Completed in mid 2011, Bella Energy provided the turnkey installation and financial consulting for a Sun Edison PPA with the City of Broomfield. The project is located at two sites; providing 189 kW of solar energy generation for the City.

The first is an 89 kW ground mounted array at the wastewater treatment plant. The second is a 100 kW ground mounted array for the Broomfield Detention Center. The array runs across a hilltop with highly variable terrain and very high wind speeds.

In 2011, Bella Energy completed 298 kW of solar for the City of Louisville. The projects provide power to the City’s water and waste water treatment plants. Each array is a 99 kW ground-mount system located on variable terrain surrounding the water treatment centers.

Bella Energy provided a turnkey installation and financing partners for the project, allowing the City to realize greater savings v.s. a conventional purchase.

Completed in the summer of 2011, Bella Energy’s 140 kW project with the City of Lafayette provides power to 2 unique sites. The project was completed thanks to PPA financing arranged by Bella Energy, allowing the city to realize solar power without negatively impacting the budget. The City of Lafayette project consists of a ground mount array at City Hall and a roof mounted system atop the Rec. Center.

Global reports have stated that “India is the top target for being the new Germany for Solar”. Several countries are looking toward the Indian market for new opportunities for manufacturers and renewable energy solution providers.  Commercial solar installers and service providers are debating about which overall strategy that they should adopt since India policies differ from state to state and state to centre. Opportunities off grid, in grid, and micro-grid sectors and government grants need to be considered, as well as the long term commitment of the nation itself. (more…)

Already one of the leading developers of commercial solar panels in the world, Siemens Energy has now launched an innovative wind turbine at the EWEA 2011 wind power exhibition conference in Brussels. The main feature of the SWT-2.3-113 wind turbine is a small permanent magnet generator. The generator features a simple design that doesn’t need excitation power, control systems or slip rings, resulting in high power production at sites with low wind speeds. The turbine has a capacity of 2.3MW, and diameter of 113 meters. It consists of Siemens B55 Quantum blades, and requires only half of the parts that a conventional geared wind turbine would need. The blade improves efficiency and performance. (more…)

The 8.9-magnitude earthquake and horrifying tsunami in Japan caused explosions at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant northeast of Tokyo. This has caused alarm and placed a spotlight on the nuclear sector. Debates are hot and heavy over whether or not to let Germany proceed with their plans to extend their nuclear power plants. German Chancellor Angela Merkel decided it was in everyone’s best interest to delay the plans and declared a three-month stay until Japan’s problems are resolved. Due to the disaster in Japan, Frankfurt trading of shares in the two biggest German power companies, EON and RWE, showed a 6.43 percent loss at 21.60 euros and 5.21 percent at 45.43 euros. The DAX index on which they are listed was off by 1.75 percent overall. (more…)

The largest photovoltaic power plant in the Alpes-Maritimes was recently opened in Cote d’Azur by the Chamber of Commerce and ValSolar Industries, a commercial solar installer. The four solar buildings are fitted with 9,000m² of photovoltaic cells on the roof areas and cover a total surface area of 20,000m². The large construction site has just been completed in Nice St Isidore in the Eco Valley.

Nice Côte d’Azur, the building’s owner, along with the Chamber of Commerce and Industry, chose ValSolar to help them make necessary improvements on the buildings, such as waterproofing. After they install a photovoltaic production facility they will become Eco Valley’s first green energy producer. The facility will have 570kWp (kilowatts peak) of power which is equivalent to the yearly consumption of 260 homes or 630,000 kWh (kilowatt hours). The PAL is the region’s first Logistics Park to produce a solar project on that large a scale.

ValSolar is responsible for the installation, while the CCI provided the roof of the buildings which have a ten year guarantee that they will not leak and a twenty year maintenance agreement. This is ideal for local owners who can avoid the maintenance costs for their roofs and make them available to create local jobs for the area.

This solar program has inspired other in the region. Nice’s St-Isidore is just one of many initiatives that have been built by ValSolar in the Alpes-Maritimes. Some other large scale projects are currently underway in the towns of of Antibes (3000m²), Villeneuve Loubet (7 000m²), Vallauris (12 000m²), Cannes (8000m²), Mougins (5000m²), Carros (2000m²) and Saint André de la Roche (2000m²). This year, solar power plant installation and renovation projects in the region represent a total area of 45,000m of facilities that are fitted with commercial solar panels on the roofs. (more…)

The electric vehicle evangelist and infrastructure company Better Place and its partner Renault revealed some of its new pricing plans today. Its vehicle service is expected to be put into action in Denmark later this year. This service could benefit individuals who live in Europe. Individuals who purchase the new Renault Fluence Z.E. “Prime Time” sedan may find the new pricing plan to your liking. It will depend on how much you like to drive. If you’re someone who travels a lot, approximately more than 40,000 kilometers (about 24,855 miles) per year you can expect to pay an “all-you-can-drive” rate of 399 euros per month which converts to about $557. If you’re not a “power driver”, your rates will be about half of that price – somewhere between 199 euros and 249 euros per month (or roughly $278 to $348, per month, respectively).

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At the beginning of 2009, Energy Secretary Steven Chu and Interior Secretary Ken Salazar initiated the Draft Solar Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement to find pieces of public land in six Western states that could be used for environmentally friendly utility-scale commercial solar panel energy arrays. Chu and Salazar want to find solar sites that won’t impact native species, tribal affiliation or public recreation areas. They are operating under a banner dubbed “Smart from the Start,” and that’s how they want the results to be viewed as pre-assessed environmentally-safe development areas that allow commercial solar installers to apply for projects without fearing rejection later, after thousands of dollars and months of research. (more…)

Australian researchers are developing commercial solar panels that could totally transform skyscrapers and cityscapes around the globe. The new generation of solar panels will be thinner than a sheet of paper, about 1/20th as thick to be exact. The thin solar panels could then be placed on glass structures transforming them into solar power stations.” Ultimately, you have got structural building materials which can also generate electricity, so it offers very large potential,” the executive director of the Australian Solar Institute, Mark Twidell, said.” The other possibility is to create multiple layers of the material so you can capture extra elements of the light spectrum and generate more electricity than most current photovoltaic panels.”

The panels are much thinner than the traditional photovoltaic panels seen on roofs today. The silicon layer that collects sunlight is overlaid on glass and approximately two microns thick. Silicon gas is crystallized onto a plate of glass and ink-jet printers are used to lay the electrical circuits to convey electricity to the battery instead of the conventional wafer of silicon.” It can essentially be turned into a design feature of the building,” Renate Egan, the chief technology officer of CSG Solar, the company developing the panels, said.” We think it will be no more than three years before it’s economically viable on a large scale.”

Today, panels are made by the square meter, and the lack of large factories makes the panels very expensive. The glass panels are made for commercial solar installers to use on the exterior of the building but are not transparent.

“The reality is that if you want to allow in a lot of light, you are not capturing as many photons, and you are sacrificing some power generation,” Dr Egan said. “But most buildings still have large surfaces. The problem we have found in Australia is that feed-in tariff systems are aimed at small-scale systems, whereas this can take advantage of large commercial spaces.” (more…)