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"SolarNetOne is a collaborative effort spanning several continents, organizations, and technical disciplines, with the goal of developing a feasible, sustainable solution for providing public and private Internet access and related services to areas that do not have the benefit of a reliable power or communications grid. With experts in open source software, photo-voltaic electricity, internet infrastructure, and true internet pioneers on the SolarNetOne team, we have endeavored to design and implement systems capable of bridging the digital divide under the most difficult of conditions, and in the most open method available."

Italy, a growing market for renewable energy, is on the road to becoming the first country to achieve "grid parity" - the Holy Grail of solar power, where costs of producing photovoltaic energy finally fall below retail electricity prices.

This Wired article summarizes and links to a poster for the American Geophysical Union meetings (pdf) from Elaine Hart, a graduate student in civil and environmental engineering at Stanford. Her power flow simulation suggests that the existing transmission network in California can accommodate up to 70% of renewables in the portfolio on a hot summer day. The number of overloaded lines in the simulation rises from 11 to 31, which is not that large an increase given that there are almost 5,000 transmission lines in California. Still, this kind of work can be really useful to help target transmission investment. The Wired article also has some good links for further reading. I look forward to seeing more of this research!

Better Place announced this afternoon that it is heading Down Under to deploy its electric car infrastructure in Australia. The Palo Alto, Calif.-based startup is working with Australian utility AGL Energy to build an electric car charging grid powered by renewable energy. Macquarie Capital Group will finance the AUD$1 billion ($671 million) undertaking. Starting in the heavily populated areas around Melbourne and Sydney, Better Place plans to have the infrastructure up and running by 2012, when its automotive partner Renault-Nissan will start selling electric cars all over the world.