Take Back Your Power 2017 (Official) - The smart meter documentary

 This award-winning film documents the real story on smart meters.

For more info, look here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ZTiT9ZSg3Q&t=9s

Solar Power 2011 - Solar PV Breaks Records in 2010

By J. Matthew Roney 

Earth Policy Release

Eco-Economy Indicator

October 27, 2011

http://www.earth-policy.org/indicators/C47/solar_power_2011

Solar photovoltaic (PV) companies manufactured a record 24,000 megawatts of PV cells worldwide in 2010, more than doubling their 2009 output. Annual PV production has grown nearly 100-fold since 2000, when just 277 megawatts of cells were made. Newly installed PV also set a record in 2010, as 16,600 megawatts were installed in more than 100 countries. This brought the total worldwide capacity of solar PV to nearly 40,000 megawatts—enough to power 14 million European homes.

Made of semiconductor materials, PV cells convert solar radiation directly into electricity. Rectangular panels consisting of numerous PV cells can be linked into arrays of various sizes and power output capabilities—from rooftop systems measured in kilowatts to ground-mounted arrays of hundreds or even thousands of megawatts. (One megawatt equals 1,000 kilowatts.) 

There are two main types of PV—traditional crystalline silicon and newer thin-film PV. In 2010, crystalline silicon production was more than double the output of 2009, accounting for over 80 percent of all PV produced. While thin-film production did not keep pace, it still grew by more than 60 percent. First Solar, a U.S. firm, maintained its leadership role in thin-film production, accounting for over 40 percent of world output, most of it produced in Malaysia. 

Data provided to Earth Policy Institute by GTM Research show that Chinese manufacturers again dominated the global industry in 2010, with close to 11,000 megawatts of PV cell production. (See data at www.earth-policy.org.) This was the seventh consecutive year in which China at least doubled its PV output. Taiwan was a distant second with 3,600 megawatts produced, followed by Japan with 2,200 megawatts, Germany with 2,000 megawatts, and the United States with 1,100. The top five countries thus accounted for 82 percent of total world PV production. 

While Germany ranks fourth in solar cell manufacturing, it towers above all other countries in terms of actual electricity generation from solar panels. Germany has widened its lead in this category each year since overtaking Japan in 2004 and, after adding 7,400 megawatts in 2010, now boasts 17,200 megawatts of installed PV. This is more than 40 percent of global capacity and over four times the 3,800 megawatts in Spain, the number two country. PV in Germany now generates enough electricity to meet the power demand of some 3.4 million German homes.

Japan installed close to 1,000 megawatts of new PV capacity in 2010. It is the third-ranked country in installed PV, with a total of 3,600 megawatts. As solar adoption accelerates in Japan, its national target of 28,000 megawatts by 2020 may be easily surpassed, especially as the country weighs energy alternatives following the March 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster. 

By nearly doubling its total PV power capacity in 2010, Italy vaulted past the United States to claim the fourth position in the world solar rankings, with 3,500 megawatts. With an expected 8,000 megawatts of new PV in 2011, likely overtaking Germany in new installations, Italy will have already exceeded its official 2020 goal of 8,000 megawatts. Enel, Italy's leading utility, sees the country reaching 30,000 megawatts by 2020—enough to satisfy half of its current residential electricity needs. 

PV capacity in the United States also saw strong growth in 2010, increasing by more than 50 percent to reach 2,500 total megawatts. California, which now has more than 1,000 megawatts connected to the grid, again led all states in new PV installations. But a number of other states, including New Jersey, Nevada, and Arizona, are ramping up their solar capacity as well, driven by programs and incentives at the state and federal levels. 

Until very recently, China's status as PV manufacturing powerhouse had not translated into much solar generation at home, as panels were seen as too expensive in the domestic market. While the vast majority of Chinese-made PV is sent abroad, a growing government commitment to increasing solar power as part of the energy mix is now catalyzing substantial PV capacity gains. Total installed PV in China grew 140 percent to nearly 900 megawatts in 2010. This was the first full year for the national Golden Sun program, which covers half the investment and grid connection costs of a solar project. It is expected to result in at least 1,000 megawatts of new installations each year after 2012. 

Furthermore, in August 2011 China's main economic planning agency announced it was implementing a national PV feed-in tariff. This policy tool, now used by more than 60 countries, is behind most of the PV already installed worldwide. A feed-in tariff typically guarantees generators of renewable electricity a long-term purchase price for each kilowatt-hour they produce and "feed into" the grid, providing a powerful incentive for installing such systems. Together the Golden Sun program and the new feed-in tariff are likely to push China's PV capacity to at least double again in 2011—and may help explain why the country's solar power targets for 2015 and 2020 have reportedly risen to 10,000 and 50,000 megawatts, respectively. 

