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

A bright future for renewables to 2022, solar PV entering a new era – Record performance in 2016 forms the bedrock of the IEA’s electricity forecast, which sees continued strong growth through 2022, with renewable electricity capacity forecast to expand by over 920 GW, an increase of 43%. This year’s renewable forecast is 12% higher than last year, thanks mostly to solar PV upward revisions in China and India. The IEA predicting significant growth in renewables is making big headlines because historically this group has been continually ‘wrong’ about their solar energy (and renewable) growth prediction in the past. The image in this tweet is one of the more popular mocking mechanisms. To the IEA’s defense, they say their job is to predict growth without speculation of political change – but with current legislative structures in place. I get it…but I am also going to rib them – in their chart they predict 438GW of solar in 2017-2022 – six years. In 2017 – there will probably be 100GW of solar. Meaning in 2020 we will probably blow past their 438GW to close to 500GW – and by 2022, close to 700GW.

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

Analysis: Current Net Metering Cap Stalls $78 Million of Solar Projects in Massachusetts – SEIA and Massachusetts partner organizations are convening at the State Capitol on Oct. 3 and testifying in support of two bills that would raise the net metering caps. The waiting list totals 124 projects, which have a capacity of 51.2 megawatts (MW) and could power nearly 5,400 homes. Some of these projects have been on a waiting list for greater than a year; sitting there not being built because of the influence of politicians and their lobbyists. Interestingly, I remember very specifically one politician that said the last ‘fix’ for this problem would not last. And, like they said, the political solution to the prior backup lasted (literally) one day as the backed up volume absorbed all of the expansion of the program immediately. If you’re serious about solutions, you need be serious about the tools you create.

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

Renewables grow 13.5% in first half of 2017 while nuclear and coal use falls – This report is full of great information: Comparing the first half of 2017 to that of 2016, solar production and use has grown by 39.86%, hydropower by 16.13%, wind by 15.65%, and geothermal by 1.80%. Renewables accounted for 13.49% of domestic electricity production during the first half of 2017 compared to 12.61% during the same period in 2016 and 10.88% in 2015. We knew solar was going to grow such a large amount since so much solar was installed in 2016 – ~14.6GW. We knew wind would grow as well. Now we’re getting to see the results of a lot of hard work – Nation’s overall consumption of fossil fuels (i.e., coal, natural gas, oil) continued its downward slide from 81.73% of total electricity use in the first half of 2015 to 80.31% for the same six-month period in 2016, and to 79.46% in 2017.

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

Suniva and SolarWorld lower requested remedies in US trade case – Suniva has lowered its floorprice from US$0.78 for modules with foreign cells to US$0.74. SolarWorld has suggested a quota instead of a floor price. Both insist any remedy must include a tariff with a rate of US$0.25/W for cells and US$0.32/W for modules. A filing posted overnight on Thursday suggested year quotas of 0.22GW for cells and 5.7GW for modules in 2018. Such scummy companies. A well-known negotiating technique is to start with an extreme value (doubling the price of solar panels), and then when you’re pushed – come off of that extreme value just a bit. Then it looks like you’ve offered something up, you’re there to negotiate and this will influence the simpler minded folks in the room. That’s Suniva last night. And SolarWorld – what a fake name – now wants to limit the total amount of solar panels imported into the country – no longer do they accept doubling the price of product. They simply want to keep others out. The US built 14.6GW of solar last year – 5.7GW would mean a reduction of at least 50% of available solar panels (1-2GW of domestic manufacturing at most).

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

Tracking the Sun 10: The Installed Price of Residential and Non-Residential Photovoltaic Systems in the United States – In total, data for this report were compiled and cleaned for more than 1.1 million individual PV systems, though the analysis in the report is based on a subset of that sample, consisting of roughly 630,000 systems with available installed price data. High level – prices have fallen further, but the price decline rate has slowed greatly. If you were waiting – it might be the time before Suniva tariffs hit. If you’re looking for guidance on what others, in the recent past, have paid for solar power in your region, this report is one of my favorites every time it is released. Here is the short version of the presentation – I recommend it if you want fast guidance, as a quick double-check versus quotes you’ve got from multiple vendors (and see image at bottom of article for state/size level pricing). If you really love the data – check out the long document.

