SunRun, a company working to make rooftop solar panels more affordable for average households, just took a big leap forward today, announcing a $100 million joint program with major utility Pacific Gas & Electric. Together, the companies say they will help the utility’s customers finance more than 3,500 rooftop solar systems across five states.

This is a huge win for SunRun, which has been locked in a dead heat with rival SolarCity — a firm that’s gotten a lot of press simply because it’s backed by Tesla Motors’ colorful CEO, Elon Musk. Both companies help homeowners find financing options that fit their budgets and desires, including relatively low monthly payments. But PG&E only signed on for $60 million, and 1,000 rooftops with SolarCity in March.

Based in San Francisco, SunRun also competes — albeit less directly — with Sungevity, a startup that uses satellite technology to measure and stake out roofs, and then help people pay for panels. It’s unclear whether its satellite spin will be enough to keep it afloat with the big boys in the space getting even bigger.

Atchison County, Missouri has just dedicated the new Farmers City Wind Power Project, consisting of 73 turbines that produce 146 megawatts of clean power, enough for 33,000 homes.  In stark contrast to the destruction caused by fossil fuel harvesting, the massive renewable energy project will coexist with farmland, which will continue to yield corn and soybeans.

Between the poverty and health impacts of mountaintop coal mining in Appalachia and the devastating effect of BP’s oil spill on businesses on the Gulf Coast, large numbers of Americans have sacrificed their well being to the risks involved in digging fossil fuels out of the earth.  The Atchison wind project shows that large scale energy projects don’t have to be the enemy of the local economy, environment, and public health.

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Researchers at the University of Texas at Austin are hot on the heels of a discovery that could more than double the efficiency of solar cells. The trick is to use tiny nanoscale crystals called quantum dots to capture more of the available energy in sunlight, including energy at the high end of the scale.  The researchers estimate that the use of high energy sunlight could boost efficiency from its present rate of about 31% for conventional solar cells, up to a whopping 66%.

Update: A team from The University of Minnesota initiated this research.

What this all means is the potential for solar energy to become cost-competitive with fossil fuels at an increasingly rapid pace.  Paired with next-generation flywheels and other new energy storage technologies, intermittent sources such as solar and wind can provide an energy stream that is every bit as steady and reliable as oil, coal, or natural gas.

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Air conditioners are a pain. They use an incredible amount of energy, reflected in incredibly high electricity bills in the summer months. But in some places, like Texas and Arizona, it’s hard to go without them. Now, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory may have an answer to the problem: A brand new air conditioning design that could make AC units 90 percent more efficient than they are today.

This is not just a new spin on the traditional design. NREL has ditched major components of today’s AC units, including their condensers and compressors. It generates colder air by evaporating water off a wet surface with a built-in fan. There is a desiccant included to make sure the air is dry.

In addition to slashing the amount of energy needed to run a typical AC unit, the NREL model, called the DEVap, also eliminates the need for chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and hydrochlorofluorocarbons (HCFCs), toxic chemicals used in many of today’s air conditioners that pollute the atmosphere.

Previously, this evaporative air conditioning process only worked in dry, hot climates, because the cool air generated would otherwise contain too much moisture. The addition of the desiccants has made it functional in a range of climates, even very humid environments, NREL says.

The challenge now will be to make the NREL air conditioner cost competitive with those already on the market. It might be as many as five summers before consumers can get buy the units to cool their houses, the laboratory says. It will be licensing the deign for commercial distribution.

Steeply reducing the amount of energy sucked by air conditioners could have a major impact on overall energy use in the U.S. and abroad. After all, air conditioners account for 5 percent of energy used in the U.S. every year.

[Photo: boliston]

Tags: air conditioners, DEVap, National Renewable Energy Laboratory, NREL

A global aluminum company called Norsk Hydro is supporting green jobs in the U.S. through its Extrusion Americas unit, which operates 12 aluminum extrusion facilities in the U.S.  Two of the company’s southeastern U.S. facilities will supply aluminum frames and other parts for a new hybrid concentrating solar facility for Florida Power & Light.  Apparently the first power plant of its kind, the 500 acre solar thermal array will connect with an existing natural gas-powered plant, replacing the fossil fuel energy with solar energy during daylight hours.