Although the cost of PV has fallen substantially over the decades, solar-generated electricity is not yet widely price-competitive with electricity generated by heavily subsidized fossil fuels. If the full cost of burning fossil fuels, including health effects and the costs of climate change, were incorporated into the price of electricity, PV would quickly be revealed as one of the least expensive sources of power. 

As system costs continue to drop, the PV landscape is evolving to include not only traditional small-scale PV installations but also utility-scale parks of tens, hundreds, or even thousands of megawatts. An 80-megawatt PV park completed in Canada in 2010 was the world's largest until September 2011, when a newly-expanded PV complex of close to 150 megawatts in northeastern Germany claimed the title. As of late 2011, the United States had 48 PV projects of 100 megawatts or more in the pipeline, including a 5,000-megawatt park to be sited on degraded farmland in California's San Joaquin Valley. At peak generation, this solar facility's electricity output would rival that of five large nuclear power plants. 

Multi-megawatt projects are also under development in India as part of the National Solar Mission that was announced in late 2009. Though the country had just 100 megawatts of installed PV capacity at the end of 2010, the goal is for some 22,000 megawatts of solar power—half PV and half concentrating solar power—to be installed by 2022. The western state of Gujarat alone plans to have 3,000 megawatts installed by 2015. 

Part of the National Solar Mission's PV expansion is destined for rural areas where millions lack access to electricity. As is the case in many other developing countries, there is vast potential in India for PV to provide power in places without an electric grid. Installing small solar systems on homes is often much less expensive than building a central power plant, with the added benefit of greatly reducing indoor air pollution from kerosene lamps. 

Industry analysts forecast that some 21,000 megawatts of PV will be installed globally in 2011. This would be a marked slowdown from the doubling of the market in 2010, but the pool of countries with rising demand for PV still continues to grow. New markets such as Slovakia and the United Kingdom are among the 20 countries expected to add 100 megawatts or more in 2011, up from 13 countries in 2010. 

As PV costs drop, as concerns about climate change grow, and as countries look to replace finite fossil fuels with energy sources that can never run out, the growth in solar power should continue. The potential is practically without limit: a 2011 article published in Energy Policy shows that solar PV deployed in suitable locations could generate 30 times the electricity currently produced worldwide.

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Data and additional resources available online at www.earth-policy.org.

Feel free to pass this information along to friends, family members, and colleagues!

Saying good-bye to nuclear (Germany)

By Spiegel Online International

Merkel takes first steps toward a future of renewables

When Angela Merkel declared a moratorium on nuclear energy after the recent disaster in Japan, critics accused her of playing politics. Now she appears to be serious. A national summit in Berlin has laid out a six-point plan to move Germany away from nuclear power.

The pledge came quickly. Just days after the earthquake and tsunami decimated Japan's northeastern coast on March 11 -- and triggered the ongoing nuclear catastrophe at the Fukushima power plant -- German Chancellor Angela Merkel promised to bring an end to nuclear power in Germany and accelerate the switch to renewables. Now, Merkel is taking initial steps toward that goal.

On Friday, Merkel met with governors of Germany's 16 states and two other cabinet ministers in Berlin. "I think we all want to move away from nuclear energy as quickly as possible and switch to renewables," she told the summit. She laid out a six-point plan and said one of the country's most important efforts over the next decade would be heavy investment in more efficient energy grids.

Germany currently relies on nuclear plants to cover 23 percent of its energy demand. Merkel's predecessor, Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, passed a law in 2002 to shutter these plants gradually, with the country to be nuclear free by 2022. But Merkel -- controversially -- reversed this phase-out last autumn.

Now, she is scrambling to reverse the reversal. She would like to see all nuclear plants in Germany shut down within 10 years. "Nuclear energy has no future in Germany," David McAllister, Merkel's party ally and the governor of the state of Lower Saxony, told the Süddeutsche Zeitung. "It's clear we need to implement the exit if we don't want to lose people's confidence."

Shares in leading energy firms like E.ON and RWE fell in advance of the meeting, against the trend of a rising stock market.

