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Credit crunch burning solar industry

Posted in alternative energy, climate change, energy, First Solar, global warming, green collar jobs, green financing, green policy, green tech, investment tax credit, renewable energy, solar energy, solar power plants, SunPower, Suntech, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , on December 3, 2008| 2 Comments »

solana1The credit crunch is taking a toll on the United States’ nascent solar industry, scuttling big renewable energy projects and curtailing expansion plans, solar executives said Wednesday as they proposed the inclusion of green incentives in the Obama economic stimulus plan.

Spanish energy giant Abengoa, for instance, has put on hold plans to build its 280-megawatt Solana solar power plant outside Phoenix to supply electricity to utility Arizona Public Service (PNW) in a $4 billion deal, said Fred Morse, senior advisor to Abengoa Solar.

“We have serious issues getting financing,” said Morse during a conference call held by the Solar Energy Industries Association. Congress in October passed a 30% investment tax credit crucial to the solar industry. But Wall Street’s meltdown has scared off investors that normally would finance large solar projects in exchange for the tax credits.

“The investment tax credit was passed but unfortunately there was no ‘I’ in the ITC,” Morse added. “We have trouble finding tax-equity investors, the financing is gone.”

Suntech America president Roger Efird said that after Congress passed the investment tax credit, the Chinese solar cell maker immediately doubled its sales force in the U.S. That expansion has now hit a wall.

“Plans to double our sales force by the end of 2009 are currently on hold, primarily because business has slowed in fourth quarter because of the credit crunch,” he said. “We had been considering establishing manufacturing in the U.S. The timing of those plans depend on the growth of the market in the U.S. and how long it takes to get through this downturn.”  Suntech’s (STP) stock – like those of rivals SunPower (SPWRA) and First Solar (FSLR) – has been walloped by the market chaos and is down 94% from its 52-week high.

Ron Kenedi of Sharp Solar said the dealers and installers who buy the Japanese solar module maker’s products have had a hard time securing credit to finance their operations.

In response, the solar industry’s trade group on Wednesday proposed that the federal government cut through the credit crunch by adopting tax and investment policies to stimulate the solar sector and create 1 million jobs.

The centerpiece of the plan is a $10 billion program to install 4,000 megawatts of solar energy on federal buildings and at military installations. “The Department of Defense alone could jump start this industry and it could have widespread impact on the use of solar, similar to what it did for the Internet,” said Nancy Bacon, an executive with Michigan thin-film solar cell maker Energy Conversion Devices (ENER).

Bacon noted that the federal government is the world’s largest utility customer, spending $5.6 billion annually on electricity. “This would create 350,000 sustainable jobs,” she said. “The solar industry is ready to deploy these systems immediately.”

The Solar Energy Industries Association also wants Congress to enact a 30% tax refundable tax credit for the purchase of solar manufacturing equipment to encourage solar companies to build their factories in the U.S. That would result in an estimated 315,000 new jobs. Making the current investment tax credit refundable would also help loosen up financing for solar projects, the association said.

Other policies on the SEIA agenda:

  • Establishment of a national Renewable Portfolio Standard that would require states to obtain a minimum of 10% of their electricity from green sources by 2012 and 25% by 2025, with 30% of the total coming from solar.
  • Rapid deployment of new transmission lines to connect cities to remote areas where wind and solar power is typically produced.
  • Expedited approval of solar power plant projects on federal land in the Southwest.
  • Creation of an Office of Renewable Energy in President-elect Obama’s office to coordinate the procurement and permitting of solar power and transmission lines.

“We are working closely with the Obama energy transition team and have been in contact with Congress,” said SEIA president Rhone Resch. “These polices are exactly the kind of shot in the arm our economy needs today.”

