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New Nevada Solar Incentive Program Opens March 24

by Dan Kulpinski on March 10, 2010

The revamped SolarGenerations incentive program being run by NV Energy will start taking applications March 24 at 12 p.m. PT.

Nevada customers installing an approved photovoltaic system on their homes, small businesses, schools or public buildings are eligible for the incentives—rebates based on the kW capacity of the system.

Starting March 24, NV Energy will be assigning slots in the program through 2013, so time is of the essence if you want to qualify for solar panel rebates.

Find a Nevada solar panel  installer first; they know the rules, can help you with your application, give you a free solar evaluation and do the install.

Just visit our Nevada solar panel installation page, fill out the form and a certified local installer will contact you by phone.

To get more incentive program details and links to lists of approved equipment, visit NV Energy’s SolarGenerations page.

The SolarGenerations program usually fills up quickly, so submit your application soon after the process opens March 24. Don’t miss out—be a part of the solar energy revolution in Nevada.

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Solar Panels Are Hot in Pennsylvania

by Dan Kulpinski on March 3, 2010

The orders are piling up for at least one solar installer in Allentown, Pa., all because of snow on the rooftops. His company can’t put up solar panels until all that white stuff from the Blizzard of 2010 melts.

That’s the story in eastern Pennsylvania, according to an article in The Morning Call, which reported that the recent Eastern Pennsylvania Home Show in Allentown included solar panel vendors for the first time—and they were fairly popular. The home show took place February 19-21.

Federal tax credits for energy efficient products, combined with similar Pennsylvania state rebates, are boosting interest in items such as replacement windows and solar panels. At the home show, most of the sales were for tax-credit products.

In Pennsylvania, the state rebates (under the PA Sunshine Solar Program) and federal tax credits for solar panels add up to almost 50 percent of the cost. If you want to take advantage of these savings, visit dasolar.com to get in touch with a local Pennsylvania solar panel installer. It’s a great time to look into residential solar energy or to cut your business energy bills with a commercial solar panel installation.

Governor Ed Rendell is also helping keep Pennsylvania solar panel installers busy, announcing Feb. 22 that the state will invest more than $5 million in 13 solar projects.

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5 Reasons to Love Solar Car Racing

by Douglas Arrison on October 25, 2009

michigan-solar-car2009-thumbThis week 32 solar powered cars from 17 countries have converged on Australia’s outback to compete for the title of World Solar Car Champion.  The race, the “World Solar Challenge” takes place every two years – giving teams ample time to raise money, design, build and test their dream vehicles.  It’s a unique event and there are 5 reasons to love every part of it.

1. Sexy
The silhouette of a solar car has always held the public’s fascination.  The cars are so “space-age” and other-worldly they don’t seem real.  Their movement is powered purely from the energy of the sun – a wheeled creation that allures through it’s beauty and it’s brains.

2. Sophisticated
The top teams from around the world have one thing in common.  They realize from the outset that a successful solar car program requires a true blend of disciplines.  Take for example the University of Michigan solar car program.  Their program (see video and original post), involves a core of about 40 students with input from a total of 100-200 students.  It’s a truly interdisciplinary group with 50% engineering and 50% business, PR and support personnel.  Solar cars are expensive, demanding the highest quality components, so the business side has to raise huge amounts of money to allow the engineers to implement their designs.  Teamwork is paramount and these students are learning that lesson well.

3. Smart
The competitors consist primarily of major Universities from around the world.  The competition is fierce, but imbued with the collegiality and sharing that most of us can only remember whimsically from our college days.  This is what makes solar car racing so intriguing.  The sense of higher purpose, learning for learning sake, and genuine concern for others’ welfare all ties in with the common goal of seeking clean and efficient sources of energy.  In an increasingly hostile world, solar cars represent intellectual energy in its purest form.

4. Scary
Solar car racing is dangerous.  Driver safety is of paramount interest and all cars are fitted with state of the art roll cages.  Still, the sexy silhouette comes at a cost. A car that can reach speeds of 87 miles per hour using only the energy of a hairdryer, must be trimmed of all excess weight.  The “shell” of the car is precisely that – a thin carbon fiber sheet whose primary purpose is to house the solar array on it’s surface.  The wheels are slimmed down to reduce wind resistance, making them prone to blow outs.   Unfortunately, crashes are all too commonplace.  When you see the wreckage of a solar car crash you quickly realize how vulnerable drivers can be.

5. Sobering
This is a race we all have to win.

As the concern over climate change builds and the price of precious fossil fuels gyrate on the world markets, we are increasingly dependent on innovation for our energy security.  The World Solar Challenge is a catalyst for some of the planets brightest minds to think outside the box and apply those ideas to the real world.  These cars seem futuristic, and they are, but the future requires that we speed up our quest for cleaner energy cars, buses, planes and self-sufficient homes.  The students that have dedicated their last two years to these solar car projects all deserve our thanks, respect, and admiration for their advancement of technologies that will indeed affect how we live in the years to come.

Note: dasolar.com is a proud sponsor of the Michigan solar car, MIT solar car, and the Berkeley solar car.  Thank you for your creativity!

Race Updates: Follow our Twitter stream for updates on the race.  As of this writing, the Michigan solar car was in 2nd place and MIT in 6th after 1 day of racing.  Berkeley did not make the trip to Australia.

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DC’s Greatest Event: The Solar Decathlon

by Neville Williams on October 21, 2009

solar-decathlon-house2If there ever was an event for our time, it is the Solar Decathlon (original post w/video) on the National Mall in Washington DC, the fourth one of which just concluded.  Begun in 2002, with support from the U.S. Dept. of Energy (DOE), The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), and BP Solar, the Solar Decathlon brings together 20 universities from the U.S., and some from overseas, to erect innovative, full sized, green, solar powered, energy efficient homes in a “solar town” on the expanse of grass in front of the Nation’s Capitol.

