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For seven years, a handful of homebuilders offered solar as an optional item to buyers willing to pay extra to go green. Now, California is on the verge of making solar standard on virtually every new home built in the Golden State.

The state's Energy Commission is expected to approve new energy standards that would require solar panels on the roofs of nearly all new homes, condos and apartment buildings from 2020 onward. There will be exemptions for homes that either can't fit solar panels or would be blocked by taller buildings or trees, but you'll otherwise have to go green if your property is brand new.

For seven years, a handful of homebuilders offered solar as an optional item to buyers willing to pay extra to go green. Now, California is on the verge of making solar standard on virtually every new home built in the Golden State. The California Energy Commission is scheduled to vote Wednesday, May 9, on new energy standards mandating most new homes have solar panels starting in 2020. If approved as expected, solar installations on new homes will skyrocket. Just 15 percent to 20 percent of new single-family homes built include solar, according to Bob Raymer, technical director for the California...

Which is why Reuters’ report that the solar industry has decided to provide more money to Republicans than Democrats this cycle just makes my head want to explode.

You may have thought the push for All Renwable Energy All The Time went out the window with the departure of Barack Obama and his control of the EPA but you would be mistaken. The 100% renewable crowd is still in action and they’ve been gradually enlisting a number of major tech sector corporations into their ranks. The website The Energy Collective ran a feature this week touting the progress that many of the nation’s largest companies have made along these lines.

Over the last year, the media have published story after story after story about the declining price of solar panels and wind turbines. People who read these stories are understandably left with the impression that the more solar and wind energy we produce, the lower electricity prices will become. And yet that’s not what’s happening. In fact, it’s the opposite. Between 2009 and 2017, the price of solar panels per watt declined by 75 percent while the price of wind turbines per watt declined by 50 percent. And yet — during the same period — the price of electricity in...

A prominent environmental activist took the unusual road of not only blaming rising electricity costs squarely on renewable sources, but also for deriding the mainstream media for ignoring the connection. Michael Shellenberger, the president and founder of Environmental Progress, explained in a Forbes blog post Monday how the unreliability of renewable energy sources, such as wind and solar, is the main reason why electricity bills around the world have been getting higher. Despite renewable energy technology slowly becoming more affordable, Shellenberger notes, electricity costs are still rising because of the unpredictable nature of wind and solar. Both sources produce excess...

A new book, Taming the Sun: Innovations to Harness Solar Energy and Power the Planet, is available from MIT Press. The book touts the wonders of solar energy and tells us that there is an urgent need to invest trillions in more solar energy. The book is filled with outright errors. The author, Varun Sivaram, has a boundless faith in technical progress that he thinks will make solar cheaper and more practical

The federal government in Canada has moved to pass coal phase-out legislation into law with its Just Transition Task Force in favor of “clean energy.” “The end of coal power will help usher in a new era for renewable energy,” said David Suzuki Foundation director of science and policy Ian Bruce. “With conventional coal-fired power officially headed for the history books, people across the country can literally breathe easier about the future of energy production.” “This is yet another signal that dirty, outdated energy sources are on their way out,” said the Foundation’s lead climate campaigner and senior policy analyst...

The White House plans to withdraw Kathleen Hartnett White's nomination to head the Council on Environmental Quality, a White House official confirmed to CNN Saturday. Hartnett White, who would have overseen environmental and energy policies across the government, had described the belief in "global warming" as a "kind of paganism" for "secular elites" during a September 2016 interview on "The Right Perspective," an online conservative radio show. She has also said the goal of climate activists and the United Nations was an all-powerful, one-world government and "planetary management," KFile reported. President Donald Trump announced Hartnett White's nomination in October and...

President Trump wants Chinese solar panels firms to make more of their products in the U.S. -- and they appear to be getting the message. A week after the Trump administration unveiled tariffs of up to 30% on imports of solar panels, one of China's biggest manufacturers announced that it plans to open a new plant in the U.S. JinkoSolar said in a statement Monday that its board of directors had given the go-ahead to "finalize planning for the construction of an advanced solar manufacturing facility in the U.S." The statement suggested Jinko's decision was tied to the new tariffs,...

