Free Republic

Even $1.5 billion in subsidies and loan guarantees can’t save a “clean” energy company from bankruptcy. That’s the takeaway from the looming failure of SunEdison, a company that touts itself as the “largest global renewable energy development company.” Once a darling of Wall Street and the green Left because of SunEdison’s portfolio of wind and solar projects, the company’s stock is now in free fall. Furthermore, two related companies that were spun off from SunEdison — TerraForm Global and TerraForm Power — also appear to be in financial distress. On March 30, Brian Wuebbels, the CEO of both TerraForm companies,...

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is looking into SunEdison to see whether or not the company exaggerated its cash on hand in disclosures last year. The news comes as the solar developer is teetering on the brink of bankruptcy. The solar company has seen its stock collapse since last year as mounting debt problems have raised concerns about the company’s ability to keep the lights on. SunEdison’s share price is off by 96 percent since last July. That has translated to a decline of the company’s market capitalization from $10 billion last summer to just $400 million today. SunEdison...

As every ten-year-old who ever got a sweater for a birthday present has been told, “It’s the thought that counts.” That seems to be the guiding principle at the Department of Energy and the California Public Utilities Commission when it comes to solar power. The latest example is the $2.2 billion Ivanpah solar thermal plant in California. (Note: Solar thermal plants do not use solar panels to directly convert sunshine to electricity, they use sunshine to boil water that then drives conventional turbines.) Here’s the story so far, Ivanpah: Is owned by Google, NRG Energy, and Brightsource, who have a...

Solar energy is rapidly becoming one of the top choices for new electricity capacity as costs continue to decline and generous public policies accelerate tremendous growth for the sector. Last year was a record year for the solar industry and the momentum is set to continue. In 2016, the EIA expects the U.S. electricity market to see 26 gigawatts of new capacity installed. Utility-scale solar is expected to capture 9.5 GW of that total, or more than one-third. If that comes to pass, it would be triple the rate of installations of utility-scale solar compared to 2015, and would also...

California regulators may force a massive solar thermal power plant in the Mojave Desert to shut down after years of under-producing electricity — not to mention the plant was blinding pilots flying over the area and incinerating birds.

The Moon's shadow is cast across Indonesia in this view from the DSCOVR spacecraft, March 9, 2016. (Courtesy of the DSCOVR EPIC team.) On March 8, 2016 (March 9 local time) the Moon briefly blocked the light from the Sun in what was the only total solar eclipse of the year. The event was visible across portions of southeast Asia, Indonesia, and Micronesia, and was observed by both skywatchers on the ground in person and those watching live online around the world. While to most the view was of a silhouetted Moon slowly carving away the disk of the...

If solar and wind were indeed catching up to other forms of electricity generation, they wouldn’t need current subsidies, much less ever-growing ones. Such are the incredible costs of producing energy with “free fuel" While driving the mostly empty and flat 1,000 miles from Houston to Colorado Springs recently, I noticed something I hadn’t seen much just a few years ago—lots of wind farms dotting the landscape, but none anywhere near even small population centers. And another funny thing, though: Invariably, many of the turbines weren’t moving and one of the largest appeared to have about 100 turbines, yet I...

German power giant E.ON on Wednesday said it booked a €7.0 billion ($7.7-billion) net loss in 2015 and warned that “the course ahead will be tougher and longer than anticipated”. […] German power utilities have complained that the country’s transition from conventional carbon fuels to greener, cleaner sources of energy is squeezing their margins. The cost of having to close down their nuclear power plants and the heavy subsidies afforded to renewable energy have pushed them deeply into the red, the companies argue. The glut of government-subsidized solar, wind and other renewable power has led to a collapse in wholesale...

House lawmakers sharply criticized the head of the Department of Energy’s green energy loan program for not releasing documents requested by a committee looking into companies that have received taxpayer dollars. “It is disconcerting that the executive director of a major government program is unwilling to commit — to actually commit — to providing all the documents that an investigation committee of the Congress has requested,” California Republican Rep. Dana Rohrabacher .. told Mark McCall, the head of the DOE’s loan office, in a hearing Thursday, “and that the answer being given is using weasel words ... House committee members...

Renewable energy advocates like to point out that the cost of renewable fuels, like solar power, have dropped substantially in the last few years. The cost of solar power for instance has fallen by more than two-thirds since 2009. Yet for all the excitement about renewable power, the reality is that the entire energy sector has essentially been in a state of deflation for the last decade. The notable drop in oil prices over the last two years aside, costs of producing oil both in the U.S. and in many parts of the world have fallen dramatically. The phase out...

