If you’ve spent thousands of dollars on solar panel system you probably want to know how well it’s working. At least this is what SunReports was banking on when they invested in the development and production of their soon-to-hit-the-market solar panel data collector.
The SunReports solar power assessment tool is both a piece of hardware that you run your solar panels or solar hot water tank through, as well as web software for calculating and tracking the data.
Preliminary tests that the data collectors have been put through showed that several of the hot water systems were configured incorrectly and were operating at night and wasting energy.
The main customers for SunReports will be solar panel installers who will be able include the system as part of an installation package for home owners and small businesses with the estimated cost coming in for “hundreds of dollars” for a five to ten year contract.
SunReports has recently stated that they expect to start making hundreds of thousands of their data collectors this year.
Concentrating solar technology is the new solar technology to be implemented in California, which hopes to generate 33 percent of their electricity from renewable sources by 2020. In concentrated solar technology, reflective mirrors are used to concentrate light onto a liquid to make steam. This steam then converts energy into electricity with the help of conventional turbines.
Southern California Edison is working with a company named BrightSource to erect “power towers,” which consist of moving mirrors to concentrate light onto a tower to make steam to produce 100-megawatts of power in Ivanpah, California. By 2013 they are projecting to light up 65,000 homes by supplying 286,000 megawatt-hours of electricity per year.
Maryland and Connecticut are struggling with budget shortfulls for solar power programs that have run out of money early.
Maryland is out of cash when it comes to funding a popular program that provided aid to home or business owners who installed solar energy systems.
State’s solar incentives offer help to subsidize the cost of buying and installing a solar power system for home and business owners, which could cost tens of thousands of dollars for a home. These programs have become popular not only among citizens, but among state and local governments trying to promote clean energy production. However with the ever-flailing econonmy, Maryland is having trouble continuing to fund these programs.
Meanwhile, the New York Times reports that Connecticut is struggling to find money for a solar rebate program.
“We won’t know what we will have available [for solar rebates] for the next several months,” Donna Tommelleo, a spokeswoman for Connecticut Gov. Jodi Rell, said Tuesday. “Like every other state, everybody is hurting.”
Rather than rebates, some local governments are looking at alternative solar power incentives. California, for example, has net metering programs in place that allow solar energy system owners that generate more power than they can use to feed the excess power back into the grid – a deduction they will enjoy on their future electricity bills.
