About $175 billion was spent globally on renewable energy projects during the first three quarters, up 16 percent from the same period last year, with Chinese solar investment at a record, according to a Bloomberg New Energy Finance report.
Read More
For years, critics of the Energiewende, Germany’s clean-energy transition, have carped that the country’s power system cannot be based on intermittent generation sources — namely onshore wind and solar PV — without advanced storage technology to balance supply and demand. In Germany, battery storage has come a long way fast, and a year ago the German government started the first-ever subsidy program to support storage systems for homes, businesses, and public institutions, like schools. Yet the program has been slow to catch on, and observers maintain that its long-term impact on the Energiewende as such will be minimal.
The key to creating a material that would be ideal for converting solar energy to heat is tuning the material’s spectrum of absorption just right: It should absorb virtually all wavelengths of light that reach Earth’s surface from the sun — but not much of the rest of the spectrum, since that would increase the energy that is reradiated by the material, and thus lost to the conversion process.
I always enjoy learning obscure terms for collective nouns (a convocation of eagles, a bloat of hippopotamuses) so I wonder if we could coin a good term for a collection of shared solar programs? A ‘bounty’ perhaps? Whatever we call it, the collection of programs continues to grow year after year. If you’ve been following IREC for some time, you ma
Renewables became Germany’s most important power source for the first time this year, according to Agora Energiewende.
Over 95 percent of climate scientists have concluded that CO2 is the primary cause of global warming. Solving the problem requires a dramatic reduction in CO2 emissions. Some people are altruistic, but almost all businesses are bottom line oriented and…
Read More
I was walking home the other day and I just had to stop when I saw this simple but effective sign: While I didn’t need a haircut, I loved the creativity, and I thought about how this one little sign is a great lesson for some guerrilla residential solar marketing: Creative content: What made me stop was this package deal: I could get a cut, a wash,
A ridiculous amount of interesting facts and statistics surround the solar industry, and every time I write one of these posts, I fall more deeply in love with solar power. What a first-class industry to be in – renewable energy, saving money, saving the planet….yeah, those things are important, and I’m always happy to share facts and statistics w
As a businessman exploring investments, I need simple answers, however complicated the problem. I wish to know: Are microgrids economical? How much investment is needed and for what? What are the factors that principally affect profitability, within the system and in the environment? If microgrids are not profitable at the present, when will they be? I recognize that understanding microgrids as a system requires complicated mathematics and modeling. I’m sympathetic to and respect those who do that.
Recent findings from The Solar Foundation (TSF) show an encouraging surge in the number of K-12 schools installing solar power to save money, reduce carbon emissions, and introduce a new generation of children to the very practical benefits of renewabl…
Read More