'True Energy Consensus'

Seven of Germany's oldest power plants were already taken off line last month, the result of a moratorium announced by Merkel in the wake of the growing problems at Fukushima. An eighth -- the problematic newer facility at Krümmel -- was also shut down. The capacity lost by those shutdowns is not to be replaced by increased activity at other plants.

Germany's opposition Social Democrats, led by Sigmar Gabriel, told SPIEGEL ONLINE on Friday that a true change in national policy would require "the participation of the parliament, all the states, the environmental movement, the business community, consumers, and the labor unions." What was important, he said -- and what Merkel is well aware of lacking -- was a "true energy consensus."

Economy Minister Rainer Brüderle told German radio on Friday that the new phase-out plan would cost consumers and taxpayers between €1 billion and €2 billion per year. Criticisms that it might actually cost up to €3 billion a year were dismissed by Brüderle as being "speculative."

Merkel's broad six-point plan, presented at the meeting on Friday, includes:

1. Expanding renewable energy. Investing in more wind, solar, and biomass energies will try to raise the renewable-energy share of Germany's total energy use -- from a baseline of 17 percent in 2010.
2. Expanding grids and storage. Building a much larger storage and delivery network for electricity -- particularly wind energy, which can be generated in the north but must be carried to the south -- will be a main focus.
3. Efficiency. The government hopes improve the heating efficiency of German buildings -- and reduce consumption -- by 20 percent over the next decade.
4. "Flexible power." The government wants to build more "flexible" power plants that can pick up slack from wind or solar energy when the weather fails to generate enough electricity during peak demand. The obvious source of "flexible power" for now, besides nuclear energy, is natural gas.
5. Research and development. The government will increase government support for research into better energy storage and more efficient grids to a total of €500 million between now and 2020.
6. Citizen involvement. The government wants to involve its sometimes-recalcitrant citizenry due to ongoing resistance against wind generators and the installation of an efficient new power line grid in some regions.

"Of course there will still be disagreements," Merkel told her state governors Friday. But by the end of the meeting she promised that her administration would bring a package of new firm proposals to parliament by the middle of June.

msm, with wires and reporting by Philipp Wittrock

A new world wants to be born

Martin Almada, recipient of the Alternative Nobel Prize from Paraguay, in Tamera, Portugal

By Tamera

"There is an old system that is not ready to die, and there is a new system that can not be born. Tamera can help the old system to finally end and a new one to be born," said Martin Almada, 74, the Paraguayan activist for solar energy and human rights and recipient of the Right Livelihood Award, during his trip to Europe at the peace research project Tamera at the end of January. The attorney knows from experience how quickly one can become a public enemy. As a socially and culturally engaged school director, he was tortured by the military dictatorship of his country, convicted as an "intellectual terrorist" and imprisoned. 

Amnesty International was able to bring about his release in 1974. His wife, however, died under the psychological terror of the dictatorship. In 15 years of exile, he worked incessantly for justice and the end of the human rights violations in South America. He revealed that his fate was part of a well-organized, secret and illegal cooperation of the military dictatorships of Latin America: the "Operation Condor." 

After the fall of the Stroessner dictatorship in Paraguay 1989, he returned, and in 1992, he discovered the "archives of terror" in a police station. These archives consisted of three tons of files, which meticulously listed the abuses of three decades of dictatorship. Among them was evidence of Operation Condor: Since 1974, the military of six Latin American countries, under the leadership of the Chilean military dictator Augusto Pinochet and the U.S. Nobel Peace Prize winner Henry Kissinger, shared the data of subversive elements and systematically eliminated the leftists and intellectuals of their countries. Through Operation Condor, between 1975 and 1985, 100,000 doctors, teachers, union leaders and social workers had been killed, tortured and made to disappear. 

Martin Almada warns: "The Condor still flies. Condor II was founded in 1997 at the Conference of American Armies. It now includes 20 countries. The central person is a commander of the Peruvian armed forces." 

All liberal governments in South America are intimidated by the military cooperation, said Almada. "The current Paraguayan President Fernando Lugo fears he will suffer the same fate as the Honduran President Manuel Zelaya who was deposed by the military." 

This is the reason why the dictator's son was able to return to Paraguay in January 2011 uncharged. "I blame Gustavo Stroessner Mora for human rights violations as a colonel of the Air Force and for having been the banker of Operation Condor," says Almada. All charges against Stroessner were dropped in 2009. Impunity is a system in many Latin American countries to institutionalize paramilitary and corporational violence. The Stroessner family had remained one of the richest families in the country. 

