Military sees changing climate as an enemy

Osama bin Laden hates this car

– bumper sticker on the Prius of James Woolsey, former CIA director

Woolsey also partially powers his home with solar panels.

 

The former CIA director, other Bush neoconservatives who planned and promoted the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, anti-war vets and even Arianna Huffington believe America's dependence on foreign oil partially funds America's enemies. Energy efficiency and alternative power are patriotic, they said, trying to make the case for an energy policy that weans the United States from politically unstable sources of fuel. The most recent effort is tied up in the U.S. Senate (link requires registration).

The civilian architects of those wars were joined by retired military officers who were talking about the strategic and tactical value of renewable energy, especially solar:

If you really want to support our troops, don’t put that sticker on the back of a gas guzzling SUV going down the 405 freeway with one passenger in it. If you want to support our troops, help reduce our reliance on fossil fuels.

– U.S. Navy Vice Admiral (Ret.) Dennis McGinn. Plug-in Humvees and low-cost solar could be tactics in the 21st century way of waging war.

Here an example of research that could make it happen: It's about a conductive ink that allows the use of an ink-jet printer to make printed organic photovoltaic solar cell panels on very thin, flexible surfaces.

It would have has a number of advantages for the military; it is ready to use, inexpensive, has little logistical footprint and is easy to use for powering portable communications, cell phones, radios Global Positioning Systems and other devices. It will also allow solar cells to be printed on military tents and soldiers’ uniforms. Energy systems, ready to go.

To Burners: Snow for Sierra; chilly on the playa

Black Rock returns to its spiritual roots:

Each year, Black Rock Solar returns to our source of our inspiration: Black Rock City. We eagerly look forward to our stay on the playa as an opportunity to connect with our supporters, inspire others and educate about our mission and our projects.

 This year could be chilly. Wear some clothes, for chrissake.

September's digital version of Solar Today is online

Its cover story is about zero-energy residential renovation. Go here and check it out.

Solar Today is a publication of the American Solar Energy Society. It offers a nice, readable mix of features, trends and policy updates published in digital and print versions.

Utah, or at least Corroon's Utah, sees solar possibilities

(Photo by Bill Keshlear)

Salt Lake Community College students installed a 3kW photovoltaic array on the roof of a low-income house in Kearns, Utah, last year as part of a pioneering program to train workers for just the kind of "distributed" solar power project that will be formally announced (but informally announced here by The Salt Lake Tribune) next week by Salt Lake County Mayor Peter Corroon.

The students were enrolled in “Advanced Photovoltaic Systems,” one of the first solar-installer classes offered by SLCC as part of its Green Academy initiative.  SLCC recognized the value of training would-be entrepreneurs and workers to compete in an emerging renewable energy economy at the boots-on-the-roof level.  The SLCC course was developed in partnership with the Utah Solar Energy Association, the Community Development Corporation of Kearns, Utah Clean Energy and others.

SLCC,  Corroon and his staff have been aggressively pushing development of renewable energy as an engine of job creation in Utah for several years now. However, it's been a tough row to hoe. Utah's Legislature is heavily influenced by coal interests and  has been sluggish in attempts to develop the state's abundant solar resources -- at least compared with what's being done right now on utility scales in Colorado, Arizona, Nevada and California.

(An example is an enabling bill that apparently died during the 2010 legislative session because of the influence of bankers and their lobbying apparatus or the relative lack of influence of solar and clean energy supporters. Take your pick. It would've opened up PACE -- property assessed clean energy -- to county- and city-level governments and homeowners. Basically, PACE is a way to finance solar systems or energy efficiency retrofits. The city or county offers you a loan, and you pay it back through your property tax bills over 15 to 20 years. Good idea, right? Here are the basics. But bankers were cut out of the loop. End of story. Or, thanks to Utahns for Ethical Government, the beginning of the end?)

That could change if Corroon, also the Democratic candidate for governor, is elected in November. Voters should expect Corroon to adopt similar policies in an attempt to inoculate Utah's economy from what may be a long-term economic downturn and the twilight of the coal industry -- or at least push for policies that enable Utah to compete with its neighbors, even its equally politically conservative neighbors.

Reno uses new law to build 1.3 MW of solar power

And, at no cost to taxpayers.

The release from Nevada Solar Works: 

The City of Reno solar project is the first statewide request for proposal (RFP) to build renewable energy that takes advantage of AB 186, a Nevada state law passed in October 2009 which allows for third-party ownership of renewable energy generation systems. The new law effectively allows businesses, institutions and governments to purchase solar arrays without up-front capital costs. They can save money by paying long-term fixed rates on the energy generated. In concert with NV Energy's RenewableGenerations Program, AB 186 has paved the way for clean renewable energy projects to be realized across Nevada.

