June 30, 2011
We know that some portion of our Solar Nation subscribers are also members of the American Solar Energy Society (ASES), the nation’s oldest association of solar professionals and advocates. But for those of you who aren’t, here’s one big benefit of belonging to ASES: Solar Today magazine.
Solar Today connects you to the leading solar energy experts, tells you what’s going on in solar development today, and keeps you up-to-date on policy, technical, business and legislative issues concerning solar. Every October there’s a ‘Getting Started’ edition full of tips for anyone looking to use solar power for the first time. You can find up-to-the-minute news on-line, and link to the digital edition of the magazine, here.
Solar Today is one of many ASES membership benefits. You can get it by going here and joining ASES today.
June 30, 2011
Another popular ASES progam is the National Solar Tour, in which hundreds of people and business owners open their doors to show the public how they’re using solar power in their lives. It’s the world’s largest grass roots solar event.
Last year there were tours in every single state, and more than 160,000 interested people paid visits to solar homes and businesses.
Would you like to be a host this year? Tours will take place (in most areas) on October 1, and you can register as a host by going here.
Share the solar wealth!
June 30, 2011
Old friend and long-time toiler in the vineyards of renewable energy reporting Stephen Lacey, now writing for the ‘indispensable blog’ Climate Progress, writes this month about how quickly solar PV is approaching grid parity.
According to top solar executives in Stephen’s story: “solar PV is no longer a fringe, cost-prohibitive technology – but, rather, a near-commodity that is quickly becoming competitive with new nuclear, new natural gas, and, soon, new coal.”
From time to time in Solar Citizen, we’ve brought to your attention indications that solar PV is getting ever closer to traditional energy sources in cost per unit of energy…
February 2011: Solar Gaining on Natural Gas
January 2011: Renewable Energy Head-to-Head with Nuclear
November 2010: Solar Heading for Grid Parity
July 2010: Solar Cheaper than Nukes
…but it’s noteworthy to read in the Climate Progress report that, long before the decade is out, reductions in materials costs can even bring solar PV into serious competition with newly constructed coal plants. And that’s a comparison with coal as it’s actually priced, not the full cost accounting price of the stuff, which, as Scott Malone of Reuters points out, can be three times what the industry charges.
Reinforcement for these stories can be found in a report on the UK’s energy future released recently by the independent consulting firm Ernst & Young. According to their report, the price of solar modules should fall to $1/Watt by 2013 (half of the 2009 figure), due to continuing reductions in the cost of materials and improvements in efficiency. So this energy source that has been decried for so long by the coal industry as too expensive (and by no less an energy expert than Bill Gates as ‘cute’) is heading fast for grid parity. The question is now not if, but how soon.
And as for the coal industry, perhaps it’s just as well that so many proposals for new coal plants have been rejected of late. If built, they’d be white elephants–or at least very grubby ones.
June 30, 2011
How many of us have heard the dismissive statement about renewables – particularly solar and wind – to the effect that their intermittency prevents them from becoming serious players in the power market? It reminds us distantly of the politician who averred, some hundred years ago, that the U.S. Patent Office could be closed because everything that could be invented had been invented – that science and technology had nothing new to say and could not improve the status quo.
No, thought leaders in the renewables industries have not spent years baffled by what detractors portray as an insoluble problem. They do actually know that the wind does not blow constantly, that clouds have been known to hide the sun, and that nightfall happens on average every evening in tropical and temperate latitudes. And they know that there are solutions aplenty. (more…)