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Generating electricity from a balloon

Posted in alternative energy, Cool Earth Solar, enviro startups, green startups, green tech, PG&E, renewable energy, San Diego Gas & Electric, solar energy, solar power plants, Southern California Edison, Uncategorized, tagged , , on November 5, 2008| 16 Comments »

cool-earth-solar-balloon1

Image: Cool Earth

LIVERMORE, Calif. – It sounds like something out of one of those do-it-your-self magazines: Stitch together two buck’s worth of thin-film plastic – the stuff potato chip bags are made of – stick in a photovoltaic cell, inflate with air and, voilà, you’ve got yourself a “solar balloon” that will generate a kilowatt of electricity. String together 10,000 balloons and you’ve got a solar power plant that can power a town.

California startup Cool Earth Solar believes this high-low tech approach is what will make its solar power plants competitive with fossil fuels. Green Wombat visited Cool Earth’s Livermore headquarters recently for a Fortune Magazine story and got a look at the technology.  “We wanted to do solar in a very different way,” says Cool Earth CEO Rob Lamkin.

Different it is. We’re standing in Cool Earth’s back shop in front of an eight-foot-high solar balloon. Two pounds of plastic are pumped with a third of a pound of air per square inch to make the balloon taut. The curved top two-thirds of the balloon is transparent and the bottom is made of the silvery reflective plastic you’d find lining a bag of junk food. A steel strut inside will hold a tiny but highly efficient solar cell, which is the most high-tech component of the balloon.

Here’s the ingenious part of the technology, developed by scientists at Caltech: Instead of using expensive optics to concentrate sunlight on the solar cell, Cool Earth manipulates the air pressure inside the balloon to change the shape of the mirrored surface so that it focuses the maximum amount of sunlight on the solar cell, boosting electricity generation 300 to 400 times.

By replacing expensive materials like steel with cheap-as-chips plastic and air, Cool Earth aims to dramatically lower the price of solar electricity. “We strongly believe it’s all about cost,” says Lamkin, “not how clever the technology is or if it is 1% more efficient.”  For instance, the amount of aluminum in a can of Coke would provide enough reflective material for 750 balloons, he notes.

The company, founded in 2007, has raised $21 million so far. It plans to build solar power stations in the 10-megawatt to 30-megawatt range. Two to six balloons will be suspended on wood poles and anchored with cables about 10 feet off the ground. That means the earth won’t have to be graded, reducing the environmental impact of Cool Earth’s power plants – a growing issue given that most solar thermal power stations will be built in the desert, home to a plethora of protected wildlife. The relatively compact size of Cool Earth’s power stations also means they can be located close to existing transmission lines.

A prototype power plant is being built in a field across the street from Cool Earth’s offices and Lamkin says a 1.5 megawatt plant will be constructed early next year in the Central Valley town of Tracy. The electricity probably will be sold to utility PG&E (PCG) under a state renewable energy program.

Unlike big solar thermal plants, photovoltaic power stations do not need to obtain a license from the California Energy Commission, which can be an expensive two-year ordeal. Lamkin estimates that a Cool Earth power plant can be up and running in six months, which should appeal to utilities like PG&E, Southern California Edison (EIX) and San Diego Gas & Electric (SRE), which are under the gun to meet state mandates to obtain 20% of their electricity from renewable sources by 2010.

Now Cool Earth just needs to make the technology work in the field. It has yet to produce electricity from its balloons, as the solar cells are still being produced. Also unknown is how the balloons will operate in real-world conditions. Lamkin says they can withstand 125-mile-an-hour winds. They have a lifespan of just five years, but Cool Earth expects to replace the balloons every year, given their low cost.

“Our major structural element is air, which so far is free,” Lamkin says. “And the sun isn’t taxed either.”

Yet.

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Big Solar project short-circuited

Posted in alternative energy, climate change, energy, environment, global warming, green policy, San Diego Gas & Electric, solar energy, solar power plants, Southern California Edison, Stirling Energy Systems, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on November 3, 2008| 22 Comments »

The risky nature of Big Solar projects has been driven home with California regulators’ move to kill a controversial $1.3 billion transmission line that would have connected massive solar power stations in the desert to coastal cities.

