I’ve seen similar claims in the news before, but I thought I’d post this one.  According to Live Science, researchers here at UT Austin have developed a spray on PV system using nanoparticle CIGS.  They’re still working on the details – they currently only get 1% efficiency, but if they can work out the details this could be an interesting product.

via Inhabitat

The Obama Administration will lend Tesla Motors $465 million to build an electric sedan and the battery packs needed to propel it. It’s one of three loans totaling almost $8 billion that the Department of Energy awarded today to spur the development of fuel-efficient vehicles.

Energy Secretary Steven Chu announced that the Department of Energy is also lending $5.9 billion to Ford to retool factories in five states. Nissan will receive $1.6 billion to refurbish a factory in Tennessee to produce electric cars. The loans are the first awarded under the $25 billion Advanced Technology Vehicle Manufacturing Program to help automakers offset the cost of retooling to build eco-friendlier cars that are at least 25 percent more fuel-efficient than 2005 models.

via Wired

Inhabitat reports on a new stadium in Taiwan designed by Toyo Ito that provides all it’s power via an enormous PV array built into the roof:

I’ve been collecting information for a post on this topic, but it appears our new mayor, Brewter McCracken just passed some legislation to start tinkering with the electrical grid. The details are a little sketchy (this seems more like a publicity stunt than an announcement of actual plans), the project seems to involve using the new meters that Austin Electric’s been installing to provide customers with realtime monitoring, facilitate distributed energy generation, and possibly introduce demand-based pricing for electricity. Hopefully Google will get on board and provide the data visualization to users.