The US Government is terrible at projecting the total amount of solar electricity that will be installed. The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), in 2006, predicted that 0.8 gigawatts (GW) of solar power would be installed in the USA by the end of 2016. The actual number was closer to 40GW – 4,813% greater.

Of course prediction is very difficult, especially if it’s about the future – but this type of mistake should not be ignored. This inability to properly project data harms our economy, health, environment, and planet because public policy is designed off of these expectations of the future.

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

California may reach 50% renewable power goal by 2020 — 10 years early – In 2016, 32.9 percent of the electricity PG&E sold to its customers came from renewable sources, according to the report. Edison reached 28.2 percent renewable power in 2016, while SDG&E — the state’s smallest investor-owned utility — hit 43.2 percent. Pacific Gas and Electric Co., Southern California Edison and San Diego Gas & Electric Co. — are collectively on track to reach the 50 percent milestone by 2020, although individual companies could exceed the mark or fall just short of it. Now, we’re in the phase of the machine where we have to figure out how to extend the renewables to 24 hours, 365 days and above a certain level. Regional coordination will probably be required, energy storage also.

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SolarCity was once, without a doubt, the leading name in residential solar power in the United States. Solar leasing was 72% of residential installations in 2014 – and the largest lessor, SolarCity, had a 34% market share of all solar installed, leased and sold. The second largest company, Vivint, was less than half their size.

Today, even after adjustments in strategy due to broader market shifts that started in 2014, and alterations of sales reachout techniques as part of their sale to Tesla, they are still the residential volume leader but their heading has definitely changed.

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What are these solar panels doing in the middle of nowhere? Solving low-voltage issues on a remote power line – “We didn’t want a lot of backflow, we just wanted enough to solve the low voltage,” Perry said. “The name of the game isn’t to power the whole area.” – I’m showing an example of how solar power on rooftops lowers the cost of grid upgrades, giving strength to the argument that residential customers have a pathway toward full retail net metering credit. This situation, per what I’ve read, seems to exist through 10% of grid needs, and begins to evolve up – but is still the case – through 30% penetration. There is a reason ConEdison will pay you extra for installing solar and batteries at strategic locations within NYC – much easier than building a fossil plant.

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Arkup, the “avant-garde life on water” company, has designed a new luxury home that integrates solar on the roof and a newly approved lithium ion marine battery system. The main selling features are that it can rise with sea levels via jacks, withstand extreme weather, move as a regular electric propelled boat, and provide it’s own water plus – of course – electricity.

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India plans 20GW solar tender, eyes domestic manufacturing boost – “The tender is being conceptualized by the Minister of  Renewable Energy. These contracts will be awarded in one go with developers to construct projects in phases. Once people see visibility of such projects, then manufacturing can kick in.” India has goals of 175GW of renewables by 2022, with 100GW of it being solar power. They’d prefer to jump-start their own manufacturing industry instead of feeding China their hard cash. Doing the 20GW in phases and you give local business people a chance to believe. After seeing contracts cancelled in India because later contracts were lower, it’s understandable that there might be unease in the business world.

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Apple signed a deal this week to power to its Sparks, Nevada data center with possibly the cheapest contracted starting price for solar power in the US. The deal was signed with NV Energy, owned by Warren Buffet’s Berkshire Hathaway.

The deal’s start price is 3.099¢/kWh with a 2% a year escalator making it very inexpensive energy.  The size of the solar project is 50MW.

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Enphase Energy, in their 4th quarter earnings call, made references to their upcoming ‘Ensemble’ line of solar inverters. Their Chief Product Officer, Raghu Belur, suggested that the new hardware will allow solar power to run a house – even without a power grid or batteries.

This is an interesting statement because almost all residential solar power inverters are designed to shut down for safety and technical reasons in case of the grid powering down.

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Following Tesla’s shift in its solar power business after the acquisition of SolarCity, which has been dominating the US residential solar market for years, SunRun has now come within, at least, 17% of Tesla’s residential solar construction volume in the 3rd quarter.

Tesla and SunRun are the two largest residential solar installation companies in the USA. Tesla booked 109MW of solar and SunRun 93MW in the 3rd quarter of 2017.

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The Tongwei Group, the 4th largest solar cell manufacturers globally, have released a plan to expand their manufacturing capacity to 30GW/year of solar cells from its currently running and under construction 9.7GW of solar cell capacity. They plan to make high-efficiency monocrystalline cells.

This plan, if executed, would make Tongwei the largest solar cell manufacturer by far.

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AEP of Ohio to invest $1.8 billion in renewables over the next three years – The most interesting part of this analysis was a breakdown of volume to be contracted/built through 2030 – 75% new generation wind/solar and 25% generation gas. We’re just at the front edge of energy storage starting to scale, so I don’t expect to see utility-scale plants considering batteries for actual energy storage and later redistribution in their quarterly calls. With that, seeing a ratio of 75-25 of intermittent to dispatchable generation for a decade of growth – that’s a shift. As noted in the article, the company does own a large amount of coal still – 47% of its portfolio – but if you don’t plan on building any for the next decade plus of time, that’s not trivial.

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Chile has received two bids for electricity from large-scale solar projects, in 20 year contracts, at prices under 2.5¢/kWh at a recent national auction. The lowest bid was 2.148¢/kWh.

These second lowest bids in the world – to a recent Saudi Arabian bid – are a product of the country having possibly the best solar sunlight on the planet, but also represents continued price declines in the solar industry and financial trust in the product from global financial houses.

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JinkoSolar has announced three solar cell efficiency records since early October. This most recent record is an extension of the one-upmanship of October 24th-25th when LONGi announced a monoPERC record at 22.71% and JinkoSolar followed up with a 22.78% record.

