Today many are still gun-shy about solar. Generally people know how expensive electric and gas are, and realize that solar can possibly bring them financial benefits.

It almost makes one stop and wonder, “Why hasn’t solar become popular sooner? What has held it back?”

It reminds me of the electric car revolution. In San Francisco alone, I’ve read some major news sources within the past six months that have reported major buildings in the city are working on renovations that are costly and environmentally-friendly, allowing electric cars to see the light of day.

Could a similar fate befall solar? It already has, as you will notice when you see the stories of countless families and individuals making the switch.

So your fear may be, “Won’t people at gas stations lose their jobs?” or maybe even, “Isn’t paying for major building in California just going to drive it down into more debt?” What seems to be the point of it all if we have crude yet pseudo-trustworthy means of meeting our energy needs.

The answer isn’t hard. Reality has hit and, quite frankly, the switch needs to be made. If it means using up more of the Earth’s resources to create panels (one of the largest, if not the largest, portion of garbage in landfills is actually newspaper, which cannot make panels), to ship them worldwide, statewide, and train the college graduates of the future for what will surely be impending, booming openings in the solar industry, then so be it.

I’m no mind reader, but Brian Williams said it best in a commencement speech to Notre Dame that (paraphrasing), “[For hundreds of years] this country has had cars, trains, and airplanes. None of those go any faster or use energy more efficiently than they did when they were first made. We still have to progress forward in many ways”.

Again, not using his actual words but it was the gist. Do a search on YouTube if you are interested in hearing the speech.

The moral is that the time is now to move forward. Not tomorrow, not the next day, or even the day after that. We have been moving forward, very quietly at first. Now there is no stopping a cleaner, happier, solar future.

Saying we shouldn’t move forward would be like saying cars and the highway system should never have been invented. I doubt you want to part with your vehicle, but I think you would be willing to flip gas stations the bird and zoom by the pump.

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Hello Readers! Hope all is well. The sun is shining here in Groveland, California, and hopefully it’s powering solar energy near you!

Today I’d like to touch on an amazing project made possible by feed-in tariffs, which I wrote about a month ago on this very blog. In that post, we expressed our frustration with American solar policy. Our sentiment has been highlighted by our British counterparts, as HomeSun, a London based solar panel provider and installer, announced that it will give away 2.5 million solar panels to customers throughout the country. This is a mostunprecedented move, and one that garners our support and admiration here at SolarSipper.

How will HomeSun fund such a program? As alluded to earlier, the company plans on covering its costs through feed-in tariffs. The tariffs require the utility to pay a solar generator for excess power they feed back to the power grid. Therefore, the solar power generated through these free panels will benefit the 2.5 million households with solar panels on their roofs, and will also contribute to the energy demands of countless other customers. While the exact number of customers is not known, it will become clear as the program gets under way (check back in the future for updates!)

HomeSun is also proving that such a giveaway can be managed easily and effectively. Seeing if your home qualifies is as simple as placing a pin on an interactive map, and following qualification, the home is equipped with a 3.5-4 kilowatt peak (kWp) solar system. Furthermore, HomeSun guarantees maintenance for 25 years!

When I wrote about feed-in tariffs, it seemed that the possibilities for expanding solar use through the program were endless. The British government and HomeSun have proved that notion right, as they have incentivized the British population to move forward with renewable energy at no personal cost. With so much to be unhappy about in solar policy, this is surely a bright spot for the future of solar.

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Less than a week ago, the California Energy Commission (CEC) gave the OK for the Beacon Solar Energy Project to be built in the western portion of the Mojave Desert.

The decision is a major step forward for the development of California solar energy farms, as the Beacon Solar Energy Project will cover thousands of acres of the California desert with mirrors aimed at harnessing the sun’s energy to heat tubes full of fluid, which will generate enough steam to turn a turbine that will produce the electricity.

The decision by the CEC could be a mere rippple in a wave of solar energy initiatives that the commission is soon to pass. In the next few months, the CEC will cast votes and decide the fate of eight other large-scale solar projects in the Golden State. The decisions made by the CEC will likely be the main factor in deciding whether or not California meets its state mandate of all state investor-owned utilities (IOU’s) – namely Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E), Southern California Edison (SCE) and San Diego Gas and Electric (SDG&E) - getting at least 20 percent of their energy from renewable sources by the end of the 2010 calendar year.

