A record-setting third quarter is in the books, with the U.S. installing 449 megawatts of PV, more than the U.S. installed in all of 2009. The total solar installed this year in the U.S. is already over one gigawatt, according to a recent report by SEIA® and GTM Research. The 2010 U.S. total was 887 megawatts.

And installations in the fourth quarter are predicted to be an even larger figure.

The U.S. solar energy industry continues to be one of the fastest-growing sectors of the American economy in 2011. In total, cumulative grid-connected solar electric installations have reached more than 3 gigawatts — enough to power nearly 600,000 U.S. homes.

The growth in the third quarter of 2011 is due to “utility-scale project completions, a strong residential market, effective policies and the plummeting price of solar panels” according to the report.

 
So, why the long face?

Well, in addition to the good news from the SEIA and GTM Research, the report cautions that “the U.S. solar market faces substantial market uncertainty with financing and political risks, including the looming expiration of Section 1603 Treasury Program.”

The Department of Treasury’s 1603 program, the tax grant program, is due to expire on Dec. 31 unless Congress extends it. In the absence of an extension of the program, the report predicts that “there will be a tax equity bottleneck for projects in 2012, leading to a possible slowdown in installations in late 2012 and into 2013.”

According to Rhone Resch, President and CEO of SEIA, “The 1603 program has done more to expand the use of renewable energy than any other policy in U.S. history.”

The report finds that “[w]ith the 1603 Treasury Program scheduled to expire at the end of this year, solar project developers will be scrambling to either complete, or safe harbor, projects in the fourth quarter of 2011 in order to qualify for the program’s grant. This will undoubtedly produce robust installation numbers through the end of 2011. However, the uncertainty surrounding the program’s extension threatens the market’s growth in 2012 and beyond.”

The other looming threat to the progress of solar installation in the U.S. is the trade petition against Chinese solar imports, which will have an uncertain impact on the market if duties are ultimately levied.

Go Green

We get quite a few magazines at our house. My husband subscribes to a couple of gaming magazines, and somehow every time we buy concert tickets we end up receiving issues of Rolling Stone in the mail. Couple that with other glossy mailings, like junk mail and catalogs, and we’ve got quite the collection of magazine paper.

Rather than tossing all of those trees immediately into the recycle bin, you can give them a brand new life.

1. Turn an old magazine into a recycled plant stand.

2. Make some recycled magazine boxes to store your knick knacks.

3. Turn them into recycled gift bows for birthday or holiday presents.

4. Fold the pages into origami.

5. Wrap small gifts in the pages.

6. Make recycled paper beads (video).

7. Whip up a bouquet of recycled magazine page flowers.

Image Credit: Creative Commons photo by theseanster93

Maintaining a healthy gut isn’t as easy as popping a magic pill. “If you’re going to use probiotics, then drink, smoke and eat badly, that’s not going to cut it,” says Georgianna Donadio, PhD, nutritionist and founder of the National Institute of Whole Health. “The entire system must be in sync; the flora is just the tip of the iceberg.”

To take a big-picture approach to your gut, consider these steps:

• Eat several small meals during the day instead of pigging out at dinner. “Cramming in all your food at the end of the day stresses the gut by giving it too much food at once,” says Leslie Bonci, a registered dietitian and director of the Sports Nutrition Center at the University of Pittsburgh. And don’t forget to drink plenty of water to keep the
food moving.

• Prioritize whole foods. That means stocking up on vegetables, fruits, nuts and legumes. If the food on your plate looks like food in the wild (e.g., grapes, not grape roll-ups), you’re off to a good start.

• Eat probiotic foods. Shoot for at least one daily serving of a food with probiotic or “live” cultures. Try yogurt, kefir (a fermented dairy drink), miso or tempeh. Look for the phrase “contains live cultures” or “active cultures” on the label.

• Bulk up on fiber. The more fiber you have in your diet, the more diversity you’ll have in your ecosystem. Aim for 25 to 38 grams of fiber a day, says Bonci. “Most people are still shy of their fiber intake.”

• Cut back on sugar. Refined sugars acidify the system and prompt the body to make more bile — and some types of bad bacteria feast on sugar and bile acids. Therefore, too much sugar may tip the bacterial balance toward the dark side. “With all the sugar we throw down these days, it’s no wonder our bacteria colonies are out of whack,” says Bonci.

Seven Ways to Tame Your Sweet Tooth

• Relax. In a 1999 study published in the international journal Gut, people in gastrointestinal clinics cited severe life stress as a precursor to their gastrointestinal problems. Although the connection isn’t clear, scientists do know that stress breeds inflammation and also upsets the parasympathetic nervous system, which controls the contractions of the intestine, thereby changing the speed at which food moves through you. Stress affects our biochemistry at many levels.

• Get seven to eight hours of sleep every night. Sleep not only regulates hormones in the gut that contribute to feelings of hunger and satiety, it also shores up the immune system. When the body is deprived of sleep, even for one night, the immune system suffers, says Bonci.

Like tending a vegetable patch, maintaining a balanced microflora environment requires daily attention. Need more good reasons to give your bacteria the respect they deserve? Consider this: “If a freeze, flood or nuclear explosion destroyed all the humans on Earth, bacteria would survive,” says Gregor Reid, PhD. “They are definitely going to have the last laugh.”

