Advanced Energy Perspectives

Since it was founded in 1998, Google has revolutionized a lot of things: cartography, communication, how we retrieve information. This week, Google’s at it again, this time with advanced energy. Google announced Project Sunroof, what it calls a “treasure map” for rooftop solar. As the video announcing the project says, people already ask Google questions about solar. “There’s all this stuff to figure out,” the voiceover says, “like, how many panels do you need? Who’s going to install them? How much would you actually save? And how do you tell if your house even gets enough sun?” Between its search algorithms, calculating engines, and mapping technology, Google thinks it has the answers to these questions, and Project Sunroof is going to give them to you – if only in three locations, so far.

Solar panels atop the Orlando Science Center. Photo by Jeff Krause.

Solar becoming cost competitive in sunny Florida and Hawaii, and AEE members making deals worth millions. Just another week’s work for advanced energy.

Photo by Richard Caperton of Opower, who joined AEE's Malcolm Woolf and Arvin Ganesan in the audience for the announcement. 

The big news came early this week. On Monday, President Obama announced the final version of the Clean Power Plan, the Environmental Protection Agency’s new rule regulating carbon dioxide emissions from power plants under section 111(d) of the Clean Air Act. Here at AEE, our experts are poring over the nearly 1,500-page rule, making sure we can help our members make the most of the opportunity for advanced energy growth created by the new regulation. But this week, the media has been writing the first draft of Clean Power Plan history – what the plan is, and what the reaction to it has been thus far.

It’s a busy time for advanced energy! Between the imminent release of the final Clean Power Plan and New York’s vision for a 21^st century electricity system coming ever closer to reality, there’s no dearth of news or excitement. Let’s begin this week with major news from an AEE member, SolarCity, which just had a record-breaking quarter.

Image: Offshore wind turbines in Denmark.

This week, one AEE Member company dominated the news cycle with a major acquisition, HP joined the trend toward advanced energy-run data centers, and the American offshore wind industry is finally off the ground (and in the water).