Solar power took the lead in new capacity additions for 2016 expected to be greater than 9.5GW of utility scale plus 4.5GW of distributed installations. The numbers could possibly be even higher with 2016 utility scale solar being so aggressive and 4th quarters being mecurial. When accounting for capacity factor (amount of time the hardware is actually pushing electrons onto the grid), solar power is 31% of new electricity, natural gas 41% and wind 20%. Solar almost doubled from 7.3GW in 2015, finishing third for overall US utility capacity additions.
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In the 3rd quarter of 2016, the United States installed 4,143 MW of solar power per a report released by Greentech Media’s Research Team – 191% greater than Q3’15. This volume represents the largest quarter in US history, even larger than the historically largest 4th quarters during the prior decade. Q1+Q2+Q3 of 2016 have already surpassed all of 2015’s total install amount. The 4th quarter is expected to be even larger – leading to 2016 overall being 88% greater than 2015. It looks like Americans installing solar power and the Department of Energy are turning their nose up to Donald Trump’s Chinese Hoax.

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State of Florida law states only an approved and regulated electric utility is allowed to sell electricity to the public. The 1988 court case, PW Ventures, Inc. v. Nichols, clarified this position. With Tesla’s SolarCity announcing that they’ll service customers of Duke Energy and the Orlando Utilities Commission in the greater Orlando area, they’ll have to abandon their ‘solar lease’ model in Florida – a state with no solar incentives.

In this model, Tesla owns the solar power system and takes all incentives, then sells the homeowner discounted electricity in a 20-year contract. With a population greater than 20 million people, the third largest state is a ripe opportunity – and maybe a laboratory.

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US electrical utilities are feeling pressure from distributed solar power and are proving that they will go to all ends to protect their monopoly positions. In Florida, the utilities are spending tens of millions of dollars to manipulate the electorate into voting for an amendment that limits solar power’s growth. In the last five years alone, the largest 25 utilities have spent more than $400 million on lobbying federal and state elections. This effort to control the political machine is worth trillions annually.

And now that we know 92% of people breathe unsafe air and more than 6 million a year die of it – that these utilities are slowing the transition to cleaner forms of energy means they are knowingly killing people.

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Target is the top corporate installer of solar power in the USA with 147MW installed on 300 stores. Walmart is close behind with 140MW, while Ikea has installed solar on 90% of its retail locations. The Solar Energy Institute of America (SEIA) report shows over 1,000MW of solar installed in almost 2,000 unique installations by the largest corporate entities in the country. Additionally these groups have more than doubled their installation volume year on year, with 2015 seeing a total of 130MW, while 2016 is projected to be closer to 280MW.

Renewable energy juggernaut Apple, who is building and managing their own ‘electric utility’  in the USA while aiming for 4,000MW solar power globally, proudly defended their clean energy investments – “If you want (Apple) to do things only for ROI reasons, you should get out of this stock.” But it turns out, Solar is pretty damn good for ROI…

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Solar thermal + storage is trying to come to the United States in form of the largest solar power plant in the world. SolarReserve has proposed a 2GW Solar Thermal + Molten Salt power plant for the State of Nevada.

The company has already built a smaller version of this plant. The new plant, ‘Sandstone Energy X’, will be built for $5 billion including the molten salt storage. This would make Sandstone Energy X among the lowest priced electricity generators on the planet.

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The Canadian Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, announced that Canada would implement a Federal Carbon Tax if the provinces didn’t do so on their own. The plan states that if any province does not have a carbon tax or cap and trade system in place by 2018, the federal government will implement a plan to tax carbon starting at C$10/ton (US$7) and reaching $50/ton (US$35) by 2022. Speaking at the House of Commons, Trudeau said, “There is no hiding from climate change. It is real and it is everywhere. What we can do is make a real and honest effort — today and every day — to protect the health of our environment, and with it, the health of all Canadians.”