There is nothing like it in the world.

Each house – every one more amazing than the next — is designed and built collaboratively by the universities’ departments of engineering and architecture.  The DOE provides $100,000 per school that elects, and is selected, to submit a house, and the students raise another $400 to $500 thousand per project.  They build them on campus, test them, then disassemble them for shipping to Washington.

Student creativity alive

The incredible thing about the event, held every two years in October, is not just the display of clean energy ingenuity, but the energy and enthusiasm of the students themselves.  They come not just to show off their ideas and talents, but to compete, i.e. the “Decathlon” title: homes are judged in 10 separate categories, from efficiency, to materials, to design, to solar panel installation performance.  Each university brings a team of about 20, and they are thrilled on the opening day to be greeted by the Secretary of Energy, this year Dr. Stephen Chu.

If I were recruiting for jobs in solar manufacturing, engineering or home building, I’d set up a table right here.  These kids are the best of a generation.  The are smart, committed, energetic, and terrifically nice.

The public loves the event, and this year I took my friend, Ed Begley, Jr., around on a dismal Saturday morning.  We visited the wonderful Penn State “Natural Fusion” zero-energy house, which demonstrated, as each house does in a unique way, the future of affordable solar power homes.  This year, they were all “grid-tied”, without batteries as in the past, feeding into the local PEPCO power grid.  Penn State’s house featured the new Solyndra cylindrical photovoltaic cells which are spaced on their modules in such a way as to allow sunshine to reach a green roof planted beneath them.  Solar on “greenroofs” is the future.

Solar in the rain

Ed was amazed to see so many people, tourists and Washingtonians, out “looking at solar in the rain.”  I was distressed at the uncooperative weather this year.  In my 22 years in the DC metro area, I’ve only twice seen weather as bad as it was last week, not counting a few 12 inch snowstorms.  It was the coldest week ever recorded in October, and it rained for 5 days straight, around the clock.  No sun at all. This, after we had four months of relentless sunshine in a region with a record for more sunny days than Florida.  Today, as I write this, the sky is a cloudless blue, but the solar homes are gone.  The weather gods could have behaved better.  I felt terrible for the kids down on the Mall all week but I’m sure their sunny spirits saved the day.

The houses are now headed back, on very large truck trailers, to their home universities where they will be on display (hopefully, in better weather) for the school year, after which most are sold and put to good use by housing developers, non-profits, or to be lived in.

We all win

The winner of the Decathlon this year was Team Germany from the University of Darmstadt.  Houses came from Alberta, Ontario, Puerto Rico, and Madrid!  The rest were from Ohio State, Iowa State, Missouri, Arizona, Louisiana, Wisconsin, Kentucky and Texas (Rice U.), Cornell, Boston U., Minnesota, California (Santa Clara), Illinois and Virginia Tech (see video tours of all the homes).

Two years ago, I watched the students erect their small solar city at Decathlon #3, sweating in brilliant sunshine, putting in 18 hour days to finish in time.  Some of the teams were almost all women.  The ladies constructing the U. of Texas house that year sported T-shirts that said, “What Starts Here Changes the World.”  They are right about that, and they will all be winners in life’s decathlon as they go forth to change the world.

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Energy? It’s the Independence, Stupid

by Douglas ArrisonOctober 6, 2009

The 2008 Presidential campaign was especially vitriolic.  But but there was one area of agreement.
America should become energy independent.
Now, as we enter the political discussion over climate change (video, original post), it’s important that clean energy advocates seize the opportunity to frame the debate.  Choosing energy independence (and it’s compliment, national security) as the [...]

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Inside the Clinton Global Initiative

by Neville WilliamsOctober 2, 2009

Last week I had the honor and privilege of attending the invitation-only 5th Clinton Global Initiative in New York City (video).  No event in history brings together so many current and former heads of state, non-government organization heads, international development professionals, corporate CEOs, investment bankers, Nobel prize winners, foundation executives, philanthropists, peace makers, energy leaders, [...]

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Feed-in Tariffs – Why do we need them?

by Neville WilliamsSeptember 27, 2009

The idea is great, and it works, but the name is terrible.  It came out of Germany in English translation.  We should call it “clean energy purchase” or “solar buy back” or at least Feed-in Rate, since we pay electric utility rates, not tariffs.
“Feed-in,” of course, refers to homeowners and businesses feeding solar electricity into [...]

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From Ecotopia to Solartopia

by Neville WilliamsAugust 28, 2009

Utopias have always had a place in the American vision, from William Penn’s “Sylvania,” to Robert Owen’s New Harmony, to the Oneida and Shaker communities and the Amana Colonies, right up to The Farm, in Tennessee founded in 1971 by back-to-the land hippies.
In 1975, I bought a copy of “New World Utopias”, a photographic chronicle [...]

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Saving the Planet One Roof at a Time

by Neville WilliamsAugust 19, 2009

In 2004 I read an article in Mother Jones Magazine by Bill McKibben, one of America’s foremost environmental authors (”The End of Nature,” “Deep Economy”), entitled “One Roof At A Time.”  The piece detailed how solar power was “edging into the mainstream” because, with little help from government, people were putting solarelectric systems on their [...]

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Pioneers of the Solar Industry – Peter Varadi

by Neville WilliamsAugust 5, 2009

Solar electricity may seem like a gift from the Gods, but in fact it was an invention of man (perhaps God inspired), and it is not new.  The photovoltaic (PV) effect was discovered in 18th century France, promoted by Germany’s Werner von Siemens, and developed as a workable product by our own Bell Labs in [...]

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