Related:

• 10 Benefits and Uses for Miso
• Eating Animalcules

A new study done by an engineering professor at Stanford University has found that the energy efficiency of computers doubles roughly every 18 months, and has done so since the very first general purpose computer, the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer (ENIAC) that was built in 1956.

With help from Intel and Microsoft, Professor Jonathan Koomey was able to gather information about computing devices from 1956 until now and with this new finding, Koomey is revising and improving Moore’s law — the observation that computer processing power doubles every 18 months.  Fortunately, the things that contribute to that power improvement (reducing component size, capacitance and communication time between them) also increase energy efficiency.

This finding has great implications for the future of computers and battery-powered devices.  As we constantly increase the performance power of computers and gadgets, we’ll be improving their energy efficiency as well — a much needed trend as we become more reliant on our portable devices.

Also, theoretically, we’re far from the limit of how much electricity we can save.  In 1985, physicists projected that we could improve computer energy efficiency by a factor of 100 billion and since then we’ve only hit a factor of about 40,000.

via MIT Tech Review

Austin Hay is still in high school, but he’s building his own house. It’s only 130 square feet, but it makes him a homeowner without a mortgage at just 16 years old.

Right now, it’s in his parents’ backyard, but he’s built it on wheels so he plans to take it to college and then wherever he goes after he graduates.

Moving out at 16

He’s been sleeping in his tiny home for a few months now and he’s already decided not to return to big (his parents’ home is 1800 square feet). “Living small means less bills, living big means more bills. I don’t want to pay big bills,” he explained from the tiny stoop of his new home.

Hay’s 130-square-foot home may make him the youngest member of the growing Small House Movement. Perhaps not coincidentally, Hay has spent his childhood at one of the movement’s epicenters (See Land of Tiny Home People).

From the land of the Tiny Home People

In his county (Sonoma), there are at least three tiny homebuilding companies (not to mention the independents), as well as the founder of the Tiny House Blog and the country’s biggest Tiny Home star Jay Shafer. Shafer, owns Tumbleweed Tiny House Company, has been something of a role model. Take a tour of Jay’s 96 square foot house here.

Before breaking ground, Hay attended one of Shafer’s monthly tiny open house tours and Shafer gave plans to build his home (it’s a Fencl design like the one Shafer lived in for years).

A $ 12,000 home

Hay expects to spend about $ 12,000 building his home (the used trailer cost him $ 2000) and he’s paying for it working two summer jobs (at a camp and at a park snack bar). He’s cut his costs in half (the home’s estimated DIY price is $ 23,000) Though this is a considerable discount from the home’s estimated price of $ 23,000 because Hay has scavenged everything from doors, windows and flooring to the kitchen sink (the hardwood floors were $ 25 at a salvage yard and so was the stainless steel sink).

Tiny construction waste

Like most in the Small House Movement, cost isn’t Hay’s only concern. He’s also aware the tiny homes consume less heat/AC/building materials and so leave a lighter environmental footprint. To make the point, he’s been collecting all of his building waste and after nearly a year of building, he only has two half-filled garbage cans filled with items he couldn’t recycle.

With a little help from Santa

In this video, Hay shows us his tiny home, his handiwork, the salvaged bits and where he hopes to put all his furniture and appliances (including the camping oven that was a gift from “Santa”).

More from ecomii:

• Scroll Through Some of the World’s Coolest Microhomes
• Can Diet Sodas Make You Fat?
• Meatless Monday: So Hot Right Now
• Food Fast Not Fast Food
• Best Grill Tips This Summer

The investment is going to BrightSource Energy, a company that develops and operates large-scale solar power plants, specifically to fund its Ivanpah project.

Ivanpah is a solar electric generating system that uses solar thermal technology and “an environmentally responsible design,” to deliver reliable, clean and low-cost power to Californians, according to the project’s website.

The plant will generate energy with a technology called power towers. Mirrors, called heliostats, are arranged in an array and aim the sun’s rays at a receiver atop a tower. The receiver generates steam; the steam causes a turbine to rotate; the rotation causes a generator to generate electricity. Because such large quantities of solar energy are being directed to such a small area, the power towers are very efficient.

The power tower at Ivanpah will be around 450 feet tall. The plant will use 173,000 heliostats, and each heliostat will have two mirrors, making Ivanpah the largest project of its kind.

Construction at Ivanpah should be completed in 2013. Here’s a video from the plant’s groundbreaking ceremony:

Google’s been on something of a clean energy investment kick over the past year or so. The company was granted the ability to buy and sell energy as a public utility last February, ostensibly to find better ways to power its own massive data centers.

A short time later, Google began making significant investments in green energy technologies. The company sealed a $38 million wind farm investment in May, bought 20 years’ worth of wind farm energy in July and provided a substantial investment for a huge offshore wind farm in October.

Rick Needham is Google’s Director of Green Business Operations. On the company blog, he writes, “We hope that investing in Ivanpah spurs continued development and deployment of this promising technology while encouraging other companies to make similar investments in renewable energy.”