Regulators OK big solar power plant; others to follow

 News from SFgate (The San Francisco Chronicle):

California's long-awaited boom in solar power plant construction took a major step forward Wednesday when state regulators approved the first in a string of projects that will soon blanket thousands of acres of desert with mirrors harnessing the energy of the sun.

Mega-solar plants closing in on final approvals

Brightsource Energy, an Oakland, Calif.-based company, is nearing completion of a multiyear permitting process that will allow it to begin construction of a massive solar concentrating plant (just under 400 MW) as early as this fall. It will be located in California's Mojave Desert, adjacent to  Interstate 15  and about five miles west of the Nevada border. The solar thermal plant will be the largest in the world, although even larger ones are on the drawing board. The installation, with its science-fiction-like "power tower" collecting reflected sun rays from thousands of heliostats, will be similar to this Brightsource installation in Israel.

From Sunpluggers.com: 

A California Energy Commission committee has recommended approval of another desert solar power project, raising to about 2,100 megawatts the rated peak capacities of solar power plants now awaiting final endorsement by the full commission.

That is approximately equal to the entire U.S. solar electric production capacity at the end of last year, which totaled an estimated 2,108 megawatts, including photovoltaic and concentrating solar technologies, according to the Solar Energy Industries Association's "Year in Review 2009."

Here's an overview of five very big Southern California solar projects nearing the end of a complicated permitting process.

Recent solar-related headlines from Nevada

From the Las Vegas Sun (2010 and December 2009):

• Utility promises transparent review of grid for rooftop solar (Aug. 5)
• Legislation would grant states revenue from clean energy (July 17) 
• Solar research facility planned for Nevada Test Site (July 8)
• Bill seeks to expedite land leases to solar developers (June 22)
• Nevada promoting small-scale urban development (June 11)
• Nevada unveils plan to step up solar energy development (June 5)
• Solar manufacturer granted $1.3 million in tax abatements (May 18)
• New manufacturing plant to create 300 jobs (May 5) 
• Utilities commission advances plan for using solar energy (Feb. 24) 
• Solar plant in Boulder City gets $2.9 million grant (Feb. 18)
• Calif. county objects to big solar project near Primm (Feb. 12)
• Mayor says solar projects having positive impact in Boulder  City (Jan. 28)
• EDITORIAL:  Transmission line to boost energy independence (Jan. 22)
• Amargosa warms up to solar; environmentalists opposed (Jan. 21)
• Reid: Ushering compromise, powering green industry (Jan. 17)
• Company gets $5.9 million to build solar panels in Nevada (Jan. 8)
• Green energy, military seek common ground (Jan.8)  
• Storing the sun's heat: States race to use emerging technology (Dec. 31)
• Growing our own work force (Dec.9)

Al got it, mostly

The solar energy resource in a 100-mile-square area of Nevada could theoretically supply the United States with all its electricity using even modestly efficient commercial photovoltaic modules, according to the Department of Energy.
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This is Acciona's 400-acre, 64 MW Solar One concentrating solar power project in the desert at Boulder City, Nev., between Las Vegas and Lake Mead. It went online a couple of years ago and is relatively small compared to what's on the drawing boards now. 

Flying into Vegas from the east, watch for it on the left side of the airplane as you prepare to land at McCarran International. You can't miss it. A little farther to the left is Hoover Dam, another renewable energy source. It's capable of over 2,000 MW. So, state-of-the-art concentrated solar (circa 2007) is not quite up to state-of-the-art concentrated hydro (circa 1935). 

Currently, federal development subsidies and an enabling political climate aren't either – although, ironically, the economy and unemployment rates of America in the 1930s are not unlike Nevada's now.

But that's another story.

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Could this be true? If so, it means about 20, 5-by-5-mile patches of desert covered with PVs or mirrors – valued until now only by turtle and lizard lovers, welfare ranchers, fatally fecund wild horses and burros, multinational mining conglomerates, "burning man"-type free spirits and foul-smelling Gabby Hayes impersonators – could power the entire United States.

Gabby Hayes is not the guy on the left.

Al Gore brought it up at a Senate hearing on climate change a while back and was pounded by critics who said he didn't have his facts straight. Botched a bit? Yeah. Gist of it? Yeah, he got it. Big Al just omitted a few practical details, a few inconvenient truths. 