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

Study: $40M to install solar-plus-storage systems at 12 SF sites for seismic resiliency – The sites selected are in each of the 11 districts of the Board of Supervisors, with an additional one in District 10, and include libraries, schools, churches, police stations and recreation centers. I’ve never seen research on how solar panels assembled on the roof of a building that has an earthquake ends up producing. I’d bet, much like we can build structures to manage an earthquake, there could be strategic pieces of hardware put into a solar racking system to let it better flex. Nonetheless, this story represents a continuing trend we are seeing where public institutions see solar+storage as important to keeping the lights on during complex times.

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

Antigua’s well-built PV systems sustain impact of hurricane Irma – Designed to withstand hurricanes of up to the category 4, each of the 55 solar power installations on Antigua, ranging from several kWp to the 3 MWp and 4 MWp utility scale installations at the international airport of Antigua and in the Lavington/Bethesda region with a total of 38,000 panels mounted, have survived hurricane Irma without damages or substantial system failures. When I was installing residential solar systems in South Florida, during the fall of 2014 – headed into 2015, the Miami-Dade Building code increased the wind speed requirements for all solar design. I remember being upset because customers who already had quotes in place, and systems designed were going to see increased prices coming from our company due to increased hardware requirements. In hind site – the building code designers were correct. These folks deserve respect. The costs weren’t that bad. And in the more complex climate that has already changed reality that we now exist within, these designs will survive longer.

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

SolarCity to pay $29.5 million to settle federal probe – SolarCity said it installed 29,000 solar energy systems from 2009 to 2013 that were eligible for grants under the Treasury program. The company said those projects were valued at about $1.8 billion by “independent appraisers, accountants and investors.” The Treasury Department, after conducting its own review, valued the projects at $1.7 billion and paid SolarCity $510 million in cash grants. Here’s the way this went down – SolarCity would build a project, then sell it to a second company that was partially owned by SolarCity and partially owned by an investor. The investor was usually a group buying the tax benefits – depreciation and the 30% tax credit. SolarCity said a residential solar project was worth $5/W (my estimate) and the Feds said the project was worth $4.72/W. I don’t know enough about the internal machinations to give you my opinion…I do know that some companies settle because it’s in their best interests to not be in a lawsuit, and I do know that sometimes the Federal government settles suits to get the company involved to pay a lot more attention. Complexities.

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At 11.07 AM this morning, in Washington DC, the United States International Trade Commission ruled 4-0, in agreement with Suniva that the US Solar Panel industry has suffered harm from the global solar manufacturing industry.

The process now follows that on October 3rd, this group will have hearings on what the remedy to this injury should be. On October 13th, they will vote on a remedy to recommend to the President. The President has until January 12th to respond with the offices final ruling on what those remedies will be. See bottom of the article for full schedule.

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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. Tariffs on Solar Imports May Hinge on Free-Trade Deals – Could a country like South Korea, with solar panel manufacturers like LG and Hanwha Q Cells, be in a stronger position if the International Trade Commission rules against the global solar panel market? South Korea, along with several others, are part of free trade deals with the USA – and their solar panel investments are NOT dependent on underpriced Chinese capital. South Korea, which entered into a free-trade deal with the U.S. in 2012, accounted for about 20 percent of solar panels imported into the U.S. over the last 12 months, according to data from the commission. Mexico and Canada, covered by the North American Free Trade Agreement, supplied about 8 percent. And Singapore, whose trade deal with the U.S. dates to 2004, accounted for 4 percent. If these groups are given any sort of benefit in considerations, it might be non-trivial as it represents 33% of solar panel imports into the USA. And both LG and Hanwha offer premium products.

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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 sedan and sports coupe in race across Australia – and to commercial market – Clenergy TeamArrow Founder Cameron Tuesley said the car’s energy management system included a highly efficient solar array that generates 1.1 kilowatts total power, making it able to of self-charge from sunlight, as well to charge from the electricity grid. The Arrow STF (Sports Touring Framework) was officially launched in Queensland on Thursday, after being designed and built in Brisbane. The sports coupe has a top speed of 150km per hour and can travel 1000km before needing to recharge. Violet relies on around 7kW of horsepower at 110km/h, and two 1.5kW motors that run at 98 per cent efficiency, the UNSW team says. She also weighs in at only 380kg, thanks to a twill carbon-fibre monocoque chassis. I’ve never seriously considered that a solar powered day driver car could really get it done – but every year this contest comes along, I see my levels of doubt fall. If the reality of the majority of our travel are short trips, in city traffic, at slow speeds and there is only one person in the car – why can’t we have a main driver being solar and access to rental/uber for longer trips?

