PROJECT EASY GREEN

The deal between SunPower and Total is all about hitting the accelerator. Total, the massive oil and gas conglomerate from France, will provide the industrial and financial muscle to allow SunPower to both cut the costs of building solar power plants and more easily and quickly expand its manufacturing footprint, executives from both companies said in [...]

With a barrel of oil now above $112 and rising, the five major oil companies are announcing Q1 2011 numbers this week and reports put profits at 40 percent above Q1 2010, despite a slowing of the economy. Commentators from Saudi oil barons to Goldman Sachs to the AARP agree, according to Professor of Law Michael Greenberger, [...]

Solar power and wind power are usually the first topics that come to mind when the discussion turns to renewable energy sources. The global solar footprint has grown almost a hundredfold, from 175 megawatts in 2000 to 15 gigawatts in 2010 . But despite the growth of those sectors, wind and solar still account only for a tiny [...]

Lee Willis rides the rails on a regular basis. So when the utility industry veteran and current vice president of the consulting firm Quanta Technology speaks at utility conferences, he likes to offer a train parable. The brief historical lesson starts with the stagecoach, the dominant form of transportation a few centuries ago. With the advent [...]

Two weeks. That is the average duration between the time when a consumer gets a smart thermostat for controlling energy use in their home to the time when they begin almost completely to disregard it, according to Recurve co-founder Matt Golden. Recurve’s data point — which the company obtained as part of an effort to [...]

Perfume additives and shark liver oil substitutes first; the broader market for diesel over time. That’s the revised business plan, in a nutshell, for Amyris Inc. , which has formally moved into commercial production. Amyris has created a genetically modified yeast that converts sugar cane syrup into hydrocarbons via fermentation. (Ordinarily, yeast would convert sugar into alcohol, [...]

Total, known primarily for its oil and gas operations, announced a plan to buy a controlling interest in SunPower, the maker of high efficiency solar modules. Under the terms of the deal, Total will, through a subsidiary, launch a tender offer to buy up to 60 percent of SunPower's Class A shares and 60 percent [...]

One of the panels I will be moderating at next week's Networked Grid will focus on smart grid data and analytics.  Data analysis is a field that has been rapidly evolving in a wide swath of industries over the past 20 years. Titled "Beyond Meter-to-Cash: Improving Business Processes with AMI Data and Analytics," the panel brings together [...]

It's the year of utility mergers. In January, Duke Energy announced plans to buy Progress to create a utility that will span a large section of the Southeast. Today, Exelon announced it will buy Constellation Energy to form a utility that will span 38 states, parts of Canada and the District of Columbia. The deal, once [...]

Back in November, Russ McMeekin, CEO of building management specialist Scientific Conservation Inc., told us that  the company's goal for 2011 was to expand the amount of commercial real estate it controlled from 15 million square feet to a whopping 100 million to 150 million square feet. Now we know how it will happen. Intel today [...]

Most every article or panel on energy storage labels storage as the "holy grail" or "linchpin" of a renewable energy future. Yet, the grids of countries like Germany or Spain with high levels of penetration of renewables have not collapsed for lack of energy storage. So, is storage really that crucial? Is it pricing that's preventing [...]

Genomatica, a startup that creates genetically modified organisms that secrete industrial chemicals, will have a big partner when it goes to Asia. Mitsubishi Chemical Corporation, the eighth largest chemical maker in the world, signed a broad memorandum of understanding with Genomatica that will explore building a plant for bio-BDO, Genomatica's signature chemical, in Asia as [...]

Nanosolar, the CIGS (CuInGaSe) solar module aspirant, has been cutting a lower profile compared to its brash early years. The 300-employee, San Jose, California-based firm has reset its management team with a focus on operations and seems to be making some progress on the technical and commercial fronts. As one of the first wave of capital-intensive, [...]

Making the business case for distribution automation is certainly getting easier these days. However, it’s not a no-brainer for all utilities. At Distribution Automation 2011 in New York City on Wednesday, Bruce Walker, Vice President of Gridwise Alliance , challenged the utilities in the audience to calculate the cost of not investing in DA. “We stand on another precipice,” [...]

Wind is ready, which explains President Obama’s touting of it in two widely heralded public appearances recently, as well as the hundreds of millions of dollars of high-profile investments Google has made in it over the last year. Last year, at seven cents per kilowatt-hour , wind energy-generated electricity was considered competitive. This year, with six and even [...]

This stuff definitely insulates. Aspen Aerogels sent us a sample of SpaceLoft, insulation for commercial buildings and homes made from aerogels. Aerogels are essentially blankets of air pockets. Air doesn't transmit heat well, so materials that can capture and isolate air bubbles tend to insulate fairly well. The company has a famous demo where a [...]

Kurion, a nuclear waste processing startup that emerged from stealth mode about a year ago, will participate in a consortium to treat the contaminated seawater at the Fukushima plant. Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) has lined up Toshiba, Areva, Hitachi-GE Nuclear and Kurion to create a system to treat the estimated 87,500 tons of contaminated [...]

It seems like just yesterday folks were sitting on panels in over-air-conditioned hotel ballrooms musing over the impact electric vehicles would have on utilities and society at large. Today, early adopters  — and the rush of companies trying to provide infrastructure to support the nascent market  — are offering some real experiences, and challenges, to reflect [...]

In the relatively near future, a fracking company may harvest electricity from the Marcellus Shale formation, too. The power won't come from converting shale gas into electricity. Instead, it will be created by harvesting the 840-degree waste heat exuded by compressors onsite needed to squeeze the methane extracted from the rock into pipelines. The five compressors [...]

We've covered the perception challenges faced by the solar industry when it comes to consumers installing PV on their rooftops — many think it's too expensive.  We've also covered the steps the industry is taking to lower the "soft costs" of residential solar installation . Companies offerring residential leases: SolarCity (with their own installers) Sungevity  (working with a network of installers) [...]