Scientists at the University of Cambridge in the UK have found a way to improve the efficiency of photovoltaic cells by as much as 25% through harnessing more of the sun’s spectrum than most traditional silicon-based solar cells can. → Read More
In an unusual hybrid, British industrial designer Phil Pauley created Marine Solar Cells that harness energy from both the sun and water.
The web of energy generators capture energy off-shore, using a combination of floating photovoltaics and natural buoyancy displacement. Thanks to the reflective nature of water, the solar component’s efficiency is up to 20% greater than it would be land-locked. → Read More
Solar manufacturer Solaria and solar performance monitoring software and hardware provider meteocontrol have today announced a partnership that will see meteocontrol’s Virtual Control Room (VCOM) monitoring system added to Solaria’s projects. The system aims to help Solaria’s customers increase their solar yields through remote management.
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GE has announced plans to spend $600 million on a new solar factory located in the Denver suburb of Aurora, Colorado. The factory, which begins operations in 2012, will be capable of producing enough solar panels per year to generate 400 megawatts of power, or enough energy to power 80,000 homes. When completed, the factory will be bigger than 11 football fields – soon to be the largest factory of its kind in the U.S.
The business will also bring 355 jobs to Colorado plus 100 more positions at GE’s research facility in upstate New York. → Read More
The spectacular failure of solar manufacturer Solyndra is being held up by some as a shining example of the Obama administration’s failure to properly manage government subsidies after its collapse left taxpayers with $535 million in federally guaranteed loans. But Solyndra’s failure on its own is not remarkable. There are always risks involved when you’re introducing innovation into a commoditized market. The bigger, and still unanswered, question is why did it take this much capital before it failed, given the warning signs? → Read More
In 2010, the U.S. installed 887 megawatts (MW) of grid-connected photovoltaic (PV), up 104% from the 435 MW installed in 2009, according to a new recent report by the Solar Energy Industries Association and GTM Research. However, the U.S. market’s share of global installations fell to 5.1%, down from 6.0% in 2009.
In the end of 2011, that’s expected to change, thanks to slowdowns in major European markets like Italy and Germany. And in a few years time, the report says, the U.S. market may be the largest in the world. → Read More
Main Street Power, a national solar financier, is partnering with AlsoEnergy for a nearly three megawatt distributed generation solar project in California. AlsoEnergy, an energy monitoring and financial management software solutions provider, will provide the energy monitoring software for the project, which will be spread throughout the state of California.
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Meteocontrol North America, a global provider of solar performance monitoring software and hardware, bankable energy yield reports, technical due diligence and operations management services for photovoltaic installations, has partnered with Princeton Solar Solutions (PSS), a top N.J.-based solar provider.
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A Year In The Life Of An Entrepeneur
1. July 2010: Ready: Set: Delaware, the state with the lowest highest point. David Argentar, a biochemist by training and bioinformaticist by trade, has launched a startup. Of sorts. Well – more of a hobby, he’d be the first to admit. He has no business plan, no investors, no employees. All he really has, in fact, is an idea and a pending patent. And as everyone is eager to tell you these days, ideas are a dime a dozen, and patents are practically a scam.
It gets worse. Much. His idea is hardware. A new kind of solar concentrator, to be exact, made mostly of water. His first version was too heavy; but he thinks his redesign could conceivably, in his wildest dreams, drive down the cost of solar power by quite a lot. But—come on, now, really—a hardware startup? With only one founder?
Hardware is hard. It allows for no binary abstractions, no digitized purity to protect you from the real world. It is the real world, in all in its vicious and unforgiving glory, perpetually at the mercy of a hundred unexpected environmental factors. And almost by definition it is incredibly expensive to develop. I should know: I myself have a degree in electrical engineering – but I fled to the warm embrace of software as soon as I graduated. Hardware was much too temperamental for me.
Argentar, fortunately, is made of sterner stuff.
Good thing, too. Over the next year he’s going to need everything he’s got. → Read More
When it comes to renewable energy solutions, sometimes nature has the best ideas. That was 13-year-old Aidan Dwyer’s conclusion after a wintry hike in New York’s Catskill Mountains, a trip that inspired him to build a unique and effective solar array design.