In addition to growing the U.S. green jobs sector, Hydro executive Matt Dionne points out that regional sourcing was an important factor in securing the contract because it cut energy costs and greenhouse gas emissions related to shipping, and it enabled the utility company to demonstrate its commitment to local economic growth.  The financial advantages of just-in-time delivery to the construction site also played a big role. As more utilities join the vanguard of sustainable energy investment, those benefits provide a stark contrast to the economic and environmental havoc wreaked by the world’s latest fossil fuel disaster.

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Residents of Orange County, Inland Empire, and the southern part of New Jersey have joined Los Angeles to become the newest areas of the U.S. that now have access to a 15% group discount on home solar energy installations. The discount is offered by 1BOG (One Block Off the Grid), an organization that helps you buy solar panels for your home by pre-negotiating the discount with solar energy companies, then putting together groups of potential buyers.  All together, 1BOG is now available to more than 23 million people.

1BOG, which hosts CleanTechnica, has the goal of bringing solar energy out of the margins of U.S. power consumption and into the mainstream.  To that end, the discount system is designed to be user friendly and informative. Joining the group is free, and members receive free guidance on solar energy before deciding whether or not to go ahead with the installation.

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A member of US-CAP, Duke Energy plans to build its own car-charging infrastructure in South Carolina as the Nissan Leaf (all battery-electric) and Chevy Volt (plug-in plus extended range) and other plug-in electric vehicles start to become available in the US later this year.

According to Mike Rowland, Duke Energy’s director of advanced customer technology, speaking to the Electric Drive Transportation Association, Charlotte and Raleigh will be among the dozen or so U.S. cities with the most demand for EVs.

A study last year recommended that with such a massive switch in fuel and infrastructure, that the US needed to plan an organized roll-out with a series of regional hubs with a certain density of public fast-charging stations, and once these are established, to then fill out the infrastructure to include wider regions of the nation.

Unlike the first regional hubs such as California, the Carolinas do not already get a high percentage of electricity from low carbon sources, including hydro and nuclear power.

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From red state to blue, ten governors of states bordering the East Coast of the U.S. have joined forces to endorse the development of wind energy farms on the Outer Continental Shelf.  The list includes Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Rhode Island, and Virgina.

So much for all that new offshore oil drilling along the East Coast that was supposed to happen.  Though some of the ten governors have refrained from openly opposing Atlantic Coast oil drilling, the “neighbor effect” virtually guarantees that they’re not going to welcome it with open arms. Given the mess that BP’s oil spill has made of the tourism and fishing industries in the Gulf Coast, any new exploitation of East Coast waters for fossil fuels will have to get past ten governors who have put politics aside in favor of an energy source that creates new green jobs and supports existing industries instead of destroying them.

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A consortium of some of the most renowned energy companies in the world would construct the world’s largest concentrating solar power plant near Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. The plant would have a capacity of 100 MW.

France’s oil company Total, one of the six ’super major’ oil companies in the world, and Spain’s Abengoa Solar will join hands with Abu Dhabi-based alternate energy company Masdar to build this power plant which would span 2.5 square kilometers (one square mile). The project will be located in Madinat Zayed, about 120 kilometres (75 miles) southwest of Abu Dhabi.

According to company estimates, the cost of the project is expected to be around $600 million and the project would offset 170,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions annually. The plant will comprise of concentrating mirrors which will focus the solar energy on tube passing through their foci. The tube will contain an oil which will absorb the sun’s heat which will then convert water into steam to drive a steam turbine and produce electricity through a generator.

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When you put 75 solar installers, policy makers and advocates in a room and ask them to discuss policies and tactics for reducing the local cost component of solar energy, what do they say?
We tried it at the end of May at the American Solar Energy Society’s (ASES) annual conference SOLAR 2010, and here is [...]