Indications are that the CEC will approve many of the proposed solar energy projects. This latest Beacon approval is a rarity in itself. According to the LA Times, the last time the Commission approved and licensed a large-scale solar thermal project was in 1999 when the CEC said yes to a San Bernardino County project.

Of course, before the Beacon Project is built, its manufacturers will have to ink a power purchasing agreement (PPA) with a state utility company, which will agree to buy the power. There is no timetable or potential plan for a PPA yet, but SolarSipper will keep you updated with the details as they unfold.

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There are more reasons to get excited about solar energy besides its potential to cancel out your utility bill. You see, solar energy has a place in the everyday development of new technology. Simply put, anything can run on solar energy: computers, cell phones, robots, light bulbs…

Yes, that’s right, I said robots. And not just any robots. Robots that can be used should we ever again see such a catastrophe as the Gulf Coast oil spill that cast a dark cloud over our sunny weather throughout summer 2010.

Researchers at the SENSEable City Lab, a branch of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), have developed a solar-powered, autonomous, oil-sucking robot that uses a nanomaterial in order to attract, and then extract, oil from water. The robots, named Seaswarm, are nothing more than conveyor belts humming over the surface of water with an icebox-looking contraption attached at one end. But this funky looking gadget could have been a savior for BP, which was calling on everything under the sun to remove thousands of barrels of oil from the Gulf Coast.

A single robot can locate the oil, and then with the use of a GPS system, can get together with its other Seaswarms and decide how to best mop up the oil from the water. And when they’re done, they can either get rid of the oil using a heater, or neatly bag it up and leave it floating for a later pickup. Inklings of the development of such robots was leaked periodically over the last several months, but the robots were officially introduced in Venice, Italy this past Saturday. There are still a few kinks to be worked out, and the robots should be ready for use in oily situations within a year.

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All this talk of solar energy begs the question: What about solar panels on the White House?! It would be the ultimate symbolic gesture of our nation’s commitment to renewable energy.

Don’t take it from me. Listen to former President Jimmy Carter who, in 1979, installed a solar water heater on the roof of the white house. At the time, it was a very forwarding-thinking move, and President Carter presented two roads that the United States could take beginning on May 6, 1979, the day the solar water heater was installed:

“A generation from now this solar heater can either be a curiosity; a museum piece; an example of a road not taken, or it can be just a small part of one of the greatest and most exciting adventures ever undertaken by the American people.”

You can watch a video on Carter dedicating the White House Solar Panels here.

Unfortunately for President Carter – and our entire nation – neither of these roads were chosen. The White House solar water heater never even made it as a museum piece, and it’s definitely not a curiosity. They are now part of a cafeteria at Unity College in Maine. You see, President Reagan had the panels uninstalled in 1986, during his term. In 1991, Unity College acquired the panels and installed them atop their cafeteria. The panels are no longer in operation.

In 2003, solar panels returned to the White House when President George W. Bush had solar photovoltaic (PV) panels installed. President Bush also installed two solar water heaters: one for landscape use and the other to heat the White House spa.

But the solar-powered White House is not complete. And if President Obama is serious about a renewable energy future, he would continue to add to the solar energy system already installed at the White House – one that, by all accounts, does not produce that much energy.

A group of solar companies led by Sungevity are asking Americans to sign a petition that calls for President Obama to permanently install a solar energy system at1600 Pennsylvania Avenue - one that would lower the The White House utility bill by 81 percent.

The president can’t use the oldest political excuse in the book: “I don’t want the taxpayers to foot the bill.” Sorry, Mr. President. The group has offered to install the system for free. If you dont want them for free, they’ve offered to install them through a solar lease that would cost taxpayers $537 a month, combined, with free maintenance and warranty. So far, no response from the President. So let’s start the countdown today: the number it days it takes the Obama Administration to install a free solar energy system at the White House that could slash its utility bills by 81 percent. August 27, 2010: Day One, and counting…

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Ancient civilizations used to worship the sun. They did so because the sun warmed them, enabled them to see, and as humanity continued, eventually allowed crops to grow.

