On October 3rd in the Press room at Solar Power 2007 took place the Second Golden Meter Awards. Golden Meter Award For Excellence in Net Metering Rules was given to the Chairman of the Colorado Public Utilities Commission (CPUC), Ron Binz. The award was presented by Claudine Schneider, President of the Solar Alliance. Leaving the rivalry behin Colorado was selected from the authors of the Freeing the Grid 2007 report, the Interstate Renewable Energy Council (IREC), the Network for New Energy Choices (NNEC), the Solar Alliance, and The Vote Solar Initiative, for crafting a best practice net metering policy. Proudly taking the award CPUC Chairman Ron Binz said:

We think we‘re doing things right in Colorado and it‘s great to have our hard work cited by these groups. With the leadership of Governor Ritter and the Legislature, we‘re creating a good environment for solar and wind power

Colorado governor Ritter plays a major role in creating the environment that Binz talks about. Ritter has delivered on his New Energy Economy vision by building upon Amendment 37 and doubling the Renewable Energy Portfolio standard for investor owned utilities to 20% by the year 2020. As to the municipal utilities and rural electric providers, they are required to generate 10% of their electricity from renewable sources by 2020. This has been a long persued goal for Colorado and now when it’s finaly achieved we hope other states will folow in the name of brighter future.

There’s one thing for sure”¦bicycles have never been ahead of cars in poluting the air. But since the electric cars have become a common view lately, we may start wondering about those motorized bikes. Yet again “¦bikes will never be ahead of cars in polution the air”¦and if there are gonna be electric cars why not electric bikes. The only problem with the bikes was the amount of surface required for the solar panels to be placed at. But there’s always a solution for everything. In this case a very shiny one as the only place where the solar panels can mounted are the wheels. And since it is not an uncoon view for the electric bikes to have a front hub motor or for them to have batteries mounted on the rear racks, these are the first pair of wheels that I have seen with solar panels integrated into them

There’s only one problem you may face with wheels like these”¦the heavy side winds. But hey it can’t be flawless. Think about the bright (in this case brighter) side of the things – with this bike you could pedal when the going was easy and engage the motor when the going gets tough – and you never need to gas it up or plug it in.

Global Warming Solutions Incorporated – a firm that dedicated itself in developing technologies that decrease the global warming – presented their newest invention. A technology targeting the development of clean, environmentally friendly solar power for commercial and residential use. The new and important mission of that invention called Light Electric and Thermal Generator or LETG is to maximize the electrical and thermal energy derived from sunlight. LETG uses a hybrid system to produce electricity year round even in low sunlight regions.

Dr. Vladimir Vasilenko the CEO of Global Warming Solutions explains what the LETG actually does. The LETG process increases the efficiency of photovoltaic conversion. He also adds that “LETG employs a unique molecular solar spectrum converter””a “˜photonic quantum pump’”” to shift an inefficient part of solar radiation to the effective red absorption spectrum of the silicon photocell.” Which translated in plain English means that the result of this technology will be an increase in electrical output of 250%””a stunning advance in what had been considered a mature field

The Global Warming Solutions are still testing the LETG technology but when completed it will give the opportunity the solar energy to be used for larger, more general purposes. And if now it is most comonly used for heating a home or office building in the near future it may be used for developing a new generation of power plants for instance.

It was a long time ago when people only dremt of stepping on the moon’s surface. Actually I think they dream about that today too, only from a little different point of view, like watching that same surface from the window of the vehicle they’re driving. Today NASA’s main goal is not just sending people in space and on the moon, but creating the ultimate vehicle that’s gonna suit the surroundings best. And this time they’re trying to ease the astonauts, too. Untill now all the vehicles that NASA sent on the moon required the astronauts to wear their suits while in the vehicle. What they are trying to do now is make the vehicle pressorized in order to turn them into a moving habitat. The idea is the vehicles to be used in missions up to two weeks long. And of course they are thinking about the safety. The new vehicles will be sent out in pairs in case that one brakes down. NASA”˜s lead for extravehicular physiology systems and performance projects Mike Gernhardt said: “If you can picture this thing, it”˜s kind of a combination between a spacesuit and a sports car.” It sure does not look like a sports car but considering that there’s basically no one there to race with I doubt they’ll be that disappointed. So what’s the connection between the car and the solar energy? The power it needs of course. The car most likely will be electric, powered by either fuel cell or solar power. And for the price tag of this new vehicle we can only guess. Here’s a clue for you ““ when asked about that Gernhardt replied, “I will only say that it will be more than a Ferrari.”

