Electrek green energy brief: 2,000GW global renewable capacity, 754MW solar plant in Mexico, more

754MW solar plant breaking ground in Mexico – Largest in the Americas. This past summer, I was excited to see 100MW projects in the news so often. My largest personal project in the 0.6MW range for perspective. Now it seems the headlines from the big news sources don’t break unless 500MW or more. These projects will cost more than $500M – that’s a lot of capital to raise, but, I often hear investors only wanting to invest large sums of money due to fixed costs. And in the big game – where Blackrock has $5T under management – $500M barely gets you in the door.

1.2GW for Maryland by 2020 – We’re in 2017, that’s 400MW/year if we don’t include 2020, if we do it then its still an impressive 300MW a year. Maryland’s 6M people will definitely feel the effect of the economic bump if the market grows at that rate. Massachusetts has a bit larger population, and slightly higher annual volume per year – but now has 20,000 solar employees. The projections here were of 1,000 jobs per year as volume grows, maybe more.

US Energy generation fell in 2016 – Fossil fuel production down 7% 2015 to 2016, overall production down 4%, Renewables up 7%. The report doesn’t get into why production fell, though the largest net change seemed to be coal’s decrease. Gas and oil also decreased. Bummer.

Global Renewable Capacity grows by 161GW: Agency (IRENA), the global cumulative renewable generation capacity reached 2,006 gigawatts (GW). 2016 capacity grew by 8.7%, according to IRENA’s latest data, with a record 71 GW of new solar energy leading the global capacity additions — the first time since 2013 that solar energy outpaced wind energy capacity additions. It was still a strong year for wind, with 51 GW of new capacity, followed by hydropower with 30 GW, and bioenergy with 9 GW. “2,000GW of global renewable capacity”

Large Chilean solar developer sees low pricing to stay, banks are comfortable, challenges with transmission lines being built – “We knew banks were comfortable with this when we made the offer,” Malo said. “We have kept talking with banks after this and none of these conversations have changed their perception.” Back to the bankers, of course. Also noted are the challenges the developer is having getting power lines built.

Module prices flat in first quarter, April-June order uptick hoped for – The Chinese market booms until the end of June, then the global market buys out excess capacity needs. From the perspective of a US developer, this perfectly balances out the end of year boom in the states. 2nd quarter is here tomorrow.

Bernreuter Research: Wacker is new global polysilicon market leader; German producer has superseded GCL-Poly as No. 1 – Wacker was able to execute its development projects is the lesson. A few other points on the challenges of the poly silicon market as leaders and shifted positions globally.

Polysilicon plant opens in Qatar – Individual energy freedom will come when we each can 3D print our own solar power (or mini-fusion or whatever). For now, after seeing how panels assembly is distributed, we watch how large manufacturing distributes itself.

Massachusetts off shore wind bidding taking a step up – an area that could hold 15GW of wind, for $3/acre totaling $1.17M/year for 31 years. First proposals are in 400 to 800MW range. Cool pictures of different wind development – two other areas already being developed by other groups. Wind power in the US is about 5% of electricity. If these off shore projects can start growing consistently we’ll need the HVDC because wind will hit 30%+ of US needs.

The size of some windmills – those are large-sized boats that looks small…

Offshore wind capacity to grow from 13GW to over 400GW by 2045—in @IRENA innovation outlook report https://t.co/4Lvqy5UwHL

— IRENA (@IRENA) March 30, 2017

Featured image is of a solar power plant around Shanghai (which I don’t think is real)

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