28 October '09
10:03 AM EDT
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Solar

The Passing of A Solar Pioneer

Let’s take a brief moment to mark the passing of 95-year-old solar power pioneer George Lof, who spent his long life showing people that alternative energy could work.

Lof’s own Denver home is thought to be the first solar powered house ever built and still generates half of its own heat, according to the Denver Post.

Lof, who received his doctorate from the Massachusetts Institute of Technoloy, built his first solar-powered house in 1945 using U.S. War Production Board grants, according to The Wall Street Journal.

He predicted that by 1955, 13 million homes would have solar systems. That obviously didn’t happen, but he felt optimistic about the future of green energy, telling Denver University’s magazine last month:

“We are now at a point where solar is going to move ahead,” Lof says. “Instead of having to make solar cheaper, what needed to happen was for other fuel sources to become more expensive.”  Read More »

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5 August '09
5:09 AM EDT
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Funding
Solar

Fotowatio’s U.S. Unit Raises $200M for U.S. Solar Projects

Fotowatio knows how to raise capital in good and bad times. Last year, the Spanish solar power developer raised some $350 million from joint owners GE Energy Financial Services and Spain’s Grupo Corporativo Landon to support its investments in Europe and the U.S. The money helped fund, among other things, its acquisition of MMA Renewable Ventures and its 400 megawatts of clean energy projects.

Fotowatio, as part of the acquisition, kept the original MMA Renewable Ventures team in place.  The company is putting its U.S. unit — renamed Renewable Ventures — to work,  announcing earlier this week the completion of the $200 million Solar Fund V. The investment vehicle will finance project construction across the U.S., which should generate some 35 megawatts of solar powered electricity within a year.

Solar Fund V will focus on the development and acquisition of commercial, public sector, and utility-scale solar projects from one to 10 megawatts in size. One of the fund’s first projects is a two megawatt PV project in Fort Collins, Colo., that, once operational, will sell its output to Colorado State University and the renewable energy credits to Xcel Energy. Read More »

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