Mark your calendars, the 39th annual National Solar Energy Conference, commonly known as SOLAR 2010 is coming to Phoenix! It will be at the Phoenix Convention Center on May 17th thru May 22nd 2010. The exhibits, which will feature many different companies from all aspects of the solar energy industry, are open to the public. There will also be many different sessions that you can sign up for to learn more about renewable energy from leading experts in the field. For more information see Solar 2010.

The American Solar Energy Society (ASES) is responsible for producing the National Solar Energy Conference. American Solar Energy Society is the nation’s largest and oldest nonprofit dedicated to advancing the U.S. toward a sustainable energy economy, and publishes SOLAR TODAY magazine, and works to increase the use of renewable energy across the U.S. ASES is based in Boulder, Colorado and has regional and state chapters throughout the country.

Jason
Estimator

On Monday, the British newspaper The Independent published an interview with Fatih Birol, chief economist for the International Energy Agency, in which Birol warned governments to pay attention to the impending oil crunch. Peak oil arrives within ten years, Birol said, but as demand for oil rises, prices will soar long before that. He predicts an oil-price crisis within two years, crippling any economic recovery. Bottom line: the world needs to adopt substitutes for petroleum, soon, simpl [...]

Do national standards contain a consistent bias in favor hot-weather architecture? Specifically, do they favor passive cooling technology over passive heating technology?

Two experts have recently drawn attention to idiosyncracies in heating/cooling rules. First, architect Paul Hutton here in Colorado points out that LEED points are awarded for white or reflective roofs, even in snow country where a dark roof may provide solar gain and reduce load on the heating system. Moreover, a hig [...]

The July/August issue of The Atlantic contains a good feature article on the history of renewable energy in the U.S. since the Carter administration, and the lessons to be drawn as we launch another go at reforming the nation’s energy economy.

In “Better Luck This Time,” senior editor Joshua Green traces the volatile seesaw pattern of renewable American renewables to Congressional ambivalence – but also (and chiefly) to a fundamental mistake by the Carter administration. Carte [...]

Investment in sustainable energy projects rose 5% in 2008 to $155 billion worldwide, according to a report issued today by the United Nations, surpassing investment in new fossil fuel projects for the first time.

However, the credit crisis delayed many North American projects, leading to an 8% drop in sustainable energy investments here. Chinese investment in renewable energy (mostly wind) rose 18%, Indian investment grew 12%, and Brazil increased 76%, mostly in sugar-cane ethanol. Brazil [...]

We love distributed power, but like most technology freaks we also love to look at gigantic engineering. At least you have to admire the ambition.

The Scientific American website today posted a slide show of ten huge renewable (or at least carbon-neutral) electric power projects, and it’s great fun. Each site was chosen as the largest of its type in the world. Heading the list, for sheer bulk as well as power production, is China’s Three Gorges Dam — it’s an environmental and cu [...]

In The New York Review of Books for June 11,  Bill McKibben of 350.org has published a thoughtful review of the new Nicholas Stern book, The Global Deal: Climate Change and the Creation of a New Era of Progress and Prosperity. Stern, former chief economist of the World Bank, made headlines in October, 2006, on the release of his Stern Report, commissioned by the British government, on the potential economic effects of climate change. Briefly, as McKibben says, Stern [...]

Olivier Drucke, 43, the Franco-German marketing whiz who runs the European Solar Thermal Industry Federation (ESTIF) in Brussels, gave a rapid-fire talk on Thursday to explain how his coalition managed to get solar water heating mandated at 50% of all heating demand by 2050.

As a baseline, Drucke said, in 2007 China had the equivalent of about 80,000 MW of domestic solar water heating, and the United States about 22,000 MW – but it was mostly pool heating, outside Hawaii. Turkey had 7,000 MW, [...]