See the images on the next page

Grid-Competitive Residential and Commercial Fully Automated PV Systems Technology Project – is a three year project of the SunPower Corporation ““ one of the biggest manufacturers of solar panels, solar cells and solar systems, based in the Silicon Valley. Recently the project was awarded by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) with cost-shared cooperative agreement, which gives the company the amount of $8,469,998 for the completion of its first project budget period, which is due to August 31, 2008. if the completion of this first stage of the project is successful and if the company sustains an execution of viable business strategy, the Department of energy will ensure another $16,230,002 for continued project implementation through June 30, 2010.

The total funding of this three year project comes up to $24.7 million. Major part in this funding has the Solar American Initiative (SAI), which goal is to make solar energy cost-competitive with conventional forms of electricity by 2015. SAI highly supported SunPower’s statement to reduce installed system cost with 50 percent by the year 2012, as the popularity of the solar power increses among the population

The only thing and practically the biggest holdback in the use of solar power energy is it’s high price. So by funding the project the U.S department of energy is trying to overcome this holdback and by that encourage mass use of solar power in the future.

I’m extremely amazed how smart some people can be! Australians this time brought a brand new way of shopping for solar panels and start forming “PV Solar Panels Buying Groups”. This new collective shopping forms fairly large orders and enables them to bargain for extremely low prices on solar panel systems directly from the manufacturers.

The main thing about solar panel systems and their installations is that they are extremely expensive, thus Australians thought that if they unite and ask more solar panel manufacturers they can get the incredible deals for large orders which are available only to dealers. It is not a secret that if you place a large order many companies are willing to give you fairly good discount on your overall order and if you are a single home buyer you won’t be able to get that benefit and you have to pay whatever the dealer wants.

The main reason for this ongoing movement is that Australia just recently started offering solar panel rebates and those discounts became interesting opportunity for many Australians to go for green renewable energy. The rebates are comparably smaller then here in the US as the government offers up to $8,000 dollars in rebates for a single household solar system, but still this gives more people the opportunity to try to get their own solar panels

The best thing about this large group orders is that they can order their panels directly from the manufacturers who are not willing to work with single solar system orders. This way end buyers can skip dealers and end up with about 30%-40% lower prices than the market prices depending on which dealers and how greedy they are. For example we all know that in California and Florida the demands are so high that dealers even rise the prices as much as they wish to and still get a lot of orders.

The only thing that really makes me angry is that Australians showed to be more practical than Americans and actually get quite better prices than we all do. This leads me to the question if there are such smart Americans to be initiative enough to form similar solar panel buying groups and save few dollars to the small homeowners.

Here I would like to pass the message to you guys and ask you if you know or are willing to participate in such solar panels buying groups to contact me and I’ll try to help you out form or contact other people so that we can all save few bucks in our new solar panels installations and help our planet recuperate the enormous carbon dioxide pollution that many generations before us caused. To contact me please go to “contact us” page and send me email. I’ll try to respond as quickly as I can.

The most important factor for harnessing solar energy is to have good amount of sunshine year-round. Due to the extremely dry environment, desert like areas are the best place to have a good solar panels farm and Arizona ranks to be the N:1 for such power plants. With almost 95% cloud free, sunny days, Arizona can easily power the whole country if the government decides to go environmental.

A plan from the Arizona Corporation Commission, the state”˜s regulator of public utilities, will raise Arizona”˜s use of renewable energy to 15 percent by 2025. Almost 5 percent of the state”˜s energy by that year must come from individual solar projects like rooftop panels. The goal is to make Arizona the first state that is solely powered by free solar energy, but due to the immense costs involved this will most not happen in near future

Due to the large investment needed in order to switch to Solar Power, many households prefer to pay the utility companies rather than investing on their own. Normal solar system that can power a single household usually costs around $30k and this makes it quite unprofitable in the short term where in fact the difference in savings on electricity bill will be around 70% – you still need to be hooked up to the grid because solar panels produce energy only during the sunny days.
The demand for electricity rises with every year and Energy officials claim that the demand will double by 2025. All new technologies use massive amounts of electricity and this makes us all dependant on it.

The state Department of Commerce published a Solar Electric Roadmap outlining Arizona”˜s solar future in January. A committee of representatives from universities, utilities and government set a goal of 1,000 megawatts of solar power generated in the state by 2020, enough to power 250,000 to 300,000 homes. However, even some members of the committee say that goal is not aggressive enough.

State officials are still afraid to push the solar power plan too much since the costs involved are more than anyone can handle. Chairman Mike Gleason said that solar energy is still extremely expensive and currently not profitable. He also said that current technological innovations had drastically reduced the prices and energy conversion, but we are still far from the time when they can become the standard.

Even thou we might not going to be able to see our country solely powered by solar energy, the fact that we have alternative solution to power our daily lives even in situation where all other non-renewable energies are exhausted is a enormous technological breakthrough.

