Welcome to Solar e-Clips. A weekly summary of news and information about solar energy issues in California. Brought to you by The Rahus Institute and Californiasolarcenter.org

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Solar News from around the State...

ABSOLUT ALTERNATIVE Uses the Best of SUN-ny California to Light Up Sunset Boulevard With Its First Solar-Powered Billboard - In response to the rolling blackouts that threaten California, ABSOLUT VODKA continues its proud tradition of creativity with another ``bright'' idea -- a new outdoor billboard, ABSOLUT ALTERNATIVE. This unique billboard, which features a giant ABSOLUT bottle made up entirely of solar panels, harnesses the power of the sun during the day and uses it as an ``alternative'' source of energy to illuminate the two-word headline, ABSOLUT ALTERNATIVE, at night. ``ABSOLUT ALTERNATIVE is a fun and interesting way to engage in the dialogue of one of the most challenging issues facing California,'' says Jim Schleifer, director of marketing, ABSOLUT at Seagram Americas. ``ABSOLUT developed this billboard to salute the efforts Californians have made in energy conservation.'' The 50ft x 18ft board, with more than 210 light bulbs, will appear on Sunset Boulevard near Sweetzer Avenue in Los Angeles and will become a familiar sight in the area for the next six months. ``The ABSOLUT ALTERNATIVE billboard does do a good job of making people think about using alternative sources of power,'' said David Dunn, solar-power expert supervising the project. ``Thought-provoking projects like this often lead to bigger and better ideas in the future.'' Press Release Yahoo Biz 2001.8.15

Test results boost Vallejo wind project - Vallejo could join the Altamont and Tehachapi Pass areas as a major California wind-power generator, producing 500 megawatts an hour at 60 percent of the cost of PG&E electricity, according to a study to be released Aug. 21. That's more than enough to power all 4,200 businesses and 49,000 residences in the growing city of 120,000, says Larry Asera, Vallejo's energy consultant. It's also more than enough to generate surplus electricity for the power market and establish Vallejo and its private-sector partners as regional producers in Solano County's Interstate 80 corridor, one of the state's fastest-growing areas, Asera says. The study's unexpected results ­ which came from tests conducted in July ­ have Vallejo thinking now on a much bigger scale than a few wind turbines powering pumping stations at two water reservoirs, saving the city $500,000 a year on power provided by Pacific Gas & Electric at a current consumer cost of 20.6 cents per kilowatt hour. "It could be a major energy source for Vallejo," said Asera, the consultant charged with combining conservation, traditional and alternative power sources to make city government and eventually the entire city energy-independent.... Alan Doyle in East Bay Business Times 2001.8.17

Amory Lovins -Time proves truth in rebel's energy efficiency predictions - Physicist, founder of Rocky Mountain Institute maintains focus on demand always beats supply. OLD SNOWMASS, COLO.: Amory Lovins ruminates with an amused expression. His face is lighted by the soft glow of his Apple laptop as he rolls a spoon through a bowl of hot cereal and savors a large mug of morning tea. We're in the Rocky Mountain Institute, a house he built in the mid-1980s to demonstrate that careful design could virtually eliminate energy demand. A success, the house requires almost no space- or waterheating energy, and has achieved a 90 percent reduction in household electrical demand. The house also has achieved an odd singularity -- the world altitude record for passive solar growth of bananas. It has done all this, he points out, with technology that is now 15 years old. ``We got a call recently from our electrical co-op. They said they had not needed to send us a bill for two months. Was everything OK? They were worried about us, but we just happened to have a lot of sunny days in June and July.'' Twenty-five years ago, Lovins shocked the world by asserting that there was a ``soft path'' solution to the energy crisis. Efficient use of energy, he declared, was a better investment than a frantic search for more oil, more gas or squeezing oil from shale. And worse, many of the power plants that were going to be built would prove unnecessary. Global granola, the policy wonks responded. Lovins was quickly dismissed as a pie-in-the-sky physicist by the energy and utility establishment, despite his compelling brilliance and stark lucidity. Today, it is clear that he was right and the energy establishment was wrong. The graph of global energy demand since the mid-1970s has followed his predicted curve for the entire period. Energy demand is far below what was predicted by policy-makers and producers.... Akron Beacon Journal 2001.8.20

