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Credit crunch burning solar industry
The credit crunch is taking a toll on the United States’ nascent solar industry, scuttling big renewable energy projects and curtailing expansion plans, solar executives said Wednesday as they proposed...
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No happy new year for the solar industry
photo: Southern California Edison While demand for solar panels is expected to continue to grow by double-digits in the years ahead, 2009 could be a make-or-break year for some companies, according to...
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Solar jobs head south
Amid the daily drumbeat of mass layoffs, here’s some sunny news: Solar startup Suniva cut the ribbon Thursday on a photovoltaic cell factory outside Atlanta. As solar factories go, Suniva’s plant – the...
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Report: The dark side of solar
Solar cells may generate clean green electricity but manufacturing them involves a witches brew of toxic chemicals that could harm the environment if millions of solar panels end up in landfills,...
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Utilities turn to thin-film solar for big power
With Big Solar thermal power plants bogged down in bureaucracy and facing environmental and financial hurdles, utilities are turning to smaller-scale thin-film solar stations that can be built in a...
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Ausra exits solar power plant building business
photo: Ausra When Green Wombat sat down for a chat with Ausra founder David Mills back in September 2007, he allowed that it was not unreasonable to expect the Silicon Valley solar startup to soon be...
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Solar investor bucks the downturn
photo: WorldWater & Solar Technologies As the financial crisis short-circuits the ambitions of green tech companies, solar financier MMA Renewable Ventures is pushing ahead with raising its fifth...
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Green stimulus: Who wins
In the green stimulus sweepstakes, big potential winners are companies like Silicon Valley startup OptiSolar. The solar-cell maker came out of nowhere last year to score a deal with utility PG&E...
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PG&E chief: We’ll be solar’s ‘green knight’
photo: Optisolar SAN FRANCISCO — With the financial crisis dimming solar’s prospects to become a significant source of renewable energy, utility giant PG&E on Tuesday said it will spend $1.4...
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Berkeley hands out solar checks
photo: Sungevity Berkeley on Friday hands over checks to the first two homeowners who tapped the California city’s pioneering solar financing program to install solar arrays. The city fronts the cash...
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Spanish firm acquires big U.S. solar financier
photo: WorldWater & Solar Technologies The consolidation of the solar industry got underway Monday with the acquisition of San Francisco-based green energy financier MMA Renewable Ventures by...
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Google to map green energy zones
Can Google help defuse a simmering green civil war between renewable energy advocates and wildlife conservationists in the American West? That’s the idea behind a new Google Earth mapping project...
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Big Solar generates big green jobs: report
photo: BrightSource Energy As the Nevada legislature debates extending tax breaks for large-scale solar power plants, a new report finds that ramping up solar development in the Silver State could...
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Solar manufacturing ramps up in the U.S.
photos: Schott German solar company Schott on Monday cut the ribbon on a $100 million factory in Albuquerque, N.M., that will produce solar panels as well as receivers for solar trough power plants....
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California moves to auction off solar energy contracts
photo: Southern California Edison It hasn’t received much media attention, but the California Public Utilities Commission has just proposed instituting a first-of-its-kind reverse auction market to...
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Another day, another big solar deal
photo: Ausra The week kicked off with French nuclear energy giant Areva’s acquisition of Silicon Valley solar company Ausra. As I wrote Monday in the Los Angeles Times: French nuclear energy giant...
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Recycling farmland, toxic waste sites for solar energy
photo: Todd Woody In Wednesday’s New York Times, I write about a growing movement to repurpose farmland and toxic waste sites for big renewable energy projects: LEMOORE, Calif. — Thousands of acres of...
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SolarCity, Tesla to test storing solar energy in EV batteries
In Wednesday’s New York Times, I wrote about two experimental projects in California to store solar energy produced by photovoltaic rooftop arrays: In the garage of Peter Rive’s San Francisco home is...
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Silicon Valley’s solar strategy to compete with China
photo: Todd Woody In The New York Times Green blog on Wednesday, I follow up on my print story about the impact of low-cost Chinese solar manufacturers on high-tech Silicon Valley startups: In an...
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NRG to acquire SunPower solar farm for $450 million
I wrote this story for Reuters, where it first appeared on November 30, 2010. A subsidiary of NRG Energy on Tuesday said it will invest up to $450 million in a 250-megawatt photovoltaic power plant to...
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