This interactive Google map shows the path of the Total Solar Eclipse of 2017 Aug 21. The northern and southern path limits are blue and the central line is red. You MUST be somewhere within the central path (between the blue lines) to see the total phase of the eclipse. The eclipse is longest on the central line (red). The yellow lines crossing the path indicate the time and position of maximum eclipse at 10-minute intervals. The green marker labeled GE is the point of Greatest Eclipse. The magenta marker labeled GD is the point of Greatest Duration. This is...

During the 2008 presidential campaign, Sen. Barack Obama began peddling his national healthcare system. On more than one occasion, he pointed to Canada and the United Kingdom as examples of a workable national healthcare system. When I first heard him point to them, I instantly thought of Rachel, a work acquaintance who lived and worked in the United Kingdom. She was experiencing abdominal pains and having problems eating for months before England’s National Health Service doctors finally diagnosed the problem to be her gall bladder. The doctor said it needed to be removed. However, from the time they wrote the...

State officials promised late Friday that tens of millions of dollars will start flowing first thing next week to financially strapped contractors on the SolarCity construction project, saving the jobs of 200 workers laid off earlier in the day because the state had fallen months behind in payments. The opening of the spigot marked a dramatic breakthrough, hours after money woes threatened to stall one of the signature pieces of Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s Buffalo Billion initiative. The state is spending $750 million to build the largest solar-panel manufacturing facility in North America, creating as many as 3,000 new jobs...

Solar panels contain toxic, hazardous materials and there are no regulations in North Carolina on how to dispose of them. Also, there are no plans in place to deal with what could happen if a storm destroyed a solar facility. The Environmental Review Commission met last week and began a discussion about the toxic materials in solar panels, what to do with expired solar panels and what to do in the event of an accident or natural disaster involving a solar facility. Chaired by Sen. Trudy Wade (R-Guilford), the commission heard from Tom Reeder, NC Department of Environmental Quality assistant...

n 2015, the U.S. saw 16 gigawatts of new renewable energy capacity installed, which accounted for two-thirds of the total. Solar alone accounted for about one-third of new capacity last year. Natural gas only captured 25 percent of the newly installed capacity despite several years of incredibly low prices. The banner year for clean energy occurred while 11 gigawatts of coal-fired electricity came offline as old plants were retired amid rising costs and stricter environmental regulation. The clean energy transition is very much underway. But the backlash from incumbent industries has also sprung to life. With solar and wind suddenly...

When Obama carried out his Solyndra con game, he broke the same law that Martha Stewart went to prison for breaking In 2009 the Obama administration gave $535 million to Solyndra, claiming that it would create 4,000 new jobs. However, instead of creating those 4,000 new jobs, the company went bankrupt. It was later revealed that the company’s shareholders and executives had made substantial donations to Obama’s campaign, that the company had spent a large sum of money on lobbying, and that Solyndra executives had had many meetings with White House officials. It was also revealed that the Obama administration had...

California, which boasts more than half of the households with solar panels in the United States, on Thursday extended a policy that has underpinned the rooftop solar industry's dramatic growth over the last decade. The 3-to-2 decision by California's Public Utilities Commission at a meeting in San Francisco to extend net metering was a major victory for the solar industry, including companies like SolarCity Corp, Sunrun and SunPower Corp . Net metering allows homeowners with solar panels to sell the power they generate but don't use back to their utility at the full retail rate, sometimes giving them a credit...

The carmaker is sponsoring researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), who have developed a new material [ in the form of a translucent polymer film - which absorbs solar energy which can be stored for days at a time before being released. Produced by MIT professor Jeffrey Grossman, postdoc David Zhitomirsky, and graduate student Eugene Cho, the stored energy can be released by changing the chemical state, likely via a small jolt of electricity. The report - published in the Journal of Advanced Energy Materials - states: "Photon energy is stored within the chemical conformations of molecules and...

NOAA classifies solar storms on a scale of one to five (one being the weakest; five being the most severe). Current conditions are classified at a moderate G2 level, meaning it could have the strength to cause fluctuations in some power grids, intermittent radio blackouts in higher latitudes and possible GPS issues. "There is still a slight possibility that we will see G3 (Strong) storms as effects persist," a bulletin posted on NOAA's website said.

Floridians for Solar Choice, an ad hoc group seeking a carve-out for the already heavily subsidized solar industry in Florida, appears to be running out of sunshine (it wouldn't do to say gas here) in its constitutional amendment petition drive. The group has gathered 271,000 certified signatures to put a constitutional amendment on the November 2016 state ballot that would oblige the state to promote solar power over other forms of electrical power generation and would allow citizens to generate solar power through a solar power company. This generation and sales would not be regulated in any way by the...