In Delaware County, Iowa, a local landowner found 15 rabbits, with their neck’s broken, spread at the base of a wind turbine. A local land manager said it is likely they were placed to lure and potentially kill eagles with the wind turbines.
Wind power provided Iowa with more than 36% of its electricity in 2016. More than any other state in the USA, and second only to coal for total electricity within Iowa.
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Big giveaway of my main takeaway of the solar tariff yesterday – If you’re buying higher efficiency – more $$ – panels this ruling affects you. Get moving, maybe. After clearing my head and reading everyone else’s thoughts on the case I found I like this one – ITC Issues Recommended Remedies in Section 201 Solar Trade Case – a bit more than others because of heavy details it went into. If you’re going to read something on the topic – I’d suggest giving the Electrek’s Take in my article two minutes, and then if you want harder details visit the GTM article linked to here.
The US International Trade Court (ITC) made three separate potential tariff recommendations for Trump to consider in order to protect the domestic solar panel manufacturing industry. At a high level, the separate recommendations were a 35% tariff on all imported solar panels, a ~30% tariff on solar cells and panels, and an 8.9GW import cap for 2018. The tariffs would mostly be phased out after four years.
The most recent tariff request by Suniva called for a minimum solar panel price of 74¢/watt, and SolarWorld called for an import cap of 5.7GW/year.
On Saturday, a record 24.6% of total electricity came from wind power sources in the 28 countries of the European Union. The majority of this wind electricity was generated onshore (88.7%) vs offshore (11.3%).
With Europe moving into the high wind production winter period, we expect a new season of records being broken. And with massive scale construction continuing for offshore wind farms, these records of 2017 will soon look quaint.
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U.S. trade panel set to recommend solar trade tariffs – In documents filed last month, Suniva asked for a tariff of 25 cents per watt on solar cells and 32 cents per watt on panels. It is also seeking a minimum price on panels of 74 cents a watt, nearly double their current cost. SolarWorld has asked for an import quota. Still though, these are only recommendations. And in our current political climate, one doesn’t know exactly how the decision makers will act. Krysti Shallenberger @klshall is going to be there today reporting via Twitter if you’re interested.
Electrical grid complexity has increased immensely. Recently, weather damage and intermittent renewable energy production have increased the dynamics that must be managed in a large power grid. In order to address that, the Dutch company Alfen is currently field testing their new ‘cellular smart grid’ solution in Lelystad, the Netherlands.
They have developed a combination of energy storage and finely tuned algorithms to help make electrical grids more resilient and to reduce their downtime.
High-tech architecture (aka Structural Expressionism) has begun to embrace solar, and it’s the hottest thing under the sun. One amazing example: Emirates Insolaire’s new custom colored solar panels – Kromatix, a Swiss technology developed by Swissinso. ”We go vertical, we dress the building with a beautiful energy-producing skin.”
The product debuted back in 2015 at the Water, Energy, Technology, and Environment Exhibition (WETEX 2015) and is finding its way into more installations today.
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The World’s Tiniest Power Market Will Leverage Big Data to Sell Solar – Local medical business campus has a collection of solar panels across many buildings, now with help from a local utility and some software – they’re selling their excess solar power into the local commercial market (mainly on campus it seems). The utility is getting paid some sort of fee for allowing this to go on. The internet started with universities and military bases connecting to each other. US Military talking solar microgrids all the time…universities as well, now we’re moving onto physically tight knit business communities selling among themselves.
Following a petition by US solar panel manufacturer Suniva, the US International Trade Commission declared on September 22nd that solar panel imports have hurt US manufacturers. They asked that a tariff of ~40¢/watt be added to solar panel imports. This decision will be finalized before January 12th.
