Howell Mayhew Engineering

10/12/2025

This is a great concept -- a motorised trolley system that rolls over the PV modules in order to permit any maintenance. I wonder how this could be applied to agPV systems.

https://www.pv-magazine.com/2025/12/10/ciel-terre-unveils-new-floating-solar-solution/?

The new floating PV structure removes traditional maintenance walkways between module rows to enable more solar modules to be installed per hectare. Ciel & Terre has also developed a motorized trolley system capable of rolling over the structure.

23/12/2022

I like this -- solar taxes as a revenue source for municipalities.

// The burst of solar activity has been welcome financially for Vulcan County. In recent years, some fossil fuel companies have walked away from properties, leaving outstanding tax bills unpaid, resulting in the county cutting its budget by 30 per cent, said the county's reeve, Jason Schneider.

According to Schneider, tax from renewable energy projects makes up 45 per cent of the county's revenue: about 25 per cent of which is solar and 20 per cent wind.

"It subsidizes everything," he said. "It's paying for libraries, it's paying for roads, it's paying for bridges." //

https://www.cbc.ca/news/science/what-on-earth-solar-power-alberta-1.6695287?

In this week's issue of our environment newsletter, we look at what Alberta is doing right in building momentum for solar power, and take stock of the biggest weather stories of the year.

16/12/2022

Are you tired of electricity bills that make no sense to you? Fixed charges. "access fees". "rate riders...???" No-one that helps you understand them.

Solar electricity is remote fusion energy delivered directly to YOU -- safe, simple, reliable, affordable, democratic, right now -- with NO utility middle man.

With the right design, you too can have an electricity bill that is a net annual credit. Ask me how. Let's get started.

22/08/2022

Wow, what an amazing engineering career this would be...

-- being part of a team on the forefront of supporting Canada's widespread adoption of EVs, solar PV and the decarbonisation electrification-of-everything energy transformation with the City of Edmonton's very-own electricity utility company.

https://www.epcor.com/about/careers/Pages/job-listing.aspx?jobId=ojNakfwk&fbclid=IwAR27mA2oQdfLtzQqK7MUwlSC-9aK1EsgWhOy2s77QfSCGhyA_c4T8haQHNw

17/08/2022

Alberta -- Canada's solar powerhouse.

Every 40 days, Alberta's solar resource is able to provide all of Alberta with all its annual electricity, heat, and motive energy.

01/08/2022

If you have a solar PV system on your house, business or farm, what does using solar electricity mean to you?

For me, I look forward to receiving my electricity bill and seeing how low it is.

15/07/2022

Fascinating thoughts... What do you think about this? Of course trees provide many other very very valuable services to society in addition to their GHG emission reductions, and I would want to be care-full in arbitrarily cutting down trees for to make way for solar PV arrays.

For central Alberta, with a PV array yield of up to 1200 hours per year and a provincial GHG emission rate of 0.57 kg/kWh, then a single 400 W solar PV module reduces our provincial electricity GHG emissions by ~270 kg per year (but only as part of a complete operating PV system and not by itself), which would (it seem) equal the annual GHG emission reduction capacity of 12 mature trees !! hmmmm... I never thought of it like this !!

Using broad average values of 48.5 pounds of carbon sequestration per year for a mature tree, versus 0.85 pounds of emissions offset per kilowatt-hour of solar electricity, it’s clear that so…

13/04/2022

On average over each of the last four years, Alberta's:

----- installed utility-scale solar capacity has grown 178%,

----- installed micro-generation solar capacity has grown 48%,

----- the world's installed solar capacity has grown 17%.

----- Alberta's installed wind capacity has grown 12%.

01/01/2022

Happy New Year...

brag about any thing, or a solar thing...

06/12/2021

I wrote this in 2009:
I wonder whether the concept of having baseload generating plants is becoming outmoded.

It is starting to appear that what we may need in the future is a significant pe*******on of renewable electricity sources (wind electric, biomass electric, waste-heat electric, solar photovoltaics, solar-thermal electric, and geothermal electric). This will drastically reduce our environmental footprint (easily 60%). However we then need something to be able to accommodate the uncontrollable and variable nature of wind and solar PV -- this would be provided by high-ramp-rate fuel-burning turbine-based generating plants (at first using natural gas and then adding H2 and renewable fuels) and electricity storage facilities (pumped hydro dams, battery banks) that are able to provide spinning reserve and very very quick changes in electricity generation and grid formation in order to meet the increases and decreases in the net load.

As a result of the highly-variable net grid-load, I wonder if it is going to increasingly become difficult to justify building baseloaded plants -- to justify spending $2 billion to $12 billion only to see the market start to evaporate because that business-economics model did not allow for society's demands for electricity that are free from environmental effects (air, water, land, and habitat), free from catastrophic risks, and free from belabouring future generations with our near-term choices plus did not foresee the increasing ability of the renewable energy industry to supply these demands at a capital cost, an operating cost, an environmental cost and a life-cycle cost that is less than those costs for the baseloaded plants.

We need to keep in mind also, that it is not the government's job to restrict the development of disruptive technologies that make inflexible business models obsolete -- this is what competitive business risk is all about (as I am told).