Solar

MOSCA, Colo.--Within a few days, Nick Thiel will take control of about 110,000 high-end solar panels pumping 30 megawatts of power onto the grid from a former potato and carrot farm.

Thiel is operations manager of the San Luis Solar Ranch, a 300-acre facility in the San Luis Valley in southern Colorado, a high-desert area considered ideal for solar power generation. I visited the solar ranch during a week-long expedition of energy-related locations in New Mexico and southern Colorado organized by the Institutes for Journalism & Natural Resources.

The SunPower solar panels, which cover 220 acres themselves, are … Read more

IBM is bringing electric power--in the form of solar panels--to data centers with trouble getting power in the first place.

The company tomorrow will detail a pilot project that couples solar power with water-cooled servers that run on high-voltage direct current. The method results in about a 10 percent energy savings by reducing the losses that normally happen in converting from alternating power from the grid to the direct current servers run on, according to Kota Murali, the chief scientist of nanotechnology at IBM India who developed the pilot as a side project.

That level of energy reduction is significant … Read more

The bankruptcies of Solyndra and now Beacon Power show that green-technology startups are still struggling to find ways to cross the dreaded "Valley of Death" into mass commercialization.

Flywheel storage company Beacon Power filed for bankruptcy protection Sunday after running out of options to raise money and fund operations. "The current economic and political climate, the financing terms mandated by DOE, and Beacon's recent delisting notice from Nasdaq have together severely restricted Beacon's access to additional investments through the equity markets," CEO William Capp said in bankruptcy papers, according to reports.

There are significant … Read more

The U.S. is poised for a big expansion of solar installations as states, municipalities, and companies add more solar in order to fulfill energy portfolio goals.

The growth will spur from many entities attempting to add renewable energy to the mix, according to a PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC) report released this week.

The report cites a prediction from the Solar Energy Industries Association that the U.S.'s global share of solar installations is predicted to triple within the next four years.

While that's good news for the solar industry overall, without the U.S. establishing strongholds this growth won'… Read more

The Department of Energy has decided to invest $60 million over the next three years to develop and commercialize concentrated solar technology, Energy Secretary Steven Chu announced yesterday afternoon.

This investment comes out of the U.S. government's SunShot Initiative, a plan to reduce the cost of solar energy in the U.S. by 75 percent in order to make it more cost effective and competitive with other energy sources, according to Chu.

What is interesting about this particular funding is that the DOE seems to have listened to the critics of concentrated solar and gotten very specific about … Read more

Cutting the cost of solar power isn't all about a better solar cell.

General Electric today announced two research projects to make installation of solar panels easier by standardizing the components, such as racking systems for solar panels. The $5.9 million in research is part of the Department of Energy's SunShot Initiative to dramatically cut the cost of solar photovoltaics.

The price of solar electric panels has steadily gone down and is poised to fall more in the face of a global price war in solar. But as much as half of the cost of solar is … Read more

Apple plans to build a solar farm next to its massive data center in Maiden, N.C., according to a Charlotte Observer report.

The company has won approval to reshape the slope of 171 acres of vacant land it owns adjacent to the data center in preparation, according to permits issued in Catawba County. However, the permit offered no details about the solar farm project itself--dubbed Project Dolphin Solar Farm-- including its size, the newspaper noted.

Apple has spent reportedly $1 billion to build a 500,000-square-foot behemoth of a data center in Maiden, N.C., which had the code … Read more

First Solar's board of directors ousted the solar company's chief executive, Rob Gillette, replacing him on an interim basis with Chairman Mike Ahearn while it searches for a permanent replacement.

Shares in the world's most valuable solar company plummeted more than 24 percent to $43.71--its lowest level since March of 2007--following the unexpected Tuesday announcement.

"It's an absolute and total surprise," said Mark Bachman, an analyst with Avian Securities LLC.

The U.S. solar company said in a brief statement that its board of directors has asked Ahearn to serve as temporary CEO … Read more

It's hard to imagine making thermostats sexy, but if anyone could do it, it would be the "father of the iPod."

In 2008, amid renewed concerns about Steve Jobs' health, Fortune ranked the probable candidates to someday replace the famed Apple CEO. The first choice? Then COO and eventual successor Tim Cook. The second? Tony Fadell, chief of the iPod division and the man credited with the ideas that resulted in the creation of the iPod and its marriage with the iTunes Music Store.

Around that time, Fadell left Apple, his next move unknown, and since then, … Read more