Solar Installations Hit Record High

According to the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA), absorption in Photovoltaic systems has remained almost top in contempo years, with the aboriginal division of 2012 at the additional accomplished for installations ever.

Photovoltaic systems (PV), which catechumen sunlight anon to electricity, accept faced some circuitous ups and downs in the U.S. in commendations to financing, tariffs, and state-level demands. However, the basal band for PV currently is growth. A new SEIA address addendum that “the residential and non-residential markets in accumulated grew 35% quarter-over-quarter.” In addition, PV continues to be the better basic of solar bazaar advance in the U.S.

The address states: “A absolute 1.8 GW of account PV will acceptable be affiliated in 2012, added than bifold the 2011 total, but the all-inclusive majority of that accommodation will be completed in the additional bisected of the year.”

For the aboriginal division of 2012, PV installations hit 506 MW, which is a advance of 85% if compared to the aboriginal division of 2011. New Jersey becoming the appellation of better accompaniment market, accidental 174 MW of installations for Q1. California came next (with 148.4 MW), and Arizona after. As for all-embracing PV use throughout the country, the SEIA address says, “Cumulative operating PV accommodation in the U.S. now totals 4,427 MW.”

The residential bazaar for PV charcoal baby in allegory to the bartering and account markets; however, it has aswell apparent the a lot of stability. About the residential market, the address says, “As acclaimed in antecedent reports, the overarching trend in the residential bazaar is the about-face from host-owned systems to third-party buying through power-purchase agreements (PPA) or charter structures.” SolarCity and Real Goods Solar, both mentioned in the report, may be arch the way in this trend.

Prices for PV systems abide to be low, and accept even alone back the aboriginal division of 2011. For three categories of installment--residential, commercial, and utility--prices accept collapsed 7.3, 11.5, and 24.7 percent, respectively. Prices for apparatus of PV as able-bodied as polysilicon accept aswell gone down, and first-quarter prices for attenuated modules were 47% lower than what they were in 2011’s aboriginal quarter.

The address added addendum that U.S. installations of PV systems in 2012 will acceptable absolute 3.3 GW. According to the 29.9 GW admiration fabricated by GTM Research for installations globally, this would abode the U.S. at about 11% of all-around installations for 2012. This is ample advance in ablaze of the actuality that the U.S. contributed alone 7% in 2011, and 5% in 2010. If the U.S. does in actuality ability these numbers, it will accomplish the country the fourth-largest in the all-around PV market; it will aswell be one of alone a scattering of above markets that can apprehend such advance to continue.

What Life's Like in California's Farming Communities

A few feet away, her mother, Bertha Dias, scrubs potatoes with water she bought from a vending machine. She won’t use the tap water because it’s contaminated with nitrates.

Every day, Dias, 43, heads to the fields to pick lemons or oranges, lugging a ladder so she can reach the treetops. She often skips lunch to save money for the $17.50 she needs each week to fill jugs with vending-machine water.

Four years ago, the family learned that it had nitrates in its drinking water, which Sanchez drank as a little girl. She started speaking out about her town’s toxic water when she discovered that nitrates can cause “blue baby syndrome,” a potentially fatal blood disorder that cuts off an infant’s oxygen supply.

“Now it really hits me,” she said, “because now it’s my baby.”

Sanchez, 18, who graduated from high school last year, lives in East Orosi, a square parcel carved out of 160 acres of land in Tulare County surrounded by orchards in the shadow of the snow-capped Sierra Nevada. Fewer than 500 people, nearly all Latino, live in this long-neglected town with no sidewalks, street lights, parks or playgrounds. More than half live below the poverty level.

The struggle to find clean drinking water has become a way of life for the residents of East Orosi. But they’re not alone. Like a growing number of California's poor people, they’re paying for water that’s not fit to drink.

One in 10 Californians in two major agricultural regions pays high rates for well water that’s laced with nitrates, pesticides and other pollutants. Most are low-income Latinos; many speak only Spanish.

