Free Republic

Morocco has turned on its massive solar power plant in the town of Ourrzazate, on the edge of the Saharan desert. The plant already spans thousands of acres and is capable of generating up to 160 megawatts of power. It's already one of the biggest solar power grids in the world, capable of being seen from space. And it's only going to get bigger. The current grid, called Noor I, is just the first phase of a planned project to bring renewable energy to millions living in Morocco. It will soon be followed by expansions, Noor II and Noor III,...

Government at all levels has been for a century-plus grossly over-involved in, well, everything.  For this particular exercise, let us look at the energy sector.  Behold the myth that is “green energy.” “Green energy” is - nigh totally - neither green, nor energy.  Most sources - wind, solar, ethanol and bio-,… - expend as much or more traditional energy to produce as they eventually provide.  And their production and utilization are in many instances much more anti-planet than demonized traditional sources.    And unlike traditional sources, “green energy” requires government money.  Lots and LOTS of government money.  Subsidies to the tune...

According to SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, the Cape Canaveral mishap was not an explosion but a "fast fire." yes. This seems instant from a human perspective, but it really a fast fire, not an explosion. Dragon would have been fine. On Thursday, a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket blew up on the launch pad, shaking nearby buildings and spewing smoke into the sky

Some say that the casualty numbers are overhyped. Other say it is a serious problem. But at the Ivanpah Solar Plant in Nevada, birds are bursting into flames. The bizarre occurrences happen when the bird’s flight paths take them into the ultra-concentrated beams of sunlight produced by the panels at the plant. On spec, the plant seems like the very ideal of energy production for the future: three gleaming towers, forty stories in height capturing the energy from the sunlight reflected by five acres of massive mirrors. All told, the plant generates some 390 megawatts of power from its turbines....

The Solar storm of August 28 to September 2, 1859—known as the Carrington Event—was a powerful geomagnetic solar storm during solar cycle 10 (1855–1867). A solar coronal mass ejection(CME) hit Earth's magnetosphere and induced one of the largest geomagnetic storms on record. The flare traveled directly toward Earth, taking 17.6 hours to make the 150 million kilometer (93 million mile) journey. It is believed that the relatively high speed of this CME (typical CMEs take several days to arrive at Earth) was made possible by a prior CME, perhaps the cause of the large aurora event on August 29, that...

Energy independence, especially if you don’t particularly like the country you currently depend on, is a very strong motivator for the adoption of renewable energy. Ukraine has recently become a great case in point, after the announcement that it planned to turn part of the uninhabitable zone around the Chernobyl power plant into a large-scale solar farm. Chernobyl, the site of one of the worst nuclear disasters in the history of the world, cannot be used for much: farming is impossible, as are most other productive human activities. But there is a lot of sunshine in the area, which can...

Security Expert: Solar Panels Are Extremely Easy To Hack  http://dailycallernewsfoundation.org/2016/08/02/security-expert-solar-panels-are-extremely-easy-to-hack/ Security Expert: Solar Panels Are Extremely Easy To Hack Andrew Follett on August 2, 2016 A conference of cybersecurity experts is meeting in Las Vegas this Friday to discuss how rooftop solar panels make homes much easier to hack. The experts found that a malicious hacker can easily knock solar panels offline, cause them to intentionally overheat or shut down entirely. Some hacking can even use solar panels to cause physical damage in the real world. “I could have installed spying software that would have had visibility into their home...

Some history of the Natick MA Quartermaster Labs solar furnace. "http://www.boston-online.com/bizarro/the_cockroaches_that_ate_natick.html" "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0tK3s1Vnol0"

To allow Montana’s solar industry to continue growing toward its enormous potential, we need the right policies in place. That’s why I was so glad to see the energy plan recently released by Gov. Steve Bullock. (cut) Henry Dykema is president of the nonprofit Montana Renewable Energy Association and owner of Sundance Solar Systems, a solar installation business near Red Lodge.

Like a crazed serial killer, the liberal green groups are celebrating their “victory” of putting America’s major coal producers out of business — to say nothing of the tens of thousands of miners placed in unemployment lines. Several thousand more mining jobs were lost last month. Now to get their next homicidal high, the leftists have turned their ambitions on the oil and natural gas industries. Here is how the Sierra Club spokeswoman, Lena Moffit, explains the grand, green vision: “We have moved to a very clear and firm and vehement position of opposing gas. We oppose any new gas-fired...