It’s now widely recognized, if infrequently mentioned, that it takes water to make energy, and energy to transport and treat water.
Michael Webber of the University of Texas has been mentioning it a lot. In a recent Scientific American article, he wrote at length about the ecological death spiral that results when energy and water utilities chase a stressed resource.

Thermoelectric power plants are the largest consumers of water in the United States, Webber pointed out in a talk on [...]

What if people ordinarily unable to install photovoltaic systems because of the initial cost or lack of an unshaded, well-oriented roof could buy into a community installation and receive a corresponding offset on their utility bills?

Speakers at today’s SOLAR 2009 session on community solar described first steps at making this model a reality. Two examples already provide valuable lessons, and more models are emerging.

Dana Hall of Pace Law School’s Pace Energy and Climate C [...]

For decades, solar power companies have worked hard to drive the cost of solar-generated electricity downward, to compete with “conventional” central power plants. “Grid parity” is considered to be 8 to 10 cents per kilowatt-hour – the average cost of utility-supplied electricity across the United States.

Speakers at the opening plenary session of SOLAR 2009 said we’ll be at grid parity within a year or two – but that it may not matter.

Ajeet Rohtgi, winner of this year’s Hoyt Clarke Hot [...]

The real estate bubble has burst. Denis Hayes, president of The Bullitt Foundation and a pioneering solar engineer and advocate, thinks the world will work its way out of the its economic morass “in three months or three years.”

But, he warned a large audience at the SOLAR 2009 Awards Banquet on Tuesday evening, “Recovery is mostly bad news. Behind it is an ecological bubble. Economic bubbles inevitably lead to collapse, and so do ecological bubbles – and there’s no recovery from an ecologica [...]

David Zach is a futurist, not a psychic.  When he speaks next Friday at SOLAR 2009, the American Solar Energy Society’s National Solar Conference, he says “I’m not going to tell people what’s going to happen in the future, but I am going to tell them how to think about the future.”

Zach will talk about looking at the world in terms of fads, trends and principles. Fads, he says, are like flavors, giving our lives color. Fads serve as anchors to a moment in time, but those who live entirely by [...]

The SOLAR TODAY staff shuffles off to Buffalo over the weekend. We’ll post daily reports on SOLAR 2009 events, right here on the Advances blog.

In addition to speeches, we’ll sit in on a lot of policy updates, technology introductions and training sessions.  There’s always something lively and interesting going on, so check this space daily.  

Blog readers are welcome to join the discussion — I hope you’ll post comments and questions as the week progresses.

&n [...]

Jigar Shah, founder of SunEdison, says the theme of his keynote talk will be that “We got everything we want except respect.”

Shah explains that a progressive administration and energy-minded Congress are happy to provide incentives and stimulus funds to promote solar energy projects. But in spite of a seven-year track record of 40 percent annual growth, Washington officials still don’t regard solar industries as grown-up, responsible businesses that can meet their targets.

Ev [...]

Good news and bad news from our English-speaking cousins:

First the good news: Jim Prentice, Canada’s environment minister, announced last week that his Conservative government will institute a cap-and-trade system for coal-fired power plants, effectively forbidding new coal-plant construction without carbon sequestration and leading to the phase-out of existing plants.

The bad news is that Australia has delayed its cap-and-trade system by a year, until 2011, repor [...]

Since October 2007, Kansas has waged a war over the issue of a new coal-burning power plant for Sunflower Electric. The utility company lobbied aggressively for it, and Gov. Kathleen Sebelius repeatedly vetoed enabling legislation.

Sebelius has now moved on to become secretary of health and human services in the Obama administration. Her successor as governor, Mark Parkinson, instantly reached a compromise with Sunflower to permit the coal plant. The power company agrees to shut dow [...]

On NPR’s Morning Edition program today, Jeff Brady interviewed hedge fund veteran Eric Janszen. For about the past year, Janszen has been telling anone who will listen that renewable energy is the next great investment bubble, following in the tradition of the real estate and dot-com bubbles. Then Brady talked to Boone Pickens, who explained, in effect, that renewable investments are tied to the price of energy in general. The unstated implication: y ou’d have to believe that energy is a [...]

