Article Title: MIT gets serious about solar power

Excerpt: the Chesonis Family Foundation is helping MIT launch the Solar Revolution Project (SRP) with a $10 million gift. The project will explore new materials and systems that could dramatically accelerate the availability of solar energy. SRP will work with other solar projects at MIT, creating one of the largest unversity research efforts dedicated to solar energy. ' The gift will allow MIT to focus on three elements—capture, conversion and storage—that could help make solar power a viable, near-term energy source. "Think 'solar' and think 'now. This is the revolution that is implied in the project name," said Daniel Nocera, a professor of energy and chemistry at MIT, who will direct SRP.

Excerpt: "By investing in the people at MIT and giving them the freedom to take risks in the lab, we will enable them to be true game-changers—advancing the state of the art to a point where solar power is cheaper and more reliable than electricity from coal," Foundation benefactor Arunas Chesonis said in a statement.

Article Title: From Silicon Valley to Solar Valley

Excerpt: Silicon Valley is poised to become the center of the growing alternative energy industry, just like it was the home of computing, experts said on Friday at an economic conference.

Excerpt: Venture capital funding to clean technology firms increased 266 percent last year, investing about $300 million by the third quarter alone, according to the report.

Excerpt: The United States has led in solar research but hasn't provided the necessary incentives to boost the market, said David Pearce, chief executive of solar company Miasole. "As a result, the demand has been outside the U.S., and the manufacturing plants, for the most part, have been outside the U.S.," Pearce said. "I see major policy changes coming."

Article Title: Energy - Solar World: A glowing report for 2006

Excerpt: The report, unveiled at last month's Solar Power 2006 conference in San Jose, Calif., credited the industry-wide boom in the United States to rising conventional energy prices and to "the expansion of federal and state support for solar deployment." Photovoltaics -- rooftop solar panels -- concentrating solar thermal power and solar water heating all got a boost from the Energy Policy Act of 2005, which took effect on Jan. 1, 2006, the California Solar Initiative and President Bush's Solar America Initiative, the joint report said.

Excerpt: Bush's $148 million Solar America Initiative -- "the largest budget increase for solar research in U.S. history," according to the year in review report -- aims to bring solar technology to cost competitiveness with fossil fuel-driven electricity by 2015. This can be achieved, according to the administration, by pumping money into research and development projects while deploying between 5 gigawatts and 10 gigawatts of PV capacity during the next nine years.

Excerpt: Despite record high prices for silicon, the main ingredient in most photovoltaic wafers, the PV panel installation rate in the United States is already shooting upward -- in the past year, the installation rate grew by 20 percent, according to the report. The installation rate "will be one of the highest in the world this year as new federal and state programs begin to stimulate demand," the report said.

Article Title: UB Reporter: UB unveils its first solar electric system

Excerpt: A total of 6,300 square feet of large, shiny, photovoltaic (PV) panels have been installed on the Norton roof, forming the largest solar array on any building in Western New York. The system on top of Norton will generate approximately six percent of the building's annual electrical power consumption and could meet the annual electrical requirements of 10 average Western New York households.

Excerpt: In conjunction with the installation of the solar roof, the university also is launching in its Science and Engineering Library "Energy for the Future," a major educational exhibit about energy alternatives, and a Solar Lounge with graphic and computer-run displays, where a wall of windows provides a close-up view of the new solar roof. Located on the third floor of Capen Hall, North Campus, the exhibit is free and open to the public.

Excerpt: "We face a challenge on how to significantly reduce energy consumption and transition away from fossil fuels," said Simpson. "We need to boost conservation and efficiency; we need to go with green power sources, such as wind, which we are doing; and we need to look for renewable sources that allow us to generate electricity on campus. That's what we're demonstrating with this solar array."

Article Title: Solar start-up snags $35 million as CIGS ignites

Excerpt: CIGS has emerged as a technology that could challenge silicon solar panels. CIGS solar cells aren't as efficient at harvesting sunlight as silicon solar cells, but proponents say they will be much cheaper to manufacture.

Excerpt: CIGS panels use far less raw material than silicon solar panels and the factories themselves cost less to build, proponents say. Miasole CEO David Pearce has said that, for $25 million, Miasole can build a factory capable of churning out 100 megawatts of solar panels a year.

Excerpt: If Nanosolar can build its factory, it will become one of the largest solar-panel manufacturers in the world. Investors in the company include Google co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page. Google, however, chose to go with silicon solar panels from Sharp, the current world leader in solar, for its plans to build the largest solar installation in the United States. Sharp concentrates on silicon, but is also looking at other materials.

Article Title: Trying to break through the current technological hurdles of solar energy

Excerpt: "Over the past decade, ASU has quietly reassembled one of the most comprehensive portfolios of solar-related research programs in the world," says Jonathan Fink, vice president of ASU's Office of Research and Economic Affairs. "This new award is a prime example of ASU's interdisciplinary approach to solar research and uncovering new ways to better harness, create and utilize solar energy."

Excerpt: The ASU researchers hope to make progress by shedding more heat than light. One part of the project will focus on developing better light-gathering capabilities. Diaz is working on the fabrication of a photonic antenna, a device that he says will increase the number of light photons absorbed through a solar cell, thereby boosting the rate of energy production.

Article Title: Promise of solar energy already starting to shine

Excerpt: Bradford, president and founder of the Cambridge, Mass.-based Prometheus Institute for Sustainable Development, says we are on the doorstep of the solar era. He's not forecasting something that will occur in the next century. Bradford offers the evidence of a trend that is well under way and that will gain relentless momentum within the next two decades.

Excerpt: Bradford says the primary reasons for the inevitable dominance of solar energy in the "energy portfolio" of the world, is the demonstrated cost-effectiveness of photovoltaic cells (PV) to generate and distribute electricity.

Excerpt: Every American who pays or knows someone who pays an electric bill should read "Solar Revolution" and become aware of the facts and figures that are necessary to challenge plans by many utility companies to build outmoded and polluting plants that use fossil fuels.