First Solar Inc. is selling one of its large California solar farms to MidAmerican Energy Holdings Co., ending the solar-panel maker’s search for a buyer. The sale places MidAmerican Energy, a unit of Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc., in the solar-power business for the first time. MidAmerican operates fleets of wind farms and conventional power plants. The companies didn’t disclose terms of the deal Wednesday, but said the Topaz solar-power plant, in San Luis Obispo County, is worth more than $2 billion. Shares of First Solar rallied nearly 7% on the news, and traded at $49.16, up 6.7%.

A forest of thousands of sturdy metal posts is sprouting in the wide open spaces of California Valley.The posts will eventually support 720,000 photovoltaic panels that will be part of the California Valley Solar Ranch, one of the world’s largest facilities to turn sunlight into electricity.

California has hit a major renewable energy milestone: 1 gigawatt — or 1,000 megawatts — of solar power has been installed on rooftops throughout the state, according to a report to be released Wednesday by Environment California, a statewide advocacy group. One gigawatt is roughly the size of two coal-fired power plants and is enough energy to power 750,000 homes. Five countries have hit the 1 gigawatt installation mark to date: Germany, Spain, Japan, Italy and the Czech Republic. California has installed more solar power than France, China and Belgium.

“What the federal government should not do is be in the business of picking winners and losers,” proclaims John Boehner, GOP speaker of the House of Representatives. “For the federal government to be out there picking one company over another, one type of energy sources over another I think is wrong.” What prompted this espousing of free-market rhetoric so popular with the tea party crowd?

Concerns about fracking’s environmental impact—not to mention a scene from fracking documentary Gasland, where a man lights methane-heavy water coming out of his kitchen faucet on fire—is reason for alarm. And such concerns have led to improved regulation in other states. But in California, the state’s regulating agency, the Division of Oil, Gas & Geothermal Resources, has maintained fracking is used too infrequently to be a concern, and therefore needs minimal oversight.

Solar Trust said today that it will convert a 500-megawatt solar thermal power plant it had been planning in Blythe, California into a 500-megawatt plant made from photovoltaic panels. The shift comes because of “improved market conditions” for building power plants with PV modules.

WASHINGTON—The Interior Secretary Wednesday approved the highest capacity solar-panel plant ever constructed on public-owned land. The approval cleared a permitting hurdle for First Solar Inc.’s 550-megawatt Desert Sunlight project, which needed to pass an environmental review from the Interior Department because it is being built on federal land.

Tokyo Electric Power Co. reported its second deadly radiation reading in as many days at its wrecked Fukushima nuclear plant north of Tokyo. The utility known as Tepco said yesterday it detected 5 sieverts of radiation per hour in the No. 1 reactor building. On Aug. 1 in another area it recorded radiation of 10 sieverts per hour, enough to kill a person “within a few weeks” after a single exposure, according to the World Nuclear Association. Radiation has impeded attempts to replace cooling systems to bring three melted reactors and four damaged spent fuel ponds under control after a tsunami on March 11 crippled the plant. The latest reading was taken on the second floor of the No. 1 reactor building and will stop workers entering the area.

By REBECCA SMITH   |   WSJ  |   Link to article Federal energy regulators approved a major rule change that they said would lead to more big electricity transmission lines getting built in the U.S. The new order, adopted Thursday, should particularly benefit wind- and solar-energy projects, which are often located in remote places […]