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[diogenes227]

We’ve had some bad news this year, like wildfires, hurricanes, droughts, floods, exploding oil trains, imploding governments, and an international consensus of climate scientists affirming that the end is probably nigh: Any enviro can see these are dark times for the climate. But if you squint hard enough through the gloom, a literal and figurative ray of sunshine emerges! Because you know what, guys, solar energy may just save us all. For realz.

This is a guarded, cautiously optimistic thumps up, mind you.

It’s kind of a no-brainer — enough free, clean, undisputed energy falls on the earth’s surface in a little over an hour to power all of humanity for a year — but the solar story so far has had its share of struggles, goofs, and embarrassment. (Looking at you, Solyndra.) This should not be a total shock: Unlike photosynthesizing plants, humans have not spent billions of years evolving ways to harvest and store all that tasty energy, and so developing the tools to do so has been pretty complicated and expensive — so far.

And yet, technically and financially speaking, solar news of late is looking pretty solid across the board. Here are some stories of solar wins to tell your children when you tuck them in at night, to give them hope for the climatopocalyptic future:

Sun Energy Keeps Getting Sunnier

[diogenes227]

GOOGLE MAKES HUGE INVESTMENT IN THE FUTURE

In its latest quarter, Google spent $2.25 billion on data center and infrastructure spending, a huge area of costs for the company. That's one of the reasons the company is aggressively moving to solar, wind and other alternative energies to power its data centers and banks of servers scattered around the world.

If you ask top executives at Google, Apple, Facebook or Microsoft, they will all tell you they are gigantic consumers of energy. And it's for this reason that top companies in Silicon Valley are in a race to be the leader of clean and renewable energies.

But more than any other, Google is the most aggressive in advancing a clean energy agenda, analysts say. Google has made 15 wind and solar investments totaling more than $1 billion.

"We've invested over a billion dollars in 15 projects that have the capacity to produce two gigawatts of power around the world, mostly in the U.S., but that's the equivalent of Hoover's Dam worth of power generation," said Rick Needham Google's director of energy and sustainability, standing along Google's solar arrays at its headquarters in Mountain View, Calif.

On Thursday, one of Google's solar investments kicked into operation. Google and several partners flipped the switch on the world's largest solar thermal project in Ivanpah, near the California-Nevada line. The project uses 347,000 sun-facing mirrors to produce 392 megawatts of electricity. Ivanpah's clear energy will power electricity for more than 140,000 California homes.

"Silicon Valley is leading the charge to be more efficient, to work on solutions to some of these problems. Google is ahead of the pack and we'll have to wait and see how it works out. They are certainly trying many different initiatives to figure out how best to manage their footprint in the environment, as well as how to manage the cost of all their energy," said Ben Schachter, senior Internet analyst at Macquarie Securities.

[diogenes227]

"The proposal is straightforward: eliminate combustion as a source of energy, because it’s dirty and inefficient."

100% Renewable Energy by 2050

One of the greatest promises of the high-tech future, whether made explicitly or implicitly through shiny clean concept sketches, is that we will have efficient energy that doesn’t churn pollutants into the air and onto the streets.

But here in the present, politicians and even many clean energy advocates maintain that a world run on hydrogen and wind, water and solar power is not yet possible due to technical challenges like energy storage and cost.

Yet Stanford University researchers led by civil engineer Mark Jacobson have developed detailed plans for each state in the union that to move to 100 percent wind, water and solar power by 2050 using only technology that’s already available. The plan, presented recently at the AAAS conference in Chicago, also forms the basis for The Solutions Project nonprofit.

“The conclusion is that it’s technically and economically feasible,” Jacobson told Singularity Hub.

The plan doesn’t rely, like many others, on dramatic energy efficiency regimes. Nor does it include biofuels or nuclear power, whose green credentials are the source of much debate.

[diogenes227]

GOLDMAN: Solar Is On The Way To Dominating The Electricity Market

Goldman Sachs has set an estimated date for when they believe residential solar power becomes competitive with existing electric across the U.S.

It's relatively soon.

[diogenes227]

Renewable energy is just such a scam!


Global buying spree in solar panels

The sun is starting to shine again on the solar-panel manufacturing industry, a year after a string of corporate collapses.

The glut of cheap solar panels that pushed manufacturing giant Suntech and others into bankruptcy is being whittled away by a worldwide surge in solar installations. The manufacturing sector’s gradual return to profitability comes eight months after China announced it would go on a solar-buying spree to cash in on the oversupply of panels.

