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Hawaiian Home a Solar-Battery Storage Microgrid Showcase

Combining performance-enhanced PV panels, advanced battery storage and cloud-connected system monitoring, a residential microgrid now up and running on the ¨Big Island¨ of Hawaii’s Kona Coast shows how PV and clean tech innovators are bringing renewable energy self-sufficiency closer to commercial, mass-market reality. The smart solar-battery storage microgrid now up and running at Bakken Hale, the home of environmentalist, inventor and entrepreneur Earl Bakken, is one of the largest of its kind in the world.

Installed by Aloha State solar installer Renewable Energy Systems    (RES) and Silicon Valley-based Tigo Energy, a ground-mounted array of 176-kW PV panels is able to produce 356-MWh of emissions-free electricity per year over a projected 20-year lifecycle. That’s enough to meet all of Bakken Hale’s power needs, the two project partners stated in a press release.

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Vehicle to Grid Energy Storage Experiment Underway in California

In a new pilot program, a California utility is paying drivers of BMW electric cars to delay charging their vehicles when the power grid is under pressure.

One hundred owners of BMW AG’s i3 hatchback receive $1,000 upfront to participate in Pacific Gas & Electric Co.’s 18-month trial, which starts this week and is confined to the San Francisco Bay Area. Peter Berman, a 70-year-old, semi-retired Los Altos psychologist, was selected from about 400 applicants.

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Vehicle to Grid Energy Storage Experiment Underway in California

In a new pilot program, a California utility is paying drivers of BMW electric cars to delay charging their vehicles when the power grid is under pressure.

One hundred owners of BMW AG’s i3 hatchback receive $1,000 upfront to participate in Pacific Gas & Electric Co.’s 18-month trial, which starts this week and is confined to the San Francisco Bay Area. Peter Berman, a 70-year-old, semi-retired Los Altos psychologist, was selected from about 400 applicants.

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Uncategorized

Vehicle to Grid Energy Storage Experiment Underway in California

In a new pilot program, a California utility is paying drivers of BMW electric cars to delay charging their vehicles when the power grid is under pressure.

One hundred owners of BMW AG’s i3 hatchback receive $1,000 upfront to participate in Pacific Gas & Electric Co.’s 18-month trial, which starts this week and is confined to the San Francisco Bay Area. Peter Berman, a 70-year-old, semi-retired Los Altos psychologist, was selected from about 400 applicants.

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The Lessons Coal and Electricity Markets of the Past Can Offer Solar+Storage Markets Today

The path to scaling up clean energy technologies like solar+storage sometimes can seem like unchartered territory. It can be challenging to figure out the best strategies to develop large, mainstream markets for clean energy technologies. So, it’s good to know that we’ve been on this path before, and that energy transitions of the past can provide some lessons for the future.

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Testing Heats Up at Sandia’s Solar Tower

Researchers at Sandia National Laboratories are working to lower the cost of solar energy systems and improve efficiencies in a big way, thanks to a system of small particles. This month, engineers lifted Sandia’s continuously recirculating falling particle receiver to the top of the tower at theNational Solar Thermal Test Facility,marking the start of first-of-its-kind testing that will continue through 2015. The Sandia-developed falling particle receiver works by dropping sand-like ceramic particles through a beam of concentrated sunlight, capturing and storing the heated particles in an insulated tank. The technology can capture and store heat at high temperatures without breaking down, unlike conventional molten salt systems.

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Listen Up: Charging Your Electric Vehicle

Electric vehicles are great: they’re affordable, great for the environment and low maintenance. And where electric rates are low — or if you have rooftop solar power — EVs are cheaper to drive per mile than gas-powered cars. But you have to think about how you will charge your EV: there are only a few thousand public charging locations in the U.S. compared to 100,000 gas stations.

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Listen Up: Charging Your Electric Vehicle

Electric vehicles are great: they’re affordable, great for the environment and low maintenance. And where electric rates are low — or if you have rooftop solar power — EVs are cheaper to drive per mile than gas-powered cars. But you have to think about how you will charge your EV: there are only a few thousand public charging locations in the U.S. compared to 100,000 gas stations.

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Rain or Shine, Students Keep Their Solar Race Cars Going with Energy Storage

Teegan and Kira Cordova love the original Star Trek TV series. That much is obvious. The eighth-grade twins from Ken Caryl Middle School in Littleton are wearing the uniform tunics from the 1960s show — Teegan’s in red and Kira’s in blue. The model electric car they’re racing in the 25th Annual Junior Solar Sprint and Lithium Ion Battery car competitions carries the designation NCC-1701, the same identifier emblazoned across the hull of the USS Enterprise — which fits perfectly with their car’s name: “Starship Enterprise.”

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NewsUncategorized

Rain or Shine, Students Keep Their Solar Race Cars Going with Energy Storage

Teegan and Kira Cordova love the original Star Trek TV series. That much is obvious. The eighth-grade twins from Ken Caryl Middle School in Littleton are wearing the uniform tunics from the 1960s show — Teegan’s in red and Kira’s in blue. The model electric car they’re racing in the 25th Annual Junior Solar Sprint and Lithium Ion Battery car competitions carries the designation NCC-1701, the same identifier emblazoned across the hull of the USS Enterprise — which fits perfectly with their car’s name: “Starship Enterprise.”

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