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Solar Energy
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Thursday, 11 March 2010 23:10 |
Sashaying down the runway this weekend toward the future of wearable technology: a solar-powered dress that revs gadgets via a USB charger located in the waist.
Parts of the dress come from Cornell University's Textiles Nanotech Laboratory, which teamed up with two Italian universities to create cotton threads that can conduct electrical currents, yet remain light and comfortable enough to feel like the good old cotton we all know and love to sleep in.
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Solar Energy
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Thursday, 11 March 2010 23:07 |
Renewable energy is being praised in Washington, but it is generating snickers here in the nation's traditional energy capital, where oil, gas and utility leaders are gathered for a major industry conference.
Leaders of two of the world's largest oil and gas companies used their addresses at CERAWeek, a sprawling conference sponsored by energy analysis firm IHS Cambridge Energy Research Associates, to warn against unbridled optimism about wind and solar energy. Khalid Al-Falih, president and CEO of Saudi Aramco, deemed overreliance on renewable power dangerous, while ConocoPhillips Chairman James Mulva employed sarcasm to compare renewable boosters to those who won't acknowledge climate change.
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Solar Energy
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Thursday, 11 March 2010 23:05 |
A utility is taking advantage of some little-used Southern California real estate for its next solar power project -- warehouse roofs.
Southern California Edison is leasing space on roofs of about 50 warehouses in the Inland Empire region east of Los Angeles to generate 250 megawatts of electricity from solar power.
The utility said Tuesday it has signed a five-year contract with SunPower Corp. to provide high-efficiency solar panels capable of generating about 200 megawatts, or about 80 percent of the total expected for the project. Terms of the contract were not disclosed.
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Solar Energy
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Wednesday, 10 March 2010 21:34 |
Roseville's Solar Power Inc. said Monday it has received $24.7 million in federal stimulus money and is considering opening a solar-panel plant somewhere in Sacramento County.
The stimulus grant was made by Sacramento County officials, who are trying to create manufacturing jobs to jump-start the economy.
"Expanding our manufacturing base to California will significantly enhance our ability to meet growing demand for our solar system development expertise and our top-ranked solar panels across the U.S.," said the company's chairman and chief executive, Steve Kircher, in a press release.
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Solar Energy
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Wednesday, 10 March 2010 21:32 |
Two years ago, this gritty mining city hosted a brief 21st-century gold rush. Long famous for coal, Puertollano discovered another energy source it had overlooked: the relentless, scorching sun.
Armed with generous incentives from the Spanish government to jump-start a national solar energy industry, the city set out to replace its failing coal economy by attracting solar companies, with a campaign slogan: "The Sun Moves Us."
Soon, Puertollano, home to the Museum of the Mining Industry, had two enormous solar power plants, factories making solar panels and silicon wafers, and clean energy research institutes. Half the solar power installed globally in 2008 was installed in Spain.
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Solar Energy
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Sunday, 07 March 2010 10:43 |
President Obama is ramping up efforts to promote clean energy. He's made repeated speeches on the topic, and in the last month, he's pledged $10 billion in federal loan guarantees for solar, wind and nuclear power as well as energy-efficient windows.
On Tuesday in Savannah, Ga., Obama unveiled details of his HomeStar plan to give people rebates worth up to $3,000 for making their homes more efficient. He's asking Congress to fund the program, estimated to cost about $6 billion.
The same day in Washington, the Department of Energy announced $100 million in Recovery Act funds to develop green technologies such as thermodevices and grid-scale energy storage.
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Solar Energy
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Sunday, 07 March 2010 10:40 |
The National Park Service, which oversees the island, said Friday it will fund a project to put more than 1,000 solar panels on the main prison and laundry building.
The panels are expected to provide 40 to 60 percent of the island's electricity and reduce the need for two aging diesel generators.
Officials say the generators pollute the environment and cost $700,000 a year to fuel and maintain.
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Solar Energy
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Saturday, 06 March 2010 10:50 |
The official projections do not look encouraging for the penetration of renewable energy into the Australian market over the next 20 years - particularly solar.
This week the Energy Minister, Martin Ferguson, released the first Australian Energy Resource Assessment, a comprehensive look at our renewable and non-renewable energy resources. Published by Geoscience Australia and the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics, it confirms Australia could be a clean energy superpower. It has a rich diversity of world-class energy resources - solar, wind, geothermal and wave/tidal - which are largely undeveloped.
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Solar Energy
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Saturday, 06 March 2010 10:48 |
The Center for Architecture Science and Ecology (CASE) located in New York, NY has come up with an ingenious way to capture the Sun's rays — use office windows as solar power generators to augment or power the building.
"The reason we're interested in windows is because they have the largest surface areas, typically, in buildings — especially in tall, urban buildings," said Anna Dyson head of CASE and a professor of architecture at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, NY. "We have a lot of vertical surface area to work with to really generate a lot of power."
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Solar Energy
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Saturday, 06 March 2010 10:44 |
Suntech Power STP reported strong fourth-quarter results, with sales and shipments sequentially increasing 23% and 32%, respectively. China's largest solar company resides near the bottom of the solar cost curve; the vast majority of the industry's panel capacity cannot produce product at the estimated $1.63 per watt that Suntech can achieve. Consequently, renewed demand has had sales booming since last spring, and the company is taking market share away from less efficient competitors (particularly panel companies based in Europe).
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