<p>Firefighters had to climb some 300 feet up a boiler tower at the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System in California after fire was reported on an upper level around 9:30 a.m., fire officials said.</p> <p>The plant works by using mirrors to focus sunlight on boilers at the top of three 459-foot towers, creating steam that drive turbines to produce electricity.</p>

Misaligned mirrors are being blamed for a fire that broke out yesterday at the world’s largest solar power plant, leaving the high-tech facility crippled for the time being. It sounds like the plant’s workers suffered through a real hellscape, too. A small fire was reported yesterday morning at the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System (ISEGS) in California, forcing a temporary shutdown of the facility. It’s now running at a third of its capacity (a second tower is down due to scheduled maintenance), and it’s not immediately clear when the damaged tower will restart. It’s also unclear how the incident will...

The Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System located near the California-Nevada border, burst into flames when some of the thousands of mirrors that focus sunlight on water towers became misalinged and started an electrical cable fire. The plant was built with a $1.6 billion taxpayer guaranteed loan and is run by a consortium of companies that include BrightSource Energy, NRG Energy and Google. Associated Press: Firefighters had to climb some 300 feet up a boiler tower at the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System in California after fire was reported on an upper level around 9:30 a.m., fire officials said. The plant...

The oil price rout has caused a lot of headaches in the renewable industry, especially in the heavily subsidized U.S. solar sector, which is suffering some setbacks even as solar installations are growing rapidly. Solar power suppliers are scaling back operations as demand is growing slower than expected, and the sector is wondering where to go from here. Investors have, of course, sensed the uncertainty. An industry that showed so much promise—particularly against the background of international efforts to curb the effects of climate change—is now in the doldrums. So what went wrong?

The pilot of a solar-powered airplane on an around-the-world journey said Saturday that stopping in California's Silicon Valley will help link the daring project to the pioneering spirit of the area. Pilot Bertrand Piccard, who left Hawaii three days ago, said he hopes to fly over San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge before landing in Mountain View on Saturday night. "Can you imagine crossing the Golden Gate Bridge on a solar-powered plane just like ships did in past centuries? But the plane doesn't make noise and doesn't pollute,'' Piccard said a live video feed on the website documenting the journey. It's...

The Treasury Department failed to meet a Republican-set deadline Friday for issuing the results of an investigation into rampant fraud under federal tax subsidy programs for solar energy. Republican Sens. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Jeff Flake of Arizona pressed Treasury inspectors to release the long-overdue report by April 22 in a letter the lawmakers sent earlier in the month. The senators did not receive the results of the investigation, but instead were told by Treasury that they are still attempting to compile the information. A spokesman for Murkowski said the inspectors "have not provided a substantive response," and they...

If California is the land of reinvention, the small desert city of Adelanto fits the bill. Roughly a two-hour drive east from Los Angeles, Adelanto was founded in 1915 by an inventor who wanted to sell land to World War I veterans. His dream never materialized and the region was taken over by orchard farms, then poultry ranches. The nearby George Air Force Base opened and eventually closed in the early 1990s. The city more recently made a solar play, but the energy market fizzled. City unemployment hovers at 14 percent, well above the national unemployment rate of under 5...

House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi’s husband bought up to a quarter million dollars of stock in a now financially troubled green energy company just weeks before it announced a major 2014 acquisition that sent stock prices soaring, public records show. SunEdison told regulators last week that it is eyeing bankruptcy under the weight of $11.7 million in debt. But in late 2014, investors were bullish on the company, which manufactures and operates solar and wind power facilities. Its 2014 purchase of wind energy company First Wind “further bolstered the reputation of the company,” wrote one market-watcher at the time. “Perhaps...

In recent years, proponents of clean energy have taken heart in the falling prices of solar and wind power, hoping they will drive an energy revolution. But a new study co-authored by an MIT professor suggests otherwise: Technology-driven cost reductions in fossil fuels will lead us to continue using all the oil, gas, and coal we can, unless governments pass new taxes on carbon emissions. “If we don’t adopt new policies, we’re not going to be leaving fossil fuels in the ground,” says Christopher Knittel, an energy economist at the MIT Sloan School of Management. “We need both a policy...

Adding graphene to solar cells makes them generate power from rain. Solar power has been on a continuous rise over the past decade. Rooftop solar is arguably the most common renewable energy source for home use, and solar power plants are arguably the biggest renewable energy large scale generators. But, regardless of all this, there is still something that limits solar power generation, and that is weather. In order for solar cells to produce electricity, there has to be sun. Rain is sometimes welcome (preferably at night), to clean up dust and soil articles that could limit the efficiency of...