September 2008 Archives

The United States just had it's first cap-and-trade greenhouse-gas auction which raised nearly $40 Million dollars. This money in turn will be used to fund reduction or avoidance of CO2 in end-use energy efficiency in the building sector using solar (among other technologies).

Auctions like this one have been scheduled to occur quarterly and are being fed by the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) which requires all fossil fuel-burning power plants in a 10-state Northeaster US region to buy credits to offset the carbon they emit. This first auction is part of a series that is being used to model a national program which is still under development. Participating states include: Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, and Vermont.

Programs like this foster innovation in solar technology as solar panels in new and existing buildings would provide energy, long term cost savings, reduced greenhouse gases, as well as carbon credit which is earned in the auction. This additional source of fiat value created by the carbon credit system trickles back down to R&D being done as solar technologies expand into building technologies.

The value demonstrated in this first cap-and-trade auction was $3.07 per alloted ton of emissions. This market driven price is up from the minimum set price of $1.86. Most of the bidders in this premier auction were power generating companies who burn coal or natural gas to generate electricity.

SunPower has released a new line of single-axis tracking systems for large-scale solar electric projects and power plants. SunPower already offers the highest efficiency photovoltaic solar panels commercially available for residential use, and it will be interesting to see if they make solar tracking technology available for residential use as well.

The SunPower Tracker system has been in use for a while now, and has been proven to deliver more energy per land area than competing systems. The SunPower Tracker also has unique backtracking algorithms that allow the panels to tilt out of alignment with the sun at low sun angles to ensure that the no panel is shaded by another, increasing total power output.

The SunPower T20 Tracker is the next generation in SunPower solar tracking technology. SunPower has improved upon their original Tracker by tilting individual arrays up to 25 degrees towards the sun, which then rotate on a single axis with higher effective insolation that generates up to 30% more energy than traditional fixed-tilt systems. SunPower ships the systems complete, designed to be installed with no ground penetration to reduce cost and increase speed of deployment. With panels that generate up to 50% more power than the competition, and a modular single axis tracking system that requires half the land area per MW of power, the new SunPower T20 Tracker will be an attractive system for large and small solar installations alike.