Nearly 6, 000 years ago, the Egyptians were the first to follow the solar year.
The film's name refers to the end of the Persian solar year, which Iranians celebrate, in an echo of their Zoroastrian past, by setting off fire crackers.
Until then, the Catholic Church branded as heretics scientific investigators who, like the 13th-century English friar Roger Bacon, calculated that the current calendar year was over-running the solar year by a whole day every 125 years.
All told, of the 561 MW of solar added last year by the top 10 utilities (776 MW of solar capacity was added altogether in 2010), 140 MW are actually owned by utilities, marking an increase of more than 300% in utility-owned solar over the previous year.
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The northern lights have been particularly spectacular in 2013 as the sun is expected to reach the peak of its 11-year solar cycle later this year.
Ruffalo, an Academy Award-nominated actor, made the switch to solar last year on his property in New York's Catskill Mountains, also near gas reserves.
For example, we actually backed a solar company last year, Black Swan Solar.
Despite fewer householders installing solar panels in the past year, more solar developments have been given the go-ahead by local authorities in Carmarthenshire and Pembrokeshire.
When countries like Italy opted to cancel those solar subsidy programs last year to save money, China solar stocks took it on the chin.
Abound Solar expects to sell about 30 megawatts worth of solar panels this year.
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The German factory has the capacity to produce 500 megawatts of solar panels per year.
When fully operational, these plants will produce millions of state-of-the-art solar panels each year.
The company noted that the facility has the capacity to product 1, 100 MW of solar cells per year.
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Nanosolar now has the ability to make 115 megawatts of solar panels per year, a company spokeswoman said.
There is a total solar eclipse this year on 23 November but it will only be visible from Antarctica.
That's happening shortly: Rijks estimates that the women in Touloum will be cooking with solar within a year and a half.
At that speed one factory could produce a gigawatt of solar modules per year, ten times as much as the U.S. is now installing.
The sun is currently in an active phase of its 11-year solar cycle, and it should continue to fire off big storms for a while yet.
Fueled partly by billions in government incentives, the industry is creating millions of solar panels each year and, in the process, millions of pounds of polluted sludge and contaminated water.
But last year solar cell manufacturers bought more silicon wafers than chipmakers--and solar's demand for wafers is growing three times as fast as demand from the rest of the electronics industry.
Faced with a potentially toxic mix of crippling public spending and decreasing oil and gas production, Algeria is looking for ways to expand their energy sector into new directions, including a substantial 20 year solar plan.
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The data, from NASA's TIMED mission, show that Earth's thermosphere (the layer above 62 miles or 100 km above the Earth's surface) "responds quite dramatically to the effects of the 11-year solar cycle, " Stan Solomon of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo.
Non-GAAP Solar Energy segment revenue declined year-over-year and sequentially due to lower solar project sales.
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Tellingly, about two-thirds of bids for solar energy contracts last year (by electricity generated) were for photovoltaic projects and only a third were for solar thermal power plants, which deploy vast arrays of mirrors to heat liquids and produce steam to drive an electricity-generating turbine.
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The solar explosion is only a year away and without question the major Chinese solar players will survive and thrive.
Intel said Monday it will spin off a new venture, dubbed SpectraWatt, that will build a factory in Oregon in the second half of this year and begin sending solar modules to customers by the middle of next year.
He noted that the new solar capacity the country added last year accounted for 11% of all new solar installations worldwide, a marked jump from the 5-7% it historically occupied.
He figures the new tax credits could quintuple his solar business in a year.
Emerging markets such as the Japan, China and India should see a big jump in solar panel installations this year.
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