Outside the white-walled town of Moura in the rolling plans of southern Portugal, more than 240,000 solar panels covering an area equivalent to 150 football pitches are slowly being manoeuvred into position in what will be the world's biggest photovoltaic power plant. A few kilometres away, at Alqueva, the Guadiana river has been dammed to create the largest reservoir in western Europe and one of 18 hydroelectric power projects under way in Portugal's river valleys. In the north-west Alto Minho region, one of the world's biggest wind farms is under construction.

SUNNYVALE, California: Call it an eco-parable: one Prius-driving couple takes pride in their eight redwoods, the first of them planted over a decade ago. Their electric-car-driving neighbors take pride in their rooftop solar panels, installed five years after the first trees were planted.

Dahagram-Angarpota enclave taken under solar power plant Our Correspondent . Lalmonirhat The inhabitants of Dahgram-Angarpota enclave have taken under solar power plant and they got electricity on Thursday in fulfillment of their long cherished demand. The chief engineer of Power Development Board of Rangpur region, Latifur Rahaman, switched on the solar power plant. Initially 100 families will get power supply from the solar project. Rangpur Power Development Board is implementing the project with the assistant of Dhaka Solar Power Project.

Emphasising the need to increase awareness on benefits of solar energy appliances as they provide recurring relief in electricity bills and recover their cost in a few years, Delhi Chief Minister Shei

US power major AES Corp and private equity firm Riverstone Holdings LLC, which have firmed up plans to jointly invest up to $1 billion in photovoltaic solar projects around the world over the next five years, are keenly eyeing the Indian market. AES and Riverstone have each committed up to $500 million for the joint venture, which will be called

Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit has said that energy efficiency and renewable technologies would have to go hand-in-hand to overcome present power shortage. All persons concerned would like Delhi to emerge as the greenest city not only due to greenery of trees but also due to paradigm shift to green energy, the Chief Minister said this while delivering an inaugural address in a two-day national seminar on "Solar Energy Development

First Solar In Project Talks With Utilities US: April 4, 2008 NEW YORK - First Solar Inc, maker of thin-film photovoltaic solar equipment, is in talks with US utilities to build renewable energy projects, Chairman and Chief Executive Michael Ahearn said Thursday. "We are having multiple discussions, and what we are trying to get to this year is some initial relationships and some pilot projects," Ahearn told Reuters in an interview.

Contrary to a favoured theory of climate sceptics, scientists claim to have found evidence that solar activity is not linked to global warming. In their study, the researchers from the Lancaster University in Britain used three different methods and found that changes in the Sun's intensity are in no way behind modern climate change.

The State Electric Company (STELCO) will change their electricity generators to hybrid systems and provide power to some of the islands using the new systems before the end of this year, the Company said on Wednesday. Director Ahmed Niyaz said that preliminary surveys on establishing a hybrid system (an engine that can convert diesel as well as renewable energy such as wind and solar power to electricity) had already been conducted in some islands.

New Solar CIGS Cells Creep Up On Silicon US: April 3, 2008 NEW YORK - Silicon cells have been the mainstay of the solar photovoltaic industry, but advances in competing technologies could give those manufacturers a toehold in the rapidly growing renewable power market. Last week, researchers at the US Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory said they had achieved a new efficiency record for one of those promising technologies, putting it within reach of the silicon cell mark.