US Solar School Census Report Published

USA solar schools

More than 3,700 solar power systems are installed at public and private K-12 schools in the USA according to a report from The Solar Foundation. Nearly 2.7 million students are attending schools gaining some of their electricity by harvesting the power of the sun. The report states electricity generated in one year by all 3,727 […]

ATA’s Solar For Timor Project A Google Finalist

Solar For Timor

Australia’s Alternative Technology Association (ATA) is a finalist in the $500,000 Google Impact Challenge with its Solar for Timor initiative. An estimated 20% of all homes in East Timor won’t ever be connected to mains grid electricity.  The Solar for Timor project would see the installation of 2000 solar lighting systems that would bring solar […]

RET Review Uncertainty Stalls Large Scale Renewables

Renewable Energy in Australia

Australia’s Federal Government has apparently succeeded in its mission to rein in the rollout of large scale renewables – even before its position on the Renewable Energy Target review has been announced. According to figures from Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF) reported on The Guardian, the nation’s investment in renewable energy projects has dropped to […]

Adelaide Airport Awarded Carbon Reduction Accreditation

Adelaide Airport solar power

Adelaide and Parafield Airports are the first Australian capital city airports to be accredited under the Airport Carbon Accreditation program – and solar has played a role. Operator of both facilities, Adelaide Airport Ltd (AAL), is now Airport Carbon Accredited (Level 2). To achieve this, AAL has implemented office and terminal upgrades and also ran […]

Melbourne Save Solar Community Forum This Week

Save Solar Forum - Melbourne

The fourth Save Solar Community Forum will be held in the electorate of Deakin, Melbourne, on Thursday, October 9th at 6pm. The latest in a series of similar events coordinated by the Australian Solar Council, the Save Solar Community Forums are a public display of support designed to bring pressure on the Federal Government to […]

Giant Solar Powered Clams

Giant clams utilise solar energy

Giant clams have been shown to use solar power – and mimicking how they do it could result in better solar panels. Researchers from the University of Pennsylvania and the University of California discovered the iridescent colourings of the giant clam’s mantle margin are used to nurture the growth of symbiotic algae that the clams […]

London’s Iconic Phone Boxes Go Green – Solarbox

solarbox

The familiar red phone boxes of London have taken a bit of a battering in recent decades, but some will be given new life with a little help from solar power. Originally introduced in 1926, the red phone boxes numbered 73,000 throughout the United Kingdom at their peak in 1980. The rise of the mobile […]

Council Makes Wind/Solar Power Compulsory On New Homes

City of Nedlands - Western Australia

In a first for Australia, a council has voted to make on-site clean power generation on all new homes and some commercial buildings compulsory. The City of Nedlands in Perth has led the way in turning more of the vast ocean of under-utilised rooftops in Australia’s towns and cities into power generators. In the minutes […]

SunEdison To Produce Polysilicon At ‘Lowest Cost In The World’

SunEdison HP-FBR polysilicon

Solar power giant SunEdison, Inc. (NYSE: SUNE), has announced its most advanced polysilicon technology was now in production; which it says will reduce the cost of solar panel polysilicon to less than USD $0.05 per watt peak by 2016. The technology being used is called “high pressure fluidized bed reactor” (HP-FBR) and creates high purity […]

New York City Schools Going Solar

New York City solar schools

New York City and State government is supporting the installation of solar power systems at two dozen schools in the City with a total of USD $28 million in funding. NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio says the initiative is part of the administration’s new green buildings plan that will triple the amount of solar capacity […]