Public health researcher Carolina Balazs suspected that nitrate-tainted water was an environmental justice problem, so she examined the contamination along with income and ethnicity in small public water systems in eight counties of the San Joaquin Valley.

She found that nearly 5,200 people had drinking water that exceeded federal nitrate standards, and half were Latino. Another 449,000, more than 40 percent Latino, had medium levels that ranged from just under the limit to half the maximum allowed.

“It was in the small systems with highly Latino populations where the nitrate levels were the highest,” said Balazs, lead author of research at the University of California, Berkeley that was published in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives last September.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency considers the water systems in East Orosi, nearby Seville and seven other Tulare County towns “serious violators” of federal safe drinking water standards. In the past three years, these systems exceeded safety levels for coliform bacteria, nitrates, or arsenic at least nine times. East Orosi and Seville violated nitrate standards 12 times.

Nitrates are byproducts of nitrogen in synthetic fertilizers, animal manure, septic tanks and wastewater treatment plants. Farmers douse crops with nitrogen, an essential nutrient for plant growth, to boost yields.

California’s $37.5 billion farming industry has led the nation in food production for more than 50 years. The state has known for decades that nitrate contamination has been a cost of that productivity. But now, state officials know the primary sources of contamination, just how extensive it is and who’s shouldering the burden.

Distribute LED Horticultural Lighting Products in India

PDR Group will resell the LumiGrow ES330 system for greenhouses and indoor farms, the LumiBar LED strip light for shelf systems and the LumiBulb red and far-red LED light bulbs for supplementary light applications.

“This partnership will create a large number of new opportunities in untapped areas for LumiGrow in India,” said Neil Coppinger, vice president of sales, LumiGrow. He continued, “Carefully selecting high-quality partners such as PDR Group enables LumiGrow to provide lighting solutions with unprecedented power and energy efficiency to growers everywhere.”

"The greatest economic opportunity for growers is improving crop productivity," commented Sanjog Lunkad, director, PDR Group. "We’re pleased to add the LumiGrow solution to our grower offering because it delivers the productivity gains of conventional greenhouse lighting with half the energy use,” he added.

Growers in India are switching from open-field farming to controlled indoor environments to achieve greater crop yields that will meet the needs of a growing population, according to the Horticulture Training Centre. Agriculture in India has the potential for major productivity gains because crop yields in India are 30 percent to 60 percent of the best sustainable crop yields achieved in farms worldwide, according to research from Oklahoma State University.

The LumiGrow product line is independently proven to improve crop yields and reduce energy consumption and costs by half compared to conventional lighting. Growers also conserve strained water supplies because plants grown with comparatively cool LumiGrow LED lights show lower transpiration rates than plants grown either in open fields or with conventional greenhouse lighting.

LumiGrow, Inc., the leader in smart horticultural lighting, enables commercial growers and agribusinesses to reduce energy costs, achieve operational efficiencies and improve crop yield. LumiGrow offers a range of third-party proven solutions for use in greenhouses, controlled environment agriculture and scientific research chambers. LumiGrow solutions are eligible for energy efficiency subsidies from Pacific Gas & Electric, Puget Sound Energy and other utilities. The Company’s 1,000+ commercial and institutional installations include Dow AgroSciences, Duke University and the USDA.

New optic design

The optic design builds on technology developed originally by BetaLED called NanoOptic. Cree acquired the BetaLED brand of SSL when it bought Ruud Lighting last year, and is now announcing a technology that it calls NanoOptic Precision Delivery Grid. BetaLED had been a pioneer in TIR optics designed to reliably control SSL beam patterns.

BetaLED's original NanoOptic lenses fit over individual LEDs and have been used in a variety of products including the recently-introduced Cree Aeroblades fixture. The new design molds an array of TIR lenses into a single optic that covers five light sources arranged in an "X" pattern that's visible in the nearby photo.

The new design offers Cree considerable flexibility in delivering many different lumen packages. Luminaire designers can use one or two LEDs under each TIR. And designers can combine two modular LED and optic assemblies in a luminaire.

