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Does it make sense to solar power everything? It leads to many small, and relatively expensive installations. Wouldn't it be more effective to go for a battery & plug-in concept where possible. One would loose the inflight recharging of the solar airplane, but for everything else, the plug-in concept probably provides benefits.

In addition, the lifetime of cars, for example, is much lower than the one for solar panels. Why integrate both?

Yes, I agree that there is too much emphasis on the novel in attempt to solve climate change. Creating technology for the designer label market to sell goods to the rich who want to tell their friends they are green. The same investment in a solid developed renewable method could yield a hundred times the reduction of carbon or more...

"Oakland, CA - In a rare move for advocacy groups, the SolarontheWhiteHouse.com campaign has created "Power the House," a fun, engaging way to continue fueling buzz and momentum around the national call for President Obama to put Solar panels back on the White House. Using Brushfire technology, the game is accessed through social media sites Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and FourSquare where Solar advocates can earn points by completing Solar missions. Players earn points based on how they virally spread the word about the campaign. Player status levels include Solar Maven, Solar Organizer, Solar Senator and Globamanator. The highest scorers will receive glow in the dark Globama t-shirts and other Solar merchandise, and in addition to bragging rights through their social networks, the "Ultimate Solar Advocate" will be named in a nation-wide press release when the campaign reaches 10,000 petition signatures. "As part of our initiative to get Solar on the White House we've created a fun, social-media-linked site to help fans get involved and spread the word," said Danny Kennedy, Sungevity Founder. "We like to think of it this as 'campaign headquarters' where advocates and supporters can check in daily and get armed to continue to get the message out that Solar starts at home.""

Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) recently released its 2008 U.S. Solar Industry Year in Review, highlighting a third year of record growth. The report notes that 1,265 megawatts (MW) of Solar power of all types were installed in 2008, bringing total U.S. Solar power capacity up 17 percent to 8,775 MW. The 2008 figure included 342 MW of Solar photovoltaic (PV), 139 MWTh (thermal equivalent) of Solar water heating, 762 MWTh of pool heating and an estimated 21 MW of Solar space heating and cooling.

Solar photovoltaic (PV) cells are a popular and often discussed (see, for example Atlantic City Convention Center Plans Largest Solar Roof in U.S., 10% of U.S. Electricity From Solar by 2025, SF Passes Largest City Solar Program in U.S. (Finally), all of which were published within the past week) form of "renewable" or "green" energy, but a casual scratching of the surface knowledge that many people have about the technology reveals some troubling details.

It seems cruelly ironic that tapping into Southern Nevada's vast solar energy potential could slowly drain our desert. Traditional solar thermal power plants that use wet cooled technology require millions of gallons of water over time in the process of converting solar rays into clean, renewable power for our community. Southern Nevada received some good economic news last month when solar Millennium, a division of one of the world's top solar power generators, announced new plans to use a "dry-cooling" system on two proposed solar power plants in Amargosa Valley, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. This dry-cooling system will use 90 percent less water than previously planned.

When Southern California Edison unveiled plans to install 250 megawatts' worth of solar panels on warehouse roofs back in March, it was hailed as a ground-breaking move. In one fell swoop, the giant utility would cut the cost of photovoltaic power, expand the solar market and kick-start efforts to transform untold acres of sun-baked commercial roof space into mini-power plants. There's just one problem: the solar industry is fighting the billion-dollar plan.

The Times has a story in the "deserts of gold" genre, confusing solar PV (panels) with concentrating solar thermal power - solar panels in the Sahara 'could power the whole of Europe'. There is a new twist to the story now though, with North Africa's wind power potential also being touted. All of Europe's energy needs could be supplied by building an array of solar panels in the Sahara, the climate change conference has been told. Technological advances combined with falling costs have made it realistic to consider North Africa as Europe's main source of imported energy. By harnessing the power of the Sun, possibly in tandem with wind farms along the North African coastline, Europe could easily meet its 2020 target of generating at least 20 per cent of its energy from renewable sources.

We already know that concentrated solar power (CSP) is shaking things up in the solar industry. A subset within the industry is turning up the heat. "Extreme" Concentrated solar magnifies intense sunlight onto a solar cell, at temperatures that could melt it, to boost efficiency for less money.

"In Chile, solar energy project developer solarpack Corporación Tecnológica and state-owned Corporación Nacional del Cobre de Chile (Codelco), the world's leading copper producer, say they will build the country's first utility-scale solar power plant in northern Chile, an area with high potential for solar energy generation."

"t is a crucial, if geekish, point: Wind and solar power are NOT intermittent, they are VARIABLE. If someone talks about problems with the intermittencies of wind and solar energies, it is out of ignorance or to intentionally discredit them. Obviously, the sun does not always shine and the wind does not always blow but those things can be scheduled and forecasted and are no reasons whatsoever not to keep building wind power and solar energy as fast as is humanly possible. The Western Wind and solar Integration Study, from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), says transmission system tools are now available that would allow the Mountain West and Southwestern states to get 35% of their electricity from wind and solar energies by 2017. All it will require, aside from the building of the wind and solar production capacity, is a change in the WestConnect group of grid operators' standard operating procedures."

"To see the future of solar power, take an hour-long train ride inland from Shanghai and then a horn-blaring cab trek through the smog of Wuxi, a fast-growing Chinese city of five million. After winding through an industrial park, you will arrive at the front door of Suntech Power, a company that in the few years since its founding has become the world's largest maker of crystalline-silicon solar panels. solar panels cover the entire front face of the sprawling eight-story headquarters. Nearly 2,600 two-meter-long panels form the largest grid-connected solar façade in the world. Together with an array of 1,800 smaller panels on the roof, it can generate a megawatt of power on a sunny day. It's expected to produce over a million kilowatt-hours of electricity in a year--enough for more than 300 people in China. In 2001, when Suntech was founded, all the solar-panel factories in China operating at full capacity would have taken six months to build enough panels for such a massive array. Suntech's first factory, which opened in 2002, cut that time to a little more than a month. Today, the company can make that many panels in less than one 12-hour shift. By the end of this year, the workers could be done by lunchtime. Suntech's production capacity has increased from 10 megawatts a year in 2002 to well over 1,000 megawatts today. Chinese solar manufacturing as a whole has increased its capacity from two megawatts in 2001 to over 4,000 megawatts."

The solar industry is booming. With waves of investment and grants, the solar power industry is for the first time becoming a serious business. New power plants will soon be pumping power out to consumers, while other firms market to sell panels directly to the consumer, providing them with a more direct means of experiencing solar energy.

The most efficient form of solar technology today is (arguably) extreme concentrated photovoltaics, essentially solar panels placed under a magnifying glass, but the problem with these systems is heat. Concentrated sunlight can melt silicon solar panels unless you include specialized cooling systems. Cooling technology costs money, and the panels require expensive tracking mechanisms to follow the sun through the day. MIT's new solar system bypasses the heat and traching problems all together.