The newest estimates of U.S. technical potential for renewable energy generation and capacity were reported recently by scientists at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), the U.S. Department of Energy research facility. […]
Smart grid technology could shave 15 percent to 20 percent off a utility or region’s peak power demand, according to estimates from the World Energy Council, IBM and others. That adds up […]
We’re being pretty stupid as a society when two renewable energy sources fight each other instead of fighting fossil fuel. The point of installing renewable capacity is to reduce carbon emissions, not […]
Utility-scale renewables’ power purchase agreements (PPAs), the LA Times recently wrote, are “confidential agreements between solar developers and utilities” that “lock in power prices two to four times the cost of conventional […]
The municipal bond–power purchase agreement (PPA) model might not have just rolled off the lot, but it still has that new car smell. A former NREL colleague first looked into this unique […]
Property-assessed clean energy (PACE) finance is alive and well in California, where a brand-new PACE program has debuted with the initial participation of an unprecedented 14 counties and 126 cities. The CaliforniaFIRST […]
Prolonged drought can affect power plants that rely on large volumes of fresh water for a variety of reasons. Though there have been few reported problems this year, lower water levels are […]
There has been a lot of dialogue on this site about the future of solar financing and the tax treatment of various solar financing scenarios, and we at the Solar Energy Industries […]
Batteries fail—as certainly as death and taxes. Rechargeable batteries at least offer the possibility of repeating the cycle, so are in this sense more like recurrent taxes than death. But alas, the […]
A geothermal power plant can deliver electricity day or night and help California utilities meet the state’s renewable energy mandate. But geothermal energy developers in California are feeling a bit left out […]
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