Google to buy wind power from Bay Area’s Altamont Pass
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Google will finally be able to say that its Mountain View headquarters is powered by 100 percent clean energy. On Wednesday, Google…
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Google will finally be able to say that its Mountain View headquarters is powered by 100 percent clean energy. On Wednesday, Google…
Just months after the world’s largest solar panel farm, called Topaz, was turned on outside of San Luis Obispo, Calif., on Monday…
The question of what Apple plans to do with its factory in Mesa, Arizona, which it was going to lease to now-bankrupt…
The massive solar panel farm Agua Caliente in Arizona is finally finished. The project shows how much power solar panels can contribute and how cheap they’ve become.
GE was poised to be First Solar’s major nemesis. But now GE has become one of First Solar’s largest shareholders by selling its thin film solar technology to the panel giant.
First Solar, one of the largest solar panel makers in the world, says it’s breaking a record for the amount of sunlight that its cadmium-telluride solar cells can convert into electricity. The improvement promises to deliver cheaper solar electricity for consumers in the long run.
A regional winner of the Cleantech Open hopes to win over investors with an idea of designing factory equipment to make super efficient solar cells. But given the dark clouds that hang over the solar manufacturing business, the startup will need more than luck.
It’s been nearly two years since First Solar announced its first deal in India. The company has made good progress in this emerging market, and it announced another, 50MW deal Monday. What it really wants to do, though, is to develop projects in India.
Things are looking up for First Solar, at least for now, as the company announced Wednesday a big jump in sales and profits for the second quarter and touted itself as a sought-after power project developer.
GE was set to become a major solar manufacturer when it announced a 400 MW factory in Colorado last year. Over a year later, though, it’s putting that plan on hold for 18 months or more while it works on coming up with more competitive technology.
Thin film solar startup NovaSolar didn’t seem to have much of a chance. It grew out of the 2009 demise of another startup, OptiSolar, but it couldn’t make it a second time around. The company filed for bankruptcy in San Jose.
Q-Cells was once the largest solar cell maker in the world. Now the company says on Monday it’s filing for bankruptcy, which makes it the latest example of an industry turmoil that has forced many other manufactures out of the business as well.
Warren Buffet’s power company, MidAmerican Energy Holdings, is jumping into solar power and plans to buy up a massive solar farm from First Solar. The planned 550 MW solar panel farm called Topaz is in San Luis Obispo County in central California.
Another dark cloud is waiting for solar companies: the decline of government incentives that in the past have pumped the growth of the solar market worldwide. The United Kingdom, for example, plans to halve its subsidies for solar panels in 2012.
Solyndra bankruptcy has helped to fuel resentment toward China for its generous subsidies of Chinese solar companies. That resentment has morphed into petitions filed Wednesday that ask the U.S. government to investigate Chinese companies for allegedly flooding the U.S. market with goods below costs.
This week’s gathering of the solar industry in Dallas at a conference will become a temporary central command for solar energy advocates who see an urgent need to fight back against negative public sentiment about solar that resulted from Solyndra’s federal loan and bankruptcy.
General Electric has been plotting a solar empire for several years now, and it has settled on a place for the crown jewel of the plan: a 400 MW factory in Colorado to produce solar panels and compete with the likes of First Solar.
While an uproar has arisen over the loan guarantees for solar from the U.S. Department of Energy (namely the one for Solyndra), another federal agency has also been making hundreds of millions of dollars worth of loans and loan guarantees to support the U.S. solar industry.
First Solar has become the biggest solar beneficiary of a federal renewable energy loan guarantee program. On Thursday, the U.S. Department of Energy announced three loan guarantee offerings totaling roughly $3.73 billion for First Solar’s three photovoltaic power plants in California.
Sempra Generation will join the pantheon of solar power plant developers who’ve gotten government aid. The U.S. Department of Energy on Wednesday announced an offer for a $359.1 million loan guarantee to Sempra to build a 150 MW project in Arizona.
Thin film solar company HelioVolt has largely adopted a code of silence for more than a year, but it appears to be emerging from the cocoon. The company has borrowed $8.5 million in debt and begun to tout its technology again.
CNN founder, and “Mouth of the South,” Ted Turner has officially turned on his jointly-owned, 30-MW, solar farm in New Mexico. Turner and co-owner power company Southern Company Monday said morning that the so-called Cimarron Solar Facility “has begun commercial operation.”
It’s been a sport for analysts and competitors to speculate when solar panel maker First Solar might no longer be the industry’s low-cost leader. First Solar executives issued their sales forecast and promised the company’s reign won’t end next year.
Abound Solar is ending the year with glad tidings and good cheer — that is, $110 million in equity and a $400 million federal loan guarantee, almost all of which will fund an ambitious plan to build 775 megawatts of new manufacturing capacity.