You can read many history books about communities that held the sun sacred – perhaps for some very good reasons. According to modern science, it is, after all, the center of the universe (and most people accept this as true, though science of course cannot ever give us truth. It can only give us extremely accurate and tangible results from risky test after risky test).

A website I recently stumbled across reports that De Vinci believed societies would eventually turn to solar energy. I can’t confirm this to be true, but De Vinci was a great mind, so I doubt it would surprise many.

The website also provides both an alarming soothing statistic that screams louder than any politician ever could - it states that in one day, more sun touches Earth than all the solar power we use as energy in any given year. That means that the sun easily meets the energy needs of 7 billion + people. If this is true, it means there is no excuse for not switching to solar faster than we are.

Does this all sound scary? Maybe a little bit, but in a pleasant way. It just may be that those ancients were smarter than some of us thought. And the future, it seems, is very bright.

The website can be found here:

http://www.facts-about-solar-energy.com/facts-about-solar-energy.html

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When Barack Obama ran for president of the United States, he did so under the slogan of “change.” And while he attempts to implement this “change” from the top down, there are campaigns popping up across the globe that are trying to enrich our lives – and the environment – from the ground up.

We’ve all heard the news: record-breaking temperatures, historic draughts, economic turmoil, and environmental disasters such as the toxic BP oil spill taking place people across the globe. People are starting to unite to help build a more sustainable and promising future, particularly when it comes to clean energy sources.

One popular grassroots organization that is providing support and tools to help folks achieve that goal is the Transition Movement. A partner with the international Transition Network, this non-profit organization looks to provide the advice, training, and inspiration for communities to help expedite a more eco-friendly, post-petroleum world, and also aid in any economic hardships that may arise in the current sluggish fiscal environment.

“Transition is a model which is about ordinary people catalyzing together with their friends, neighbors, community to look at the practical responses to peak oil and climate change,” says co-founder Rob Hopkins. “It’s growing  nuts and bolts of re-localization based on the idea that where we get to at the end of this could be better than where we start from.”

A key to a successful transition going forward is to be more self-sufficient as a community and to generate a lifestyle that is more locally based. Creating a food initiative, for example, made up of locally-grown fruits, vegetables, grains, and other products generates more revenue within a community and helps to significantly reduce carbon emissions to help curb climate change.

There is a model by which residents can follow, which is made up of principles, guidelines, and other “ingredients.” All of which can be found on www.transitionus.org.

Clean, renewable energy – such as solar – can be a vital component of the movement. Solar power ideally sticks to the transition guidelines by putting locals to work through purchases and installations. Best of all, the energy produced comes from the sun! There is no carbon footprint associated with the energy source.

The focal point of the Transition Movement is community. That is the core idea behind the business model at www.solarsipper.com  as well. By purchasing solar power in neighborhood groups, homeowners greatly reduce the costs of installation, while also forming an unbreakable bond through the knowledge that they are together working as one toward a more sustainable future.

As those on the top and bottom do what they can to combat global warming, move us away from our dependence on oil, and get the economy back on track, it’s those in the middle that are ultimately responsible for making real change.

Feel free to drop us a note or ask us a question at SolarSipper.com and let our team of experts help you and your neighborhood make that transitional move a successful one.

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Hello Readers! Before we get started on this weeks topic, I’d like to recommend, for our Bay Area readers, a visit to Stefano’s Pizzeria in Mill Valley – the only solar powered pizzeria in the United States! It’s surely a cant-miss attraction for the solar lover.

As we’ve previously stated, almost nothing can escape political mention in an election year. And in the most important news for solar followers, the lack of government initiative has finally come to a head. On Friday, August 6^th, the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) sent House Speaker Nancy Pelosi a letter expressing the association’s frustration with the current rate of progress of our nation’s solar industry. The standoff comes as no surprise to solar enthusiasts, who for years have been put off by the lack of solar policy in this country. Here at SolarSipper, we have touched on the topic many times with discussions on feed-in tariffs and municipal websites.