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

Quiet energy revolution underway in Japan as dozens of towns go off the grid – Higashi Matsushima has built its own independent transmission grid and solar generating panels as well as batteries to store power that can keep the city running for at least three days, according to Atsumi. The city of 40,000 chose to construct micro-grids and de-centralized renewable power generation to create a self-sustaining system capable of producing an average of 25 percent of its electricity without the need of the region’s local power utility. The headline seems a bit strong as of yet – there is no reference to dozens of towns off of the grid. However, this town can now run without the grid. And I bet, in times of stress the town would be able to figure out how to indefinitely stay off of the grid. Major grids composed of many smaller grids sounds pretty healthy.

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

Want solar panels? You still have to pay Florida – This article is wrong regarding going off grid. It is NOT illegal to go off grid in Florida – and you don’t necessarily have to pay the utilities if you want solar power. First point – it isn’t illegal to go off grid. A while back there was a court case in which a person tried to go off grid completely – solar, water and sewage. The local jurisdiction condemned her home saying it wasn’t habitable. She took them to court. The judge ruled that going off grid solar and water were acceptable. However, since the lady was still connected to the local sewage system – but had disconnected the service, she was still liable for costs. Additionally – since this particular jurisdiction had water+sewage interconnected, she wouldn’t be able to go off grid for water unless she installed a septic tank and managed her own sewage. Second point of the article – that is partially true – the electric utilities have lobbied to make ‘anti-islanding’ a thing. Your solar power system will shut off when the grid goes down so you don’t backfeed local poles. This protects line workers. Be careful the conspiracy we bite onto.

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

Decision makers are ‘compelled’ by value of solar-plus-storage – “They’re willing to trade the savings from the solar for the resiliency. So the school is still saving money on the solar-plus-storage system, they’re just not saving as much. Being able to trade dollars they didn’t have in the budget – the savings they created out of the solar – for this priceless public service, that’s a big deal.” Local power production, along with energy storage, is worth more than the monetary savings from solar electricity alone. After watching hurricanes debilitate local populations administrators are starting to wise up to the weaknesses of being dependent on distributed wiring systems. Energy storage – local batteries – are going to rule the world.

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

CAISO Regionalization, 100% Clean Energy Bills Stall – California hasn’t been able to push its 100% renewables bill – #SB100 – through just yet, and that means it won’t happen until – at the earliest January. “(SB100) is not going to move — there is overwhelming opposition to it. And there is not time to work that out,” Assembly member Chris Holden (D) said. One batch of opposition comes from unions who say a push toward 100% renewables will harm their job prospects. Another interesting push – ‘regionalization’ of CAISO, California’s main power grid management body, would allow California and other states to more easily trade renewable energy among themselves. Now, California will often export additional solar power to Arizona – slowly cleaning their grid – but not in an official and organized manner. Regionalization would help push that along. Of course – that bill doesn’t look like it will pass either.

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

The great nutrient collapse – In 2004, a landmark study of fruits and vegetables found that everything from protein to calcium, iron and vitamin C had declined significantly across most garden crops since 1950. In 2014, Myers and a team of other scientists published a large, data-rich study in the journal Nature that looked at key crops grown at several sites in Japan, Australia and the United States that also found rising CO₂ led to a drop in protein, iron and zinc. Not only is CO2 increasing weather effects like hurricanes – it’s also lowering the nutritional density of your food. The mission to get clean energy and transportation is only that much more important.

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

DOE Officially Marks SunShot’s $1 per Watt Goal for Utility-Scale Solar – And you know what: its years early and doesn’t include subsidies. The DOE’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) released new research today that shows the average price of utility-scale solar is now under $1 per watt and below 6 cents per kilowatt-hour. That’s higher than the record-breaking project bids we’ve seen in the U.S. and abroad in recent years. But that’s because DOE calculations for levelized cost of energy (LCOE) do not include subsidies — such as the federal Investment Tax Credit — and are based on the average climate in Kansas City, Missouri. Thank you SunShot, thank you China and thank you Obama.