As promised, First Solar will see its solar panels installed in India next year. The company announced Thursday a deal to ship 15 megawatts of its cadmium-telluride panels to ACME Tele Power by March.
CNN founder, and “Mouth of the South,” Ted Turner said this weekend at the World Climate Summit in Cancun, Mexico, that his jointly owned, 30-MW solar farm in New Mexico is being turned on “right now.”
Mobile video chat application Tango is touting 1 million downloads in its first 10 days. But the app, which lets users video chat with each other across both iOS and Android mobile devices, faces some competition from a new Yahoo Messenger app that allows video calling.
Media mogul Ted Turner says if he were to start over now as an entrepreneur, he would work in clean energy. Turner, who’s been investing in solar for the past few years, made the remarks at Google Zeitgeist this week.
Mimicking the overall solar industry this year, thin film solar darling First Solar (s FSLR), delivered a solidly mixed bag for its quarterly earnings today, announcing revenues that topped expectations, raised earnings guidance for the year, a drop in profits and lowered revenue guidance for the year.
Here’s the big risk for utilities trying to meet California’s renewable portfolio standard, which calls for utilities to deliver 20 percent of their electricity from clean power by the end of 2010 and 33 percent by 2020: The clean power projects sometimes fall through.
Solar panels tend to be like Christmas tree lights: if one panel stops working, the whole string is affected. But startup eIQ Energy has a system that connecta solar panels in parallel instead of in a series, and the innovation is starting to gain some traction.
First Solar’s (s FSLR) U.S. utility solar domination plans continue: this morning the thin film solar darling announced that it plans to acquire NextLight, which owns 1,100 MW worth of solar projects in the Southwest, for $285 million.
UPDATE: Thanks so much to the hundreds of people who took our survey! We’ve closed the survey and will be sending gift…
First Solar (s FSLR), the thin-film module manufacturer that has seen increasing price pressure from polysilicon makers, remains confident about its prospects…
UPDATED What’s not to like about Trony Solar? The Shenzhen, China-based solar startup brought in $79 million in revenue last year and…
Take the Matrix-popularized concept of being able to view a subject encircled in cameras from 360 degrees worth of angles. Now put…
If there are two groups that together make a natural team to build the world’s largest solar photovoltaic plant, it’s the Chinese…
In its ongoing quest to monetize its massive audience, YouTube (s GOOG) announced this morning that it is getting clips from Time…
When First Solar snapped up shuttered OptiSolar’s pipeline of solar projects with western U.S. utilities, it bought itself over a gigawatt worth…
The thin film solar outfit that has signed up utility deals in spades has scored yet another big one. This morning Southern…
An analyst tells CNET that some new, thin notebooks are showing cracks in the base due to the construction with plastic. OEMs…
Thin film solar maker HelioVolt could be a contender for the chronoptimist crown. Earlier this year, the Austin, Texas-based company pushed back…
After a bump in the road that lasted four whole months, the national switch to digital TV transmission is upon us. We…
As Germany’s Solarstravaganza kicks off in Munich on Wednesday, we’re reminded of the role the country’s government has played this decade in…
Solar firms have been hit as hard as anyone in the economic downturn as companies and residents have shied away from large…
First Solar (s FSLR), the thin-film solar darling that has reportedly reached grid parity, or the point where photovoltaic electricity is as…
The credit crisis isn’t just shaking up the solar industry, it’s reshaping it — forcing major deals to shift from the weak…
We’d like to say thanks to this month’s sponsor of TheAppleBlog: WunderRadio: WunderRadio Plays thousands of streaming internet radio stations and other…
Solar power may produce electricity without burning fossil fuels, but it brings its own set of environmental bad news: toxic chemicals in…
First Solar (s FSLR) appears to have reached an important and, for many solar companies, elusive target: grid parity, or the point…
We’d like to say thanks to this month’s GigaNET sponsors: Brightcove: “The 2008 SEO Video Playbook” (free download) Accenture: “The Innovation Dilemma:…
Here’s a refreshing change: Some positive news about a solar company. First Solar [FSLR], a prominent stock in the beleaguered solar sector…
In one of the biggest solar IPOs since First Solar, the public offering from polysilicon solar gear maker GT Solar priced at…
In-flight broadband antenna maker AeroSat has raised $14 million for expansion. Their antenna is going to be installed in the planes of…
The U.S. economy may be sputtering, but there was some good news coming out of the cleantech world this morning. First Solar,…
I was hoping that Reso would come in handy on the low-res small screen of a UMPC, but it hasn’t panned out…
Coming soon from some people who are really good at milking the same theme: a web series about people in their twenties…
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The original reports that bounced around the web covering the HTC Shift, an innovative UMPC with a sliding keyboard stated that the…
Sony PSP is going hit the stores this week, and as Russell says it is one of the most eagerly awaited platforms…
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution (subscription required) has an article about how broadband is quickly getting embedded into our lives, and changing how we…