Just What We Need: Another State Energy Bureaucracy - Why does California need a new public power authority when it already has a Public Utilities Commission and the California Energy Commission? Neither Gov. Gray Davis nor the state Legislature has a good answer for that, yet they are busy forming a new bureaucracy that will do things it need not do and, in some cases, should not do. Sifting through the ashes of California's botched deregulation experiment, we've learned several important lessons about deregulation: that it leads to blackouts and price gouging because generators have an incentive to keep "reserve margins" tight so as to keep their prices high; that it makes us heavily reliant on natural gas-fired generation and steers us away from geothermal, fuel cells solar and wind power; that it fails miserably at promoting conservation; and that when wholesale prices are set by market forces rather than by the cost of generation, businesses and consumers are exposed to price shocks and volatility... COMMENTARY By PETER NAVARRO in LATIMES 2001.8.19

Seeing the light - Last weekend our news pages [Santa Barbara News Press] detailed how the city of Santa Barbara, during the height of the Davis energy crisis last January, applied to federal regulators to shut down the city's small hydroelectric power plant. It seemed like an odd idea, coming as rolling blackouts, massive power shortages and utility bankruptcies were in the headlines. In its petition to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, the city explained that over the last several years it had either lost or made a small amount of money operating the plant. Call us crazy, but one might think that despite the small profit margin, perhaps it would be a good idea to keep the megawatts flowing during an energy crisis. Fortunately, the city eventually withdrew its petition and kept the plant operating.... SB NewsPress Editorial 2001.8.18

Helios - NASAs solar powered plane - climbs into record books - The Helios, NASA's solar-powered flying wing, descended to Earth on Tuesday afterscaling heights no other airplane has ever reached -- 96,500 feet. The $15 million experimental aircraft, powered by 14 tiny propeller motors that have been described as having the strength of blow dryers, surpassed the horizontal flight record of 85,068 feet set in 1966 by a Lockheed SR-71 jet. It took Helios about 5 hours to set the world altitude flight record and 9 1/2 hours to return home, making a perfect landing at 1:42 a.m. Hawaiian time (7:42 a.m. EDT) on the Hawaiian island of Kauai. Robert Curtain Jr., vice president of AeroVironment, the southern California company that made the Helios with NASA, said the flight was successful even though it just narrowly missed its target goal of 100,000 feet, about three times higher than a jet airplane flies...Joan Conrow for CCTimes 2001.8.14

Plots Provide Food Source at Pomona Housing Site - In the first of its kind in California, a "tenant cultivation" housing development has opened in Pomona, where 15% of the residents' diet comes from food grown on the site. The 31-unit, low-income housing complex, funded by the Los Angeles County Community Development Commission and several private donors, features large garden plots tended by the development's tenants, and energy-conservation equipment, such as solar panels, which has cut tenants' energy bills by as much as 30%. Cal Poly Pomona professor Paul Sommers helped design the garden, and volunteers from the school teach gardening and nutrition classes to the tenants. There is a waiting list of 100 families for the conservation-friendly development, where two-bedroom apartments go for $360 to $500 a month. Three-bedroom units run from $400 to $600 monthly. LATimes 2001.8.19

Cleaning up greenhouse gas pollution could have a dramatic and immediate effect on health, researchers say - More people are being killed by pollution from cars, trucks and other sources than by traffic crashes, researchers estimate in a report that says cleaning up would prolong the lives of thousands of people. The researchers, in a study in the journal Science, said that cutting greenhouse gases in just four major cities -- Sao Paulo, Brazil; Mexico City; Santiago, Chile and New York City -- could save 64,000 lives over the next 20 years. Greenhouse gases, principally carbon dioxide or ozone, are those pollutants that tend to trap the sun's heat in the atmosphere or to affect solar radiation. The gases have been blamed for causing global warming, but the study's lead author, Devra Lee Davis, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University's Heinz School in Pittsburgh, said the effects are not just long-term. "The message in our study is that there are real and immediate health benefits" in reducing greenhouse gases, she said. She said that burning of fossils fuels, such as gasoline in cars or coal in power plants, can create air pollutants such as ozone, airborne particles small enough to be inhaled, carbon dioxide and other gases. The pollutants, said Davis, can cause people to die prematurely from asthma, breathing disorders and heart disease. ...PAUL RECER AP SF Chronicle 2001.8.16

DOE announces Thin Film Research Industry Partners - The U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) today announced the 19 universities and 14 companies expected to receive a total of $40 million in funding for research and development into thin-film photovoltaic cells. Photovoltaics (solar cells) generate electricity directly from sunlight. "Each of these awards makes possible a research and development direction that could significantly cut the cost of solar electricity," said Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham."With lowered costs, solar energy's potential can be fully realized, increasing its contribution to our national energy security and helping our environment. Developing cutting edge solar cell technologies also helps the U. S. photovoltaics industry maintain its position against tough foreign competition in this increasingly lucrative world market." Thin-film solar cells use tiny amounts of semiconductor material compared to the more conventional crystal silicon cells, which leads to greatly reduced production costs. National research teams formed as a result of these awards will perform collaborative research on key research problems. The teams consist of university, industry and NREL researchers. Press Release ISES.org 2001.8.20

