The universities entire campus community fosters a strong commitment to a culture of innovation and conservation. Tucson having one of the best solar friendly climates in the U.S. doesn’t hurt the cities ranking. The city gets around 350 days of sunshine annually and the fairly flat terrain is the ideal environment for utility scale ground mounted installations.

Tucson strives to encourage the use of solar power in innovative ways. Tucson Electric Power, which serves 400,000 customers in the southern part of Arizona, recently introduced a program that offers rate payers the option of purchasing 150 kilowatt blocks of solar power for a mere $3 each.

Georgia Power plans to purchase more solar power in response to the surge in solar demand. According to the Atlanta Business Chronicle, Georgia Power wants to get the cap on their solar power consumption increased from the current limit of 2.4 megawatts to 6.4 megawatts. The company said that it wants to help solar grow in Georgia.

Using solar power not only helps to limit the amount of carbon emissions, it also helps to reduce the load on the power grid. Summers in the state are very hot and humid requiring residents to use their air conditioners during the day when solar panels would be at their peak output.

The Oconomowoc Transport Co. also operates the very first solar electric charging station in the state. The new buses were unveiled on August 25 and according to the Wisconsin Office of Energy Independence, they cost much less to maintain than regular buses and produce from 30 to 40 percent fewer emissions. “It’s a little glimpse of the future; it’s very impressive,” Oconomowoc assistant superintendent Mike Barry was quoted as saying.

Regular school buses only get around 7 miles for each gallon of gas, but the new hybrids will increase that to 12 miles. It is hoped that other school bus companies will soon begin to follow the lead and add hybrids to their fleets.

Hunton also stated that ACE is in talks with the Massachusetts government to build solar systems on former industrial sites that are polluted with chemicals. These brownfield properties can’t be made habitable without going through extensive remediation. But, these polluted properties are ideal locations for solar arrays.

In the western part of Massachusetts, some of these sites have already been used to erect solar facilities. In the coming years, the pace of developing solar facilities is likely to increase in the state. In fact, the state hopes to increase the production of solar energy from 10 megawatts today, to 250 megawatts by 2017.

Last year, the Recovery Act allocated $100 billion that was to be used for research into energy, medical science and transportation. Biden said tht the fruits of those investments are already paying off. Funds that are provided by the public sector are helping to stimulate innovation in the private sector.  With the help of both state and federal subsidies, the solar industry is expected to continue.

“We’re planting the seeds of innovation, but private companies and the nation’s top researchers are helping them grow, launching entire new industries, transforming our economy and creating hundreds of thousands of new jobs in the process,” the vice president said in releasing the report.

NextEra will be rushing to break ground on the Beacon Solar Project before federal grant programs expire the end of this year. The landmark project will be built and operated by Beacon Power, a subsidiary of NextEra. There are several other developers including Abengoa and Brightsource that are waiting for approvals for similar projects either in or close to the Mojave Desert. They to are hoping to get approval in time to break ground before the end of the year.

Although environmental concerns have grown over land and water intensive CSP projects like this one, regulators and utilities in California have been eager to get these projects in the works. They fear without projects such as this they won’t be able to meet the state’s goals for renewable energy. Many analysts have already speculated that California won’t meet their 20 percent target by the close of the year.

The prototype measures at 16 feet long and 7 feet wide and weighs just 35 pounds. There are two square solar panels located at the head which propel the robot on top of the water’s surface. As the robot moves, a thin,  flexible conveyor belt that is covered with the nanofabric will rotate mopping up the oil. Researchers estimate that a fleet of between 5,000 and 10,000 Seaswarm robots can cover a area the size of the Gulf in a month if they are working non-stop.

“We say these vehicles are autonomous because they provide their own energy, propel themselves along the surface of the ocean and therefore we don’t need humans to collect the oil,” Discovery News quoted Biderman as saying. One lab reports that one Seaswarm can run for several weeks on 100 watts with the capacity to absorb several gallons of oil per hour. The robots are equipped with both GPS systems and wireless communications that will allow them to communicate with other robots and be operated manually with a remote.

“Robotic strategies are intriguing, and they create further opportunity to consider responses in the future,” said Ron Kendall at Texas Tech University. “Collecting oil is a pretty low-tech enterprise. If you want to deploy hundreds of expensive machines to do that, I’m not so sure that it will scale up,” he said.

Solar Millennium also has hopes of getting a construction permit through the Bureau of Land Management, but company CEP, Josef Eichhammer said they expect to get the permit soon. “We plan to receive all construction permits this fall and to finalize the financing for our first project, representing approximately 484 megawatts of generating capacity, so that we can start construction by the end of this year,” he indicated.

If the Blythe project moves forward as planned, it would be the largest CSP facility in the world. The plant would contribute a significant amount of renewable energy to California’s portfolio. California state utilities are required to purchase one third of their power from renewable resources by 2020. The facility would also use much less water than other projects needing an estimated 90 percent less than older CSP designs.

The Michigan Assembly Plant will have an array that can capture renewable energy from the sun during the daytime hours and store any unused power in 2 megawatt batteries. The batteries will also be drawing solar power off the grid at off-peak times whn the rates are lower. The stored power can be released when ever the plant needs electricity.

Ford estimates that the solar system will result in a savings of $160,000 annually. The new project will also be serving as a test site for the impact that battery powered vehicles have on the smart grid. “With this solar energy system, we will be able to gain vital understanding about the integration of renewable power, smart-grid technologies and energy storage at an industrial facility,” Ford vice president Jim Tetreault said.

Vanguard Energy Partners, a solar installer located on the East Coast recently announced that the correctional institution has deployed a solar array that is 402 kilowatts. The new solar system will reduce the prison’s dependency on fossil fuel energies by 27 percent and reduce the carbon emissions from the prison by 790,000 pounds annually.

While those two benefits are impressive, there is also a third benefit. Prison warden Paul Schultz said, “We were able to provide our inmates with the opportunity to work on the project and gain skills training in the green industry.” Universities and schools are also taking advantage of the educational opportunities when installing solar projects. Students can not only learn about the benefits of solar power, they can also be more prepared for green jobs.