American Solar Alliance

It's easy to think about modules as singular units of power output, but the reality is that they are a collection of diverse components, each with influence over the end system's total cost and performance. For DuPont, its focus is of course on the mater...

The Obama Administration's $60 billion Loan Guarantee Program (LGP) for renewable energy is considered a failure because of Solyndra, Beacon Power, and potential 2012 bankruptcies. What is not well known is that 75 percent of the program's deployed funds...

Miasolé says it has created a 17.3 percent "champion" thin-film copper-indium-gallium-selenide (CIGS) solar photovoltaic device, results obtained in its own labs and not (yet) independently verified.

By late February the renewable energy industry should have direction from the Ontario government on some of the major changes ahead for the province’s landmark feed-in tariff program. “I am hoping we will have an announcement then with the me...

You may have heard it before, but it is worth mentioning again: In residential communities, solar is contagious. But a recent study, "Peer Effects in the Diffusion of Solar Photovoltaic Panels," conducted by Bryan Bollinger of the NYU Stern School of Bus...

Renewable energy in the United States is at a crossroads. With several federal tax grants set to expire by the end of 2012, utilities are trying to decide if the falling prices of solar and wind technology makes renewable energy competitive enough to inv...

Two reports out in the past week examine Europe's solar PV market in 2011, indicating slowing growth in the flagship countries and promise in some smaller regions for 2012 and beyond. Note that the data that follows is preliminary; final 2011 numbers won...

A recent report has generated lots of buzz by finding that as many as 50,000 jobs could be lost over the next three years if a 100 percent tariff is placed on Chinese solar panels. Yet from where I'm sitting, I see a far different number from the same re...

Twenty years ago, international leaders descended on Brazil to lay the groundwork for what would eventually become the Kyoto Protocol. This summer, a 20-member United Nations panel will once again head to Rio de Janeiro with an even more ambitious agenda...

Due to growing urbanization and resulting environmental threats, China has invested nearly US$50 billion annually into its renewable energy sector since 2009. China's five-year investment in environmental protection is on track to reach 3.1 trillion yuan...

Concentrated photovoltaics (CPV) is an upcoming renewable market that promises to provide cost-effective power generation at high levels of efficiency. The performance of a CPV system is dependant on the direct normal irradiance (DNI). Because of this ma...

Earlier this month, I attended EUCI’s Utilizing Clean Power Development Conference in Philadelphia.  The conference attracted a variety of large institutions (hospitals, municipalities, universities, etc.), developers, and financers to discuss...

What if electricity cost more when the sun was shining?  Many utilities are using new electronic "smart meters" to adjust the price of electricity as often as every hour, to reflect supply and demand.  And charging more when electricity i...

A big energy-related disaster doesn't just leave horrible marks on people's lives; it also can propel better and quicker policy and technology adoption. Kyocera on Monday said it plans to start selling a system that pairs solar panels with lithium-ion ba...

The volatile swings seen in the upstream part of the solar PV supply chain, from silicon to cell/module pricing, have been well documented. End-market demand and associated policies supporting it is also a roller coaster, with many key regions currently ...

Solar players on both sides of the Pacific have been warily anticipating the Feb. 13 deadline when the Department of Commerce was set to announce whether it would impose duties on solar cells and modules coming in from China.

I have no idea why people love time-lapse videos. Our eyes are certainly attracted to things that move quickly, and for some reason it’s fun to see people in hardhats and machines building a solar project from nothing, condensing days or weeks in...

System-level monitoring, continued adoption of string inverters for large PV installs, and improvements by Chinese suppliers are among the trends gleaned from a survey of inverter buyers & sellers.

One dollar per watt: that's the mark the solar industry is hoping to hit in order to become cost-competitive with conventional energies. In a bid to reach this magic number in the next two years, various Asian manufacturers are striving to reduce costs b...