Today’s efficiency announcement of 23.45% is a full 2.9% increase over two weeks ago.

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A pilot structure built in California has shown that ‘wavelength selective’ greenhouses can be designed with solar panels that feed crops enough sunlight, while also powering the structure. In the greenhouse, 20% of crops actually grew better – while overall, plants used about 5% less water.

The broader goals of the project were to lower agricultural co2 emissions with sustainable energy generation, while exploring how to increase our food security with offgrid greenhouses.

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High Lithium-Ion Battery Demand Prompts Japanese Manufacturers to Speed up and Expand Capacity – TDK plans to increase the annual capacity by around 15% in 2018; Murata Manufacturing, which acquired Sony’s battery business in September, plans to invest approximately 50 billion yen by the end of March, 2020 to expand capacity. Already we know there are 10-20 Gigafactory equivalents around the world being built. And, due to demand growing at rates faster than projected, and costs falling greater than anticipated we’re now seeing those expansion plans – expanding. Interesting list from article: Current lithium-ion battery leading manufacturer in the world is Japan’s Panasonic, with market share 23%, followed by Korea’s Samsung SDI, with market share 21%. The rests are South Korea’s LG Chem (market share is 14%), TDK (11%), Murata (8%), China’s Tianjin Lishen Battery (6%), China’s BAK (4%), China’s BYD (4%) and Maxell (1%).

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HSBC pledges $100 billion of finance by 2025 to combat climate change – “This will involve direct lending, bonds and project finance, alongside new products in asset management,” an HSBC spokesman said. The company has huge resources that it loans out on an annual basis. This $12.5B/year is a new tranche for them to become experts at. They’re going to have to hire experts skilled at analyzing the projects they’ll fund. They’re going to get to know a whole new group of service providers in the clean energy arena to get deals from. This number will grow. Goldman Sachs recently announced they’d be pushing $150B in the same time period.

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Redflow of Australia makes ‘the world’s smallest’ zinc bromine flow batteries at 10kWh each for residential applications. The group recently installed their largest residential system – a 60kWh off grid battery system to combine with 18.7kW of solar power.

The installation cost a similar amount as connecting the home to the power grid 2.7km away.

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I love that they call it highlights – Highlights of the Findings of the U.S. Global Change Research Program Climate Science Special Report – Global average sea levels are expected to continue to rise—by at least several inches in the next 15 years and by 1–4 feet by 2100. A rise of as much as 8 feet by 2100 cannot be ruled out. Sea level has risen by about 7–8 inches since 1900, with almost half (about 3 inches) of that rise occurring since 1993. The report, by the Congressional Budget Office, says that for about 10 million people, cutting back on CO2 will do nothing to fix the flooding that will already occur due to current emission levels. The Federal Government recommends 10 million people be forced to bear the consequences of Climate Change on their own, as the economics of covering them via taxpayer money would be too much and might create uncertainty.

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The largest wind turbine blade manufactured in Spain to date, 73.5m (241ft), was transported from the factory to the port in Castellón, Spain on October 20th. LM Wind Power, the manufacturer, filmed the 3.5 hour, 45km (28m) trip show off their product – and made an entertaining mini-film to boot.

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Mega Sunergy released a new “multi shingled array module” 315W solar panel design that increases the efficiency of a standard solar panel by up to 17%. The company has changed how they lay out the 60 individual solar cells within the solar panel. Instead of perfectly spacing those 60 out – with small, defined areas between the cells – the company has allowed the solar cell’s borders to overlap each other while increaseing the cell count to 68.

The company expects their new solar cell layout to increase solar panel output 5-17% depending on the original solar cell type. In effect, by lowering the efficiency of the average solar cell they’ve increased the solar panel efficiency.

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PV module imports soar in US – Imports of PV modules to the US market have soared since the beginning of third-quarter 2017 due to concerns about price hikes, and as of the end of October, 5GWp of PV modules had arrived in the US waiting for customs clearance, according to industry sources in China. I was under the impression that any panels imported after the ITC accepted the Suniva back in May would be retroactively tariffed by default. Actions like this by people in the know, at a minimum, suggest that the judgment isn’t determined yet. Maybe this retroactive tax, much like the overall structure of the tariff, is part of Trump’s leeway.

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German company Max Bögl Wind AG has built the world’s tallest wind turbine. The turbine ‘hub’ is 178m (584ft) tall, and the tower’s total height – to the tips of the upward extended blades – is 246.5m (809ft).

For every meter increase in turbine height, annual energy output is increased 0.5-1% due to lower turbulence and higher wind speeds.

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10,000 jobs to be created with SC solar power project – Cypress Creek Renewables will announce a plan to invest $1.5 billion to build 2 gigawatts of solar power in South Carolina, according to Adams and Reese LLP. The more than 80 projects will create 10,000 construction jobs and power more than 600,000 homes. The clickbaity title totally got me. I was wondering, ‘What solar project is big enough for 10,000 jobs?!’ Then I read the article and saw it was 80 projects! However, I’m glad the clickbait grabbed me. The 2GW number is huge – and it turns out, as of the end of 2016, the whole state in its history had installed 0.2GW. This series of projects will increase the state value by 10x!

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In Tesla’s Q3 2017 earnings report, they gave an update on their ‘Tesla Energy’ division. They highlighted being on track to meet the 100-day deployment deadline of the 100MW/129MWh energy storage project for South Australia. Mention was made of the work being done in Puerto Rico in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria – ‘solar panels, Powerpacks and hundreds of PowerWalls.’

Additionally, Tesla – at multiple points – pointed toward a future of more revenue from energy generation and storage. 11% of the quarter’s revenue came from the Tesla Energy division.

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