“These projects are unlikely to proceed,” wrote Jean Vieth, an administrative law judge with the California Public Utilities Commission, in a ruling rejecting San Diego Gas & Electric’s Sunrise Powerlink transmission line.

Phoenix-based Stirling Energy Systems in 2005 scored a contract to provide SDG&E (SRE) with up to 900 megawatts of electricity to be generated by as many as 36,000 solar dishes. A few months later, the utility filed an application to build the Sunrise Powerlink, a new transmission line to connect the Stirling power plants and other renewable energy projects to the coast.

But the utility’s proposal to build 150-foot-high transmission towers right through wilderness areas of Anza-Borrego State Park, home to a host of protected species, triggered a long-running fight with green groups that generated an 11,000-page environmental impact report. On Halloween, Vieth issued a ruling that found that despite state mandates to cut greenhouse gas emissions, the environmental impact of the transmission project was frightening.

“The potentially high economic costs to ratepayers and the potential implications for our [greenhouse gas] policy objectives do not justify the severe environmental damage that any of the transmission proposals would cause,” concluded Vieth in a 265-page decision.

The battle isn’t over — the public utilities commission will vote in December whether to accept the judge’s ruling. They will also consider an alternative decision issued by a commissioner assigned to review the case. That decision would let SDG&E build a transmission line along a different route under certain conditions.

But the case highlights the conflicting environmental values that will dog solar power projects. In other words, just what trade-offs are we willing to make to secure a planet-friendly source of energy? In this case, the judge ruled that to avoid the environmental damage of a massive new transmission line, the preferred alternative is to build more fossil-fuel plants close to San Diego along with a smaller-scale solar power station and a huge increase in rooftop solar arrays. The judge acknowledged that such an alternative “would cause substantially more GHG emissions than the proposed project and other transmission proposals.”

The judge’s second preferred alternative was to build only renewable-energy projects near San Diego that would not require big new transmission lines. Some Sunrise Powerlink opponents argue that San Diego has enough roof space to generative massive amounts of electricity from photovoltaic solar panels. (The cost of such an undertaking was left unsaid.)

Public Utilities Commissioner Dian Grueneich’s alternative decision would allow San Diego Gas & Electric to build Sunrise Powerlink along a more environmentally-benign route if the utility could prove that most of the transmission line would carry renewable energy so as to offset the 100,000 tons of greenhouse gases emitted during its construction. “Reliance on a single 900-megawatt contract (the Stirling Energy Systems contract) is too risky,” she wrote.

So where does this leave Stirling? COO Bruce Osborn didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. But earlier this year, he told Green Wombat that even if Sunrise Powerlink was killed, there’s enough existing transmission capacity to carry electricity from the power plant’s first 300-megawatt phase. Stirling also has a 20-year contract to supply up to 850 megawatts of electricity to utility Southern California Edison (EIX), a deal not contingent on Sunrise Powerlink.

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First Solar jumps into residential rooftop market

Posted in alternative energy, energy, enviro startups, environment, First Solar, solar energy, Uncategorized, tagged , , , on October 29, 2008| 17 Comments »

In a move that will bring thin-film solar panels to the U.S. residential market, First Solar has signed a deal to provide installer SolarCity with 100 megawatts’ worth of solar arrays over the next five years. First Solar is also investing $25 million into SolarCity, the Silicon Valley startup backed by Tesla Motors founder Elon Musk.

This is First Solar’s initial foray into the home market — and apparently the first of any thin-film solar module maker. Thin-film solar panels are made by depositing solar cells on sheets of glass or flexible material and use little of the expensive silicon that forms the heart of more bulky conventional solar modules. That makes thin-film panels cheaper, although they are less efficient at converting sunlight into electricity. And thin is in for homeowners who prefer less-obtrusive panels on their roofs.

