In fact, eight of the 10 largest working solar power plants finished construction in 2012.
About half of those shipments are destined for commercial rooftops while the other half will be deployed in ground-mounted solar power plants.
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BrightSource was founded in 2004 by American-Israeli pioneer Arnold Goldman, whose Luz International built nine solar thermal power plants in the Mojave Desert in the 1980s and 1990s.
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In contrast to most power plants, customers welcome solar in their own backyards.
One of the first concrete steps that Desertec announced was a plan to build three solar power plants in Morocco.
In a bid to help the struggling solar companies, the grid operator unveiled a number of measures last week to ease pressures facing solar project operators in connecting power plants to the electric grid.
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The solar power plant is expected to create approximately 350 jobs during construction, will power about 100, 000 homes and will be one of the largest photovoltaic solar power plants in the world, when complete.
In California the building of desert based solar power plants has caused outbreaks of valley fever among workers, infected by spores that have emerged from the disturbed soil.
Companies that stand to benefit from tougher curbs on emissions from coal-fired power plants, including utilities that have invested heavily in wind, solar power and nuclear, are pushing the White House not to weaken the rules.
U.S. firms, which provide 60% of the solar cells and panels used in India's power plants, are already unhappy with the local content requirements.
Official figures indicate that 25% of the power generating capacity of new solar plants in 2011 went unused because the plants could not maintain a connection with the electric grid.
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First Solar is building three solar power plants and working on permits for a fourth one in the state.
The cost of producing solar electricity by large solar power plants plummeted from 31 cents per kilowatt-hour in 2009 to 14 cents per kilowatt-hour in 2012.
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The need to engineer energy storage equipment that could work well with solar or wind power plants has prompted many private and public investments in battery and other storage technologies.
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Mark Ruffalo is throwing his celebrity behind legislation in New York that would lower the cap on emissions (mostly from coal-fired power plants) and help provide hundreds of millions of dollars in incentives for solar energy.
Under the new plan, 750 megawatts of new solar power plants will be built within the next 18 months, most likely in areas that aren't connected to the grid or in places that have grid connections but inadequate power supplies, Mr. Kapoor said.
It is developing giant off-shore wind turbines, biomass power plants (including projects in Florida and Washington with Duke Energy), and, with its Ausra acquisition, solar thermal power plants.
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The rise of solar power in Germany is directly related to the country's phase-out of nuclear power plants -- however in Japan, the issue of nuclear power is back in the news.
Apart from this, Zafar is also in negotiations with a couple of companies that develop water filtration plants, those that can be powered by solar power.
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The funding is part of an initiative called SunShot, which was launched in early 2011 to make solar electricity cheap to produce and therefore competitive against energy from coal or natural gas power plants.
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