World’s Largest PV Solar Park
German officials have opened a 78-megawatt portion of what they say is now the world’s largest solar PV park. Saferay’s 78-MW plant on former open-pit mining areas near Senftenberg in eastern Germany was completed in three months. The plant includes 330,000 crystalline solar modules and 62 central inverter stations. An 18-MW development was completed by Phoenix Solar in 2010 and a 70-MW project commissioned in August was built parallel to the Saferay installation and includes common infrastructure. In all, the solar park has a capacity of 166 MW.
Huge profit for Big Oil
Exxon Mobil reported quarterly earnings of $10.3 billion on Thursday, a surge of 41% from a year earlier. Why? Higher prices for oil and natural gas. Profit at the oil company soared compared to the same period a year ago, when it was $7.4 billion. Per-share income climbed to $2.13 per share from $1.44 in the prior year. And revenue rose to $125.3 billion from $95.3 billion in the year-ago quarter, the company said. Exxon’s not the only one hitting it big: BP too has doubled its earnings from the same quarter last year, pulling in $4.9 billion in Q3. And according to CNN, “Chevron is scheduled to report third-quarter earnings on Friday. The company is expected to announce revenues of nearly $70 billion, an increase of 40% from a year ago, and net income of $6.7 billion.”
Irene one of the 10 costliest catastrophes in the US history
Hurricane Irene will most likely prove to be one of the 10 costliest catastrophes in the US history, and analysts said that much of the damage might not be covered by insurance because it was caused not by winds but by flooding, which is excluded from many standard policies. Industry estimates put the cost of the storm at $7 billion to $10 billion, largely because the hurricane pummeled an unusually wide area of the East Coast. Beyond deadly flooding that caused havoc in upstate New York and Vermont, the hurricane flooded cotton and tobacco crops in North Carolina, temporarily halted shellfish harvesting in Chesapeake Bay, sapped power and kept commuters from their jobs in the New York metropolitan area and pushed tourists off Atlantic beaches in the peak of summer.