SolarCity CEO Lyndon Rive told Green Wombat that First Solar’s more economical panels will allow the company to expand to the East Coast and other areas that do not heavily subsidize solar. SolarCity installs solar panels at no cost to the homeowner and then leases them back for a monthly charge. “What matters is not efficiency but cost per kilowatt-hour,” Rive says, noting that solar programs like California’s reduce rebates to panel makers as the number of installations increase. “We need solutions that address declining subsidies.”

Added SolarCity communications director Jonathan  Bass: “When we talk to customers their four biggest priorities are cost, cost, cost and aesthetics.”

Beginning in early 2009, SolarCity will start receiving 20 megawatts’ worth of First Solar panels a year. Rive won’t disclose how many megawatts SolarCity currently installs annually, but 20 megawatts would seem to represent a significant expansion of the startup’s operations. Over the past two years, SolarCity has installed solar arrays for 2,500 homes and small businesses and a spokeswoman says the First Solar deal would supply enough panels for about 5,000 homes a year.

The deal also marks a move to diversify on the part of Tempe-Ariz.-based First Solar (FSLR)  — known as the Google (GOOG) of solar for its once-stratospheric stock price. The company, backed by Wal-Mart’s (WMT) Walton family, had primarily focused on the overseas commercial rooftop market. This year though First Solar has signed deals to build thin-film solar power plants for utilities like Southern California Edison (EIX) and Sempra (SRE).

First Solar on Wednesday reported that third quarter revenues rose 30% to $348.7 million from the second quarter and was up 119% from the year-ago quarter. Profit spiked 42% to $99.3 million from the second quarter and increased nearly 116% from a year ago.

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A green credit crunch?

Posted in climate change, electric cars, enviro startups, environment, eSolar, geothermal, global warming, Google, green financing, green startups, green tech, renewable energy, solar energy, solar power plants, Southern California Edison, Uncategorized, wind power, tagged , , , , , on September 25, 2008| 2 Comments »

photo: eSolar

If Wall Street’s implosion can feel remote on the West Coast, where green tech startups largely rely on Silicon Valley venture capital, there may be no escaping the fallout from the credit crunch.

Still, even those renewable energy companies tapping East Coast cash have powered ahead amid the chaos on the Street. Take SolarReserve, a Santa Monica, Calif.-based solar power plant developer. A day after Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy last week, the stealth startup announced a $140 million round of funding from investors that included Citigroup (C) and Credit Suisse (CS).

Lehman does hold small stakes in wind turbine maker Clipper Windpower of Carpinteria, Calif., and Ormat Technologies, a Reno, Nev., geothermal developer. “Lehman’s exit from wind is not good news, but it’s not the end of the world,” says Ethan Zindler, head of North American research for New Energy Finance, a London-based research firm. And while Lehman holds stock lent to it from solar cell companies like SunPower (SPWR) and Evergreen Solar – potentially diluting their earnings per share if the stock is not returned – Lehman is not a big player in solar.

That’s not the case with Goldman Sachs (GS) and Morgan Stanley (MS). Both are major solar and wind investors and both were forced this week to reorganize themselves into bank holding companies to stave off shotgun marriages with other institutions. Spokespeople for Goldman and Morgan Stanley told Green Wombat that the firms’ transformation into more conventional commercial banks – at least a two-year process- will not change their green investing strategies.

But if there appears to be little immediate collateral damage from the financial crisis for green tech startups, there are longer-term consequences. Solar power plants, wind farms and other large-scale renewable energy projects require billions of dollars in bank financing.

“Credit is just going to get more expensive,” says Zindler. “We’ve already seen some pull-back for some big solar and wind deals. Bigger developers who have solid balance sheets will be OK but the smaller guys could be in trouble.”

Says Bill Gross, chairman of solar power plant developer eSolar: “I think if you’re going to get project financing, you’re just going to have to show higher returns to get people to take the money out of the mattress.”

