EGEB: Helicopter jobs, woof top solar, BP drops £200M on solar, more

Electrek Green Energy Brief: A daily technical, financial, and political review/analysis of important dog news. Featured Image Source.

Omnidian Raises $5.1 Million for Residential PV Performance Offering – Omnidian offers residential solar owners a performance guarantee so any loss of production, below an agreed level, is reimbursed. It has a software platform that integrates with third-party PV monitoring systems and identifies underperforming assets requiring a field service dispatch. The firm partners with a nationwide network of precertified field technicians who carry out repairs. If you’re the type who is going to check your system constantly, then don’t get this type of product. If you’re the type that likes things to just run, then consider insurance. Maybe you’re the type who will check your system out everyday for the first year or two, then fade. I’m closer to the last one.

Offshore wind could provide significant opportunities to helicopter operators –  Global helicopter fleet utilization hit a low of 54% in 2017 due to falling demand and increased supply from orders placed pre-downturn. Oil companies required fewer journeys offshore and as a result, many airframes were put into storage. The offshore wind market offers a significant opportunity for helicopter operators, with almost 6,000 turbines to be installed globally over 2018-2022 bringing the global total to 10,000 by forecast-end. Westwood expects $119m of offshore wind-related helicopter expenditure over the forecast, with a CAGR of 39%. If you’re interested in watching for really fascinating and probably occasionally dangerous jobs in the renewable industry – here’s one.

BP returns to solar with £200m Lightsource deal – Lightsource BP will  grow value through developing and managing major solar projects around the world. Big companies that have large amounts of capital can deploy it to develop and build projects, then sell off to investors or hold as cash creating assets. Sorta similar to an oil well – but with electricity.

Attackers Deploy New ICS Attack Framework “TRITON” and Cause Operational Disruption to Critical Infrastructure – The attacker gained remote access to an SIS engineering workstation and deployed the TRITON attack framework to reprogram the SIS controllers. During the incident, some SIS controllers entered a failed safe state, which automatically shutdown the industrial process and prompted the asset owner to initiate an investigation. The investigation found that the SIS controllers initiated a safe shutdown when application code between redundant processing units failed a validation check — resulting in an MP diagnostic failure message. You should read this, it’s very short, very technically focused. Central power plants are targets, they’re big, they’ve got lots of important things going on. Distributed power plants can be hacked all the same. The US already took down an Iranian nuclear facility.

Final tax bill includes up to 80% offset for wind, solar tax credits – Solar power investments took a bit of a hit in certain sectors, none in others, in the ongoing taxation plans. Those looking to purchase solar power for their own woofs will feel no effects. The 30% federal tax credit seems to be the same as it was. The business side of solar though will see differences. First, with a lower corporate tax rate (21% vs 35%) the benefit of depreciation goes away. Prior, you could write off 60% of a solar system in year one – now you can still do the same, it’s just that the taxes you are offsetting are lesser. A second piece of investment lessening seems to do with international investors who could use solar power tax benefits to offset domestic taxes. They can still do so – but 20% less. Global banks will be affected here – and this will directly influence the utility-scale industry and foreign companies. Suniva still pending.

I just thought it interesting to point out there the coal industry is on this list…

The average tax rate paid by money-making, publicly traded companies at the start of the year was about 26%. https://t.co/8uA6AI8Tae pic.twitter.com/6imfMnoaSo

— FiveThirtyEight (@FiveThirtyEight) December 15, 2017

When you hear people talk about an official learning curve value, the amount the price of something will fall relative to volume produced, here’s the solar number: 22% price drop for each doubling in global volume deployed. The big bulge in 2007-2008 is the price of silicon bubble.

Price of solar PV modules has fallen more than 100-fold since 1976. Learning rate approx. 22%: prices fallen 22% every doubling in capacity.https://t.co/OLOsHEfciZ pic.twitter.com/gQjxCNS1sl

— Hannah Ritchie (@_HannahRitchie) December 16, 2017

Featured image is from the Department of Energy SunShot program. Just a dog and her solar in Upstate NY enjoying the view. Photo by Greg Johnstone.

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