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Your trusty Commercial Solar Guy has sacrificed much to sneak out to the Mandalay Bay Convention Center in Las Vegas, Nevada for Solar power International 2017. The blue skies, colorful drinks and 90°F are really taxing my ability to stay focused on solar panels – but I’ll do my best to tell you about the coolest solar panel technology on the planet.

Bifacial solar panels are being marketed *almost* everywhere. Visiting each of the big players – LG, LONGi, Hanwha Q Cells, Yingli, BYD, Panasonic and others – gave me a bit of unique information from each manufacturer’s perspective.

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

Pope says humanity will ‘go down’ if it does not address climate change – Pope Francis said the recent spate of hurricanes should prompt people to understand that humanity will “go down” if it does not address climate change and history will judge those who deny the science on its causes. “If we don’t turn back, we will go down,” Francis told reporters on Sunday on the plane returning from Colombia. This planet has suffered massive animal die offs in the past as a result of changes in the atmosphere. Humans are not special, other than that we can clearly see what is happening and we have a chance to react. We do have a choice.

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

US Residential Solar Market Forecast to Decline For the First Time – Last week, we saw that in first half of 2017 the USA set another solar volume record, but within that record is a decline in the residential market. This decline is mostly driven by a shift from solar leasing toward solar purchasing. As companies like SolarCity and Vivint start trying to improve cash flow versus selling large volumes of long term leases, their focus has shifted those large volumes toward a ‘higher quality’ product. This interesting dynamic is shown within the overall drop, in that cash purchases have increased, as well the broadness (number of states with solid volumes of cash purchases) of the market has increased. Yes, the press will show you headlines purporting the challenges of residential solar – make sure you read the details though.

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

Amish phone booths – McKenna trained a local high-school physics teacher to do installations. About 50 of them are off the grid. One lights up the gazebo in the local cemetery; others are phone booths meant especially for the Amish. Since religious principle dictates no electricity at home, they rely on the booths as a crucial link to the outside world.  The article is really about solar power in Trump voting areas, but the Amish piece caught my attention. Solving problems with solar.

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

Your solar panels could power the neighborhood during a blackout – The team has created a number of algorithms that allow homes to disconnect from the grid, and use and share power from their renewable energy resources during an outage, all the while improving system reliability by up to 35 percent. Right now, in the USA if the power grid goes down – we have legislated that a solar power system, without a battery backup, will shut down. Meaning you will lose power as well. This is done to protect those working on the grid later on. Maybe its time to move beyond that? Distributed energy production means distributed energy power plants are coming. These algorithms will be part of that guidance.

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

Acciona and Spanish university claim world record solar generation measurement in Chile – “The peak power curve was obtained with an irradiance of 853 W/m2 and a cell temperature of 40.1oC.” The deserts of Chile are some of the best sunlight on the planet, and now it looks like we have evidence of them being the highest anywhere on the planet for this moment. Of course, the people that work these plants have to wear special gear to protect themselves from sunlight even in short time periods – maybe not the best place to build a home.

Header image is of the winner of the RAF photographer of the Year award – Two RAF Chinooks head out over North Sea wind farms during a low level flight to retrieve a downed pilot during a rotary training exercise. Senior Aircraftman Nicholas Egan was on hand to record the moment.

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

Lagerwey tests its (wind turbine tower) Climbing Crane – brought to my attention by Paul – And the key benefits also pitched by Paul in a later tweet: 90% less truck movements; req 90% less construction site area; req usable in stronger winds usable on difficult terrain (e.g. swamp, mountain) – Today, this machine offers another innovation to lower pricing and broaden the market for a product. These incrementals constantly add up. So, how long until this machine is able to build a tower on its own? We build it a home on the back of an 18 wheeler bed – back it up to a field and drop some programming in it. Supplies are parked in loading areas and the robot worm (looks like a caterpillar climbing a stem but obvious marketing issues exist there) starts building wind stalks. Anyone got links for a robots building solar fields? Youtube at the end of article.

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