Tags: Akeena Solar, Alameda, Bay Area Solar companies, Berkeley, bill, Boulder County Colorado, California, cash, Colorado, electric, energy, expensive, federal tax, government, home, Homeowners, image, installation fee, lease, long term benefits, MONEY, monthly bill, New York, PACE, Palm Desert, panels, Property Assessed Clean Energy, property tax, roof, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Santa Cruz, satellite, solar lease, solar panel, solar system, SolarCity, Sonoma County, summer, Sungevity, SunRun, Texas, Washington, weekend
The general idea we all have about installing solar panels is that they are very expensive and due to that, unaffordable although they do offer long term benefits, but putting in $20,000 to $30,000 in cash upfront to install a solar system on the roof of your home is not an easy thing to do.
However, the good news is that many Bay Area solar companies that include Akeena Solar, SolarCity, Sungevity and SunRun, are in the process of starting new business models through creative financing mechanisms to make rooftop solar more affordable.
Most of the local and state governments, including Washington, are willing to help. The White House is already busy promoting a new form of financing generically known as PACE, or Property Assessed Clean Energy, which allows private property owners to pay for renewable projects like solar and energy efficiency upgrades through an addition to their property tax bill.
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Tags: Berkeley, CdTe, CIGS, Copper oxide, Copper sulfide, Cyrus Wadia, Daniel Kammen, Electricity, energy, front line energy source, FSI Mike Ahearn, iron pyrite, latest solar panel technology, Paul Alivisatos, Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory, semi conductor technology, silicon, solar energy, solar energy market, thin-film technology, Wadia
The FIRST SOLAR INCORPORATION (FSI) has brought the manufacturing cost of solar panels down to $1 per Watt. This news has brought another wave in the renewable energy sector. But studies have shown that there is long way to go if solar energy can compete with the other forms of energy.
New challenges faced by this industry and some suggestions are discussed below.
CdTe Tecnology
FSI has decreased the cost of solar panel to $1 and it is because of the cadmium tellurium (CdTe) technology. The silicon solar panels are in the range of $3 so in this race the (CdTe) is the winner. After this decrease in price of thin filmed photovoltaic panels, this technology still needs time and further growth to scale this energy to be adapted as front line energy source.
Growth Rate
LBNL researcher Cyrus Wadia says.
“First Solar is great, as long as we’re talking megawatts or gigawatts,” he says. “But as soon as they have to start rolling out terawatts, that’s where I believe they will reach some limitations.”
The solar energy market is growing at the rate of 56%. If it goes on with this speed for the next 10 years then it will account only 2.5 % of global electricity. This growth rate is difficult to maintain. CEO of FSI Mike Ahearn has told analysts in a conference that “as good as things look for the mid-term and beyond, the short-term outlook for the solar industry in our view has never looked more difficult.”
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Tags: Alexander R. Stine, assistant professor of earth and planetary sciences, Berkeley, Berkeley Institute of the Environment, California, cause of global warming, causes of global warming, Climate Change, climate changes, climate data, climate warming, co-director, definition of global warming, earth global warming, effect of global warming, effects of climate change, environmental global warming, evidence global warming, facts global warming, facts on global warming, first author, global change, global climate change, Harvard University, Inez Fung, less energy, National Science Foundation, Peter Huybers, professor of earth, Solar Energy, solutions global warming, solutions to global warming, stop global warming, temperature, the causes of global warming, the effects of global warming, the global warming, the greenhouse effect, UC Berkeley, UC Berkeley's Department of Earth and Planetary Science, United Kingdom, University of California, University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit
BERKELEY — Not only has the average global temperature increased in the past 50 years, but the hottest day of the year has shifted nearly two days earlier, according to a new study by scientists from the University of California, Berkeley, and Harvard University.
Just as human-generated greenhouse gases appear to the be the cause of global warming, human activity may also be the cause of the shift in the cycle of seasons, according to Alexander R. Stine, a graduate student in UC Berkeley’s Department of Earth and Planetary Science and first author of the report.
"We see 100 years where there is a very natural pattern of variability, and then we see a large departure from that pattern at the same time as global mean temperatures start increasing, which makes us suspect that there’s a human role here," he said.
Although the cause of this seasonal shift – which has occurred over land, but not the ocean – is unclear, the researchers say the shift appears to be related, in part, to a particular pattern of winds that also has been changing over the same time period. This pattern of atmospheric circulation, known as the Northern Annular Mode, is the most important wind pattern for controlling why one winter in the Northern Hemisphere is different from another. The researchers found that the mode also is important in controlling the arrival of the seasons each year.
Whatever the cause, Stine said, current Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) models do not predict this phase shift in the annual temperature cycle.
Details are published in the Jan. 22 issue of the journal Nature.
Temperatures at any given time of the year can be very different on land than over the ocean, Stine said, and a change in the strength and direction of the winds can move a lot of heat from the ocean onto land, which may affect the timing of the seasons. However, this seems to be only a partial explanation, he said, because the relationship between this pattern of circulation and the shift in the timing of the seasons is not strong enough to explain the magnitude of the seasonal shift.
The researchers also found that the difference between summer and winter land temperatures has decreased over the same 50-year period, with winter temperatures warming more than those in summer. They found that in non-tropical regions, winter temperatures over land warmed by 1.8 degrees Celsius and summer temperatures increased by 1 degree. Ocean warming has been somewhat less.
Stine noted that the study limited its focus to non-tropical regions because the seasons are more pronounced outside the tropics.
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