EGEB: $121/year to keep coal away, 50 year floating solar, India’s largest energy storage, more

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Study finds Del. residents would rather live near wind turbine than coal plant – Residents living near a Delaware wind turbine would pay nearly $31 a year to keep it around and would pay about $121 annually to make sure a coal plant would not replace it, recent research has found. The real world version of this data, outside of a survey, would be represented in where we build our power plants and the property value surrounding those plants. And there is plenty of research in the world on this topic showing property values much wider than ~$121/year.

India’s largest floating solar plant completed withstanding huge water level variations – The main challenge for the project was a water level variation of 21 metres between summer and monsoon seasons, so the firm had to design special anchoring systems to ride the variations as well as high-speed wind conditions. M.R. Narayanan, chairman, Adtech Systems, told PV Tech, “Our company has been specialised in making ferrocement platforms and floating structures for the last 20 years. The ferrocement platforms are guaranteed for 50 years life.” Fifty year life from the floating hardware is the big data point I wanted to grab from here – and a company that’s been building for two decades. Second data point, the one that made the headline – was that this system was designed to shift in height. Good engineering all around.

India’s first utility-scale solar storage project realized – Mahindra Susten, one of India’s most significant EPC players, has won the auction for a 20 MW solar project integrated with 28 MWh of battery storage capacity in Andaman & Nicobar Islands. Mahindra sealed the deal with a bid of INR 2.99 billion ($46 million). The company will provide complete EPC and O&M services for 25 years. Less than 12 months ago, this project would have been in the upper edges of global scale for size of an energy storage project, today – its awesome, just normal awesome though. This project is competing with diesel generators charging $.23/kWh – it’s going to be a solid investment. With the solar costing about $1-1.2/W that means the battery storage is over $900/kWh – island delivery costs? Best part of this project is that it is now a new peak size in India, soon to be world’s largest population.

Enel signs deal worth $330 million for 298MW of wind power – Large tax equity deals – passive investors will purchase 100% of “Class B” and “Class C” equity interests in the project, respectively, in exchange for their payment of the above purchase price. This interest will allow the investors to obtain, under certain conditions set by U.S. tax laws, a percentage of the fiscal benefits of the Thunder Ranch wind project – Enel will have managerial rights. Tax equity investors will use the tax benefit immediately to offset earnings. At some point in the future, Enel will sell this project to a pension fund who wants the long-term cash revenue. This agreement might already be signed pending certain levels of performance at the plant.

Motech creating solar module assembly JV with Giga Solar in Taiwan – Motech Industries said it was entering into a Joint Venture (JV) with metallisation paste supplier, Giga Solar Materials Corp to establish a solar module assembly plant in Taiwan. What I like with my morning coffee, as much as anything else, is more solar panel manufacturing coming online. I wonder what the size of this facility will be. The company was founded with $33 million in the bank. Yesterday, solar cell manufacturers announced a mega merger. More of a trend to follow?

Scientists create most powerful micro-scale bio-solar cell yet – A microfluidic lab-on-a-chip system that generates its own power is essential for stand-alone, independent, self-sustainable point-of-care diagnostic devices to work in limited-resource and remote regions. I imagine one day that robots will use these solar cells to send out scouts – ant-sized robots – to explore the world. Super complex devices on the microscopic level. I hear chatter about recreating photosynthesis in the labs often – ‘solar leafs’ – maybe one day we’ll figure out how to manufacture much simpler, cheaper solar.

So, maybe those FoxNews ads are having an effect.

ICYMI: Fox News host @seanhannity makes the case for President Trump to #SaveSolarJobs and deny foreign-owned Suniva & SolarWorld a bailout. pic.twitter.com/IZk1VuOugh

— Solar and Storage Industry (@SEIA) October 17, 2017

Featured article source, article in today’s EGEB – Scientists create most powerful micro-scale bio-solar cell yet

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