But Gross, the founder of Pasadena, Calif.-based startup incubator Idealab, argues that given soaring electricity demand and fossil fuel prices, large-scale renewable energy projects will be an attractive investment, paricularly since utilities typically sign 20-year contracts for the power they produce. eSolar, which is backed by Google and other investors, has a long-term contract to supply Southern California Edison with 245 megawatts of green electricity. Gross says eSolar has a pipeline of other projects and interest in the company remains high, particularly overseas.

“If you can make projects that can compete with fossil fuels on a parity basis, those projects are going to be financed,” he says, “because they’re safe returns for 20 years and I think money is going to flow to them.”

Rob Lamkin, CEO of solar power plant startup Cool Earth, echoed that sentiment. “The credit crisis does give me pause,” says Lamkin, whose Livermore, Calif.-company has raised $21 million in venture funding and is developing “solar balloons” that use air pressure to concentrate sunlight on solar cells. “But the energy problem is so big that I don’t see problems raising project financing.”

The key for developers of utility-scale projects – particularly solar power plants – will be keeping their costs under control; not an easy thing when deploying new technologies amid a commodities boom.

Dita Bronicki, CEO of geothermal power plant developer Ormat Technologies (ORA), does not anticipate trouble obtaining project financing. “I think the cost of money is going to go up, but a company like Ormat with an operating fleet and operating cash flow will not be as affected,” Bronicki says. “Small companies will find that lenders will be more picky in what they will invest.”

Green entrepreneurs tend to be an optimistic bunch, so it’s not surprising they still think the future looks bright. But they had reason to be sunny this week – amid Wall Street’s meltdown, the U.S. Senate on Tuesday passed, at long last,  extensions of crucial renewable energy investment tax credits and other goodies to goose green tech, such as a tax credit worth up to $7,500 for buyers of plug-in electric cars. The Senate action now must be reconciled with similar legislation in the House of Representatives.

Solar projects, for instance, would qualify for a 30% investment tax credit through 2016.

“That is one thing that will help project finance,” says Gross. “So many people are sitting on the sidelines right now and if the investment tax credit passes that will help get these projects financed.”

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Green energy’s big win in Congress

Posted in alternative energy, climate change, electric cars, energy, environment, geothermal, global warming, green cars, green policy, investment tax credit, PG&E, plug-in electric hybrids, renewable energy, solar energy, solar power plants, Southern California Edison, Uncategorized, wind power, tagged , , , , , , on September 24, 2008| 13 Comments »

After a year of stalemate that threatened to strangle the nascent United States solar industry, the U.S. Senate on Tuesday passed energy legislation that extends a key investment tax credit until 2016.

The 30% solar tax credit was part of a package of green energy incentives that includes a one-year extension of the production tax credit crucial to the wind industry and a $2,500-$7,500 tax credit for people who buy plug-in electric vehicles. (That should make General Motors (GM) happy as it prepares to roll out its ever-increasingly expensive Volt plug-in electric hybrid.)

Homeowners also won an extension of a tax credit for installing solar panels and the $2,000 cap on such systems was lifted. Put in a small wind turbine or a geothermal heat pump and you can claim up to a $4,000 and $2,000 tax credit, respectively.

The big winner was the solar industry. Congress’ failure to extend the investment tax credit threatened to scuttle scores of multibillion-dollar solar power plants in the pipeline and undermine mandates that utilities like PG&E (PCG) and Southern California Edison (EIX) obtain a growing percentage of their electricity from renewable sources.

The legislation now returns to the House of Representatives, which earlier passed a similar version of the Senate bill.

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Google, GE to develop green energy technology

Posted in alternative energy, climate change, corporate green, energy, environment, geothermal, global warming, Google, renewable energy, Uncategorized, wind power, tagged , , , , , , on September 17, 2008| 14 Comments »

SAN FRANCISCO – Google and General Electric said Wednesday that they will collaborate on developing geothermal power as well as technology to enable plug-in vehicles to return electricity to the grid.