Martin Almada also learns how the world's dominating powers protect themselves against resistance and alternatives from his second activity as a promotor for solar energy. "I discovered that the poverty of my country is not ending and that settlements of Indians and peasants will never be independent, unless they produce their own energy." As a model project he founded, with 200 Indian families, a first solar village in Asuncion, which produces no emissions and uses no fossil energy, and a paper mill that functions solely with solar energy. His plan is to turn the former dictator's palace into a popular University of Human Rights and solar energy, with the help of his foundation Fundación Celestina Pérez de Almada. 

During his visit to Europe, he also visited the SolarVillage of Tamera in Portugal. "Here, a dream has become reality," he said in the 1995 founded Peace Research Centre. He was especially impressed by the revolutionary research work on water autonomy and community. 

"Self-sufficiency and solidarity - central themes of Tamera - are the two central issues of our time. To work seriously on solutions is an act against the interests of the world banks. This is why projects like Tamera need international protection."

Future energy sources

by the Glob on someday

Passive House

In order to reduce our energy needs, every building should be constructed to be as energy efficient as possible, as 40% of all energy consumed is from existing buildings. One way to achieve this is to make all buildings conform to the Passive House or similar standard. Passive houses are recommended because buildings built to this standard are extremely energy efficient and comfortable to be in at the same time. It is not only new buildings that can be passive houses, existing buildings can also be retrofitted to this standard. Just doing this alone will tremendously reduce the energy requirements for the building.

Spray on films for walls and windows and solar roof tiles

These energy efficient buildings can and should also have their own solar energy, either as solar panels which are expensive, or better still (when available) using spray-on solar film for walls and windows and installing solar roof tiles which I would personally recommend. Such a building would at the very least be zero-energy (or minimal energy), and could even be a net exporter to the electricity-grid, especially if other energy sources are also added.  We can also have rainwater collection systems added not only to potentially generate more electricity (especially using nanotechnology), but also to provide water at the same time for gardening, washing machine, car washes, WCs, and (with a suitable filtration system) even for drinking water and showering. 

Solar power arrays and solar farms

The Solúcar PS10 solar power tower, which is in Sanlúcar la Mayor, a small town 15 km west of Sevilla in Andalusia, Spain, is the world's first solar power plant is operational since 2007.  Construction of the nearby Solúcar PS20, the second generation solar plant began in 2006.   Both the PS10 and PS20 are estimated to generate enough energy to power the equivalent of the city of Sevilla, and are both scheduled to be complete in 2013.  

Wind farms on and off shore
Whitelee Windfarm is Europe's largest windfarm and is located on Eaglesham Moor just 20 minutes away from central Glasgow. The windfarm has 140 turbines which can generate 322MW of electricity, enough to power 180,000 homes. 

Geothermal energy

The obvious place, and where traditionally where the first geothermal power plants were constructed, is to build close to the surface where tectonic activity happens, typically geysers, or near volcanoes. Binary cycle power plants is one modern type of geothermal plant, first introduced in the USSR in the 1960s. A more recent development is in Enhanced Geothermal Systems (EGS) which do not require convective hydrothermal resources, and which involve deep drilling, injecting high pressure water, then extracting the resulting heat from the steam. Depths for the EGS wells can be 3-5 km deep.

Tidal power
Since the Earth's tides are dependent on Earth's rotation, as well as the gravitational attraction of the Sun and the Moon, this source of energy is limitless. SeaGen, the world's first commercial tidal power generator is already in use in Strangford Lough, Northern Ireland.

Nuclear fusion

This is an energy source for the future, perhaps the late 21st Century or the 22nd Century onwards. Nuclear fusion works by fusing two or more atomic nuclei to form a single heavier atomic nucleus, currently known to operate at very high temperatures in the order of 1 million-100 million °C, and this releases vast amounts of energy. Nuclear fusion happens in the core of stars.

The International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) in France, theWendelstein 7-X in Germany, and the Large Helical Device in Japan, are demonstration proof-of-concept fusion reactors, whose development is in progress. Actual power generation for homes would be expected in the late 21st Century or the 22nd Century. Fusion Energy can also be used to propel spacecraft in the long term future (or could even be used just for spacecraft engines, should renewable energy meet all our energy needs on Earth).

You can read the full article here.

Related article:
Germany's solar revolution

Germany' new industry - the solar power revolution

Hemann Scheer (1944-2010) was interviewed about how Germany managed to create a new industry based on alternative energy, why other governments are not capable or willing to get rid of their oil dependence, and about public pressure to go green.  This was one of his last interviews.