Solar

Fourteen members of the World Trade Organization (WTO)—including the U.S., China, the European Union (EU), and Japan—on Tuesday launched negotiations to eliminate tariffs or custom duties on wind turbines, solar products, and other environmental goods.  The first phase of negotiations between the 14 WTO members, which make up 86% of the global environmental goods trade, […]

Nevada utility NV Energy’s net metering program does not significantly impact homeowners without rooftop solar, according to a study prepared for the Nevada Public Utilities Commission (NPUC) this month.  The study was conducted by San Francisco–based Energy and Environmental Economics (E3) at the request of the NPUC after the passage of a Nevada law last […]

National Hydro Power Corp. (NHPC) and the Renewable Energy College (REC) of Kolkata have partnered to develop a 50-MW floating solar photovoltaic (PV) plant in the Indian state of Kerala, according to a report in the Economic Times. The project would represent the largest floating solar PV plant in the world, dwarfing a 1.2-MW plant […]

Continually falling costs and tightening emissions regulations are set to drive huge growth in global renewable energy capacity despite flagging support for subsidies in Europe and the U.S., says a new report from Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF). The BNEF report projects global spending on new power generation will be around $7.7 trillion through 2030, […]

RWE AG is Europe’s third-largest electricity and fifth-largest gas marketer, with holdings in upstream oil and gas production, power grids, and energy trading. Its German power subsidiary has been the utility poster child for the effects of the Energiewende, the transformation of the Germany power system away from nuclear and coal toward renewable energy and […]

At the Edison Electric Institute (EEI) annual meeting this week in Las Vegas, the tone was one of collaboration with partners from Washington to distributed generation companies. Those partnerships will be needed as the investor-owned utility (IOU) industry fights not so much a war on coal as a war for mindshare and wallet share in […]

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 […]

The Department of Energy (DOE) plans to make an additional $4 billion in loan guarantees available to help commercialize U.S. renewable energy and energy efficiency technologies that avoid, reduce, or sequester greenhouse gases. The DOE on Wednesday issued a draft loan guarantee solicitation under Title XVII of the Energy Policy Act of 2005 (through Section […]

In a stark departure from the zero-nuclear future proposed by a previous administration, the cabinet of Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe Friday endorsed restarting the country’s idled nuclear reactors as it develops more renewables.  The cabinet on Friday officially adopted the first Basic Energy Plan since the Fukushima disaster, a 78-page document (in Japanese) that […]

Florida Power and Light (FPL) on Wednesday asked the Florida Public Service Commission (PSC) to approve a unique pilot program through which the company will build new solar facilities and participating customers will fund them via voluntary contributions.  During the next three years, depending on customer participation, FPL projects that the program could support the […]

The Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating Station was inaugurated on Feb. 13 in California. Our news story on the launch included several photos, but below are additional shots of the world’s largest concentrating solar power plant taken during the event. —Thomas Overton, JD is a POWER associate editor (@thomas_overton, @POWERmagazine).    

Brazil’s electricity market is vast: the largest in Latin America and 10th largest in the world, with an installed capacity of 121,000 MW. Download the report.

California leads the nation in installed solar photovoltaic (PV) capacity, with almost 150,000 systems large and small in operation and more than 2 GW of total capacity. Worldwide, California would rank 7th in installed solar capacity (PV and thermal) were it a separate country. All that activity is leading to some major changes in the […]

The Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating Station, the world’s largest concentrating solar power (CSP) facility, was dedicated Thursday afternoon at a ceremony keynoted by U.S. Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz. In his remarks, Moniz hailed the Obama administration’s leadership on supporting renewable energy projects. “President Obama and the Department of Energy [DOE] are committed to ensuring […]

In 2010, intent on continuing its commitment to energy efficiency and preventing climate change, Japan enacted its second Basic Energy Plan. The new policy document, revising the first, from 2003, called for

President Obama spoke briefly about energy in his State of the Union address on Tuesday night, though he declared at the outset: “The all-of-the-above energy strategy I announced a few years ago is working, and today, America is closer to energy independence than we’ve been in decades.” That statement rejected recently expressed concerns from 18 […]

The U.S. Commerce Department will begin fresh antidumping and countervailing duty investigations of imports of certain crystalline silicon photovoltaic products from China, as well as an antidumping duty investigation of imports from Taiwan. The department announced today that the scope of the new investigations, petitioned for by SolarWorld Industries, specifically excludes products covered by existing […]

A land of lakes and rivers, Quebec benefits today from an abundance of clean and green energy, vastly generated by means of hydro power, which is increasingly complemented by the province’s eastern wind energy farms. Download a pdf of this report.

The Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) is developing a promising solar-fossil hybrid power system for integration with a conventional combined-cycle power plant. The hybrid system uses concentrated

Dominion announced that it has placed into service a group of solar generation projects in Marion County, Ind., that will generate up to 28.6 MW of electricity. The three projects, known as Indy Solar I, II, and III, were acquired in July 2013 from Sunrise Energy Ventures LLC, based in Minnetonka, Minn. All three projects […]

Solar photovoltaic (PV) installations in the United States for 2013 will surpass 4 GW for the first time, spurred by continually falling prices and surging popularity of residential rooftop solar, according to a report from the Solar Energy Industry Association (SEIA) released this week. Notably, the U.S. is projected to beat Germany in solar PV […]