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

FERC: 116 GW of Solar and Wind Utility Scale Generation Additions by 2020 – By 2020, proposed additions equal nearly 72.53 GW for wind and about 43.53 GW for solar. FERC says it used data from Velocity Suite, ABB Inc. and The C Three Group LLC, which include plants with nameplate capacity of 1 MW or greater. Retirements are only expected to be 68 MW for wind and 2 MW for solar in the next three years. The utility scale solar industry installed about 10GW in 2016, 2017 looks to be lower – but predictions of a return to an average of almost 15GW a year is a nice looking number.

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

How to Halve the Cost of Residential Solar in the US – Here in the land of technology leadership and free-market enterprise, American regulation has more than doubled the cost of solar. The regulation comes in three un-American guises: permitting, code and tariffs — and together they are killing the U.S. residential market. Modernizing these regulations, primarily at the local and state level, is the greatest opportunity for U.S. solar policy in 2018. When looking at the Australian installation process – see chart in link – I don’t feel scared, I just feel like I’d have to up my skillset, and carry more equipment on my truck. The nationwide application covers the contractor license verification, hardware check out and grid application. Would you be ok with that? As an aside, this conversation harkens back to a 2013 study when we saw US costs 2X Germany’s…and for the same reason.

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Xcel Energy, electricity utility of Colorado, received a batch of bids whose medians were 2.1¢/kWh and 3.6¢/kWh for wind and solar power plus energy storage, respectively. The pricing was released in the public version of the ‘2017 All Source Solicitation.’

The world’s previous low for solar plus storage was a 4.5¢/kWh project in Arizona.

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

Solar company seeks big incentives to bring 800 jobs to Jacksonville – The City incentives are two-fold. First, the company is seeking a Qualified Targeted Industry Tax Refund of up to $800,000 over five years. The program pays per job, and would only be paid as the Florida Department of Economic Opportunity verifies the job creation and wage targets. The second part comes as a Recaptured Enhanced Value Grant of up to $23.8 million over ten years. The largest ask is a Capital Investment Tax Credit to offset the company’s state corporate income tax liability. The Project Summary says the annual cap on that credit is $20,500,000, but it could be used over a 20 year period. Roughly – the first ten years will mean $4,100 in missed tax revenue, and the second ten years will be $1,250 in missed tax revenue. North Florida getting an average income of $46k/job times 800 jobs is cool – $37M/year – lower cost of living in the region. No state or local taxes. Property and sales tax is it – lets hope schools and infrastructure and cops can be covered in that money while we build solar panels.

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Researchers at Los Alamos National Laboratory have demonstrated a 6″ prototype of a quantum tuned, double paned, solar powered window. The window is special, even for a solar window, in that the outside window pane has quantum dots changing ultraviolet and blue light into more easily absorbable frequencies for off the shelf solar cells to turn into electricity. The same technology applied to a standard solar panel suggests a decrease in cost of electricity from said panel of up to 34%.

“The approach complements existing photovoltaic technology by adding high-efficiency sunlight collectors to existing solar panels or integrating them as semitransparent windows into a building’s architecture,” said lead researcher, Dr. Victor Klimov.

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Florida Representative Holly Raschein has sponsored a new bill in the Florida Legislature to fund a $10 million pilot program installing solar panels and energy storage at strategic public facilities to keep them up and running during critical events and natural disasters.

The program would start on July 1, and run for a single year. The Florida Solar Energy Center (FSEC) will administer and report on the outcomes, with potential expansion.

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Electrek Green Energy Brief: A daily technical, financial, and political review/analysis of important green energy news.

Solar doesn’t need a “breakthrough”. It’s a breakthrough on it’s own. – The basic topic is what is needed to get solar to the 30-40-50% of global electricity? A book was recently written (Taming the Sun: Innovations to Harness Solar Energy and Power the Planet), and a nice article on Bloomberg posted about it (Solar’s Bright Future Is Further Away Than It Seems)…and its causing an uproar (mostly good discussion on twitter actually – author’s twitter feed full of discussion on the topic)! This article – solar doesn’t need a breakthrough – is actually just a collection of tweets that I happened to be lucky to read as it was coming along. I lean toward this article’s perspective, though what I’ve seen said of the book so far has nuggets of solid advice for us to follow. Uproar!

