(Rocky Mountain News) -Gargl Chakrabarty
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On Friday, the utility sought competitive bids for up to 600 megawatts of solar power projects with capacity for storage - power that would serve roughly 150,000 customers in the Front Range.

The price tag: about $3 billion.

If Xcel selects a single plant generating the entire power, it would be the world’s biggest solar project.

“We can do it,” said John Czingula, one of the biggest shareholders and founder of Solargenix Energy.

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Full Story

Xcel Energy Press Release

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DENVER – Xcel Energy will seek to acquire approximately 2,200 megawatts of electric generation supply for its Colorado customers between now and 2015, through an all-source request for proposal (RFP) issued today by the company. The RFP is part of the most recent 2007 Colorado Resource Plan (CRP) approved by state regulators in December.

Xcel Energy is seeking to add up to 700 megawatts of additional wind and solar generation through the RFP. In addition, the company will consider acquiring up to 600 megawatts from solar thermal generation with storage capability or natural gas backup.

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(1.8.09 - Reuters) - President-elect Barack Obama on Thursday said an economic stimulus package should include building a new electricity “smart grid.

“Smart grid” describes a more efficient, cost-saving method of moving electricity along major long-distance transmission lines to local distribution power lines and disparate end-users in homes, businesses and schools.

The estimated cost of creating a nationwide “smart grid” by investor-owned utilities in the United States is $50 billion over 10 to 20 years, said Ed Legge, an analyst with the Edison Electric Institute, a power industry lobbyist. Adding federally and locally owned utilities, the full cost would be about $65 billion.

Smart grid advocates say utilities and customers will realize cost savings in the long run, despite the high roll-out costs.

In a smart grid, computers and sensors, installed at power plants, substations and along power lines, would signal control centers that would better manage the flow of electricity. For instance, computers would detect transmission bottlenecks and direct power around them.

Power outages are now monitored as customers call local utilities to report them. Smart grid computers would discover outages automatically.

“Smart meters” would be installed to replace conventional electricity meters. These would facilitate communication between utilities and their customers, letting them curb power use when demand peaks and prices are high.

Cutting demand during peak hours would reduce the need for capital spending on more power plants, substations and power lines. Proponents say it also will cut greenhouse gas emissions blamed for global warming.

The meters combined with smart appliances would make it possible to control and regulate appliances remotely.

Proponents say “smart” technology also will help renewable power sources like solar panels and solar power plants and wind farms integrate into the overall transmission system.

Conventional power grids have difficulty with the intermittent nature of solar and wind power.

Smart grid technology is in various forms of planning and implementation depending on the utility or state jurisdiction.

Investor-owned utilities account for about 70 percent of U.S. electricity use. Several utility companies have begun replacing conventional electricity meters with “smart meters” that receive signals from the grid and send signals back to grid operators.

After year-long study of smart grid technologies in the Pacific Northwest, U.S. officials and IBM estimated customers saved 10 percent on monthly power bills and cut power use by 15 percent.

If those figures could be realized nationwide, it could save between $70 billion and $120 billion in spending on new power plants and transmission lines, the study found.
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<a href=”http://www.reuters.com/article/politicsNews/idUSTRE50808B20090109″>Story link</a>

<a title=”YES WE CAN” href=”http://flickr.com/photos/16333811@N00/2994035684″><img src=”http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3275/2994035684_fd0dc33d3f_m.jpg” alt=”" /></a>

PRESS RELEASE
RSi-Solar Unveils the Windows of the Future
World’s First Power Generating Glass Window

Last update: 3:35 p.m. EST Dec. 10, 2008

HOLLYWOOD, Calif., Dec 10, 2008 (BUSINESS WIRE) — Rainbow Solar Inc. (RSi) announces the world’s first, transparent, photovoltaic-glass window which generates 80 to 250 watts of electricity.
This is the next-generation of BIPV (building integrated photovoltaic), an enclosed super-tempered glass window system, with a patent pending, fully integrated, multi-tier PV and heat insulation technology. Up to 9′ x 9′ size with comprehensive options to meet design, weather, climate, and building code requirements.
The RSi Power Independence Evolution:
Rising energy prices initiated the renewable energy revolution, moving from centralized-grid infrastructure to self-sustaining energy, a Power Independence evolution. Of all the renewable energy solutions, solar is the only affordable solution that can be applied on an individual’s property that is truly self sustaining and low maintenance.
Website: www.solar.tm
SOURCE: Market Watch & RSi Energy Group

Full Article

StopGlobalWarming.org partner Reverb, worked with Maroon 5 and Counting Crows to “green up” last summers tour and engage fans to join in. Check out a video recap of their efforts.

Ban Ki Moon
Wednesday, November 26, 2008

Amid the pressures of the global financial crisis, some ask how we can afford to tackle climate change. The better question is: Can we afford not to?

Put aside the familiar arguments - that the science is clear, that climate change represents an indisputable existential threat to the planet, and that every day we do not act the problem grows worse. Instead, let us make the case purely on bread-and-butter economics.

At a time when the global economy is sputtering, we need growth. At a time when unemployment in many nations is rising, we need new jobs. At a time when poverty threatens to overtake hundreds of millions of people, especially in the least developed world, we need the promise of prosperity. This possibility is at our fingertips.

