Solar developers are breathing a sigh of relief this morning as they wake up to news that the House passed a big tax cut and stimulus bill last night, sending it on to the President for his signature, which is expected this afternoon. The bill, which extends Bush Era tax cuts, extends unemployment benefits, and cuts social security taxes, also extends a popular renewable energy grant program.
At the end of 2010, GM and Nissan introduced their long-awaited electric cars, the plug-in hybrid Chevrolet Volt and the all-electric Nissan Leaf. If these are successful, they could bring sweeping changes to the automobile industry, which has relied almost exclusively on petroleum to power its cars. But whether electric vehicles become popular depends on improving the technology, especially by developing better batteries.
New semiconductor-based devices for managing power on the grid could make the "smart grid" even smarter. They would allow electric vehicles to be charged fast and let utilities incorporate large amounts of solar and wind power without blackouts or power surges. These devices are being developed by a number of groups, including those that recently received funding from the new Advanced Research Projects Agency for Energy (ARPA-E) and the National Science Foundation.