The breaking point for the SEIA came as President Obama was set to sign a bill that eliminated billions of dollars in solar energy loan guarantees. The loan guarantees originated from the nation’s economic stimulus bill, which set aside $6 billion for renewable energy. It was estimated that this money would go toward funding more than $60 billion in renewable energy projects. However, since the stimulus bill was signed, more than half of the funds have been diverted toward other projects. Last fall, $2 billion was set aside for the “cash for clunkers” program. Still, renewable energy experts stepped aside and “continued in a polite way behind the scenes,” according to the SEIA spokeswoman. Earlier this month, when an additional $1.5  billion was taken away from renewable energy to help states pay for emergency education and Medicaid costs, the behind the scenes renewable energy experts made a move toward center stage.

The letter can be viewed here. Surely, emergency education and Medicaid help for states is a noble cause, but the federal government’s willingness to take this money from solar and other renewable energy is maddening, particularly at a time when there are billions of dollars committed to frivolous solutions. Rather than take the money they had given slow-to-change auto firms, a relic of the past, the government has chosen to take it out of a vital component of the future: renewable energy. The government’s interests are shoddy at best, and we here at SolarSipper hope that the government learns from this mistake, and sees how important renewable energy is to this country’s future. Share your thoughts with us today, and tell us how we can help you and others pave the path toward a future in which solar energy is our primary source of energy.

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The Sale Lake Tribune recently wrote a story highlighting great solar news in Utah, where residents are beginning to warm up to the idea of renewable energy – solar in particular.

The article mentions a man paying $24, 000 for 24 solar panels – the important point being that the panels take care of all of the energy needs for his home/family. It may take a little time, but you don’t need to be a mathematician to see that the benefits add up quick and that the panels will “pay back”, perhaps as soon as a few years depending on his  monthly energy costs.

Another Utah resident is quoted saying that solar and wind energy is no longer considered “odd” by families and businesses. Instead, clean energy is being seen now more than ever as a smart move in the right direction, both financially and environmentally.

Finally, a professor in Utah installed a 34-panel solar energy system for his home, though he anticipated it taking over a decade for it to pay itself off. Considering this, I doubt he went along with the installation solely to save money, though solar is steadily blossoming into a cheaper and more economically realistic alternative to dirty energy sources like coal.

… especially how high prices for heat, cooling, and electricity can be in many states, California included.

You can read the entire article by copy/pasting the link below:

http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/money/50044446-79/solar-wind-energy-power.html.csp

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A note to Californians: Before investing in a solar energy system, get to know your solar rights.

Know your solar rights so that you know no one can restrict your use of a solar energy system. A portion of  California Civil Code 714 has some thing to say about that:

Any covenant, restriction, or condition contained in any deed, contract, security instrument, or other instrument affecting the transfer or sale of, or any interest in, real property, and any provision of a governing document, as defined in subdivision (j) of Section 1351, that effectively prohibits or restricts the installation or use of a solar energy system is void and unenforceable.

As a Californian, know your solar rights because California Civil Code 714 is not all black and white, thanks to 714.1, which outlines a specific instance in which you can be prohibited from installing your own solar energy system:

 Notwithstanding Section 714, any association, as defined in Section 1351, may impose reasonable provisions which:(a) Restrict the installation of solar energy systems installed in common areas, as defined in Section 1351, to those systems approved by the association.

(b) Require the owner of a separate interest, as defined in Section 1351, to obtain the approval of the association for the installation of a solar energy system in a separate interest owned by another.

Knowing your solar rights can help clarify some of the more intricate steps that you as a Californian are required to take before installing a solar energy system. What kind of permits do you need? Government Code 65850.5 can help you out:

(b) A city or county shall administratively approve applications to install solar energy systems through the issuance of a building permit or similar non discretionary permit. Review of the application to install a solar energy system shall be limited to the building official’s review of whether it meets all health and safety requirements of local, state, and federal law. The requirements of local law shall be limited to those standards and regulations necessary to ensure that the solar energy system will not have a specific, adverse impact upon the public health or safety. However, if the building official of the city or county has a good faith belief that the solar energy system could have a specific, adverse impact upon the public health and safety, the city or county may require the applicant to apply for a use permit.

The above is but a small sample of information embedded in California law that can clarify many of the questions that we have about solar energy systems. Of course, new developments are always coming about and these laws are subject to change. No worries, we’ll keep you updated. But here’s all the info as it currently stands.

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