High-Efficiency Spectrolab Solar Cell is Named Among the Year's Top 100 Technologies by R&D Magazine - A newly developed solar cell designed and built by Spectrolab, Inc (Sylmar, CA), that is capable of record-breaking efficiency in converting sunlight to electricity is among the year's 100 most significant technologies selected by Research & Development Magazine. The award is for a type of Spectrolab terrestrial solar cells that could enhance people's lives by dramatically lowering the cost of solar electricity generation. Spectrolab is a unit of Boeing Satellite Systems, which is a business of The Boeing Company (NYSE:BA - news). Known as a triple-junction terrestrial concentrator solar cell, this Spectrolab technology has achieved a world-record conversion efficiency of 34 percent in laboratory tests, which means that it is the first to exceed the goal of the U.S. Department of Energy (DoE) One-Third-of-a-Sun initiative. Spectrolab has already received an order from Arizona Public Service, Arizona's largest and longest-serving electric utility, for 140 kilowatts of terrestrial concentrator receivers populated with its high efficiency triple-junction solar cells. Yahoo Bizwire 2001.8.15

California Homebuilders to build Zero Energy Home Prototypes - The Solar Buildings Program of the the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), recently announced funding to a team of California homebuilders and homebuilding professionals to focus on building single-family homes that combine energy efficiency construction techniques with solar energy generation and other renewable technologies to eventually produce a Zero Energy House (ZEH). The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), a research facility of the DOE, issued a solicitation requesting proposals from homebuilding teams to introduce the Zero Energy Buildings (ZEB) concept into new-home construction. As a result, a team was awarded a grant to design and evaluate the construction and performance of Zero Energy Homes prototypes - with the eventual goal of building a Zero Energy Neighborhood. The team consists of: ConSol, a Stockton-based energy efficiency consulting firm; The Meyers Group, the largest residential market information company in the nation; and four top builders who cover a wide geographical and demographic area. The California builders include Centex Corporation, Shea Homes and WL Homes. Pardee Homes will participate in Nevada. Press Release Consol 2001.8.13

California & Iceland Sign Energy Development Pact -Partnership Will Give California Access to Iceland's Expertise in Geothermal Power and Look to Expand Other Sources of Alternative Energy Resources. The California Technology, Trade and Commerce Agency (CTTCA) and the Iceland Ministry of Industry and Commerce signed a Memorandum of Understanding Tuesday, launching a mutual exchange of knowledge that will serve to promote the cooperative development of environmentally sound energy resources. The signing took place this morning at CTTCA headquarters, 801 K Street, Suite 1918. The Iceland Ministry of Industry and Commerce Permanent Secretary, Thorgeir Orlygsson, joined Lon S. Hatamiya, Secretary of the CTTCA, for the event. ``This is a unique partnership that will help California take advantage of Iceland's innovations in sustainable energy resources,'' said Secretary Lon S. Hatamiya of the CTTCA. ``It ensures that California will remain on the cutting edge of alternative energy resource development, and it demonstrates the state's commitment to clean air and water.''... Yahoo Bizwire 2001.8.14

An Eye to the World...

Cuba exporting solar panels - Cuba has a new export in demand. A small solar panel factory, co-funded by the UN development Program, has begun exporting solar panels to Germany and Italy as well as bringing electricity to rural areas in Cuba. Often considered costly and unreliable, solar panels have brought to rural Cuba something that no other energy source could- wireless, mobile energy. The panels have brought educational television to remote schools, and power equipment in isolated medical clinics. The clinics also have the added benefit of being able to radio for helicopter help when there are medical emergencies. The plant, located in Pinar del Rio, has the potential to fill the electrical needs of the 93 percent of Cuba that is not on an electrical grid....JAY NEWTON-SMALL in Earth Times 2001.8.18

Note regarding dead links: Most publications move stories into their archive after one or two weeks. Use the date provided here with individual stories to help find them after they have been moved.

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ABOUT THE EDITOR
Tor Allen is the President of The Rahus Institute, a non-profit organization. Tor has 10 years experience in the renewable energy field including: design, research, marketing, program and policy development, and installation work. He is currently the coordinator of the California PV Alliance, a collaborative group working to accelerate the market for photovoltaics in California.

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