Power From Jellyfish?

I'm signed up for several newsletters in the solar industry and recently came across an article about a startup in Washington called Clarian Technologies.  They are approaching alternative energy from a unique point..self service.  Yep you too can install solar or wind power yourself.  They make small solar and wind powered systems that can be plugged in to a regular house outlet and provide power...free!..well not exactly free since you still have to buy the unit but you get the idea.
The solar product, the Sunfish, is about 200W and starts at $599.  The wind system is great. It's called the Jellyfish and it really does look like a Jellyfish...definitely put a smile on my face.  It puts out 400W (at a wind speed of 28mph) and starts at $399.  These are not huge systems but if everyone installed it would add up.  Here's a shot of the Jellyfish..love it!:

I think these are a great idea and one that will promote alternative energy.  Though I wish they could somehow turn this upside down and embed a satellite dish.  They could call it the Flipper..talk about bang for the buck!

Anyway check them out at : http://www.clariantechnologies.com/

Popular Science Archives

Popular Science teamed up with Google to archive images of all past issues.  Some of this stuff is pretty classic..very fun to browse through old mags.  I saw an article from 1981 about a house in Massachusetts  that installed a 7.5 Kw PV system on their house.  It was going to supply  all the energy they needed.  The problem was that it cost $75, 000 and I doubt there were any tax incentives at that time. A quote of the article "economic justification is not even remotely possible"..wow we've come a long way.  Thank god for early adopters though!

You can read the archived issue here: http://bit.ly/95I9xi

You have to scroll through the old ads, very amusing.  I was especially surprised at the number of cigarette ads in there..yes the Marlborough Man shows up (check out the Camel Man too on page 26)...have fun.

Big Solar Struggles to Find Home in CA

I read an article on the NPR site that outlined the difficulties companies are having putting very large solar farms in California. It seems there is quite a bit of NIMBY going on.  No on wants them to rip up large swaths of land just down the road from where they live. They are concerned that if they remove the vegetation it will create a dust bowl. This is a tough dilemma and I'm not sure of the answer.  It would supply power for about 120,000 homes. 

It did get me thinking...what if these companies could lease roof space from all those homes and put their solar systems there?  Then they wouldn't have to touch all that land.  Of course it would be more expensive and probably the biggest draw back is that the smart grid isn't really in place to move this power to where it needs to get to. I do think distributed power is the key going forward...just need the smart grid!

NPR Stories This Week on Energy in California

California is making an attempt to the lead the way to clean energy.  NPR is taking at look at this all this week with a series of interesting stories.  You can listen in here:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=129128750

Is Thin Film About to Change The Industry?

I read an interesting article in the SF Chronicle this morning about a small company, AQT, that is manufacturing equipment to make thin film CIGS cells.  They are using technology that has been around for a while, reactive sputtering...sounds funny but it's proven (disk drive manufactures have been using it to make hard drive platters).  The idea of using existing equipment is to get capital costs down.  This in turn will help drive the cost of PV well below the $1 per watt point.

The direction they've taken is in contrast to other companies like Solyndra who are developing their own equipment to do this.  AQT claims that improvements have driven up the efficiency to around 12% on their manufactured panels...that's pretty good and makes a very compelling case.  Selling PV at  50 cents a watt could bust the market wide open.  Now they just have to convince large suppliers of PPA's to get on board.  They tend to be very conservative with new technology.  They need to make sure the reliability is there over the long haul before they commit since a high number of failures can hugely affect their margins (this is not so critical in the residental space).

It will be interesting to see how this plays out but I predict that thin film will be leading the charge going in to the next phase of PV.