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On Aug. 11 a bid of US$0.46/W was put forward to build 500MW of solar power in China (a roughly calculated levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) at $0.019/kWh). In the past week we saw a bid of $0.023/kWh to build 1.2GW of solar power in Abu Dhabi. This price of $0.023/kWh is nearly 25% lower than the $0.0299/kWh bid for a series of Abu Dhabi projects in late April. These extremely aggressive price falls are partially driven by unique situations – a Chinese solar panel production glut and historically low costs of money. But as Frank Wouters, the former director of Masdar Clean Energy puts it, “We’re still learning how to further reduce the cost of solar cells and other components, as well as operation and maintenance costs. There’s no reason why the cost of solar will ever increase again.”

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Is a Federal Carbon Tax coming to the USA? The answer can be surmised in one point: Exxon has been lobbying Congress to institute carbon regulation. This corporate policy became public after a 2009 speech by their CEO, Rex Tillerson. Recently, Judges from Minnesota and Washington have lent credence to the public costs (health and pollution) of burning fossil fuel. While California’s cap and trade program flounders, critics are calling for a simpler, direct carbon tax. And in December of 2015 a bill was introduced in Congress which laid out clear carbon tax pricing through 2035. That bill, S.2399 – Climate Protection and Justice Act of 2015, is stuck in committee. As our consciousness of climate change transforms into new policies,  two important questions emerge: What form of carbon tax will most effectively meet our goals of long term species sustainability and why is Exxon advocating  a certain version?

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Electricity is one of the most important things in our lives. That solar panels allows us to collect photons from the skies and drive – literally if it’s an electric vehicle – our modern world is almost magical. In our first article on residential solar, we talked about the structural aspects of a house and how they affect solar output. The next step is to decide what hardware you want to include – solar panels, inverters and racking are the three main components to a system. Solar panels get the most attention, and their amazing price drop has been the greatest driver of solar uptake over the last ten years.

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A member of the Alabama Public Service Commissions (PSC), the group that regulates the state’s power companies, who voted against net metering solar power recently sought an opinion from the same PSC as to whether or not a Community Solar Power plant, paying him approximately $250,000/year for 20 years on his family’s land, would be an ethics violation. After pretty much blocking solar for regular people – he pushes for $5M from solar for himself.

The PSC (sorta – see end of article) voted against commissioner Chip Beeker’s solar plans:

“The Commission has held that business relationships with entities that intend to do business with entities the public official regulates create conflicts of interest,” Ethics Commission Executive Director Tom Albritton wrote.

The commissioner, whose son earns money from the monopoly approved power company, has doubts about climate change: “I believe that no matter what you call it, a myth is still a myth, and the so-called ‘climate change crisis’ is about as real as unicorns and little green men from Mars.”

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On Sunday, Scotland produced 106% of its electricity needs -over a 24 hour period – via wind farms. Scotland joins a select group of countries that have had peak moments (or days/months/forever) when their electricity needs comes from non-polluting renewable energy. Iceland runs completely on hydroelectric and geothermal, Costa Rica ran for 75 straight days in 2015, Portugal ran for four days, Denmark generated 140% of their demand, Germany broke 95% for a few moments and there are many other countries with wonderful clean energy achievements. With places like Hawaii aiming for 100%, Rhode Island building its first off shore wind farm and the US Department of energy readying the mainland’s grid to be able to handle 100% – we will see reports like this proliferate in the future.

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The wind is always blowing somewhere, and now Rhode Island – the smallest state, has become the first to install offshore wind power in the USA. Deepwater Wind is installing five 6-megawatt wind turbines built by GE that have 80 meter long blades.

The project was first proposed seven years ago – while nearby competing projects in Massachusetts, proposed 13 years ago, still haven’t gotten a start (though it looks hopeful something will happen). The project will deliver its electricity to Block Island, a popular vacation spot where homeowners sometimes pay greater than $0.40/kWh (over double the national average) or burn diesel fuel. Deepwater Wind received $290M in financing last year and signed a 20 year Power Purchase Agreement (PPA) with National Grid to purchase the wind energy, the power company that serves the entire state of Rhode Island (and Block Island). The coastline of Rhode Island and Massachusetts have some of the best wind resources in the USA.

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During a Monday morning Tesla Motors conference call Elon Musk, in response to several questions regarding designing a new system wide (solar, storage & car) inverter, said –

We don’t want to jump the gun on future (hardware) announcements, but we are internally betting on the merger. If it doesn’t go through, It would a bit awkward…we are betting on the merger for integrated power electronics.