Last summer, Michael Totten wrote a couple of columns in SOLAR TODAY about Google’s sustainable energy projects. A flurry of letters (July/August 08) followed, proposing ways in which Google’s software products — in particular, Google Earth — might be adapted to solar energy planning.

We’ve seen a number of these mash-ups recently. The slickest and most appealing was put together by CH2MHill Enterprise Spatial Solutions for the City of Berkeley, and linked through the Community [...]

Pres. Barack Obama, in a speech today to the National Academy of Sciences, committed the United States to spend at least 3% of GDP on research and development, including a major commitment to energy projects.

The initiative includes doubling the budgets for the National Science Foundation and the National Institute of Standards and Technology, among other agencies, plus about $400 million to launch ARPA-E, the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Energy.

A major administratio [...]

Non-fossil liquid fuels got a boost yesterday when the California Air Resources Board called for a 10% cut in the carbon emissions of motor fuels by 2020.

On the face of it, the rule is good news for the ethanol and biodiesel industries. To limit land-conversion and food-competition problems, CARB favors low-carbon fuels with high energy content per acre. The board has published complex rules that are seen to promote sugar cane over corn ethanol, for instance. In response to protests fr [...]

Obama on energy: “The nation that leads the world in creating new energy sources will be the nation that leads the 21st century global economy. America can be that nation.”

Fight shapes up over climate-and-energy bills

Mojave CSP plants would use too much water: Park Service officer

Colorado enacts state financing plan to support distributed renewal installs

California launches $176 million investment program in renewable fuels

Ontario a [...]

It’s Earth Day. Companies and agencies large and small use the occasion to announce green initiatives. Some of these are trivial greenwash, but some mark real progress in mainstreaming renewable energy. Here are a few of today’s winners:

Bright Automotive, an Indiana start-up with backing from the Rocky Mountain Institute, Alcoa, Google, Johnson Controls and the Turner Foundation, announced its Idea PHEV delivery van, meant to dramatically reduce the fuel use of large delivery fleets. [...]

Nevada is shaping up to be a test case for the success of solar power.

The good news, reported on Friday, is that the state’s electric utilities met their 9% RPS requirement in 2008. A number of questions remain going forward, all centered on the issue of how they’ll meet their 12% requirement this year and 15% by 2015.

The utility companies want to continue building central power plants, based on concentrating solar and geothermal stations, photovoltaic arrays and wind farms. [...]

Two stories came through this week that made me blink:

Pacific Gas & Electric signed a preliminary agreement to buy power generated in space,  and the Vatican announced plans to build a 100 MW solar power plant — the largest in Europe — and export electricity to Italy.

In the March issue of SOLAR TODAY I wrote a skeptical piece about the chances anyone will ever launch a satellite that can beam utility-scale power to Earth (see page 18).

But I’m glad the Pope has fait [...]

Following on to Monday’s story about the rising fortunes of thin-film PV relative to silicon, today’s Wall Street Journal reports that FirstSolar will sell 48 MW of PV modules to Sempra Generation, of San Diego, for installation at a solar farm in southern Nevada. Sempra doesn’t have a customer for the power yet, but the company is confident it will sell to one of the many utility companies scrambling to meet an RPS goal.

Sempra already has 10 MW of FirstSolar panels at the site, [...]

Schuco Designs a Cooler Module

Schuco has redesigned its photovoltaic modules to help them stay cool. As they heat up in the sun, today’s silicon PV cells lose about one half percent of their power for every degree Celsius. Schuco engineers used the Flomerics FloVENT computational fluid dynamics (CFD) software to model energy absorption and reflection, and to simulate heat flow out to the aluminum frame and surrounding air. By optimizing heat flow, Schuco gets a cooler, more powerf [...]