During Google’s (GOOG) annual Zeitgeist conference at its Silicon Valley headquarters, Google CEO Eric Schmidt and GE (GE) chief Jeff Immelt said the two giants also would team up to push for policy changes in Washington to develop smart electricity grids to allow the widespread deployment of renewable energy.

“There’s two fundamental things that have to be done, and which we’re working with Google on,” said Immelt before an audience that included former Vice President Al Gore. “One, there has to be more capacity. The second thing is there has to be a smart grid to allow it to operate more effectively. That’s primarily software. We make the hardware.”

Schmidt quizzed Immelt about the impact of the Wall Street meltdown on green energy. “Will the craziness of last week screw some of this stuff up?” asked Schmidt. “Are we going to get set back for years because of all the shenanigans in the financial industry?”

“People should be concerned but not panicked,” replied Immelt. “The federal government is doing the right thing.”

Gore was not so sanguine, noting that Congress has failed repeatedly to extend crucial investment tax credits for renewable energy. “While Congress is voting on oil drilling and leasing oil shale – which is a move that would be game over for the climate crisis – they’re preparing to filibuster over renewable energy tax credits,” he said.

Google and GE are among scores of Fortune 500 companies that have lobbied Congress to extend the investment tax credit and the production tax credit, which is particularly important to the wind industry. ”

“I’m a lifelong Republican and I believe in free markets but over time we worship false idols,” says Immelt. “Sometimes we think the free market is whatever the price of oil is today. In the end, clean energy is both a technology and a public policy.”

He noted that because the production tax credit allowed the wind industry to scale up, wind-generated electricity now costs about six-to-seven cents a kilowatt hour, down from 15 cents 15 years ago.

“We bought Enron’s wind business for a few million dollars and now it’s worth $7 to 8 billion,” Immelt said. “I’ve made some bad decisions but that wasn’t one of them.”

Google in August invested nearly $11 million in geothermal companies developing so-called enhanced geothermal systems technology to allow the earth’s heat to be tapped nearly anywhere and turned into electricity. On Wednesday, Google and GE said they will work on technology to transform geothermal into a large-scale source of green electricity.

In a statement, the two companies said they will also “explore enabling technologies including software, controls and services that help utilities enhance grid stability and integrate plug-in vehicles and renewable energy into the grid.”

Image: Google

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Greening the petrochemical industry

Posted in climate change, corporate green, corporate sustainability, enviro capitalism, enviro startups, green startups, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , on September 16, 2008| 2 Comments »

Illustration: Genomatica

Outside of ExxonMobil (XOM), petrochemical companies would seem to be the least likely to join the sustainability movement sweeping corporations worldwide. After all, how do you green an industry predicated on petroleum as a key ingredient?

The answer, according to San Diego startup Genomatica, is to replace hydrocarbons with carbohydrates. The company is announcing Tuesday that it has bioengineered a microorganism that ingests sugar and water to produce a chemical called 1,4‐butanediol. Commonly known as BDO, the chemical is a raw material found in everything from golf balls to skateboard wheels to spandex. Although Genomatica is planning a pipeline of bioengineered chemicals, BDO alone is a $4 billion business.

“By using carbohydrates versus hydrocarbons, we can produce BDO with less energy and that translates into a smaller carbon footprint,” Genomatica CEO Christopher Gann told Green Wombat.

So far, Genomatica – founded in 2000 and backed by marquee Silicon Valley venture capital firms Mohr Davidow Ventures and Draper Fisher Jurvetson – has only produced batches of BDO in the laboratory. But Gann,  a veteran of Dow Chemical (DOW), and company president Christophe Schilling claim that by the middle of 2009 they will be able to make bioengineered BDO cheaper than the petroleum-based chemical.