Ironically, Cree and BetaLED have both said previously that small LEDs offer luminaire designers superior ability to control the light. Indeed Ruud said, "The closer you get to a point source, the better you can control the light." Ruud added that the new design still uses what would be considered a point source, although Cree had to build larger TIR lenses. And Ruud said the aforementioned optical efficiency validates the design. Ruud concluded, "We have achieved better photometric performance than we achieved with NanoOptic in the LEDway products."

McNeil said he received an email last week from LGUMC member Pete Taylor, who travelled with the group that read, "The lights are on in Colonet."

The system lights a room for three hours every night and the charge on the battery lasts three nights, he said.

Ten kits were built and their cost is around $150 a piece, but McNeil thinks building them in volume in the future can reduce the price.

Part of the funds to build them came from LGUMC, a private donor and the Los Gatos Morning Rotary Club, McNeil said.

On April 22, during the 42nd anniversary of Earth Day, LGUMC will have a Lighting for Literacy booth and banner with a small display unit at the church's front lawn so the public can see what it does first-hand.

Taylor said the solar lighting system idea is the brainchild of retired IBM engineer Jess Salem, a Cupertino resident who attends LGUMC.

Taylor added the program is being tested so that hopefully it can be expanded to a larger segment of youth and volunteers in the country.

"Putting together circuit boards here is probably pretty boring, but when we got to Colonet and the youth installed them and saw they actually lit up the homes, they became energized and took ownership of the project," Taylor said.

Phase-Out Of 500 Million T12 Fluorescent Lighting Tubes By The Department Of Energy Starts

LUXADD introduces the Express T5 Retrofit Kit Series: Greener, more efficient fluorescent lighting saves up to 73% on energy costs.

Lighting is the single largest user of electricity in schools, hospitals, office and other commercial (retail and service) buildings.

Production of most T12 florescent lamps will be phased out, as mandated by the 2009 Department of Energy General Service Lamp legislation. Many of the standard fluorescent lights- an estimated 500 million T12 tubes – in millions of buildings will need to be replaced starting in July 2012. The Department of Energy (DOE) regulations will eliminate the most common T12 tubes. It is estimated that the replacement of 500 million T12 tubes would produce an annual saving of $10 Billion in electricity costs nationwide.

LUXADD is the only U.S. manufacturer of the new Express T5 Retrofit Kit Series to meet new Federal law mandating replacement of standard T12 (and elective replacement of T8 fluorescent light tubes to save up to 73% in lighting energy costs).

It's a Big Job.

Why Facilities Need to Update Their Lighting Now.

The millions of building and facilities that are using conventional T12 fluorescent systems will need to update their systems soon. Waiting until the phase–out deadline will result in a rush on replacement lighting products – and drive up the cost of the decreasing supply of remainingT12 components. Historically, nearly 30% of all the fluorescent lighting sold in the U.S. was T12 technology. That's going away.

Lighting is the single largest user of electricity in the U.S. New, patented technology from LUXADD allows for easy retrofitting of older, less efficient fluorescent lighting systems to T5, the leader in energy efficiency and lighting quality. The T5 saves up to 73% on lighting energy and reduces a company's carbon footprint up to 60% with just one simple "SNAP" – like changing a light bulb. It is "plug and play" technology anyone can do does not require maintenance personnel.


Rising energy costs directly impact all buildings in the U.S. Retail and service buildings in the U.S. use 149 billion kWh (or 508 trillion Btu) of site electricity (electricity consumed within the building) each year. This electricity is used for a variety of different purposes, the most being used for lighting (59%).

The majority of this electricity is used for lighting and office equipment (24%) (such as computers, printers, faxes and photocopiers). Both lighting and office equipment produce heat, requiring more air conditioning - another electricity end use - to cool the buildings.

LUXADD can instantly improve lighting energy efficiency up to 73% and also save on air conditioning electricity costs used to cool the building due to heat produced by old-technology fluorescent lighting. The overall energy savings with LUXADD are up to 80%. LUXADD offers the only linear fluorescent lighting conversion adapter specifically designed for the US and Canadian market. It is designed for all residential and commercial applications- and it's Made in the U.S.A.