Category Archives: photovoltaic panels

Solar Farm Converted To A Coal Mine -Yah, I know, that is never going to happen

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Sorry I was trying to be funny. This is actually really good news that should have happened a long time ago. You know, like when Global Warming could have been prevented. Reluctantly getting it right when it is too late is like the orchestra on the top deck of the Titanic. Ahh but that’s the cynic in me. Put on a happy face and believe.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/02/climate/coal-mines-solar-climate.html

Coming Soon to This Coal County: Solar, in a Big Way

In Martin County, Ky., where coal production has flatlined, entrepreneurs are promising that a new solar farm atop a shuttered mine will bring green energy jobs.

Credit…Maddie McGarvey for The New York Times

By Cara Buckley

MARTIN COUNTY, Ky. — For a mountain that’s had its top blown off, the old Martiki coal mine is looking especially winsome these days. With its vast stretches of emerald grass dotted with hay bales and ringed with blue-tinged peaks, and the wild horses and cattle that roam there, it looks less like a shuttered strip mine and more like an ad for organic milk.

The mountain is poised for another transformation. Hundreds of acres are set to be blanketed with solar panels in the coming year, installed by locals, many of them former miners. The $231 million project, which recently cleared its last regulatory hurdle, may well be the biggest utility-scale coal to solar project in the country.

It would be a desperately needed economic boost drenched in symbolism: Renewable energy generated from a shuttered mine in the heart of Appalachia, where poverty grinds on in the aftermath of the coal industry’s demise.

In many ways, the project is a test case for whether a region once completely dependent on digging fossil fuels from the ground can be revived by creating clean energy from the sun. As coal continues to decline — the number of jobs nationwide fell to about 40,000 last year from 175,000 in the mid 1980s — supporting former coal communities is seen as vital for what has been termed a “just transition,” in part to ward off backlash against attempts to decarbonize.

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Little House Off The Grid – What could be better than that

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I rarely ever do videos. I am a Print man. But this is a great “How To” video. They have a composting toilet and solar panels so they got the TOP and the BOTTOM covered hahahaha. The sleeping loft is amazing. I would prefer a king bed but i sure you could get it in if it was part of the early design. They do live outside alot but there is nothing wrong with that. That would not work in an Illinois winter.

https://digg.com/video/this-ultramodern-off-the-grid-tiny-house-will-blow-your-mind

It is a 150,000 dollar house with 20,000 dollars worth of solar but it is off the grid. So it is worth every penny. Infrastructure for a lifetime is not cheap.

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Go there an watch for 18 minutes. More next week

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The Latest In Residential Solar – I love the “solar skin”

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I have not talked about Solar for awhile. We plan on getting some Solar Panels on our roof this year and they have exploded in our neighborhood. This is all good. Like I said, it may not be commercial yet, but I love the concept of solar skin. Just saying solar skin, makes me happy.

https://www.solarreviews.com/blog/solar-panel-technologies-that-will-revolutionize-energy-production

Which new solar panel technologies will revolutionize energy production?

Updated

In this post, we take a detailed look at 5 solar technologies that will have the biggest impact on the solar industry over the coming years.

#3 Solar skins

Solar skins are a novel PV technology to integrate custom designs into solar panel systems. The solar skin technology is similar to the ad wraps displayed on bus windows.

Solar panel skin

A comparison of a standard solar panel installation (L) and solar skins on top (R). Image Credits: Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) News

Sistine, the manufacturer of solar skins, is testing the technology at the United States National Renewable Energy Laboratory to increase its efficiency. Solar thin-film skins maintain high efficiency due to its selective light filtration advancements. The sunlight falling on solar skins is filtered to reach the solar cells beneath it. As a result, it simultaneously displays the custom image and provides solar energy.

These imprinted custom images, embedded into solar panels, can exactly match your grassy lawns or rooftops of your homes.

Solar skin panels can also be beneficial for businesses or government offices. They can be customized to display business logos, business advertisements, a country’s flag, and so on.

Moreover, solar skins utilize rail-less racking systems, sit lower, have a sleek finish, and hide metal components, giving the panels a super cool look. If panel aesthetics stops you from going solar, Sistine’s SolarSkins might be the solution you are looking for.

