March 17, 2012

Solar Energy Power System and its Cost-Effectiveness

March 17, 2012 No Comments

The sun sends us more energy in an hour than we consume in a year. Now with the world demanding more and more power, we find ourselves like thirsty nomads in the desert searching for any drops of water. Yet, it is all around us.
In the past few decades, our attempts to use solar systems have been hampered a number of factors. The supply chain to produce panels in large quantities had been inefficient and so prices remained high. That all changed in the past five years with large companies entering the sector and bringing scale and efficiency to the manufacturing process. Solar panels prices have dropped 80% in the past five years. Prices will fall another 50%. This will bring solar in line with grid power with no subsidies in more than ten states.
Second, installation of solar has been an inefficient practice with variable quality of installations. Now, however, with the rise of professional companies such as SolarCity, Mercury and others, installation quality is high and consistent. The cost of installation is also coming down with new mounting systems.

Google Goes Wind and Bets Further On Solar

March 17, 2012 No Comments

According to Bloomberg Magazine, Google taking up wind-power purchases to reduce emissions, even as it devotes most of its renewable energy investments to solar. This green hedging of energy-related projects is the “trade-off aimed at reining in costs as the company seeks higher returns.”
Google went to 30 percent green energy with virtually all of it from wind, up from 19 percent a year earlier.
Yet of the $917 million that the company has invested in renewable-energy projects, about two-thirds—or $622 million —is channeled toward solar.
Wind power is at least 50 percent cheaper than solar energy, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. That explains why Google, which consumes 2.26 million megawatt-hours of electricity a year, mainly for data centers that run its billions of Web searches, increasingly prefers wind. Whole Foods Market, Bank of New York Mellon (BK), Starbucks, and Intel are among those companies that made the biggest wind-power purchases in 2010, data compiled by Bloomberg New Energy Finance show.