More intersolar Stories

By
Solar polar bear

One of the largest solar conferences in the U.S., Intersolar, kicked off on Tuesday in downtown San Francisco, and is expected to draw around 22,000 attendees in the solar and power sectors this week. Here’s photos of the latest solar gear shown across two floors. Read more »

By
SolarOr's honeycomb

Fusing solar technology with buildings is an area that tends to invite creative ideas. An intriguing design caught our attention at Intersolar in San Francisco this week: It’s a solar panel with a honeycomb structure that replaces the glass facades of a building. Read more »

loading external resource

By
SunPower T20

Germany has sprinted ahead of the U.S. when it comes to embracing clean energy and becoming the world’s largest solar market. That means Germany has learned some lessons that the U.S. could benefit from, including ways to drive down the cost of solar electricity fast. Read more »

By
armeggedon

The cries declaring a cleantech armageddon are coming keep on getting louder. But I don’t think cleantech is headed for a sharp crash. It’s been going through consolidation for some time now, and the cleantech sector is inherently cyclical and is heading into a down cycle. Read more »

By
walmart_solarcity2

Here are our five topics to watch for at one of the largest U.S. solar conferences, Intersolar, in San Francisco this week. Policy — how to survive with more mandates and less money — along with new technology and markets will dominate the discussions. Read more »

By

Most collaboration tools focus on assigning tasks to the people on your team who will get them done. Teamly takes a different approach, encouraging your team to look for the priorities in your project and exercise a little autonomy. Read more »

By

Last year’s oil spike feels like a distant memory, but to remind you, oil prices surpassed $147 per barrel last July, with gasoline prices above $4 per gallon. But if you think that was bad, feel lucky you weren’t living in the Caribbean at the time. […] Read more »

By

Four-year-old thin-film solar startup SoloPower has so far kept a low profile, with only four press releases posted on its site since 2007 and none before then. But earlier this month, the San Jose, Calif.-based company said it was applying for a $190 million loan guarantee […] Read more »

By

The U.S. version of the world’s largest solar conference, Intersolar, saw four packed days in downtown San Francisco this week, with more than 15,000 visitors and 500 solar exhibitors. We covered the speakers, the startups, the big players and the trends. Here’s a wrap-up of what […] Read more »

loading external resource

By

With the prices of silicon falling, competition heating up among solar equipment makers and solar manufacturing capacity expected to far exceed demand this year, it may seem like the worst possible time to build a solar factory. Yet several thin-film startups, such as PrimeStar Solar and […] Read more »

By

If you can supersize meals, why not solar panels? Roger Little, chief executive of Spire, which develops equipment for solar PV panel manufacturing, thinks so. Little, who spoke on a panel at the Intersolar conference this week in San Francisco, told us that his Medford, Mass.-based […] Read more »

By

A year ago, it seemed like gigawatt-sized solar factories were just around the corner, with companies such as Sharp and Royal Dutch Shell subsidiary Showa Shell Sekiyu unveiling plans to build 1 GW thin-film solar plants. And back then, predictions like the one from Anish Tolia, […] Read more »

By

Despite the best efforts of solar firms to reduce cost and raise the efficiency of solar material, many in the industry still find themselves chasing thin-film solar darling First Solar, which makes high-efficiency cadmium-telluride solar film panels. In particular, Oerlikon Solar and Applied Materials, which have […] Read more »

By

Over the last year, U.S. electric utilities have announced ambitious plans to own and operate their own solar projects. In two high-profile examples, California’s Southern California Edison and Pacific Gas & Electric each unveiled plans to develop 250 megawatts worth of midsized projects (1 to 20 […] Read more »

By

Few ideas drive as much excitement in the solar industry as grid parity, the point at which solar systems — or any other renewable source of energy — cost the same as producing electricity from conventional sources like fossil fuels. Travis Bradford, founder of The Prometheus […] Read more »

By

The Intersolar conference, being held in downtown San Francisco this week and which will see over 15,000 solar execs meeting, mingling and doing business across 120,000 square feet of space, comes at a unique point in the development of the U.S. solar market: one of major […] Read more »

By

As the world’s largest solar-panel producer for the last two years, China already is a major solar player. But now, some industry experts say, it’s expanding from being mainly a solar panel supplier to also becoming a substantial customer. “China, which already is important in production, […] Read more »

