Industry News

Japanese solar developer, Blue Power, has built a 24 hour solar plus energy storage power plant that can run for 24 hours a day at 143-1 Hinode, Akaigawa Village, Yoichi District, Hokkaido, Japan. While smaller solar plus storage facilities have been around for a couple of decades, a utility scale project at this large size…

The Clean Power Hour is a weekly clean energy headline review and commentary podcast brought to you by Tim Montague and yours truly – the CommercialSolarGuy – John Fitzgerald Weaver. First of course, here’s the podcast – Episode 34! Now, to the news! Scientists working for the Pentagon have successfully tested a solar panel the size of…

The US Department of Energy’s Energy Information Administration (EIA) has released the February Electric Power Monthly, providing data through the end of 2020.  The report notes that solar energy exponential growth is back, as photovoltaic (solar) generation grew by more than 28%, accounting for ~3.2% of total US electricity generated for the year. Total electricity…

The Clean Power Hour is a weekly clean energy headline review and commentary podcast brought to you by Tim Montague and yours truly – the CommercialSolarGuy – John Fitzgerald Weaver. First of course, here’s the podcast – Episode 33! Now, to the news! Hydrogen-powered drives for e-scooters …this advance is really something significant. One argument against hydrogen…

The Department of Energy’s (DOE) National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) has released their U.S. Solar Photovoltaic System and Energy Storage Cost Benchmark: Q1 2020. The document is a bottom up review of the costs to build solar power plants of all sizes, and for the first time – it includes energy storage. Bottom up means…

The Clean Power Hour is a weekly clean energy headline review and commentary podcast brought to you by Tim Montague and yours truly – the CommercialSolarGuy – John Fitzgerald Weaver. First of course, here’s the podcast – Episode 32! Now, to the news! Tim likes drone videos … and now – we like drone videos. The Tesla…

Lithium ion batteries are going to be deployed in massive volumes going forward globally. DNV GL tests those batteries to allow groups like 8Minute Energy to better model the technical, and thus financial, performance of those batteries. DNV GL’s most recent 2050 projections suggest 3 TWh of lithium ion globally, and 5.4 TWh of long…

The Clean Power Hour – a weekly clean energy headline review and commentary podcast run by Tim Montague, and yours truly – the CommercialSolarGuy – John Fitzgerald Weaver. First of course, here’s the podcast – Episode 31! Now, to the news! Musk offers $100M for carbon capturing X-Prize Ok, so if we’re going to extract…

On December 21, 2020 OxFord PV announced that they set a new record for a perovskite-silicon tandem research solar cell at 29.52%. The perovskite cell was placed atop a monoPERC NType silicon solar cell. This efficiency percentage broke the very recently set record of 29.15% by Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin, who had just announced their solar cell…

The Clean Power Hour – a weekly clean energy headline review and commentary podcast run by Tim Montague, and yours truly – the CommercialSolarGuy – John Fitzgerald Weaver. First of course, here’s the podcast – Episode 30! Now, to the news! Elon Musk announces he’ll donate $100 million toward the best carbon capture technology. As…