Milpitas, an East Bay, CA city, is trying to create its own power source.  Essentially, they would allow homeowners to pay for their solar installations the same way they pay for their sidewalks. The city raises capital upfront with municipal bonds and is then reimbursed through the tax system.  The homeowner doesn’t need a big bank loan that is due upon the sale of the home; the next inhabitant just picks up the taxes.  The project, if undertaken neighborhood-by-neighborhood, allows for the pros and cons to be weighed and establishes tax rates and other essentials for citywide implementation.  The recent changes to California law now allow this type of assessment arrangement.

The city wants to offset the potential drain on the grid because they feel the electric car and plug-in hybrids are right around the corner in 2010-11.  That, coupled with the fact that Solyndra, the leading Bay Area solar manufacturer, has just secured a lease for a space covering 30 acres with a square footage of 506,000 in the Milpitas area.  The lease is believed to be the largest in the Bay Area in the past 20 years!  Add in California’s new mandate requiring utilities to pay for excess power generated by home solar installations and support from the Obama administration, and you’ve got yourself one forward-thinking city that’s moving in a sound direction. (more…)

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Whatever posturing or politicking might go on here at ground level, the International Space Station stands as a beacon of community between the world’s spacefaring nations. That community, or at least the Netherlands’ role in it, has grown a bit with the recent signing of a deal that will see Dutch Space B.V. provide solar arrays for nine unmanned cargo ferries. The ferries will deliver supplies to the space station.

The deal is a feat of international collaboration here on earth as well. The shell of the cargo ships will be built by Thales Alenia Space of Italy. The solar arrays will be integrated, tested and constructed by Dutch Space. The cargo ferries themselves will be built by Orbital Sciences of Virginia, USA. Furthermore, Dutch Space will look to two other American companies, Alliant Techsystems and Emcore, to develop substrates and solar cells for the solar panels. (more…)

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Japan recently made serious strides toward leading exploration and implementation of space-based solar power. While many countries (US excluded) have set goals for domestic renewable energy production, Japan has literally set loftier goals, announcing ambitions to collect solar power in space by 2030.

Photo Credit: Greenlaunches

That solar power would be harvested as part of Japan’s Space Solar Power System (SSPS), in which solar arrays several square miles in size would hover in a geosynchronous orbit above Japan and beam collected solar energy down to receivers on earth via lasers or microwave radiation. Intense, right?

Adding a notable level of seriousness to its plan, Japan has selected a consortium of industry giants to make their science-fiction plan a reality. These include Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Mitsubishi Electric, NEC, Fujitsu and Sharp, led by researchers at the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA). (more…)

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