Electrek green energy brief: Shell had a hockey stick before Gore, Politician ‘shocked’ people like solar, more

Energy pricing increase slowed down in Australia where more renewables installed – The standard argument you hear from the politicians employed by the fossil groups is that renewables drive up the price of electricity…except – they don’t. In Australia this very simple analysis shows exactly the opposite. What’s going on here? You and I know…its called competition from an energy source taking no prisoners.

Kentucky political ‘shocked’ people give a damn – It should be a national law that any politician that wants to submit a law against net metering, and is going to use the same stale excuse of, ‘solar…business plan needs to be subsidized through the average ratepayer,’ need be first educated on the complex reality of that statement. There are dozens of studies done by professionals showing that this is mostly garbage in our low penetration world that is peddled by the utilities to scare mom and pop. I’m shocked this excuse is still being used.

ARPA-E projects receive over $1.8 billion in private funding – Who says government funding can’t help capitalism? Two data points to end the argument: 56 ARPA-E projects have turned into private companies and received almost $1.8B in funding. And remember – every time someone talks crap about Solyndra, the Solyndra program made billions for tax payers.

Locus Energy now monitoring 5GW of solar power – There are other monitoring companies monitoring more solar, showing off 5GW for Locus isn’t the purpose – what I’m really interested in is learning what these companies are doing with their data. I bet SolarEdge – with their module level monitoring – has the most valuable data to solar panel manufacturers, financiers and insurance companies. If you have true, in the field data on every single panel – you can provide serious services to those who need to know how their various hardware experiments are playing out in the real world. Remember – solar panel manufacturers are producing things that need last for decades, and 90% of solar panels are younger than 5-6 years.

Merger & Acquisitions – Comtec, a producer of silicon ingots and wafers, has finalized purchase of a mainland China residential solar installation company. First off, I have no visibility on the Chinese residential market. All I imagine in China are the giant fields of solar, beautiful waterfront solar (see header image), or fish farm solar. When I visited China in 2008 I didn’t see much solar PV on building or homes – but there was significant solar thermal heating the water. I wonder what I would see today?

Electric utilities buying distributed energy resources – Utilities have invested $2.9B in buying distributed energy resources since 2010 across Europe and North America. I still say that I believe electric utilities have the best chance of getting distributed energy into the wild – first, they have the trusted connection with the ALL OF THE customers. As a salesman, something like that makes my mouth water. Secondly – they know WHERE the solar power needs to be installed to make the grid more valuable, meaning they can strategically push for higher incentives in spots to limit their upgrade requirements. Third – they’re freaking energy management experts. Let them have the market if they’re going to run it the best! Step your game up utilities.

Funny…funny hahah…right? Funny…till you die.

You know how people like to talk smack to Al Gore & Michael Mann because of the hockey stick temperature graph? Shell had a hockey stick graph in the early 1990s… #ShellKnew #ExxonKnew

Shell told the public the truth about climate change in 1991 but never got round to telling their board of directors https://t.co/uXXhOFxwxj pic.twitter.com/yKQt199eRG

— E3G – Third Generation Environmentalism (@e3g) February 28, 2017

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