Community Solar
On March 14th and 15th, the Northeast Sustainable Energy Association held the BuildingEnergy Boston Conference. Among the attendees were building professionals, educators, homeowners, students, and energy & environment professionals. One of the presentations given at BuildingEnergy Boston was titled Solar Access for the Underserved. Three different speakers addressed the problem of accessibility of solar, and provided specific solutions to this problem.
On a brisk Saturday morning, residents from across Southeastern Massachusetts came together along the shoreline of the Mt. Hope Bay to watch the demolition of the two Brayton Point cooling towers.
Pairing solar with the energy-hungry marijuana growing market seems like a no brainer. Indoor grow houses require an incredible amount of electricity to power artificial lighting, fans, dehumidifiers, water pumps and many more elements at all hours. As more states legalize recreational marijuana, the electric grid is bound to suffer from this increased 24/7 demand. Surely solar can help even things out?
Hawaii regulators have approved six of eight proposed large solar plus storage projects, with all coming at or under 10 cents per kilowatt-hour.
National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) researchers estimate that installing floating solar photovoltaics on the more than 24,000 man-made U.S. reservoirs could generate about 10 percent of the nation’s annual electricity production. Their findings, published in the journal Environmental Science & Technology, reveal for the first time the potential for floating PV to produce electricity in the United States.
While the United States was the first to demonstrate floating PV panels—with the first installation occurring 10 years ago on pontoons on an irrigation pond in Napa Valley, California—the idea has not received widespread national acceptance. The U.S. focus has primarily been on installing large-scale, ground-mounted solar panels, and only had seven floating PV sites as of December 2017. Floating PV sites are being deployed more overseas, however, with more than 100 sites as of the end of last year. Japan, for example, is home to 56 of the 70 largest floating PV installations.
Floating PV being installed in Walden, Colorado. (Photo by Dennnis Schroeder/NREL)
The 50% by 2030 mandate would include a provision that utilities source at least 14.5% of their power from solar, the highest portion of any policy to date. But to do that it has to get through both the Maryland House and Governor Hogan.
Image: Thisisbossi via Wikipedia. Licensed under Creative Commons.
Sunrun made a splash at the BNEF Summit in New York City at a time when utilities are increasingly struggling to adapt to new realities. But distributed energy resources have a long way to go to play a major role, and we will still need additional energy sources in future power systems.
Sunrun CEO Lynn Jurich. Image: Bloomberg
Company creates a more sustainable growing model it calls greendoor™, uniting renewable, solar energy with the water-efficiency of indoor growing
SANTA BARBARA, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Cementing its role as an industry trailblazer, Canndescent™ has completed the cannabis industry’s first, commercial-scale solar project, powering its indoor production facility in Desert Hot Springs, CA. Delivering onsite, renewable energy, the 282.6 kilowatt system uses 734 solar modules on seven different carport structures to energize the company’s historic cannabis production facility, which also earned attention in 2016 as California’s first municipally permitted operation. The state-of-the-art, clean energy system offsets as much carbon annually as a 430-acre forest and reduces annual atmospheric carbon emissions by 365 metric tons (per NREL and EPA estimates).
Canndescent Youtube Channel