President Trump is at it again, putting American interests over foreign ones, this time trying to save solar manufacturing jobs. But could an America First mentality actually work in this case? President Donald J. Trump is a lot of things to a lot of people, but for his most fervent detractors, placing a 30% tariff on fully assembled solar panels and cells has moved him to full-on cartoon villainy. Like billionaire C. Montgomery Burns on The Simpsons, apparently his lifelong obsession is to block out the free, limitless energy of the sun. The four-year tariff only kicks in after the...

At the site of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in Ukraine, work is almost finished on a huge new solar plant that's set to provide one megawatt of renewable power for the local electricity grid. The new plant sits just a hundred metres (328 feet) from the Object Shelter, nicknamed the "sarcophagus", a sealed metal dome designed to prevent further radiation leakage from the remains of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant. The blast that occurred on 26 April 1986 remains one of two most disastrous nuclear accidents in history alongside Fukushima, but the installation of these solar panels offers hope that...

Good power quality can be defined as a steady supply voltage that stays within the prescribed range, steady a.c. frequency close to the rated value, and smooth voltage curve waveform (resembles a sine wave). In general, it is useful to consider power quality as the compatibility between what comes out of an electric outlet and the load that is plugged into it. The term is used to describe electric power that drives an electrical load and the load’s ability to function properly. Without the proper power, an electrical device (or load) may malfunction, fail prematurely or not operate at all....

WASHINGTON, N.C. (WNCT) – There is growing concern in some counties about how much solar farms are actually costing taxpayers. Under North Carolina law, counties must give solar companies an 80 tax abatement. For smaller counties like Beaufort, that equates to around a $543,000 tax loss each year. A planned 600 acre solar farm in the county threatens to bring the total tax lost to well over $1 million a year. The more solar farms a county has, the greater that number. “Our taxpayers here are paying for that tax abatement, and they’re also paying for an increase in energy...

NASA’s own data is showing that the star our globe revolves around is dimming. With no sunspots reported in 96 days, the sun is going dark and the evidence could point to an approaching ice age. As the sun gets successively more blank with each day, due to lack of sunspots, it is also dimming, says the website Watts Up With That? According to data from NASA’s Spaceweather, so far in 2017, 96 days (27%) of the days observing the sun have been without sunspots. Today at Cape Canaveral, SpaceXlaunched a new sensor to the International Space Station named TSIS-1....

I have created a solar oven with an old satellite dish and about 250 small mirrors. My thermometer reached >600 degrees F in about one minute. I'm trying to think of a way for it to automatically track the path of the sun. Any suggestions?

Plants grown in this 'smart' greenhouse fared as well or better than plants grown in conventional greenhouses. The first crops of tomatoes and cucumbers grown inside electricity-generating solar greenhouses were as healthy as those raised in conventional greenhouses, signaling that "smart" greenhouses hold great promise for dual-use farming and renewable electricity production. "We have demonstrated that 'smart greenhouses' can capture solar energy for electricity without reducing plant growth, which is pretty exciting," said Michael Loik, professor of environmental studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and lead author on a paper that appears in the current issue of the...

GREENVILLE, SC (FOX Carolina) - Cypress Creek Renewables and Greenville Technical College have launched a solar job training program. The program is the first of its kind in the country, Adams and Reese LLP said in a press release. According to Adams and Reese LLP, Cypress Creek Renewables will invest over $1.5 billion to develop and build 2 gigawatts of solar energy in projects across South Carolina. The project will create 10,000 jobs, the law firm said. 600,000 homes will be powered with solar energy as a result of the project, Adams and Reese LLP said.

Just days after US President Donald Trump called for further isolation of Iran, a Norwegian solar company signed a deal Tuesday to invest €2.5 billion in the country over the next five years. “Norway is fully committed to the JCPOA (nuclear deal), and this is proof that we have taken the opening very seriously, and we will see more investment very soon,” Norwegian ambassador Lars Nordrum told AFP. He was hosting the signing at his Tehran residence between Norway’s Saga Energy and Iran’s Amin Energy Developers, who will work together to install two gigawatts of solar panels in multiple sites...