Dwyer observed patterns in the trees and, after further research and contemplation, realized the branches matched up with the Fibonacci sequence, a mathematical pattern found throughout nature, such as in falcon flight paths, nautilus shells and ratios within the human body. → Read More
Ford Motor Company is teaming up with San Jose-based solar panel maker SunPower to offer a rooftop solar system option which will be sold alongside the upcoming Ford Focus EV. The “Drive Green for Life” program, as it’s being called, involves mounting solar panels on a customer’s home.
These panels wouldn’t be used just to charge the Focus itself, however. They actually help offset the cost that comes with having to charge the car, something which most electric car owners do every night.
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Aviation enthusiasts interested in greener flying might put an Elektra One plane on their wish lists. PC-Aero‘s electric aircraft can fly for up to three hours on one charge with a 100mph cruising speed. The charging happens inside a solar-powered hangar included in the plane’s anticipated purchase price of $145,000. → Read More
Group buying is moving into the commercial clean energy space thanks to Solar@Work, a program designed by San Francisco’s Department of the Environment to make solar panels more affordable for business owners. Businesses have three options for acquiring solar panels through the program: Purchasing, leasing, and securing a loan. A federal grant covering 30% of installation costs is also on offer.
Solar@Work hopes to sign on at least 20 building owners in the San Francisco area by the end of the year, which could translate to as much as 2 megawatts of solar power.
While the program is innovative in simplifying solar for commercial buildings, it is not the first to harness group buying power for solar. 1Bog has a similar model for home-based solar installations, and SolarMosaic provides a crowdfunding platform for bringing solar to community buildings such as schools and churches. → Read More
We will see more of these devices coming in the next few years, I am sure: Panasonic today announced [JP] the BG-BL01, a portable and solar-powered LED light that doubles as a charger for USB gadgets. The device is sized at just 152×104×24mm, weighs 150g, can house two AA batteries and is splash proof. → Read More
SoloPower— a manufacturer of flexible, thin film solar cells and modules— has raised another $43.7 million in an equity round this month, according to a new SEC filing. Investors in the round include: Greentech Capital in New York, and Thomas Weisel Partners in San Francisco. Earlier investors in the company include: Hudson Clean Energy Partners, Crosslink Capital, Convexa, and Firsthand.
In February this year, SoloPower locked a $197 million loan guarantee from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Loan Programs Office to build a “facility that, when completed and at full capacity, is expected to produce approximately 400MW of thin film Photovoltaic (PV) modules annually,” according to a company press statement. → Read More
It seems like when I’m outside the US, all I see is solar-powered netbooks. Solar powered netbooks here, solar powered netbooks there. Cafes brimming with them, streets littered with them, babies babbling into their solar powered netbooks issued at birth. Okay, maybe not. But this one from Samsung, which has no special specs except for the solar panel on the back, was originally not coming to the US. And now it is. For $399. July 3rd. Word to your solar powered mother. [via Laptop] → Read More
Total, the fossil fuels giant, just gave itself a renewable energy makeover by finishing up its $1.3 billion purchase of a majority stake in SunPower, the San Jose, Calif.-based designer and manufacturer of solar panels and systems.
Let’s put the scope of the Total-SunPower deal in perspective. According to research by the Cleantech Group and Deloitte, for all of 2010, venture investments in cleantech companies of any stripe worldwide totaled $7.7 billion across 715 deals and the solar segment attracted 24 percent of those dollars. → Read More
Google today announced a new partnership with SolarCity, committing $280 million from its coffers to finance SolarCity installations, namely solar rooftops for homes in North America.
The partnership brings Google employees a discount on residential solar installations and services from SolarCity. On a worldwide basis, according to the company’s last quarterly earnings report, Google employs about 26,300 full-time.
Earlier this month, SolarCity locked a commitment from U.S. Bancorp that put them past the $1 billion mark in terms of financing capacity… → Read More
Cleantech companies— especially in solar— love to talk about how they’re breaking records. They issue press releases left and right about the most efficient this, that and the other. Such claims fizzle if they haven’t been verified by a third-party lab. They can also feel like greenwash, or Cola War style brand standoffs.
Broken records we love to hear about, though, are like these from cleantech ventures Lighting Science Group and Flisom (in Switzerland)… → Read More
On Wednesday, SolarCity added $158 million to the pool of funds that it uses to finance, design, develop and install commercial or residential solar power projects in the U.S. The latest fund came through a partnership with U.S. Bancorp (a subsidiary of U.S. Bank) and gives SolarCity more than $1 billion in financing capacity… → Read More
