Solar Energy Industry News
Santa Monica, California,USA
As solar panels installations beginning to take off and start sprouting over the country like corn fields in Iowa. Some caution and critical talk about their appearance is starting to rumble among some sectors of government.
In Santa Monica, California, a city ordinance is pending that would require solar panels to be installed so as to be suitably less visible. Installation of solar Arrays will not have to take in to consideration they visible impact on the surrounding locations and designed to be more aesthetic to the passer by. There are exceptions. Single family residential homes and locations where relocating or redesigning the arrays would increase the cost or reduce the efficiency by a specific amount particular to the system.
Tainan,Taiwan
Concentrated solar power
Recently Taiwan held an opening ceremony for the inauguration of the country`s first commercial High Concentration photovoltaic solar power station. The plant will have a generating capacity of one megawatt once the construction has been completed. Currently the array can produce just one hundred kilowatts of energy.
The solar power produced will be used to run the photovoltaic research center of the Advanced Renewable Energy Inc. With any supplemental energy being resold to the state-run Taiwan Power Company
The high concentration photovoltaic (HCPV) solar power system requires up to 50% percent less land area of a conventional photovoltaic power station but costs more to build.
China
Solar Array
China plans to introduce a preferential tariff for energy companies that use solar power as a means of generating power. State owned distribution companies will offer a $0.16 incentive for every kilowatt hour of solar energy that is provided to the electrical grid.
Currently a tariff of $0.04 per kilowatt is offered for coal fired generated electricity and the new incentive for solar energy is hoped to increase the production of clean energy by 2020 to a target of 20 Gigawatts. The current target for the year 2008 was 1.8 Gigawatts of solar energy was drastically not met with less than 0.1 Gigawatt being produced.
It is hopped that then new tariffs will be enough incentives to wean energy companies away from CO2 emitting power generation by making the production cost equally competitive.
China is currently one of the worlds largest emitters of greenhouse gasses and has the goal of producing 15% of its total energy needs by the year 2020 in the form of renewable energy.
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