Green Energy

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

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.

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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.

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

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.

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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.”

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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.

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

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.

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Last month, it was revealed that Tesla is working with world’s largest wind-turbine maker, Vestas, to deploy batteries at their wind farms.

Now Tesla won its first contract with the company and as it turns out, it’s not only for a wind farm but actually the first solar+wind+energy storage project in the world.
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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 finds Del. residents would rather live near wind turbine than coal plant – Residents living near a Delaware wind turbine would pay nearly $31 a year to keep it around and would pay about $121 annually to make sure a coal plant would not replace it, recent research has found. The real world version of this data, outside of a survey, would be represented in where we build our power plants and the property value surrounding those plants. And there is plenty of research in the world on this topic showing property values much wider than ~$121/year.

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One of the world’s largest solar manufacturers in the world, GCL System Integrated Technology, has designed and sold their first out of the box ready solar farm – the ‘2.5MW Solar Block.’

GCL is a vertically integrated solar manufacturing company – they’re the largest polysilicon manufacturer globally, and along with making solar wafers and cells, they’re involved in solar panel final assembly. Their goal in designing the Solar Block is to lower the cost and speed the deployment of utility-scale solar power. The units can be daisy chained into larger plants.

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Stion Solar, an American manufacturer of thin-film solar panels with a factory located in Mississippi, confirmed that they’re going to ‘discontinue’ operations. The manufacturing facility has 75MW/year of manufacturing capacity active that’s currently sold out.

Other solar manufacturers have made recent announcements to expand production in the USA. ITEK announced 150MW/year of monoPERC product in Washington State. CSUN – who first announced their California plant in February of 2017 – said that their solar panels will be available in January 2018. And of course, Tesla – who started plans long ago – is racing toward 1-2GW of solar tiles/year.

All of these actions occur while the market awaits Trump’s ruling on the Suniva solar tariff case.

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Four Swiss universities came together to build the US Department of Energy’s 2017 Solar Decathlon overall winner. Eleven teams competed over the course of two years to build a home taking into account modern global demands of “reliability, resilience, and security.”

The Swiss schools – École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, School of Engineering and Architecture Fribourg, Geneva University of Art and Design, and the University of Fribourg – scored perfect 100’s in energy, architecture and engineering categories.

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

Rooftop solar pv decreased the average price of wholesale electricity from $132/MWh to $88/MWh over the one year study period inNew South Wales, Australia (pop. 7.5M). Down pricing pressure was most strongly felt between 1-4 PM. During the whole of the one year, $2.2-3.3B was collectively saved. February – mid summer down south – saw the greatest savings – $740M. These numbers, the $2.2-3.3B, don’t include the money also saved by those who installed the solar power. This is the price of electricity – for everyone. Solar power – bringing the price of electricity down for everyone else by lessening electricity grid peak demand.

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

Vikram Solar launches new monocrystalline product line SOMERA – PERC monocrystalline solar cells reaching module area efficiency up to 19.05% (for 60 cells) and up to 18.45% (for 72 cells). 2,400 Pascal Wind load, 5400 Pascal Snow load and Dynamic Wind load. Extremely low LID and lower temperature coefficients. Cool to see manufacturers launching these 19% monoPERC products. Cool to see it is an Indian manufacturer whose got a big brand name and a cutting edge product. Germany, China, US, South Korea, Japan have all been making big volumes of panels for a while. Adding India – soon to be the largest country on the planet – will mean a huge market expansion.

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The Netherlands is expanding a test of solar panel sound barriers (SONOB) as part of a project replacing currently installed sound barriers. The bifacial solar panel screens are rated to generate electricity equivalent to usage in 40 to 60 houses. The 2014 test project (see images below) met expectations – including how the panels would deal with public nuisances such as graffiti. In 2016, the solar sound barrier won the Golden Decibel award for great ideas in the public project category.

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What goes up, must come down…but what was going down – is now going up.

The US Energy Information Administration (EIA) has projected that the USA’s CO2 emissions from energy usage – burning oil, coal and gas – will increase in 2018. The main driver is a predicted increase in ‘heating degree days’ – number of days that Americans will need to warm their homes. Concurrently, an increase in ‘cold heating days’ – air conditioner needing days, the continued increase of oil burning in cars, and a decrease in hydroelectric generation will also affect the final balance of clean vs dirty energy production.

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

The U.S. solar industry’s new growth region: Trump country – GTM Research shows that eight of the 10 fastest-growing U.S. solar markets between the second quarters of 2016 and 2017 were Western, Midwestern or Southern states that voted for Trump, with Alabama and Mississippi topping the list. First it was the wind power – made easy by the fact that the USA’s strongest wind resources push across the central states of this country with a fury. And now solar power is placing itself firmly in all political regions of the country. This evolution could have a real effect on the Suniva trade case.

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The newest solar panel technology was on display at Solar Power International in Las Vegas. The biggest attention getters were higher efficiencies and bifacial – but there are other technologies- cut cells, string ribbons, anti-soiling coatings, and solar tiles – that also deserve some time in the limelight.

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

The header image is of the 27MW San Fermin solar plant in Puerto Rico four days after Hurricane Maria swept the island. The image came from the NOAA by way of earther.com (and reader Will Driscoll). The system was designed back in 2012 to withstand up to 250-260kph (155-162mph) wind speeds. All hardware is two meters off of the ground and there is a local energy storage system hooked into the power plant. We’re nearing the end of a discussion – solar that is designed to withstand a hurricane will do so.

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During the first half of 2017, solar panel manufacturers announced near record amounts of new or upgraded production capacity. This new capacity, while almost 70% in China, is spread worldwide and focuses on the newest hardware trends in the industry pushing solar panel efficiency higher.

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