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Go there and read. More next week

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We Are Going Over The Climate Cliff – At least these people are trying

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Natural Gas will be the death of us. Let me repeat that. Natural Gas will be the death of us. Why? Because Capitalists will sell it as a bridge to renewables and humans will die half way across the bridge. Let’s be honest, METHANE is a much more corrosive long lasting green house gas. While using natural gas will decrease the Volume of green houses gases. It will speed up Climate Change. Humans do not want to face up to what is killing us – Greed sped on by a pernicious economic system. If we stopped venting green house gases tomorrow it would be a 100 years before the effects wore off. We are not stopping today, are we?

Illinois offering affordable solar installation for low-income housing

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Carlinville Got Solar Going On – Blackburn College and Carlinville School District seek solar

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This is so amazing. This is everything I hoped for 30 years ago or so. We do not need coal. We do not need oil. We do not need natural gas. All we need is ourselves.

Shining a Light on the Solar Array

https://www.cusd1.com/apps/pages/index.jsp?uREC_ID=1552877&type=d&pREC_ID=1678920

School Board discusses solar energy

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50,000 Homes Powered By Solar In Texas – If we would have done this this 30 years ago

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It really all comes down to the fossil fuel companies like Exxon. If they would have admitted that Global Warming was happening, like their research showed, then we could have been doing this in the 1980s. As it is now, we are in a horse race and we are losing. Still I try to be positive, this is happening in Texas, red of red states, so there is hope that this example will pick up the pace.

https://www.chron.com/business/energy/article/Construction-begins-on-largest-utility-scale-12507169.php

Construction begins on largest utility-scale solar project in Texas

By Ryan Maye Handy

Updated

California-based 174 Power Global is breaking ground Thursday on the largest utility-scale solar project in Texas, the company said.

The project is on 1,500 acres of private land in Pecos County, in West Texas, and area that has become a hub of utility-scale solar projects. It’s 236 megawatt capacity can power 50,000 homes a year, and all of its power will be sold to Austin Energy, a utility for the city of Austin. The project will cost $260 million.

174 Power Global is a subsidiary of South Korea’s Hanwha Energy.  174 Power Global has focused on developing solar projects on land without competing interests. The project in Pecos County, for instance, has not oil and gas development and the salinity of the property’s water prevents it from being used for livestock or agriculture.

RELATED: Solar power emerges where oil and gas once dominated

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Trump Tries To Stop Alternative Energy – He fails miserably

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What can I say about Trumps environmental policies in general and his energy policies specifically that hasn’t been said before. They SUCK. The economic surge in their direction is so strong that they can’t be stopped. But will it be in time?

Business

U.S. solar takes hit from Trump tariffs but is cheaper than ever: report

Reuters 13 hours ago

By Nichola Groom

(Reuters) – U.S. solar installations fell 15 percent in the third quarter as the Trump administration’s tariffs on overseas-made panels forced developers to put off large projects, according to a report commissioned by the industry’s primary trade group.

Current weakness in the utility-scale market, however, will be offset by larger volumes of projects than had been expected over the next five years because solar energy is now cheaper than ever, the report said.

Quarterly installations of utility-scale solar were 678 megawatts, the lowest quarter since 2015 and a more than 30 percent decline from a year ago, the report by Wood Mackenzie for the U.S. Solar Energy Industries Association said. The total market, which includes residential and commercial installations, came in at 1.7 gigawatts.

The slowdown is a shift for solar, which has experienced runaway gains in the last decade. Through the first three quarters of the year, solar accounted for 30 percent of electricity generating capacity additions.

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California Mandates Solar In Residential Housing

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I know I posted about this before, but this time they made it final. So this is a way to celebrate. 49 States to go..

California Becomes 1st State to Require Solar Panels on New Homes. Here’s How It Will Reduce Utility Costs

Natasha Bach
Fortune

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/california-becomes-1st-state-require-181816746.html

California has taken the final step to be the first state in the nation to require solar panels on new homes.

