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Electrek green energy brief: Investment in solar power funds, climate science in 1859, solar 1.4% of US electricity, more

Foresight targets new 250MW UK pipeline with fresh placing – In essence, the group is selling shares in a cross section of solar projects. I don’t know exactly how it pays out – but it would seem logical to get some sort of payment for the electricity being sold in a near real time basis. What is the global appetite for investing into solar funds? We know hundreds of billions. Trillions? It’d be interesting to buy enough solar power in your initial offerings that the collected energy revenue would be enough to considerably grow the solar portfolio over time, versus paying out for, say, the first five years. A 30 year investing that grows itself for the first five yeas before it starts to draw down. In the US making use of tax credits and depreciation would mean tax free electricity revenue to reinvest in new solar projects.

The basics of climate science were lain in 1859 by John Tyndall – ‘Tyndall’s most striking discoveries were the vast differences in the abilities of “perfectly colorless and invisible gases and vapours” to absorb and transmit radiant heat.’ Using the machine pictured above, Tyndall discovered that complex molecules like water vapor and carbon dioxide (plus others) were the best absorbers of heat. We knew the fundamentals of how we were going to heat our planet in 1859 – 158 years ago. Darwin published The Origin of Species that year…another ‘controversial’ idea.

Tyndall announced some of his early results on May 26, 1859. 93 days later, in Titusville, Pennsylvannia – Drake struck oil and the ‘first large-scale commercial extraction of petroleum” was underway.

Consider this: NV Energy received 21,923 applications for solar power in 2015. In 2016, NV Energy received 287 applications for new rooftop systems. It is irresponsible of politicians to act in such manners that business is so affected. Human lives are affected.

Trump wants to cut funding to the satellites – Your politics are wrong if you support this and I don’t care to please your sensibilities. You are attempting to doom a species with your bet that everyone else should be doing it instead of you.

Solar power represented 1.4% of electricity in the USA in 2016, a 40% increase over 2015. The totals, by region and sector, are located here. The 1.4% will grow in 2017 even if there was no new solar installed as much of the solar volume installed in 2016 was in the second half of the year – which starts toward lower sunlight and has less time to run. 2017 might see 2.0% of electricity being from solar – meaning the amount of solar from electricity might double in two years.

Sri Lanka submits tender for 100MW of floating solar power – 100MW would be the second largest floating solar system, but I thought to show this article because it references that the system would cover 4% of the reservoir on an island nation. Covering half of the body of water would increase the solar system to greater than 1GW – leading me to wonder how much potential for floating solar power there is.

Real cool looking solar windows from Onyx – how long till solar glass market has significant volume being deployed?

This is how you get solar power into the mountains of Nepal:

 

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