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Electrek Green Energy Brief: A daily technical, financial, and political review/analysis of important green energy news.

China’s Carbon Market Shows How U.S. Is Falling Behind – China is really taking the bull by the horns to manage emissions in the power sector. It’s a significant structural shift, but they legitimized the concept of cap-and-trade in these seven pilot programs that started after 2008. China had 10 years to train people and let them learn the ropes of carbon trading. They were a de facto university for a generation of emissions-market traders. The rest of the world has pretty much lost a decade. A smart friend of mine once told me – There are four stages of knowledge, first – you don’t know what you don’t know, then you know what you don’t know, next you don’t know what you know – and finally – you know what you know. I say that because, I don’t think I know what I don’t know about the ‘ropes’ of the carbon trading market.

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On January 3rd, New York governor Andrew Cuomo delivered a state energy storage target of 1500MW via the private market by 2025 and has put up $260 million in state money to help drive the investment.

In the annual “State of the State” address, varying proposals  – from combating MS-13, to cleaning up the Hudson River, to expanding clean energy jobs – were delivered to start the new year. The energy storage target delivered seems to be an extension or culmination of prior state legislation requiring targets be set.

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Electrek Green Energy Brief: A daily technical, financial, and political review/analysis of important green energy news.

New Tax Bill Offers Unexpected Benefits to Commercial Solar Installations – Our analysis shows that the reduction in tax rates will increase the rate of return by about a 2 percent per year. Over time this adds up: the total value of the project increases by 19 percent, which for this project is over $140,000. In terms of depreciation – The total value of the project increases by over 6 percent. I’ve not played with these things in my spreadsheets yet this morning, but I will. I’ll let you know how they work out.

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

In West Texas Where Wind Power Means Jobs, Climate Talk Is Beside the Point – If Texas were a nation, it would be the sixth-largest wind energy producer in the world. The bulk of that power is coming from the Nolan County region. And so the reddest parts of Texas are responsible for supplying upwards of 12 percent of the state’s energy needs every month with clean, green kilowatts. By the end of last year, there were more than 100,000 jobs related to the wind industry nationwide, at least one-fifth of them in Texas. In Western Texas, born and raised, building wind turbines is how I spent most of my days. And I changed the way the world was powered.

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

U.S. renewables replace coal and gas in 2017 – In the first nine months of 2017 gas use fell 11% year over-year. If borne out through the last three months this would be the first such fall since 2013. The bigger story here, in my opinion, is that both coal and natural gas usage fell in the same year. For a while, coal was down – and gas was up. And coal was down because gas took over. Well, this year gas was able to go down because we had a lot of solar/wind in place, and hydroelectricity out west was huge. From what I’ve read – it won’t happen again out west with hydro because of droughts. What matters more is that this happened once – because that means it can happen again.

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

Oxford PV granted financing for perovskite serial production – Oxford PV received an EU bank financing of €15m, to support the transfer of its disruptive perovskite on silicon tandem solar cell technology from lab scale to commercialisation. Plus “The company has demonstrated the necessary parameters in efficiency and stability on its perovskite photovoltaic technology, to engage commercially with major industry players and play a key role in enhancing solar energy supply in the future.” Two items – 1. Perovskite is moving from a lab to a commercial facility. That’s pretty cool. 2. From the quote – ‘necessary parameters in efficiency and stability’ – most perovskite push back has been due to it quickly degrading in sunlight and water. If stability is meeting requirements – then perovskite is getting real.

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The California Independent System Operator (CAISO) – the group that manages 80% of the electricity used in California – has begun showing utility-scale batteries charging and discharging into the power grid via their website.

By resolution, due to a natural gas emergency, the State of California requested large-scale battery based energy storage projects be attached to the grid at the end of 2016, early 2017. Now we get to watch the systems – some that we covered – do their job.

