Solar

How I helped make better solar panels, and how you can

As you might perhaps have read in an earlier blog post, I am giving part of my computer calculation capacities to scientific projects close to my heart such as cancers, AIDS and of course, solar energy via the World Community Grid. As I was wondering if all this energy – and thus money – had […]

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Global capacity doubled : a solar boom

To Greentech Media : ” two-thirds of all solar PV capacity in place worldwide has been installed since January 2011. Let’s put that into perspective. It took nearly four decades to install 50 gigawatts of PV capacity worldwide.” ” But in the last 2 1/2 years, the industry jumped from 50 gigawatts of PV capacity

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Latest news from China

I originally wanted to write a post only on how the People’s Republic of China is willing to quadruple its solar PV capacity by 2015.  But given other news from there got my attention, I thought it would be better to present them all. First thing first : the Chinese government is not messing around

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Peru to provide solar panels to two million inhabitants

I seldom blog about Latin America besides the occasional post on the deforestation of the Amazon rainforest. So when I read about Peru’s efforts to give access to its poorest population, I just knew I had to share this. The Peruvian National Photovoltaic Household Electrification Program will benefit more than 2 million people by providing

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Desertec abandons Sahara solar energy export dream

The Desertec Industrial Initiative (DII) have been been the subject of many articles here. The huge project was due to generate large amounts of renewable energy from solar and wind farms in Northern Africa and bring it to Europe. Criticism had been important as the feasability of generating up to 100 gigawatts of electricity in

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Worth an article – my May and June 2013 tweets

uh oh ! I totally forgot to publish a review of my most interesting news on Twitter for both May and June ! Lucky you, here is this long awaited for selection. As usual, each tweet could have been the subject of a full article. Given this selection I believe it is safe to say

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A look at the solar thermal market

When people talk about solar energy, most of them just think about solar photovoltaic (PV) that generates electricity from sun rays. While this is a great energy source, there is a much simpler one : solar thermal. This is why my interest was brought to an IEA report on how this heat source is growing

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Solar costs drop by a hundred

To pursue my quest for the best information about cleantech and sustainability, I have recently added one social media to my collection. I am now gathering – and sharing information – via Tumblr. This allowed me last week to find great graph on how solar costs have been decreased, cut and slashed by a factor

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Grid parity for solar PV is already here in 105 countries

I have already noted quite a few times in the past month that grid parity is slowly but surely approaching. What if it were already the case ? To the Applied Materials blog and REneweconomy it is already here in over a hundred countries. Yes, solar photovoltaic installed on rooftops is now cheaper than electricity

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Renewables are surging much faster than thought

A close observer of renewable energy markets I am amazed at how fast they are growing around the world. Many countries are banking on them to get out of the current triple crisis. Even if the efforts being done are lacking the necessary scale, results are very encouraging. Portugal is getting 70 percent of its

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