April 01, 2008
A Solar CEO's Beef with Washington Lawmakers
A Solar CEO's Beef with Washington Lawmakers | SolveClimate.com
July 4th 2007 was Nancy Pelosi's energy independence day, a day when new legislation delivered by the Democratic majority was supposed to start delivering America out of the hands of fossil fuel interests and toward a responsible posture on global warming.
Not much happened in Congress then -- or quite frankly, since -- but something else did happen last July that's worth remembering instead: the first step on the road to generating 10% to 20% of the nation's energy from the sun by 2030, according to solar energy CEO Peter Duprey.
A project called Nevada Solar One got switched on in a place called Boulder City, Nevada. Congress didn't notice even though it was the first plant of its kind to be built in 17 years, and was, in Duprey's words, "the beginning of the resurgence of large-scale concentrated solar power in the US and the world."
If the beef he has with Washington gets resolved, that is. Here's the crux of it.
You'd think Solar One would be something Congress and the technology-minded White House would want to get behind with supportive renewable energy legislation, and in fact there's a bill that got through Pelosi's House. But the smart money says it will die in the Senate or get vetoed by the President. Meanwhile, in Washington, the State Department is hosting an international renewable energy jamboree in Washington this week called WIREC. Duprey is one of the speakers, but without the renewable law, it's all only smoke and mirrors.
Nevada Solar One is chock full of mirrors, too, but there's not a wisp of smoke. It looks like a 400-acre lake glistening in the desert under a crystal clear sky. It generates 64MW of electricity and powers more than 14,000 homes. Its 40-foot-high shiny parabolic troughs focus the sun's rays onto a pipe filled with heat transfer fluid that heats up to 750 degrees. The hot fluid then turns water to steam, which turns a turbine, which generates electricity.
It does what a coal-fired power plant does, only it doesn't need the coal. That's as clean as coal can get.
Posted by Sun at 10:23 PM | Comments (1)
March 29, 2008
Do it yourself solar projects
BuildItSolar: Solar energy projects for Do It Yourselfers to save money and reduce pollution
Posted by Sun at 03:19 AM | Comments (0)