News & Articles on Solar Energy

While I have primarily worked with wind energy, I have long been a proponent of renewable energy in the broadest sense. This includes solar energy. My work in Canada, especially Ontario, stressed inclusion of solar energy because it had been previously overlooked. At one time Ontario was one of the leading jurisdictions in North America developing solar photovoltaics due in part to the programs I and others pushed. The political winds changed and these policies were abandoned and with it Ontario’s progress toward a renewable energy future.

Brief Summary of World Solar PV Market Stats 2006

By

Paul Gipe

December 5, 2006 Total Market World PV 1,500-2,000 MW/yr $11-14 billion/yr Growth: 20-40%/yr Major Markets Germany: 600-750 MW/yr; $4-5 billion/yr …

Solar Office. Solar Powered Office Building In Schonau, Southern Germany.

Strom Rebels of Schönau: The Village That Built Their Own Solar Utility

By

Paul Gipe

Alt captured that rebellious spirit in his inspiring tale of the small town of Schönau and how residents built a solar utility in the deep recesses of Germany’s Schwartzwald–the Black Forest of legend. The story has all the elements of its own legend in the making. Small town Davids against electric utility Goliaths. Simple townsfolk with a bright, you could say “sunny”, outlook on the future. And a decades-long struggle to bring their dream to reality. There’s a movie script waiting to be written, or at least a documentary

Josef Pesch Freiburg Baden Wuertemburg Germany 11 21 2005 0066

Josef Pesch–Strom Rebel of Freiburg

By

Paul Gipe

Pesch was named a strom (electricity) rebel by Elektritzitätswerke Schönau (EWS) in 2005 and that was a good reason for …

Photon Magazine’s Model Solar Photovoltaics Feed-in Tariff Contract under Germany’s EEG

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Related Files photon_magazin_german_model_solar_pv_contract_einspeisevertrag_eng-doc

Envisaging feed-in tariffs for solar photovoltaic electricity: European lessons for Canada

By

Ian H. Rowlands

The purpose of this article is to reflect upon this European experience with feed-in tariffs, to stimulate discussions regarding what promise they might hold for the development of solar photovoltaic electricity in Canada.

Design as if People Matter: Aesthetic Guidelines for the Wind Industry

By

Paul Gipe

Note: The graphics to this article were lost when my original web site crashed in the fall of 2022. For …