Garth Stapely, Modesto Bee

Someday, someone could harvest sunshine as well as almonds near the Fink Road Landfill in west Stanislaus County.

County supervisors on Tuesday unanimously agreed to explore converting part of a 1,040-acre farm on county-owned property next to the landfill into a solar field.

Also Tuesday, leaders without discussion postponed weighing the future of farmland tax breaks because a majority of supervisors own such property.

Central Valley Business Times

What is being billed as the world's first conference dedicated specifically to addressing the challenges faced in the high altitude wind power industry has been scheduled for Nov. 5-6 in Oroville.

The conference will serve as a major platform for high altitude wind power professionals, academics, inventors and entrepreneurs from all over the world, predict its sponsors, California State University Chico, the BayTEC Alliance and the Cleantech Innovation Center at Oroville.

Todd Woody, New York Times

AMARGOSA VALLEY, Nev. - In a rural corner of Nevada reeling from the recession, a bit of salvation seemed to arrive last year. A German developer, Solar Millennium, announced plans to build two large solar farms here that would harness the sun to generate electricity, creating hundreds of jobs.

But then things got messy. The company revealed that its preferred method of cooling the power plants would consume 1.3 billion gallons of water a year, about 20 percent of this desert valley's available water.

Anne Eisneberg, New York Times

THE main way for homes to harness solar power today is through bulky panels added to the rooftop or mounted on the ground.

But companies are now offering alternatives to these fixed installations, in the less conspicuous form of shingles, tiles and other building materials that have photovoltaic cells sealed within them.

Central Valley Business Times

Chowchilla-based Minturn Huller, an almond huller and sheller for over 260 almond growers in the Central Valley, has started construction on a 540 kilowatt solar power system.

Cenergy Power, a division of BAP Power Corp. of Carlsbad, is building the plant, which will power Huller's primary hulling facility.