Solar

Anyone who follows either the energy industry or the military knows that all branches of the U.S. military have aggressive goals for renewable energy and for improving energy security and independence. Microgrids are a key part of that plan. When I wrote about military microgrids in “The Military Gets Smart Grid” back in January 2012, […]

Aside from places where microgrids have a track record—educational, industrial, and commercial campuses—commercial and community microgrids are still the domain of early adopters, but the number of people wanting to travel the trail they are blazing is increasing. A microgrid is any collection of interconnected loads and distributed energy resources within clearly defined electrical boundaries […]

If you’re looking for the easiest place to deploy microgrid technology, look at islands. That was the general consensus of presenters at the 4th Military & Commercial Microgrids Summit in Washington, D.C., held June 17-19. In addition to a presentation about a microgrid being developed for Necker Island—owned by Sir Richard Branson, founder of the […]

If, as Navigant Research suggests, the global microgrid market will exceed $40 billion annually by 2020, where is all the capacity going, and what’s fueling it (literally and figuratively)? Peter Asmus, a long-time researcher of smart grid technologies at Navigant, shared that market projection and others at the 4th Military & Commercial Microgrids Summit in […]

The Department of Commerce preliminarily ruled that China is subsidizing certain crystalline silicone photovoltaic (PV) products at a rate of 18.56% to 35.21%, marking another win for SolarWorld.  Commerce announced its affirmative preliminary determination in a new countervailing duty (CVD) investigation on imports of PV cells, modules, laminates, and panels. The agency calculated a preliminary […]

The Department of Energy (DOE) released a report on May 21 highlighting progress at five concentrating solar power (CSP) projects in the southwestern U.S. In the report, “2014: The Year of Concentrating Solar Power,” three DOE-supported technologies are featured: parabolic trough, power tower, and thermal storage. The DOE has helped finance the large-scale deployment of […]

For the first time ever, the U.S. has filed criminal charges against known state actors for hacking U.S. interests. A grand jury in the Western District of Pennsylvania indicted five Chinese military hackers for computer hacking, economic espionage, and other offenses directed at six American victims in the U.S. nuclear power, metals, and solar products […]

Gas, wind, and solar are it for any new generation in North America for the next five to 10 years (with a few one-offs), speakers at this year’s Platts Global Power Markets conference agreed. The annual event for those involved in power project development, financing, and litigation was held in Las Vegas Apr. 7 to […]

The Agua Caliente Solar Photovoltaic (PV) facility in southern Arizona, currently the world’s largest solar PV plant, completed construction on April 29. The 290-MW project—located between Phoenix and Yuma—is jointly owned by NRG Energy, through its subsidiary NRG Solar, and MidAmerican Solar, a subsidiary of MidAmerican Renewables. The plant will sell its electricity to Pacific […]

Oklahoma’s Gov. Mary Fallin (R) on Monday signed into law a measure that would allow regulated electric utilities to recover revenues needed to pay for transmission infrastructure as the number of distributed generation users increases.  Senate Bill 1456, which drew strong opposition from environmental and distributed generation groups, reversed a 1977 law that prohibited public […]