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Photovoltaic withstood Caribbean hurricanes better than many buildings – The largest solar farm in the Caribbean with its 58 MW, which was only finished in August 2016, also proved that photovoltaics can be made storm-proof. Here, apart from occasionally torn away modules, almost no damage was caused. For projects done by a company in Antigua – The tests showed, according to Wolf, that the structures for ground-mounted open-site systems have to be anchored over 2 m into the ground, and sometimes additional concreting is required too. Furthermore, solar modules with a frame thickness of 50 mm and strengthened glass have been used. The angle of the solar modules has also been adjusted so that they provide the wind with as little vulnerable surface area as possible. So, we now have solid evidence – in a real category 5 hurricane – that solar can be built to withstand a hurricane. The articles note that the newest systems only lost ‘an occasional solar panel.’ If occasional panels are lost – then that means the solar system is still up, as strings can go down and a broader system still run.
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Italy proposes phasing out coal power plants by 2025 – “We have asked (grid company) Terna to identify the infrastructure needed,” Minister Carlo Calenda said in a parliamentary hearing on the document. They’re in the early stages of doing so, but someone – somewhere, thinks its possible. Italy’s got a population of around 60 million people. France, already so clean from an electricity standpoint, plans to be coal free by 2023. No coal Netherlands by 2030. Rock on Europe.
One of the most futuristic cool solar systems I’ve ever seen is made by SmartFlower. The analogies are built into the structure – like a flower, the machine rises with the sun, opens wide to catch the rays, tracks the sun across the sky and then closes itself away for the evening.
The SmartFlower is really an interesting-looking piece of engineering. Its purpose shines when you talk about protecting your house if the grid goes down. The price is strong for a standard solar house install – but if the commitment of connecting to your roof is an issue for you, the SmartFlower is cool with you seeing other solar panels.
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JinkoSolar Breaks Multiple World Records of Silicon Solar Cell and Module Technology – JinkoSolar broke the existing world record by achieving conversion efficiency of 22.78% on P-type monocrystalline PERC solar cells. This marks the second time in 2017 that JinkoSolar has broken a world record in solar cell conversion efficiency after achieving the 22.04% conversion efficiency record on P-type polycrystalline PERC solar earlier in the year. This first record, the 22.78% bests LONGi’s announcement yesterday at 22.71% (lol) – both monoPERC P-type solar cells. First off, the Jinko’s record is a 0.31% increase in efficiency over LONGi’s. That means a homeowner with a ~10kW solar system making around 14,000kWh/year, and getting $0.15/kWh will make an extra $6/year. Nonetheless – I love that Jinko feels the need to stand right next to LONGi on the global charts. We’ve got global brand names pushing the edges of technology – in the end customers usually win.
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Press release of the week for me – LONGi Solar Achieves a New World Record for PERC Cell Efficiency – Fraunhofer ISE CalLab of Germany certified a photovoltaic conversion efficiency of 22.71% on the company’s monocrystalline PERC cell. In April 2017, LONGi’s 100MW pilot cell line achieved efficiency of 22.17% in mass production. At the end of August, efficiency improved to 22.43%. With continued R&D optimization, we believe the monocrystalline PERC cell can reach a conversion efficiency of greater than 23.0% in the near future. We plan to introduce the 22.0% efficient PERC cell technology into the production line at the end of 2017. 340W-345W module ratings for a 60-cell format by 2018. Tons of information! 22.71% – wow! More watts per square foot. 100MW line that’s making these cells? Awesome – that means it’s in real life, not labs. 23% in near future – not surprising with the pace being set. 340-345W module in 2018. Cool… question is though – will any of these panels make it to the USA with a global solar tariff? Hrmm….
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Dubai Investments’ Coloured Solar Panels to Dress Buildings in Dubai Through Emirates Insolaire – The header image is of a building covered by panels made by a company owned by Dubai Investments described in the linked article. Check out some other projects by the company. And also check out the technology tab just before you look at the different color specification tab. Note that based upon color specification the total efficiency of the panels changes – that’s neat. The technology tab seems to say that this layer applied atop a standard solar panel will lower overall efficiency by 9-12%. I’ve written the company an email to find out if they make their own panels – or if they buy in the open market from high-efficiency manufacturers. If I get a follow-up, I’ll do a write-up. Cool to see the aesthetics of solar panels able to be considered. I’m bullish on Tesla’s Solar Roof because of the aesthetics. Sold a lot of solar in my life in the USA, and homeowners really care about the curb appeal of their large investment.