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

Men Resist Green Behavior as Un-Manly – The idea that emasculated men try to reassert their masculinity through non-environmentally-friendly choices suggests that in addition to littering, wasting water, or using too much electricity, one could harm the environment merely by making men feel feminine. C’mon fellas – overcompensating for something? You seriously need special marketing so your sensitive little feelings don’t get hurt while saving the planet? You’d think you’d support the thing that would make your offspring healthier…

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Part of solar power’s allure is the ease with which one can get electricity out of ‘simple’ hardware in very complex moments. In southeast Asia, Africa, the Middle East and the Caribbean we’re seeing solar power – right now – offering huge services to people in trying times.

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JA Solar has had their monocrstyalline (mono) passivated emitter rear cell (PERC) panel certified as the highest efficiency model in the market today. The solar panel’s power output was rated at 326.67W, for a panel level efficiency of 19.97%.

JA Solar’s current monoPERC products for sale max out at approximately 300W.

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

Meet the Lawyer Trying to Make Big Oil Pay for Climate Change – This attorney is the same one that won $200B+ from the tobacco groups – A report released in mid-November by the Center for International Environmental Law has new evidence that big oil was warned about the risks of global temperature rise nearly 50 years ago. “There seems to be no doubt that the potential damage to our environment could be severe,” explains a 1969 study prepared for the American Petroleum Institute by two Stanford scientists. This is the issue. That hard data was known, yet some of the wealthiest corporations on the planet who were managing one of the most important global resources, decided they needed to slow the progression to change via public manipulation.  That’s illegal.

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

US Takes India Back To World Trade Organisation In Solar Power Dispute – India unveiled its national solar programme in 2011, seeking to ease chronic energy shortages in Asia’s third-largest economy without creating pollution. But the United States complained to the WTO in 2013, saying the programme was discriminatory and US solar exports to India had fallen by 90 percent from 2011. The United States won the case last year, when WTO appeals judges ruled India had broken the trade rules by requiring solar power developers to use Indian-made cells and modules. Such “local content” requirements are banned because they discriminate in favour of domestic firms and against foreign competitors. Everyone inhale, exhale, and realize that we – the United States of America – are about to become some of the largest clean energy hypocrites on the planet. In order to get money from the bank bailout in 2009, there was a Made in America requirement. Now, we’re going to tax a solar panel from everywhere else on the planet because we can’t keep up. Sad.

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A vanadium/mining industry PR firm has visited the site of an in development 200MW/800MWh vanadium flow battery in Dalian, China and noted that site work is ongoing. They also stated that most of the product that will fill the site – the vanadium batteries – is already built in the manufacturer’s nearby factory.

This battery is currently the largest planned chemical battery in the world, and part of a Chinese government investment to spur the technology.

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China is building roadways with solar panels underneath that may soon have the ability to charge cars wirelessly and digitally assist automated vehicles. This second solar roadway project – part of the Jinan City Expressway – is a 1.2 mile stretch. The building technique involves transparent concrete over a layer of solar panels.

Construction is complete and grid connection is pending, but is expected to be complete before the end of the year.

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

Bay State Wind Submits Bid to Build Massachusetts’ First Offshore Wind Farm – This offshore wind story is going to get real big real, real fast in the USA. NREL has already told us our power grid is strong enough to handle these winds, and with Europe and China hammering offshore wind with research and investment, our large and long coast lines are ripe. Already built-in Rhode Island, now New York, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Maryland, and North Carolina (at least) have started the proposal process. If the bid in Massachusetts turns out to be 2GW, that would make this wind plant one of the largest on the planet. Though I think we’ll see 1.6GW of wind bids totaled in a few projects. Tesla Energy storage is part of at least one of the bids.

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Austin Energy is once again leading the USA with the lowest price per kWh from solar power. Intersect Power and Austin Energy announced a 150MWac solar power purchase agreement that seems to range between 2.35-2.725¢/kWh, and could be as low as 2.1¢/kWh.

When this project comes online in 2020, Austin Energy will be getting 51% of its electricity from renewable electricity sources.

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