April 27, 2011
Do you want to do your part to move the solar needle forward in your community? You can do that by being part of the largest grass roots solar event in America: the ASES National Solar Tour.
The 15th Annual National Solar Tour is already in the planning stage. Commercial and residential owners of solar systems are now signing up to host visitors interested in learning about real-life experiences with renewable energy use. It’s a great opportunity to spread the word to your neighbors about the economics and the practicalities of going solar.
Last year, for the first time, there were solar tours in every single state in the Union, with participation by 160,000 solar enthusiasts. This year even more are expected. In most locations, the Tour will take place on Saturday, October 1.
You can find out more about the National Solar Tour here, or by contacting Richard Burns, Tour Manager.
April 27, 2011
Our thanks to those of you who communicated your displeasure to the U.S. Congress over the very real danger that the Department of Energy’s Section 1705 Loan Guarantee Program would be a casualty of the Congressional budget process. We sent out our Action Alert at the height of the Capitol Hill donnybrook, and the news floating to earth along with the dust it aroused is that the program has actually survived intact.
The Loan Guarantee Program provides underwriting guarantees to private investors to enable them to fund renewable energy projects. As of this year, the program has allowed more than twenty large projects, representing some $40 billion in private investment, to proceed. Continuation of the program will enable a further $35 billion of private investment to be committed, creating more than 80,000 jobs.
This is a classic example of where not to cut government spending, i.e., where it attracts more investment than it actually pays for, not to mention that it increases renewable energy deployment in typically large packages, and creates good green jobs. It seems that some sanity crept back into the stridently doctrinaire debate in Congress, for which we’re grateful.
We’re also grateful for your contribution to the argument. Now, back to the barricades….
April 27, 2011
The Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory has published research showing that Californian homes with PV systems installed sell for a premium over homes without such systems.
“We find compelling evidence that solar PV systems in California have boosted home sales prices,” says the lead author Ben Hoen, a researcher at Berkeley Lab. “These average sales price premiums appear to be comparable with the average investment that homeowners have made to install PV systems in California, and of course homeowners also benefit from energy bill savings after PV system installation and prior to home sale.”
The premium has amounted to between $3.90 and $6.40 per watt installed, or approximately $17,000 for a 3.1-kW PV system. (more…)
April 27, 2011
We often find ourselves having to temper people’s expectations about newly announced advances and breakthroughs in solar power. New materials, processes and efficiencies discovered in the laboratory often won’t, realistically, be seen outside the lab. for a couple of years, while others don’t translate into commercially realistic products at all.
That’s no reason, however, for us to shy away from passing on news of exciting discoveries in research labs., because those discoveries may, in the fullness of time, change the way we build houses, derive our electrical power and live our daily lives. We’d just like to see these products fulfill their promise and be on the market now, rather than when our grandchildren are of homebuying age.
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
creeps in this petty pace from day to day
to the last syllable of recorded time…
Notwithstanding, the news coming out of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology qualifies as exciting, and we look forward to it living up to its promise for the way it could transform the built environment. (more…)
April 27, 2011
For once, we’re not being satirical with that headline. An excellent case of tax dollars being used for the benefit of us all can be found in the Department of Energy’s PV Technology Incubator program. This program dispenses relatively small amounts of funding to start-up companies with promising technologies, with the aim of finding breakthroughs that will dramatically lower the cost of solar installations. The program is a high-pressure one that expects recipients to show rapid progress toward meeting the Department’s SunShot Initiative goal: utility-scale solar costs in the order of $1/watt by 2020. (more…)