PolitiFact weighs in:

There are all sorts of reasons why building a 10,000-square-mile (a square with 100-mile sides) solar installation would be even more difficult than it sounds.

For one, we would need a place to store the electricity so that it could be doled out in the dark night hours and on cloudy days.

Also, we would need a vast new system of transmission lines.

He didn't mention the logistical problems of mounting arrays on steep mountainsides, plentiful in Nevada, and the aesthetic and environmental downsides of large concentrating solar thermal projects. It doesn't hurt having one of the most powerful lawmakers in the country, Sen. Harry Reid, on your side. But all politics is local, and we still live in a democracy. County- and state-level elected leaders and historical cultural values can derail even the best-laid strategic plans of out-of-state and out-of-country corporations.

Still, a lot of potential clean energy* – that, if developed, could help Nevada with its massive state budget problems and nation-leading unemployment rate – falls unused on dirt and rocks owned by the federal government and administered by the Bureau of Land Management in Nevada and the Southwest and bounces back into space. 

That seemed to be Al's main point.


*When victims of skin cancer think of the sun's energy, the first word that comes to mind is probably not "clean."

Diverting clean-energy funds weakens focus

Opinion from the Washington Post:

At the least, it's (tapping money intended to guarantee renewable energy loans to keep teachers and other government workers on the job) another signal that energy policy has become a lower priority for the Democratic majority. With the climate bill dead for now, a drained fund for renewables would be yet another step toward dismantling the Democrats' once ambitious energy agenda.

BLM land across the Southwest is not just for cows, cacti, miners or space aliens anymore

From the New York Times:

Southern California is poised to become the world's solar power capital as the Obama administration continues to stamp its approval on large-scale renewable energy projects across the Mojave and Colorado deserts.

Since Aug. 1, the Bureau of Land Management has issued final environmental impact statements (EISs) for three commercial solar plants that, once built, will cover nearly 20,000 acres of BLM land in the desert regions and produce enough electricity to power nearly 1.6 million homes.

A solar scholarship program for disadvantaged kids

It's a project of Solar City, Young Community Developers and City College of San Francisco:

SAN FRANCISCO., Aug 19, 2010—SolarCity, City College of San Francisco and Young Community Developers today announced a first-of-its-kind solar training program for economically disadvantaged residents of the Bayview/Hunter’s Point neighborhood.

SolarCity will contribute scholarship funding for instructors, tuition and fees, books and student expenses. Young Community Developers (YCD), a community-based organization that provides a variety of training and support opportunities in Bayview, helped to identify and recruit the 15 students that will make up the program’s inaugural class.

The close working partnership among the community-based training organization, academic institution and nation’s largest residential solar installer will create a unique educational experience in one of the Bay Area’s most underserved neighborhoods.

 The City College program is believed to be the first solar scholarship program in the U.S. funded by a privately-held solar company.

In development of renewable energy, elections matter

A couple of weeks ago, The Las Vegas Sun asked a few advocates of renewable energy (in southern Nevada, it's mainly solar) their opinion of the candidates for U.S. Senate, Republican Sharron Angle and Democratic incumbent Harry Reid:


Here is the paper's set up:

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has strong ties to the renewable energy industry and a reputation as a backroom deal maker. Republican Sharron Angle has publicly expressed doubts about renewable energy’s ability to become a major energy source and economic powerhouse for the state but has little experience with the issues surrounding energy.

Which raises the question: What happens to Nevada’s renewable energy dreams if Angle beats Reid in the U.S. Senate race?

No tailpipes, 0-60 in 3.7 seconds, powered by the sun

The Tesla Roadster is the initial offering of Tesla Motors. A photovoltaic array atop a car port can keep the car's batteries topped off.

Tesla's Elon Musk talks about starting a company that builds electric cars, the company's partnerships with Toyota and Daimler, and development stages that will bring a sophisticated mid-range priced model to market within the next four years. Here's the Tesla website.

A nice blog titled "PV+EV: We're getting 72 miles per day of sunlight, or 72 MPS."

Black Rock Solar passes 1,000,000 watts of solar installed

That's 1 megawatt.

Black Rock focuses on the social- rather than financial- bottom line. It has completed a dozen or so projects in or near Reno, Nev., mainly along the I-80 corridor.

About Black Rock:

"Black Rock Solar is a nonprofit with a simple goal: to speed the adoption of renewable energy. We do that by building low or no cost solar power in under-served communities, by teaching people in those communities how they can do the same and by supporting policies that will grow the renewable industry. In this way, we can help solve the climate crisis and increase our country’s energy independence one watt at a time."

