While the U.S. is known around the world for innovative companies like Google and Facebook, there is a new vanguard of American companies creating and exporting clean energy technologies,” said Jim Kapsis.  His company, OPower, an (more…)

Are your solar panels looking a little grimy? No worries, there is now a team of seasoned professionals to do that cleaning for you.

Solar Maid, a one-of-a-kind New Jersey company, first began in 2003 but didn’t receive the boost it needed until 2008, when the solar industry really took off.

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When will the maturation process take hold for the global Home Energy Management market? The answer to this question and more will be answered in an upcoming report published by Pike Research, “Home Energy Management.” Some initial thoughts are as follows: (more…)

And now for a dose of reality.

No doubt smart meters are a good thing, but even their most ardent fans must admit that a degree of hoopla surrounds these little digital boxes. We hear that if consumers can just see how much power they use in real time, and what it costs, our energy woes will be no more.

Smart meters will even cure the blind. The energy blind that is.

“It can be difficult to separate the hype from legitimate claims,” said the American Council for an Energy- (more…)

After a meeting between President Obama and a bipartisan group of U.S. senators, leading Senate proponents of climate and energy legislation say the only climate bill with a chance of passage this year would be a measure placing a cap on the carbon dioxide emissions of electric power utilities.

At least two Republican senators — Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe, both of Maine — involved in Tuesday’s meeting with Obama said they would support placing a cap and price on the CO2 emissions of utilities, provided that most or all of the proceeds were rebated to taxpayers.

A key sponsor of climate and energy legislation in the Senate, John Kerry (D-Mass), suggested he might be willing to drop his move to place a cap and a price on CO2 emissions throughout the economy in favor of a more limited bill capping the emissions of electric utilities. (more…)

Though Smart Water offers equal or potentially greater benefits than Smart Energy, Smart Water isn’t getting equal coverage.

It’s been a great year for the Smart Grid. Entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, analysts, journalists, and regulators can’t stop talking about it. Experts are competing to project greater market potential. Zpryme puts the Smart Appliance market alone at $15.2 billion by 2015, Lux Research talks about $15.8 billion, Cisco estimates the overall opportunity at $100 billion and Pike research uses a whopping $200 billion figure. (more…)

With the Nissan Leaf and Chevy Volt slated for launch in December, car manufacturers and regulators are scrambling to build intelligent charging systems that help consumers schedule charging during off-peak hours.

“Off peak charging” was the mantra of Pedro Pizarro, the executive vice president of power operations for Southern California Edison during a panel that also included executives from Nissan, GM and Ford at the Green:Net 2010 conference in San Francisco. Pizarro said SCE anticipates between 150,000 – 1,000,000 EVs in its service area by 2020. (more…)

(Reuters) – The climate bill unveiled by U.S. Senators John Kerry and Joseph Lieberman on Wednesday would reward many businesses for cutting output of greenhouse gases but could add costs for those who do not.

Kerry and Lieberman hope that companies who see opportunities in energy conservation and low-carbon power will convince lawmakers to support the bill which needs 60 votes to pass.

Utilities such as FPL Group, Duke Energy and Exelon have lobbied alongside environmental groups for the climate bill as has General Electric, a manufacturer of clean coal and natural gas systems for power plants and wind turbines.

Here are some initial reactions to the bill from companies and business groups: (more…)

Researchers at the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory released a new study on the bill savings received by residential customers with solar photovoltaic (PV) power systems, under the net metering rates currently offered by California’s two largest electric utilities. The report focuses on California, as it is the largest PV market in the United States.

The study shows that the bill savings per kilowatt-hour (kWh) generated by a PV system varies by a factor of 4 to 5 for residential customers of Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) within the study sample, and by a factor 2 to 3 for Southern California Edison (SCE) residential customers in the sample.

Net metering is a billing arrangement that allows customers with PV systems installed on-site to offset their monthly consumption with PV generation, whether or not the demand for power coincides when their systems are generating power. In conjunction with other policy support mechanisms, net metering has been instrumental in jump-starting the market for distributed PV in California and elsewhere in the U.S. However, alternative compensation methods are under consideration in some jurisdictions. (more…)

Texas-based Xtreme Power is one of the leaders of the energy storage world, designing and manufacturing large-scale solid-state energy storage and power management systems called Dynamic Power Resources for solar and wind power applications.

CEO Carlos Coe talked with CleanTechies about developments in the energy storage field.

CleanTechies:   You have two energy storage projects in Hawaii.

Carlos Coe:  The first project is on the island of Maui and it’s affiliated with the wind farm that’s on that island. And that project is a 1.5 megawatt project in size going on a 30 megawatt wind farm.  So that project was put into service the middle part of last year and has been in service since then and has done very, very well.

CleanTechies:  Any glitches? (more…)