"What I need for this project", I explained to my young son, "is an army of German robot pigs." His eyes went wide. "And I know just where to get them..."I have a project on my desk right now to look at avenues of disposal for sewage sludge ...

As I often do on a Saturday morning, I was up early reading through energy headlines. I happened across this story on eSolar:Bill Gross's Solar Breakthrough"We are producing the lowest cost solar electrons in the history of the world," Bill Gross is telling me. "Nobody's ...

A couple of interesting solar stories this morning, as well as a new blog covering solar power. First, the new solar-focused blog by Paul Symanski. Paul has experience in the solar industry, and many of his early entries are concerned with solar energy economics:Rate Crimes - Bringing ...

I am going to be offline for a few more days, enjoying some time with the family. In the interim, Tom Standing has sent some detailed replies to some of the comments following his posts Arizona Solar Power Project and Ambitious Solar Plans in France.------------------------------...

The following guest post was written by Tom Standing, a "semi-retired, part-time civil engineer for the City of San Francisco." In Part 1, Tom took a critical look at a 280 MW solar thermal plant in Arizona. Here in Part 2, Tom examines France's ambitious solar plans.---------------------...

The following guest post was written by Tom Standing, a "semi-retired, part-time civil engineer for the City of San Francisco." In Part 1, Tom takes on the calculations for a 280 MW solar thermal plant in Arizona that I looked at back in February. My conclusion from that essay ...

I apologize for being out of pocket lately, and that trend is going to continue at least through this week. I have a staff meeting all week, and then I fly back to Europe next Monday. So, my posting will be sporadic until then. I do appreciate everyone keeping the ...

Sorry for the lack of postings/comments in the past few days. I have been traveling, and just arrived back in the U.S. I have lots of things to catch up on (family time, among the most important) and I have to prepare my presentations for the ASPO conference (I ...

Executive SummaryIf you don't want to run through the calculations, here is the summary. I attempted a thought experiment in which I calculated whether it would be feasible to use solar power to generate enough energy to offset all U.S. gasoline consumption. My conclusion is that it will ...

Fortune has a very interesting interview with Google co-founder Larry Page. He hits on a lot of topics that are frequently discussed here, and some that aren't often discussed, but that I have spent a lot of time thinking about (e.g., geothermal). Here is a link to the interview:...