More about Black Rock:


And even more ...Black Rock and Burning Man:

Projects completed this year by Black Rock include a 30kW PV array at the Fernley, Nev., Fire Department; a 150 kW array at the Food Bank of Northern Nevada in Reno; a 135 kW array at Pyramid Lake High School; and a 20 kW array at the Pioneer Center for the Performing Arts in Reno.

CSS: "clean coal" technology or political way station?

The West – mainly Montana, Wyoming and Utah – has plenty of coal, and coal interests have plenty of clout.

Then there's this from the EPA and DOE: 

Clean coal' (meaning the kind that's theoretically possible if the federal government subsidizes sequestration development and when carbon dioxide is somehow injected into the ground via those as-yet-unproven technologies after the coal is burned) boom not possible without carbon pricing.

Aaah, the political maneuvering.

The renewable energy tango ...

One step forward, two steps back.

Or what Congress giveth, Congress can taketh away.

$1.5 billion taken from federal renewable energy loan guarantees in order to save teachers' jobs.


Al speaketh another inconvenient truth:

"These rescissions put into jeopardy the green jobs that the administration has touted as part of our clean energy future and put us further behind the rest of the world."

A few more details:

"US President Barack Obama signed on Tuesday legislation that will provide various states with $26 billion of emergency funding to pay thousands of public sector workers. The H.R. 17586 bill has been approved by House of Representatives, while an identical version was passed by the Senate on August 5. The spending will be offset by a number of measures including a $1.5 billion cut in funding for renewable energy loan guarantees."

Utah governor: Do what I say, not what I do

The Republican governor of Utah, Gary Herbert, was more than happy to stand before assembled media last year to demonstrate his support of a PV installer training program at Salt Lake Community College.

Gov. Herbert promotes a PV training program. (Photo: Bill Keshlear)

But lack of a personal commitment, especially in an election year, speaks louder than a sound bite.

The largest solar? In southern Colorado?

Cogentrix Energy LLC, a power generation project development company, announced today that it has entered into a contract with Public Service Company of Colorado for a solar generating project to be located near Alamosa, in southern Colorado. 

The 30,000 kilowatt solar generating project would be the largest facility of its type in the world and is expected to be completed in the second quarter of 2012.  





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A starting point for subcontractors and installers.

Amusing ourselves to death as ...

 Congress fiddles

 "It has passed on!   It is is no more!  It has ceased to be! It’s expired and gone to meet ‘is maker! ‘E’s a stiff! Bereft of life, ‘e rests in peace! If you hadn’t nailed ‘im to the perch ‘e’d be pushing up the daisies! ‘Is metabolic processes are now ‘istory! ‘E’s off the twig! ‘E’s kicked the bucket, ‘e’s shuffled off ‘is mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the bleedin’ choir invisible!!"

And Russia burns

"There was nothing similar to this on the territory of Russia during the last one thousand years in regard to the heat."


"Over 15,000 likely dead in Russia, 17 nations comprising 19% of Earth's total land area set extreme heat records this year, July was 'sixth straight record warm month in the tropical Atlantic.' "

A reality check

"To put this in rough perspective – and note this is not absolutely precise, it's purely ballpark to give you some feel for what the Russian people are enduring – if this heat wave was hitting North America, it would be near 100°F in Fairbanks, Alaska. Most of Canada would be baking at 100° or higher, the northeast, from Maine to the Great Lakes region would be hitting upwards of 105° everyday ...


"The desert Southwest, even some of the higher elevations of Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, and West Texas, would be as uninhabitable as Death Valley or the Sahara ...


"It would mean nationwide massive power brownouts, unprecedented crop failures, water rationing like you have never seen, record wildfires raging in dozens of states, thousands of death (tens of thousands of deaths) and life threatening heat related illness, roads and highways clogged with broken-down, over-heated cars, and emergency services stretched beyond the breaking point across the US and Canada ..."

Chipping away at a 14 percent jobless rate

The photovoltaic array at Nellis Air Force Base, northeast of Las Vegas went online in Dec. 2007 and supplies the base with about 25 percent of its electrical needs. Parts of it were built on top of a capped landfill.

Here's news for out-of-work installers in southern Utah and Las Vegas: Construction of a 50-megawatt photovoltaic plant is expected to begin next year at Flat Top Mesa, about five miles west of Mesquite. It would be one of the largest PV arrays in the country (in the neighborhood of 140,000 panels), twice as big as the PV plant at Nellis AFB.