Posts in 'Solar Energy/PV'
Community Solar Gardens Help Renters Go Green, but Solar Companies are Concerned
Posted on Mar 12, 2010 by Jennifer Lance.
If you live rent an apartment, own a condominium, live in a shady neighborhood, or simply don’t want solar panels on your roof, residents of Colorado have a solution: community solar gardens. What’s a community solar garden? It’s a unique idea to allow residents to purchase a share of a large solar array that would give them credit on their utility bill and qualify for rebates.
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Engineered Virus Causes Tobacco Plants to Grow Solar Cells
Posted on Jan 28, 2010 by Jennifer Lance.
Tobacco, once the glory crop of the South Atlantic region of the United States, has fallen in stature as health problems associated with smoking the plant have come to light. Now tobacco may be able to redeem itself by producing solar cells, according to researchers at the University of California at Berkeley. By infecting tobacco plants with a genetically engineered virus, scientists have been able to “produce artificial photovoltaic and photochemical cells” which are biodegradable and may end up being “more environmentally friendly than traditional methods of making solar cells”.
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Glitter-Sized Solar Panels Use 100 Times Less Silicon to Generate Electricity
Posted on Jan 20, 2010 by Jennifer Lance.
As a preschool teacher, glitter is part of my world. These tiny, shiny flecks are loved by little children, yet are detested for the problem their tiny size makes clean-up. Solar energy used to have the opposite problem: the large size of photovoltaic panels needed to produce energy was considered prohibitive for many applications. Such concerns are no longer, as scientists have successfully developed “tiny glitter-sized photovoltaic cells that could revolutionize the way solar energy is collected and used.”
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New Year’s Resolutions at Colorado’s Green Breweries
Posted on Jan 18, 2010 by Scott James.
Green beer doesn’t just mean toasting to a four-leaf clover on St. Patrick’s Day or buying a six pack of Rolling Rock. Colorado breweries are at the forefront of the green revolution, essentially leading the way toward creating products with renewable energy. In Colorado, two major brewing companies each made announcements of green improvements to their breweries early in January of 2010: New Belgium and Odell.
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Senator Feinstein’s Desert Monument Bill: Hurting or Helping Solar?
Posted on Dec 29, 2009 by Susan Kraemer.
Despite her unblemished past record of good votes on environmental, renewable energy and climate change prevention; Senator Feinstein has just confounded the media by proposing a bill that would seem to have the effect of slowing solar energy development in California’s deserts, by placing some portion of it off-limits.
Of course, most jumped on the easy story: environmentalists fighting themselves. But there is also evidence to support her contention that her bill, by taking environmental concerns off the table, is just what we need to break the logjam of efforts to build more renewable energy in California.
One piece of evidence is right in the maps:
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