STUFF

Hay. Friends and strangers out there going through NFL withdrawal. Help where you can. (I kid. Folks out there going through war, starvation or worse. Help them. And sorry for the downer.)

Moving on,

Virginia had more green building construction (office buildings, etc.)/capita last year than any other state. Only DC higher.

AZ regulators further slashed Tucson utility incentives for residential rooftop solar, eliminated incentives for commercial installs. Cut installs budget to ~$750K for '13. Residential rooftop incentives now 10 cents/w. Solar hot water to get 40 cents/Kwh. Overall Tucson El '13 budget for clean energy increase to $35.8M from '12's $30M. Reflects larger outlays for utility-scale projects coming online.

Pub Svc NM started build of 8Mw $18M PV solar plant in NM. Great numbers for solar. Comp's largest solar plant to date. Sept online. 1 of 4 new solar projects planned this year to add 20Mw for $45M. (1st solar build I've seen at just over $2/w.) PNM also to procure 10Mw of geothermal elgen from facility to open in '14. PNM too to provide subsidies for 11 more Mw of customer-owned solar installs.

Constellation completed 5.7Mw solar plant for Portland Gen El, OR.

Lab thin-film solar:
GE Research new record 18.3% efficient CdTe solar cell.
EMPA (Swiss) tops CIGS tech on polymer @ 20.4%.
Solar Frontier has 19.7% for its copper-indium-selenium cells. Can get to 20.3%.
Germany's Heliatek at 12% for their organic solar cells. Vacuum-deposited oligomers (already used for OLEDs.)
Module production translates to avg. 10-20% efficiency loss from lab cell on all techs.

Soitec CPV module San Diego manufacturing plant started up last month. "Concentrix" modules. 140Mw of 280Mw plant capacity operational. 300Mw of contracts. $150M invested in plant so far. CPV tech uses optics to concentrate sunlight on highly-efficient PV cells. Best in strongest sun. Triple-junction cells. Fresnel lenses. Captures, concentrates sunlight 500x before reaching cells (~30% efficient). Soitec has 6 factories around world.

EDF (FR) subsid in talks on $100M stake in 40Mw solar power project in Israel.

Iberdrola (SP) added $700M worth of wind power in US by end of '12. 3 farms. 189Mw, 28Mw, 48Mw. (More costly per watt than that PNM solar. If all the figures are correct.)

Duke completed 36Mw batt storage system at 153Mw TX wind farm. $22M DOE grant match from stimulus.

EDF (FR) Canada subsid turned on 2 150Mw wind farms in Quebec. EDF will have built 1Gw of wind power in the province by '16. REpower 2Mw turbines. Total investment ~$700M.

To keep in mind: if NG were oil, it'd be $25/bl at present prices. (But, NG loses ~25% of its energy in conversion to LNG.)

World should know by mid-year if Higgs Boson was found or not at CERN.

Onward, upward and happy trails, pards.