Tag Archives: Renewable energy

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What Does a Climate Scientist Drive?

Mark Jacobson's all-electric Tesla roadster


If you’re Mark Jacobson, director of Stanford University’s Atmosphere/Energy Program, you drive an all-electric, cherry-red Tesla roadster, with a license plate proclaiming “GHG FREE.” (GHG = Green House Gases)

Solar power, Charge!

“Note that the license plate is a little exaggerated,” Jacobson wrote The Phoenix Sun via email, “but the power does come from rooftop solar.”

If you’re a regular Sun reader, you know we’ve covered Jacobson’s work in the past. But after he co-authored a cover story for Scientific American on how to create a 100% renewable energy society, the editors at Grist felt Jacobson’s “big picture” thinking merited a full interview.

You can read that Q&A with Jacobson, here, on Grist.





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Rooftop Solar PV Gets a New Face

Sanyo's bifacial PV

Today in my blog “Brief Back” (written for True/Slant) I wrote about the implications of a story out of Canada that’s not getting much play in the States.

It’s about Sanyo’s “bifacial” solar PV, that can use solar radiation coming from in front or from behind it. Why do that? Because when it’s placed on roofs with 85% reflective coating, the array can produce 30% more electricity than the one-sided variety.

The details are more interesting than that might sound, so check it out at True/Slant.

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Plans for Largest Wind Farm in US Announced

GE 2.5 MW wind turbines in Germany

If work goes according to plan, 338 new wind turbines will be producing as much 845 MW of electricity in north-central Oregon by 2012. The “Shepherds Flat” wind farm will be spread across 30 square miles in north-central Oregon, approximately 120 miles due west of Portland.

This is the first time the GE-made 2.5xl turbines will be used in the US, but 100 of the large turbines (rotor blades are 100 meters long — about 330 feet) have already logged over a million hours of energy production in in Europe and Asia. The wind farm will be owned by New York-based Caithness Energy with the power generated supplying electricity to Southern California Energy customers.

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