Last October, Google announced that they are going for massive solar energy production and launched the largest solar panel installation to date on their corporate campus in Mountain View, CA headquarters. By June 18th the installation was almost done and a total of 9,212 solar panels making up about 1,600 kilowatts peak time power capacity. Panels cover the rooftops of eight buildings and two newly constructed solar carports at the Googleplex. See photo below:

Google‘s solar panels are projected to produce enough electricity for approximately 1,000 California homes or 30% of Google‘s peak electricity demand in our solar powered buildings. This is the biggest solar panels array ever built in the us mainly due to the huge costs involved. Google did not share any prices with us but we can estimate that its few million dollars at least.

The thing that made me really impressed with Google‘s new Solar System is that they managed to build online monitoring station where people can see the solar panels performance in real time which is really awesome. Check out this link here: Google Solar Panels Monitoring Station. On the graphic we can clearly see that during the night there is zero generated power and at noon is the peak. In fact that clearly shows how solar power is generated throughout the day

The best way to analyze the generated power is to cut the peak on half and assume that only half of the peak time generated power will be used/usable and the rest should be stored for later use (during the night). Google has huge amount of batteries but they don‘t store all the excess energy due to the nature of their business as the power requirements during the day are about 90% of their needs and therefore they do not need to store energy for the night.

Another really cool thing Google implemented was the Plug-In-Hybrid cars that are powered by electricity. Those cars are loaded during the day by the huge solar panel array and their own garage rooftop solar system (only a fraction of the whole system).

Google is going for clean energy with the hopes that many more large corporations will follow their steps and help keep our environment clean

You can’t believe what I just found. General Electric – multibillion dollar company which made the small amount of 4.5 Billion dollars only in the first quarter this year, just received $722,000 dollars in government sponsorship to install new solar panel system on one of their corporate buildings in Connecticut. Is this a joke or what?

The state funding comes from the Connecticut Clean Energy Fund, which gets its money from commercial and residential electricity customers. Each household in the state pays about 50 cents monthly in their energy bill towards this fund. Those money are later invested in Alternative Energy projects like Solar Panels and similar, but in this case are given as a grant big corporations.

“A lot of people around the state are unsure whether renewable technologies really work,” and If prominent companies show that solar energy systems can be successful, “people start to say, ‘If it works for them then it will work for me,” said the spokeswoman for Rocky Hill-based Connecticut Innovations, which announced the grant last Monday

The new solar panel system that GE is going to build is to generate 168 kilowatts of energy and therefore power about 5% of their complex. The Clean Energy Fund estimated that this somehow not really wise investment in my opinion is going to “show us that solar energy is a good solution” and will develop bigger interest in renewable energies. Also the fund is hoping that if General Electric actually does save some money with their new gift, they will invest some money in building up solar panels at other locations here in the US and therefore expanding the US solar initiative.

I’m not sure how giving money to the big corporations is going to help the little people like us get solar panels, but if they did it there should be some reason, or somebody got a really nice pile of money on the side. Indeed if GE does install solar panels at their other locations it will be a real success for all environmentalists, but in general solar electricity is not cheaper than regular grid power and I’m not sure that the big corporations are going to waist millions just to go environmental. If the government wants to make this thing happen I guess a law saying that multibillion dollar corporations are to invest such and such percentage of their income/profit to green energy projects it will be quite better and much more effective than giving them money and hoping that they will go solar, but that’s only my opinion on the topic.

Ames based Flexible Solar Panels Manufacture ““ PowerFilm, Inc, just announced that they are almost ready with the first phase of their expiation program and they will double their production capacity from 1 megawatt per year to 10 megawatts and also plan to build new building where they can increase production capacity to the amazing 24 megawatts.

The last few years Flexible Solar Panels became extremely popular due to their unique characteristics of being extremely mobile. There is a growing demand for portable power supplies for commercial and industrial use in oil and gas exploration, Global Positioning Systems and other operations and even the Department of Defense is interested in developing a line of solar panels to produce electricity for use by the military in remote locations.

Last summer PowerFilm raised 18 million dollars from the UK Alternative Energy Stock Market for the first phase of their expansion program which they just announced it is almost complete. This expansion improved their production capacities ten times since last year from 1 megawatt to 10 megawatts, but this is not the whole story. Last week they raised another 15.6 million to build new solar panels factory near Ames or Boone areas (they still haven’t made their minds because of some unknown government issues). The new factory will be 50,000 square feet and will open around 60 new work places

The interesting thing here is that the American Stock market is still not ready to subsidize large Alternative Energy projects like this one and the UK Stock Marketers are quite more experienced that us in this area. Since last year the European Solar Panels project had increased with 150% especially in Spain and France. The European Union is gave heads up on few very large solar plants that are already finished (see: ) and few more that will be ready later this summer.

Congratulations to PowerFilm and we will be waiting to see their new 1 meter wide flexible solar panel strip next year.