All About Solar | Green Energy News

January 1, 2006 – Vol.10 No.41

All ABOUT SOLAR.

This week’s news...

Attention owners of small solar systems in New Mexico: PNM wants to buy any excess power you have. More specifically, if your solar system meets certain guidelines - under 10 kilowatts and a PNM approved grid connection, for example - they want to pay you 13 cents per kilowatt hour for the environmental attributes of your system. You get to keep the power you need. They’ll pay for what you don’t.

For you, and your one-kilowatt system (for example), you could earn an estimated $3650 during a 12-year span that you’re supplying solar electricity to PNM. The payments, over time, will reduce the cost of your system thus make it more affordable. A larger system will bring in more money, of course.

For PNM, they get to buy green power from a system that you’ve gone to the trouble to build and maintain on real estate (such as your roof) they don’t have to buy. PNM hopes the plan will encourage more people to build solar systems they can tap into. Visit and dig deep into the PNM website for details. http://www.pnm.com/ .

Solar cell and panel companies constantly tweak and improve products to improve performance and hopefully increase sales.

Evergreen Solar has introduced a new 120-watt solar panel that is the same physical size as its 110-watt and 115-watt models. More power output from the same size panel means more power output from a given number of panels for a given area covered, or perhaps fewer panels needed for a required output.

How they accomplished the trick is a company secret. Visit Evergreen at http://www.evergreensolar.com/ .

WorldWater and Power seems to specialize in solar systems to power specific industrial applications, like pumping large amounts of water.

The company has signed a contract valued at more than $1 million to build a solar system to help power a production facility of Quality Embroidery, in Los Angeles, California. The rooftop and carport solar system will be installed by Quantum Energy, a new subsidiary of WorldWater and Power. Visit WorldWater at http://www.worldwater.com/ .