The solar powered plane Solar Impulse flew for over 26 hours without interruption and landed on July 8th. This plane has a wingspan of 63 meters – the same as a Boeing 777 – weights 1,600 kg and goes as fast as a scooter, 70 km-h. The plane gathered enough energy from the sun during …
Solar PV capacity is growing fast, and each year it is growing even faster. But when talking about solar with friends, some of them complain that the blue color is an hindrance as it looks out of place with red roofs. This might change soon as Lof Solar, a solar company from Taiwan is launching …
This year will remain as an important milestone in the history of solar power. Indeed to GreenTech Media : ” In 2010, we will cross the threshold of 10 gigawatts of photovoltaic solar installed globally in a single year.” This is indeed amazing as in 2000 only 170 megawatts were installed. This is 58 times …
It is no news for you if you subscribed to this website : solar thermal alone could provide up to a quarter of global electricity by 2050. The use of molten salt could enable our civilization to store solar electricity for up to seven hours. Morocco is ideally located to harvest all this energy as …
Yesterday the French Minister for Ecology, Energy, Sustainable Development and Town and Country Planning, Mr. Jean-Louis Borloo visited a company in Vaudrey, less than 20 kilometers from my hometown. Ravoyard SA manufactures since its origins metallic structures. Dynamic, it recently diversified its activity to add photovoltaïc films to its existing products. As the market is currently …
An official visit from Mr. Borloo at Ravoyard SA Read More »
France is promoting via aggressive feed-in tariffs the expansion of solar photovoltaic. I believe this is quite a good thing even if our electricity is 90 percent low carbon. (80 percent nuclear and ten percent hydro) Indeed, we will soon need additional capacity for both heat pumps and electric vehicles. However I believe the French (and other) …
This week was unveiled what is perhaps to date the largest renewable energies project in the world. Indeed, an Indian company – Airvoice Group – plans to build 10 GW of solar PV capacity and three GW of wind power. All these capacities are due to be built on various sites within the decade in …
Solar energy is to me the panacea for Africa, a continent where 550 million people still lack electricity. With molten salts, concentrating solar could bring light to these populations during important parts of the night. Solar cookers could also help fighting deforestation by removing the need for fuelwood. Now an experiment run in Benin (West Africa) shows …
For the seventh part of this series – and after having tackled heating, electricity, water, transport, food and waste – I guess it is time for us to see how solar energies can benefit our lives. I mention solar energies as there are three possibilities : passive solar applications, which are the most basic, solar …
The most important news this weekend on energy and the environment was the draft of a plan from the Indian government that could literally change the world’s market for both solar thermal and photovoltaïc. To a local newspaper – The Hindu – the world’s largest democracy indeed would like to have 20 GW of solar …