A recent press release by FPL (formerly Florida Power and Light) talks highly of on-going solar construction. FPL exclaims that they’ve built 300MW of solar power across eight power plants. They also communicate that FPL is the largest holder of solar resources in Florida – 375MW.
It’s a facade.
FPL has worked very hard to manipulate the public and political machinations of rulemaking. And this political harm means Florida is lagging in the solar race – despite being the Sunshine State – because of bureaucratic capture of the legislative bodies and aggressive, misleading advertising against public-led solar movements.
Researchers testing cutting-edge unmanned aerial vehicle technology went to the 24 hours a day sunlight of Greenland to power ‘perpetual’ solar drone flights.
The main goal of the project from the manufacturer’s perspective was to find a practical application of a solar-powered drone that could fly indefinitely, as there’d been few real-world uses. To partial success, the group tested the ‘First-ever solar-powered flight in the Arctic’ on June 20th.
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Hemlock Semiconductor to lay off 100 workers – This week Hemlock is reporting that it will lay off 100 workers in Michigan, with most losing their jobs in the first quarter of 2018, as part of a plan which involves “simplifying and streamlining its organization to meet the new market realities”. The US used to be the largest producer of polysilicon in the world. It was the one solar power related item that brought the net import/export above $0. A combination of events has hammered at this. For one – Chinese tariffs attached to polysilicon as a result of US tariffs on solar modules in 2013 helped. This led to an opening for China and South Korea to ramp up volume – and they’ve done so. As an aside, SolarWorld technically owes $800 million to Hemlock as part of contracts signed when polysilicon cost a lot more.
Jeff Bezos atop a wind farm breaking it in with a bottle of bubbly is pretty intense. Amazon’s founder made his way up one of more than 100 new wind turbines in Texas celebrating a major renewable energy project coming online.
The 253-megawatt “Amazon Wind Farm Texas” in Scurry County is part Amazon’s long-term goal to reach 100% renewable energy. As of the end of 2016, the company was beyond 40% – and expects to break 50% before the end of 2017.
China is leading the world in solar power installations by a long run. ASECEA is predicting that 50GW of solar power is well within reach of being installed this year. In June and July of 2017, China installed 25GW of solar power – and they’ll push the globe past 100GW total for the year.
At China’s ‘State of the Union address’ equivalent, just yesterday, president Xi Jinping said, “Any harm we inflict on nature will eventually return to haunt us… this is a reality we have to face.”
SunPower announced that they won 291MW worth of bids as part of the most recent French Energy Regulatory Commission (CRE) energy bidding process. SunPower sells the most efficient panels available on the market.
Including prior bids this year as part of the French program, SunPower has now won 505MW worth of total projects. SunPower makes money both from selling solar panels and from owning solar farms, though this may change. They’re expected to sell 1.3-1.5GW of solar panels in 2017.
A recent report released by the International Energy Agency (IEA) has stated that universal energy access is possible by 2030 and solar technology will be at the forefront of the effort. In order to reach near 99% of the global population having electricity, solar power microgrids and off-grid installation will be needed.
Reaching 99% in the IEA’s ‘Energy for All Case’ will cost $28 billion per year through the end of 2030.
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The Potential Impact of Solar Tariffs in 12 Charts – Good charts. Potential is the keyword. These numbers are probably close to true. If so, residential costs aren’t really noticeable. Utility yes, however, those price increases aren’t enough to end investment – maybe slow it down a bit…but not a lot. Clarity would be best at this point so our pricing is hard.
The world’s first floating wind farm is now feeding into Scotland’s electricity grid. The $260M pilot project, majority owned by Statoil, is the first commercial development in the floating wind field. All prior floating wind turbines were research focused.
Floating wind is being developed because 80% of the Europe’s wind resources are located in water too deep for traditional fixed bottom wind turbines to reach. Additionally, just west of Europe, in the North Atlantic, there is enough wind to power the entire world.