“This is a disruptive technology,” Gann says.

If Genomatica lives up to its claims of success in the lab, the technology indeed could potentially turn the petrochemical industry on its head.

First, anything that removes petroleum from a manufacturing process is going to get noticed. (While transportation accounts 70% of the 20.7 million barrels of oil consumed in the United States daily, a significant portion is used for chemicals  – up to 25% in the gulf states home to the nation’s petrochemical industry, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.)

Second, Genomatica’s microorganism leaves behind none of the nasty byproducts of petrochemical production, avoiding the health risks and costs of containing, storing and cleaning up toxic waste.

Lastly, Gann and Schilling say Genomatica’s technology frees BDO production from vast and accident-prone petrochemical complexes. “Since the raw materials are sugar and water, we can locate next to where there’s sugar and water or locate next to where the product can be consumed,” says Gann.

The startup was spun out of the University of California at San Diego, where Schilling and his mentor, Professor Bernhard Palsson, developed a technology platform to design virtual microorganisms. Schilling compares the process to the way airliners are designed entirely on computers.

“It allows us to model and simulate how microorganisms would survive and grow,” he says. “We can now go ahead and figure out the best way to engineer the organism to perform a particular task. We use off-the-shelf technologies and some proprietary ones to produce the organisms.”

Genomatica, which has raised $20 million from the Silicon Valley VCs as well as some Icelandic angel investors, will make money by licensing its technology to chemical companies. Gann and Schilling declined to identify other chemicals in their product pipeline but said they were related to the class of petrochemicals known as “cracker-plus-one.”

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Thin-film solar startup scores a fat $300 million

Posted in alternative energy, energy, environment, First Solar, investment tax credit, OptiSolar, PG&E, solar energy, solar power plants, Southern California Edison, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on August 27, 2008| 13 Comments »

The looming expiration of a crucial renewable energy investment tax credit doesn’t seem to have spooked investors. Silicon Valley thin-film solar startup Nanosolar said Wednesday that it has secured another $300 million in funding and is jumping into the Big Solar game as well.

Writing on the Nanosolar blog,  CEO Martin Roscheisen said that the latest financing round – the company’s funding now totals half a billion dollars –  comes from oldline utility AES (AES), French utility giant EDF and the Carlyle Group, among other investors. Nanosolar, which prints solar cells on flexible materials, will supply solar panels to the newly formed AES Solar, which will build medium-scale – up to 50 megawatts – photovoltaic power plants.

The Nanosolar news is just the latest of a spate of deals to take solar panels off rooftops and plant them on the ground to generate massive megawattage. Two weeks ago, thin-film solar startup Optisolar won a contract from utility PG&E (PCG) for a 550-megawatt PV solar power plant while SunPower (SPWR) will build a 250-megawatt photovoltaic solar farm for the utility. Leading  thin-film company First Solar (FSLR), meanwhile, has inked deals over the past few months to build smaller-scale PV power plants for Southern California Edison (EIX) and Sempre (SRE). And thin-film solar company Energy Conversion Devices is assembling a 12-megawatt array for a General Motors plant in Spain.

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Do wombats twitter?

Posted in Uncategorized on August 14, 2008| 2 Comments »

photo: Todd Woody

Do wombats twitter? Actually, they go “hrrrrmph, hrrrmph.” But Green Wombat has decided to give Twittering a go, inspired by my Fortune colleague Adam Lashinsky’s plunge into microblogging via the Twitter service. For the uninitiated, Twitter allows you to post short messages – 140 characters tops – to the Twitter site and send them to the mobile phones of people who choose to follow your tweets.

Given the green tsunami of enviro-tech news that floods into Green Wombat’s inbox every day, I’m hoping Twitter will be a way to keep readers updated on developments which I don’t have time to do full-fledged stories. So dear readers, if you’re so inclined, sign up for the Green Wombat twitter stream here.

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