Economists at the United Nations call for a Green New Deal - a deliberate echo of the energizing vision of President Franklin Roosevelt during the Great Depression of the 1930s. Thus the U.N. Environment Programme has launched a plan for reviving the global economy while dealing simultaneously with the defining challenge of our era - climate change. It urges world business and political leaders, including President-elect Barack Obama, to help redirect resources away from the speculative financial engineering at the root of today’s market crisis and into more productive, growth-generating and job-creating investments for the future.

This new “Green Economy Initiative,” backed by Germany, Norway and the European Commission, arises from the insight that the most pressing problems we face are interrelated. Rising energy and commodity prices helped create the global food crisis, which fed the financial crisis. This in turn reflects global economic and population growth, with resulting shortages of critical resources - fuel, food, clean air and water. The commingled problems of climate change, economic growth and the environment suggest their own solution. Only sustainable development - a global embrace of green growth - offers the world, rich nations as well as poor, an enduring prospect of long-term social well-being and prosperity.

The good news is that we are awakening to this reality. We have experienced great economic transformations throughout history: the industrial revolution, the technology revolution, the era of globalization. We’re now on the threshold of another - the age of green economics.

Visiting Silicon Valley last year, I saw how investment has been pouring into new renewable energy and fuel efficiency technologies. The venture capital firm that underwrote Google and Amazon, among other archetypal entrepreneurial successes, directed more than $100 million into new alternative energy companies in 2006 alone.

In China, green capital investment is expected to grow from $170 million in 2005 to more than $720 million in 2008. (In just a few short years, China has become a world leader in wind and solar power, employing more than a million people.) Globally, the U.N. Environment Programme estimates that investment in low-greenhouse energy will reach $1.9 trillion by 2020. The financial crisis may slow this trend. But capital will continue to flow into green ventures despite harder economic times. I think of it as seed money for a wholesale reconfiguration of global industry.

We can already see its practical expression. More than 2 million people in the advanced industrial nations today find work in renewable energy. Brazil’s biofuels sector has been creating nearly a million jobs annually. Economists say that India, Nigeria and Venezuela, among many others, could do much the same. In Germany, environmental technology is expected to quadruple over the coming years, reaching 16 percent of manufacturing output by 2030 and employing more people than the auto industry. Mexico already employs 1.5 million people to plant and manage the nation’s forests.

Governments have a huge role. With the right policies and a global framework, we can generate economic growth and steer it in a low-carbon direction, not unlike Roosevelt’s original New Deal. Handled properly, our efforts to cope with the financial crisis can reinforce our efforts to combat climate change. In today’s crisis lies tomorrow’s opportunity - economic opportunity, measured in jobs and growth. Most global CEOs know this. That’s one reason why businesspeople in so many parts of the world are demanding clear and consistent environmental policies from their leaders. It is also the reason that global companies like General Electric or Siemens are betting their future on green. But it is important that the global public recognizes this fact, perhaps nowhere more so than the United States. When Obama takes office, voters and elected officials alike should be reassured by studies showing the United States can fight climate change by cutting emissions - at low or even no cost, using only existing technologies.

As secretary-general of the United Nations, I have a special duty - shared by all - to give voice to the voiceless, and to defend the defenseless. We know that those most vulnerable to climate change are poorest of the world’s poor. They are also most vulnerable to the shocks of the financial crisis. As world leaders, we are morally bound to ensure that solutions to the global financial crisis protect the interests of all peoples, not just the citizens of wealthier nations.

Those left behind by the previous boom - the so-called “bottom billion,” living on less than $1 a day - must be brought into the next economic era. Again, a solution to poverty is also a solution for climate change: green growth. For the world’s poor, it is a key to sustainable development. For the wealthy, it is the way of the future.

Ban Ki Moon is the secretary-general of the United Nations.
This article appeared on page B - 9 of the San Francisco Chronicle

Happy International Eco-Giving Thanks Day!

Vrede,
Bruce

By Douglas Fischer, Daily Climate
Posted: 11/21/2008 10:47:55 AM PST

There is energy to be harvested in deserts of Southern California, Arizona, Spain and Africa: Sunlight focused so intensely it can melt salt, vaporize water and run air conditioners from Phoenix to Seville long after the sun has set.
This is concentrating solar power, and it represents the best hope for utility-scale power from renewable energy and the surest way to get energy-sucking Sun Belt cities off carbon.

It’s also a technology you’ve likely never heard of, given the attention and credits lavished on rooftop photovoltaic kits.
Concentrating solar power, or solar thermal, is a world apart from photovoltaic solar, the world’s fastest-growing energy technology. Rather than use silicon-based panels to chemically convert sunlight to electricity, solar thermal uses mirrors to focus the sun’s rays on pipes carrying oil or other heat-absorbing fluid. Sunlight heats the oil to 500° C or more; hot oil flashes water to steam; steam spins a turbine; the turbine makes juice.

Simple? That’s the attraction.

“We’re going to see a lot more of these,” said Hanis, the solar association spokeswoman.
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Read more…

Sipala,
Bruce