The California Building Standards Commission on Wednesday unanimously upheld a May 9 decision to require solar panels on homes up to three stories. The requirement goes into effect Jan. 1, 2020.

Currently, just 9% of single-family detached homes in California have solar panels. But as the state pushes toward decreasing greenhouse gas emissions—and with a 2045 goal to transition to a fully renewable energy grid devoid of fossil fuels—this rule will help accelerate that progress. Aside from energy efficiency, solar panels reduce ozone-damaging household emissions, most of which come from natural gas-generated electricity.

In the long-term, solar panels benefit homeowners. While the upfront cost for building a home will increase—by as much as $10,000, according to the California Energy Commission, or as much as $25,000-30,000, according to home construction company Meritage Homes—long-term energy bill savings will be considerable.

Reuters reports that a homeowner could expect to save $19,000 in energy costs over 30 years, while Meritage Homes predicts reduced operating costs could amount to as much as $50,000-60,000 over a 25-year period.

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It is OK to dance. Go there and read. More next week.

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Death Is Near – UN releases a report that says by 2050 we are toast

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That report said that the World had to shift to renewables by 2050 or face dramatic changes. The report says that Society as we know it will be destroyed. Everybody went wild. But I prefer to keep things positive. Even Utility Companies are trying to change and Duke is one of the worst.

https://www.bizjournals.com/charlotte/news/2018/10/10/duke-energy-pegs-battery-investmentat-500m.html

Energy

Duke Energy pegs battery investment at $500M

Rob Caldwell, head of Duke Energy’s distributed energy technology group, says its investment in Carolinas battery storage could grow larger than the current $500 million estimate.

NANCY PIERCE

By  – Senior Staff Writer, Charlotte Business Journal
Updated

Duke Energy Corp. expects to spend $500 million over the next 15 years installing more than 300 megawatts worth of storage batteries on its Carolinas grid.

Charlotte-based Duke (NYSE: DUK) released the estimate Wednesday morning, days after proposing its first microgrid project — including a two-megawatt solar farm and a four-megawatt storage battery — for residential and business customers. That will serve the remote mountain town of Hot Springs, on the North Carolina-Tennessee border north of Asheville.

Duke says it plans to expand the use of batteries beyond storing and dispatching of energy. Its long-range plan includes deploying batteries for other purposes such as system balancing, increasing reliability of “end of the line” power supplies and to defer other traditional grid upgrades.

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Go there and cheer up. More next week.

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Native Americans Give Up On Coal – That is if Peabody will let them

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This is what it is like at the end of a power source. People can hardly wait to get away from coal and on to something else. I say, GOOD FOR THEM. Coal is no longer competitive. No matter how they try to stand in the way coal supporters, including Dotard in Chief, will always lose. Can you say, dust bin of history.

  • 7:30 am

Solar is starting to replace the largest coal plant in the western U.S.

On Navajo land in Arizona, a coal plant and coal mine that have devastated the environment are being replaced by solar–with both enormous benefits and local drawbacks that can serve as a lesson for how the rest of the country will need to manage the transition to renewables.

By Adele Peters   6 minute Read

In the desert near Arizona’s border with Utah on the Navajo Nation, a massive solar array built in 2017 now provides power for around 18,000 Navajo homes. Nearby, construction will begin later this year on a second solar plant. And on another corner of Navajo land, the largest coal plant west of the Mississippi River is preparing to close 25 years ahead of schedule, despite some last-minute attempts to save it.

“Those two [solar] plants really are the beginning of an economic transition,” says Amanda Ormond, managing director of the Western Grid Group, an organization that promotes clean energy.

The coal plant, called the Navajo Generating Station, was built in the 1970s to provide power to growing populations in Southern California, Arizona, and Nevada. A nearby coal mine supplies the power plant with coal. As recently as 2014, the coal plant wasn’t expected to close until 2044–a date negotiated with the EPA to reduce air pollution. But reduced demand for coal, driven both by economics and climate action, means that the plant is scheduled to close in 2019 instead. The coal mine, run by Peabody Energy, will be forced to follow.

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Go there and celebrate. I mean read. More next week.

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