This and other comments essentially answered the question we posed Saturday, ‘Will TeslaSolar continue to outsource the brain of its solar systems – the inverter – or develop in house?’ That design of this inverter occurred as part of the behind the scenes work of a merger, is testament to the importance of this piece of hardware in Musk’s vision of Tesla Energy’s future.

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Tesla had made it a goal to vertically integrate long prior to the current offer to purchase SolarCity. SolarCity took action purchasing a solar panel and solar racking company. A looming question becomes – how exactly will TeslaSolar protect itself in the solar inverter market? TeslaSolar could purchase a close technology partner like SolarEdge or design in house like it does with Tesla automobiles. With powerful options like these, arguments of value of cash, availability of in-house focus, risk of inaction/value of action and control over data are probably the driving considerations.

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The world’s most famous and damaging nuclear meltdown is now being considered for the world’s largest solar power plant. The Ukrainian nuclear power station Chernobyl had a nuclear meltdown on April 26, 1986. Since then 1,600 square miles of land has been deemed an ‘exclusion zone’ as the radiation levels are too high for human health. But in a recent interview, Ukraine’s ecology minister said the government was negotiating with two US investment firms and four Canadian energy companies, which have expressed interest in the Chernobyl’s solar potential.

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In a new report released by SolarCity, we are seeing that solar power systems have a usable lifetime of at least 35 years – 40% longer than the market expects. The key finding of the report is that power degradation (annual efficiency loss) of solar panels supplied to SolarCity is as much as 35% lower than for a comparable industry-wide selection of non-SolarCity panels, which are typically expected to last for 25 years. SolarCity feels it is the implementation of a stringent and industry-leading “Total Quality Program” that has driven this.
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The 2016 US Presidential election is close – plenty of politics are swirling related to the solar power and renewable energy industries. Each of the candidates running for President have spoken specifically on solar power, with Clinton and Sanders expressly supporting significant growth. Sungevity has put together a fun tool that lets you tweet directly to your candidate the system size that Sungevity thinks would best fit on their residence. Raising awareness – one tweet at a time!
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Elon Musk surprised the business world with one of the most common sense moves I’ve seen in a while – an offering to merge Tesla and SolarCity into a single company. Musk, this morning on a conference call, stated that he sees these companies coming together to become worth $1 trillion. For that to be a realistic valuation, Tesla and SolarCity are going to have to build more Gigafactories (Solar & Battery) and blow through the 1,000,000 car/year number. With a 10:1 earnings ratio, six Gigafactories each for solar & battery plus a 30% expansion of Fremont beyond 1,000,000 cars will do it. Here’s how…

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According to a new research study, released by the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), your old solar modules will be worth $15 billion in recyclable material by the year 2050. This potential material influx could produce 2 billion new panels. IRENA estimates that PV panel waste, comprised mostly of glass, could total 78 million tonnes globally. This end of life recycling ability will help finance future solar growth, and – more importantly – when combined with current industry recyclability at 96% (goal of 100%) will mean that solar power has, beyond a doubt, environmental credibility.

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On May 26, 2016 – “U.S. Rep. Mike Honda (D-Silicon Valley, Calif.)  introduced H.R. 5350, the bipartisan Energy Storage for Grid Resilience and Modernization Act. Honda was joined by Reps. Chris Gibson (R-NY), Tom Reed (R-NY) and Mark Takano (D-CA).” The purpose of the legislation is to clarify that energy storage industry receives a 30% tax credit equivalent in nature to what the Renewable Energy industry gets. The 30% Solar Power Tax Credit, is credited with being one of the major drivers for the solar power installation boom in the United States.

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GreentechMedia did the work to determine “Solar Made Up 64% of New Electric Generating Capacity in the US in Q1 2016.” This first quarter is part a potential 119% growth in the solar industry in 2016 – greater than $30 billion in revenue. And these announcements are on top of many other recent solar proclamations – 1,000,000 rooftops, record low pricing, leadership in jobs count and growth, whole countries running on renewables and more. With the Earth setting record warm months, every single month, its good that solar power is becoming sexy – but can we keep up the pace long enough to win the war?

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