By

It’s a question we hear all the time: Why doesn’t California have a German-style feed-in tariff for the solar industry? German utilities pay a high price for any solar electricity fed into the grid, with the cost distributed among the country’s ratepayers. The much-esteemed policy made […] Read more »

By

Some 60,000 solar insiders from around the world have gathered in Munich this week for the annual Intersolar conference. As prices for solar panels fall and solar developers face financing challenges in the economic downturn, Markus Elsässer, CEO of Solar Promotion, one of the two organizers […] Read more »

By

When we first wrote about Herzliya, Israel-based SolarEdge late last year, we knew the company was gunning to tackle what’s called partial shading — a problem whereby shade, dirt or shadow on just a few cells of a solar panel can disproportionately reduce energy output. Like […] Read more »

By

The massive solar conference in Munich Germany kicks off tomorrow, and we’ll be bringing you some of the news about the startups and tech innovations from the show. Tigo Energy, a startup that sells software and hardware to make solar photovoltaic systems more efficient (not to […] Read more »

By

China’s Qaidam Basin could become the equivalent of the Mojave Desert in terms of solar power projects, if new plans to build a 1-gigawatt solar power photovoltaic farm in China come to fruition. While utilities and startups have sited the Southern California desert for some of […] Read more »

By

With Oprah pushing an e-reader to her audience, Google placing whole books online, and the popularity of programs such as Stanza, which turns the iPhone into a mobile library, the mass market has latched onto e-books in a meaningful way. Witness Amazon.com’s Kindle e-Reader, which has […] Read more »

By

So the first North American Intersolar, the San Francisco-based version of the massive European solar conference, is over. And the Earth2Tech crew sent these 9 stories from the show your way. Send us over your thoughts on our conference coverage — more stories/less stories, more photos? […] Read more »

By

Whether you want to take your web working career into a different direction or you simply want a refreshing distraction from your regular web work, it’s likely that you’ll consider changing your niche market at least once in your career. What are the consequences of changing […] Read more »

By

The solar guru at semiconductor equipment company Applied Materials, Charlie Gay, says the chip companies that drove the electronics revolution will be important in bringing down the production costs of the solar industry. Gay gave a speech to launch Intersolar, the first U.S. version of a […] Read more »

By

Intersolar, the first U.S. version of a grandaddy European solar convention, officially kicked off this week in downtown San Francisco. We’ll be covering the event closely, including the bit of news that came out of yesterday from the conference pre-events (GreenVolts raising sizable funding). In a […] Read more »

By

Speaking of raising the bar on virtualization, the new upgrade for Parallels 3 includes support for Windows Vista SP1 and Windows XP SP3 along with a few needed performance improvements. Yes I know, as hard as it is to stomach the fact that people use Windows on […] Read more »

By

YouTube seems to be rolling out a new visualization discovery tool. For now, it only works in full-screen mode, and it’s not available on all videos. Once in full screen, you’ll see an icon in the lower-left corner that features three balls in a triangle shape […] Read more »

By

Word on the street web out of CNET is that Monday is the day that Amazon unleashes their Kindle eBook reader. Expected at $399, the electronic device has to compete with Sony’s newest reader version as well as the latest Cybook from Bookeen, both of which […] Read more »

By

Bob Russell from MobileRead pinged me earlier today via e-mail about this, but my Exchange migration gunked up the works. Luckily, there’s still time to hit up Digital Inspiration (great blog, BTW) and leave a comment to win a copy of ALLCapture. This screencasting / capture […] Read more »

By

New York is playing host to two high profile trials, both starting today. Dennis Kozlowski, the high living Tyco CEO accused of bleeding his company of more than $600 million is going to go back to the court today, after his first trial last spring was […] Read more »

By

Folks a little commercial break so to speak. I know most of you subscribe to Business 2.0, the magazine I work for. I have put a small subscription form for those of you who want to subscribe to the magazine and perhaps have not had a […] Read more »

By

Business 2.0: Telecom executives have adopted a glass-half-full attitude these days. After three brutal years, 2004 proved to be a good-enough year, giving them hope that 2005 could actually be better. How can that be? Continue reading… Read more »