Yingli Green Energy Holdings Co., the world’s leading producer of solar panels, on Tuesday announced its 10th consecutive quarterly loss — but said it expected to rejoin many of its competitors in turning a profit by the third quarter of this year. Reuters reports:

A recovery in solar panel prices after a four year slump has helped Yingli’s rivals such as Trina Solar Ltd [and] JA Solar Holdings Co Ltd post profits in recent quarters, while JinkoSolar Holding Co Ltd posted a profit last August.

Bloomberg explains why the glut of panels that triggered the sector’s woes a year ago is starting to disappear:

Developers installed 37.5 gigawatts of panels worldwide last year, up 22 percent from 2012, and that figure may increase as much as 39 percent this year, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

That growth is starting to “sponge up” much of the glut, especially among Chinese manufacturers, that resulted from a buildup in the late 2000s, Pavel Molchanov, an analyst at Raymond James & Associates Inc. in Houston, said in an interview. “That has made a real dent in the overcapacity.”

China, which surpassed Germany to become the biggest solar market last year, may install more than 14 gigawatts this year, aiding domestic producers. The Asian nation added a record 12 gigawatts of solar power in 2013, compared with 3.6 gigawatts a year ago, according to data from Bloomberg New Energy Finance.

There seems to be a little bit of good news in here for everybody.

Nice chunk of change made in FSLR last few days.

[diogenes227]

See-through solar cells could change windows into power stations

And keep cell phones charged and...

Technology marches on...

[Rogerdodger]

Destroying the planet for profits?
Sounds familiar.

Can you imagine the protests if a new coal or nuclear powered energy plant was killing thousands of birds, including endangered species?

Emerging Solar Plants Kill Thousands of Birds in Mid-Air

Federal wildlife investigators visited the BrightSource Energy plant last year and watched as birds burned and fell, reporting an average of one "streamer" every two minutes.
(Called "streamers," for the smoke plume that comes from birds that ignite in midair!)

The investigators want the halt until the full extent of the deaths can be assessed. Estimates per year now range from a low of about a thousand by BrightSource to 28,000 by an expert for the Center for Biological Diversity environmental group.
The $2.2 billion plant, which launched in February, is at Ivanpah Dry Lake near the California-Nevada border.
Federal wildlife officials said Ivanpah might act as a "mega-trap" for wildlife, with the bright light of the plant attracting insects, which in turn attract insect-eating birds that fly to their death in the intensely focused light rays.
More than 300,000 mirrors, each the size of a garage door, reflect solar rays onto three boiler towers each looming up to 40 stories high.

The bird kills mark the latest instance in which the quest for
"clean"? energy has inadvertent ENVIRONMENTAL HARM!
Solar farms have been criticized for their impacts on desert tortoises, and wind farms have killed birds, including numerous raptors.

At least solar is not natural, organic, sustainable carbon based.

"CLEAN ENERGY"? Really?


But stand way back and it looks "green".
Maybe because everything around it is dead... kinda like a leaking nuclear power plant?

[diogenes227]

Boy, you really don't like technology or innovation or maybe even the future but you are revealed as no more than a propagandist when you start repeating posts just for the sake of repeating posts.

Here's you post from the absurd "Slower Power Absurd" thread. To paraphrase an old saying -- if you don't have any new to add to the discussion, don't add anything at all.

Thousand of birds

Amazing how stubborn some people are. Truly, you are making yourself out to be the guy trudging behind the plow horse while your neighbor drives a tractor.

Solar is coming and even you don't have a fat enough finger to stop it. Quit anguishing over it. It's a good thing.

[stocks]

Bill Gates: Renewable energy can't do the job.

Gates expressed his views in an interview given to the Financial Times yesterday, saying that the cost of using current renewables such as solar panels and windfarms to produce all or most power would be "beyond astronomical".

Gates is already well known as a proponent of improved nuclear power tech, and it seems he still is.

The main new thing is the firm assertion that renewable energy technology as it now is has no chance of powering a reasonably numerous and well-off human race. This is actually a very simple thing to work out, and just about anybody numerate who thinks about the subject honestly comes to the same conclusion - examples include your correspondent, Google renewables experts, global-warming daddy James Hansen, even your more honest hardline greens.

Unfortunately a lot of people aren't numerate and/or aren't honest,


http://www.theregist...sidies_into_rd/

[Rogerdodger]

Today's news: "Local poor will pay an additional $15 per month for Electric"
EPA emission rules to subsidize wind, solar...

Edited by Rogerdodger, 02 July 2015 - 04:56 PM.