(Reuters) – California’s supreme court refused to consider a lawsuit filed by an influential environmental group seeking to delay construction of a solar plant because it might harm rare plant and animal species.

The state supreme court said it (more…)

Some places actually have “better” sun than others for producing solar power, but identifying those places isn’t always intuitive.

Contrary to what I would have guessed, Hawaii does not have the best sun for solar energy production. Factors like cloud cover, water vapor and atmospheric (more…)

GE, already dominant in the U.S. wind turbine market, is getting into the wind tower business, with a recent announcement that it would buy Wind Tower Systems (Wind Tower).

Wind Tower is a Park City, Utah, company that designs towers for mounting utility scale wind turbines. While most existing (more…)

BrightSource Energy, Inc., developer of utility-scale solar thermal power plants, has raised an additional $90 million in its most recent equity financing, according to a U.S. securities law filing.

Keely Wachs, a spokesperson for BrightSource Energy, reports that the Company has now raised $420 million in equity financing to date.

The new year brings some good pieces of news on the energy storage front. If the first week of 2011 is any indication of trends to come over the next 12 months, there’s much to look forward to in the area of utility-scale energy storage.

Perhaps the biggest news (not in terms of scale but in terms of significance) is that the first utility-scale battery storage system in (more…)

A new utility-scale fuel cell system that could potentially power more than 600 homes and produce one megawatt of electricity, is being tested by FirstEnergy and Ballard Power Systems at the former’s Eastlake plant in Ohio. (more…)

It seems that the most important meetings at SunPower all take place in the Tiffany & Co. conference room. In fact, all the other conference rooms are named after significant SunPower installations—Nellis (14.2 MW), Bavaria One (10 MW), Moscone (675 kW), and Olivenza (18 MW).

Perhaps the high-quality, luxury jeweler, (more…)

BrightSource Energy, Inc., developer of utility-scale solar thermal power plants, has raised an additional $150 million in its most recent equity financing. The Series D round brings BrightSource’s total equity financing to more than $300 million and positions the company for significant growth.

New investors including Alstom and the California State Teachers Retirement System (CalSTRS) joined existing investors in this round, led by VantagePoint Venture Partners, Morgan Stanley and Draper Fisher Jurvetson.

The additional financing will be used to support BrightSource’s 2,610 megawatts in contracts with Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) and Southern California Edison to build 14 solar power plants in the US southwest by 2016. The funds will also be used by BrightSource to further its international expansion plans.

(more…)

A UK-based renewable energy company has received a $61 million grant from the Australian government to build the world’s first utility-scale wave power project.

Ocean Power Technologies will begin construction of the 19-megawatt project in the waters off Victoria in 2010. The project will provide enough electricity to power 10,000 homes.

Wave technology uses buoys riding up and down on waves to drive an electrical generator, and then sends the power ashore via underwater cable.

(more…)