Free Republic

Sunlight beats down on a graveyard for dead solar panels in Yuma, Arizona, hundreds stacked in neat piles, waiting for their next life. The great majority of worn and damaged panels are still dumped in landfills. But with more and more piling up, many people know that needs to change. In this desert city where Arizona, California, Sonora and Baja California meet, North America’s first utility-scale solar panel recycling plant has opened to address what founders of We Recycle Solar call a “tsunami” of solar waste. Plans to address climate change rely on massively scaling up clean, solar electricity. The...

Global cobalt demand soared with the advent of cell phones and laptop computers. It exploded with the arrival of electric vehicles and now is skyrocketing in tandem with government EV mandates and subsidies. Cobalt improves battery performance, extends driving range and reduces fire risks. Demand will reach stratospheric heights if governments remain obsessed with climate change and Net Zero. States and nations would have to switch to electric cars, trucks, buses and tractors; end coal and gas electricity generation; convert gas furnaces, water heaters and stoves to electricity; and provide alternative power for windless, sunless periods. Electricity generation would triple...

A “battery fire” at a rural New York solar farm has triggered warnings from authorities for local residents to avoid the toxic smoke plumes billowing from the site. Democrat Gov. Kathy Hochul issued a warning Thursday night for locals to stay away from the site near Lake Ontario. The blaze began around 1 pm at a solar farm in Jefferson County, outside the village of Chaumont, according to WWNY-TV. The village is about 78 miles north of Syracuse and near the Canadian border. Photos and videos aired by the local news station show smoke shooting from a solar panel array...

December 2019 marked the beginning of Solar Cycle 25. The Sun’s activity has quickly ramped up and even though we haven’t reached peak levels in this cycle, the Sun’s activity is already exceeding predictions. Solar events will continue to increase as we near solar maximum in 2025, and our lives and technology on Earth, as well as satellites and astronauts in space, will be impacted.

10% for the big guy. The Biden administration is trying to ban real cars in favor of electric cars. It’s pushing unreliable wind and solar over reliable gas, oil and coal energy sources. All of that requires lots of lithium for energy storage and that makes us dependent on China. Meanwhile, the Biden administration also keeps shutting down efforts to mine lithium in America. Rover Metals Corp. is pleased to announce that it has it received its exploration drill permit from the Bureau of Land Management (“BLM”) to further exploration at its Let’s Go Lithium (“LGL”) project, NV, USA. The...

Wind turbines, once touted by the few wealthy and less populated countries as a clean solution for electricity, are now becoming an eyesore, a hazard, and a significant environmental threat. After decades of operating around the world for the few wealthy and less populated countries, wind turbines continue to have a live expectancy of about 20 years. To date there has yet to be discovered a financially viable means of recycling those wind turbines. As a result, today’s old wind turbines are being dumped into toxic waste dumps. Because wind turbine blades are very difficult to recycle, the waste stream...

Pair your portable power station with portable solar panels and take the power of the sun with you wherever you go. Here's our tested picks for the best solar generators. Solar panels and batteries are the newest innovations in portable power, mirroring home power trends. Portable power stations have been available for a while now, taking care of power needs in all sorts of situations. Using solar panels to charge on the go is the next logical step. Combine portable power stations with solar panels and you have yourself a solar generator. Solar generators, like their gas-powered counterparts, are portable...

A British-built solar powered drone with a 115ft wingspan that can operate in the air for 20 months has made a successful maiden voyage to the stratosphere – the second layer of Earth's atmosphere. Over a 24-hour period, PHASA-35 took off from New Mexico and soared to more than 66,000 feet, officially reaching the stratosphere, before landing successfully. The 150kg solar-electric aircraft, which has a wingspan lined with solar panels, has been developed by London firm BAE Systems at their facility in Warton, Lancashire. It is powered by the sun during the day and by batteries overnight, allowing it to...

The White House announced the release of a research plan on solar radiation modification (SRM) on Friday that suggests the “possible deployment” of solar geoengineering techniques to mitigate the effects of climate change. The report was published by the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), to provide a research plan for “solar and other rapid climate interventions” in response to a congressional mandate in the Consolidated Appropriations Act 2022. The use of SRM techniques that would block or filter sunlight is being explored as a “potential complement to other tools available...

The Swedish Parliament announced that it is abandoning its green energy targets. Finance Minister Elisabeth Svantesson explained that "wind and solar power are too unstable to meet the nation's energy requirements. Only a nuclear pathway is viable to remain industrialized and competitive. The goal of a 100% renewable energy supply is infeasible and must be scrapped." Biden's climate envoy John Kerry called this decision "disappointing. By breaking away from a uniform acceptance of the necessary reduced standard of living, Sweden risks reigniting a global quest for prosperity that constitutes the chief threat to our climate goals. This is their second...

