Posts Tagged ‘solar power’

Simeon Brown peddling porkies about gas shortage

Written By: - Date published: 9:00 am, August 27th, 2024 - 43 comments

Energy Minister Simeon Brown is peddling lies about a gas shortage. The country exports around 40 percent of its annual gas production as methanol. More is used to make synthetic nitrogen fertilizer, a nasty greenhouse emission source, for our farms. We don’t need expensive LNG distribution facilities while exporting the bulk of our own gas.

Battery power gets way more interesting

Written By: - Date published: 10:10 am, September 27th, 2019 - 35 comments

Anyone who has been around tech for the last couple of decades will be aware of the liberating and industry disruptive effect of batteries. This caught my attention – “Tesla May Have Invented a Million-Mile Electric Car Battery”. It was well worth the read.

The solar surcharge

Written By: - Date published: 2:39 pm, April 15th, 2016 - 98 comments

Profit gouging or genuine need?

The free market’s inability to handle climate change

Written By: - Date published: 9:49 am, November 8th, 2015 - 150 comments

Two recent events, one involving a WTO challenge to India’s subsidy for local Solar Panel manufacturers and the other the local review of New Zealand’s electricity grid suggest that the free market is not the best mechanism to use to create sustainable electricity supply.

For Solar

Written By: - Date published: 12:05 pm, June 25th, 2013 - 48 comments

There’s an issue for solar power about to hit: Standards NZ’s new proposed standard requires the use of a particular, untested, inverter which is not expected to even exist until July 2014.  The current 2005 standard on solar power production allows electricity lines companies to enforce their own set of standards onto independent solar power installers.

Discrete solar technology

Written By: - Date published: 4:29 pm, December 26th, 2010 - 20 comments

Chinese manufacturing and state support is transforming the cost structure of solar technology. This in turn is helping to put in power support for the emerging use of wireless technologies in the developing world. This helps to ensure that less dirty carbon emitting technologies are not used in the developing world.It is hard to see a downside to this state initiative because it  makes solar tech cheaper and more available earlier rather than later.

Good news: Solar powered flight

Written By: - Date published: 1:24 pm, July 11th, 2010 - 16 comments

An experimental solar-powered plane completed its first 24-hour test flight successfully Thursday, proof of concept that an aircraft can collect enough energy from the sun during the day to fly all night. The eventual goal is to fly it round the world…

A solar future?

Written By: - Date published: 1:30 pm, September 18th, 2009 - 34 comments

You can read more about it here.

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