Report – The Solar Thermal Alliance of Colorado (which includes COSEIA) released a “roadmap” report on January 24th after nearly a year of working with stakeholders throughout the state to spur investment and local economic growth. The report provides Colorado with a new vision to make the state a global leader in solar thermal...
Report – Solar renewable energy certificate (SREC) markets have emerged in a number of U.S. states to encourage the adoption of solar energy systems. SRECs represent the generation attributes of solar energy systems and can be traded separately from commodity electricity. A SREC is created for each megawatt-hour (MWh) of electricity generated from solar...
Report – The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in its review of the ENERGY STAR specification for residential water heaters, released a Draft 2 version based on comments received on the Draft 1 specification as well as subsequent stakeholder discussions and research. One of the key changes to the draft 2 version is on...
Report – Close to a thousand solar assisted cooling (SAC) plants have been installed worldwide, which cover all types of technologies and sizes. This is of course a very early market in comparison to the tens of millions of compression air-conditioning systems sold worldwide every year. Recently, a number of large and very large...
Report – The number of all solar installations completed in 2010 grew by 22% to over 124,000 installations (compared to the number completed in 2009). This figure includes grid- connected and off-grid PV, solar heating and cooling, solar pool heating and solar thermal electric. Through 2005, over half of these installations were for solar...
Report – Incentives continue to drive installations in major markets. Hawaii, which suffered an installation drought in 2009 and 2010, sprung back to life in Q1 2011 with a residential solar thermal rebate of up to $1,500. In Q2, the dollar value of the rebate was reduced to $750 per system, but with high...
Report – Domestic shipments of solar thermal collectors decreased almost 17 percent from a year ago to 12.2 million square feet during 2009. The residential sector is the largest domestic market in the United States for solar thermal collectors. Solar thermal collectors shipped to the residential sector in 2009 totaled 10.2 million square feet,...
Report – In the U.S. in 2010, there was $309 million spent on solar water heating (SWH) installations. SWH total system costs of $128/sq. ft. were 79% sourced domestically, which equates to $101/sq. ft. The U.S. imported $13.6 million of SWH and SPH (solar pool heating) collectors, with evacuated tube SWH collectors coming from...
Report – Whether new or retrofit, solar heating technologies can be economically applied to meet your renewable goals. Les Nelson of Western Renewables Group gives an overview of solar thermal technology; the differences between the common low-temperature systems for domestic hot water and updates on incentives, financing mechanisms, and resources available to federal agencies...
Report – Data collected from 53 countries, representing 90-95% of the solar thermal market, shows solar thermal is second only to wind among non-traditional renewable in its contribution to meeting global energy demand. This year’s edition of the International Energy Agency, Solar Heating and Cooling (IEA SHC) programme reports that 196 GWth or 280...