The Scottsbluff, Nebraska 5.2 MW Community Solar project was part of the NPPD’s Sunwise program that consisted of an array has over 14,000 solar panels. It’s reported that it had been put into operation in 2019. Surely the project had been ceremoniously put into operation, with dignitaries and proponents proclaiming it would reliably deliver cheap and clean energy, reduce the state’s carbon footprint and contribute to a bright and climate-friendly future. Now it has been just recently reported that the multimillion dollar solar energy park was literally reduced to a heap of rubble as hail literally pummeled it to a...

Xcel Energy’s new $1.7 billion Power Pathway Project to build 550 miles of new 345-kilovolt power lines and at least four new substations in eastern and southeastern Colorado will add to the cost of renewable energy. Xcel customers will be paying for the power lines to help meet Gov. Jared Polis’ Greenhouse Gas Reduction Roadmap goals for carbon reduction. ... for nearly full electrification of buildings and transportation, Net-Zero America co-principal investigator Jesse Jenkins, an assistant professor and energy systems engineer at Princeton, told The Denver Gazette in an email that the U.S. would have to increase transmission capacity by...

The solar industry in California has experienced several high-profile bankruptcies including one of its largest producers, Petersen Dean. Now, another local solar company has shuttered, leaving homeowners with unfinished systems on roofs that aren't producing any power, not saving money on utility bills, and often there's still the financing of the equipment and installation that the customer is responsible for.

Inflicting heavy fines on developers of a project billed as supplying clean, renewable energy, a federal jury has awarded a couple in southwest Georgia $135.5 million after runoff from “Lumpkin Solar” severely polluted waters and soils on their rural property. According to a lawsuit filed by Shaun and Amie Harris, Lumpkin Solar’s developers – after clearing about 1,000 acres of timberland, farmland, and land previously used for hunting and fishing – failed to install adequate measures for erosion and sediment control. “The result is what one would expect – when it rained, pollution poured downhill and downstream onto the neighbors’...

Please note: this article was pulled down offline from Forbes. I will let you draw your own conclusions as to why. Factually, there was no justification for it. This list could be closer to 50 but let’s just stick to a handful of them. I literally live in this business every day, and I’m just so confused. 1. In a world that is apparently getting both warmer and colder because of global warming, how is it that we can increasingly rely on non-dispatchable (i.e., intermittent, usually unavailable), weather-dependent electricity from wind and solar plants to displace, not just supplement, dispatchable...

How solar farms took over the California desert: ‘An oasis has become a dead sea’ Residents feel trapped and choked by dust, while experts warn environmental damage is ‘solving one problem by creating others’ eep in the Mojave desert, about halfway between Los Angeles and Phoenix, a sparkling blue sea shimmers on the horizon. Visible from the I-10 highway, amid the parched plains and sun-baked mountains, it is an improbable sight: a deep blue slick stretching for miles across the Chuckwalla Valley, forming an endless glistening mirror. But something’s not quite right. Closer up, the water’s edge appears blocky and...

https://archive.ph/hPjcr .... Archive link only since the UK Telegraph is blocked here due their obsolete complaining from 20 years ago.

"Progress towards an energy transition appears to be significantly lagging the optimistic projections and any reduction in government mandates and subsidies could make many investments unprofitable, and at least some elements of the energy transition appear to be driven by irrational exuberance..."– Michael Lynch, Energy Policy Research Foundation, 2022The loudening insistence that renewables should displace, not just supplement, fossil fuels and nuclear energy in the power sector has some undeniable problems. In electricity jargon, politically favored wind and solar power are “non-dispatchable” resources (with capacity factors lower than 35%), while fossil fuels and nuclear are “dispatchable” (with capacity factors 85%...

STORY: This solar farm 'mows' the lawn with some wooly workers The farm says they got tired of wasting their own energy keeping grass trim And that they turned to sheep as a greener and more powerful method [Rexhep Rrudhani, Shepherd] “They realised that mowing the lawn was very hard and they asked me whether I can bring my sheep. I said yes and I brought my sheep here. The plant’s manager gave me the water for the sheep because they have a well that is 90 meters deep. This is necessary during summer. When I do sheep shearing, I...

DIKE, Texas (KLTV) - An East Texas community is faced with a new development that is creating concern. A solar farm is being built in the community of Dike, located in Hopkins County. Some say incorporating into a city would be the solution. In 2020, the Hopkins County Commissioners Court approved to build a solar farm in the community of Dike. Construction has already begun. But many community members are against the project, like Kirk Reams. “The landowners that have leased this land had already signed leases and everything had been done before most of the community members ever found...