Green Energy

Solar panel manufacturer JinkoSolar has broken the record for solar cell efficiency for the most commonly used type of solar cells – 22.04% for a P-type multicrystalline product. Near concurrently, solar research facility Fraunhofer ISE has broken the record for n-type multicrystalline solar cells with an efficiency of 22.3%.

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

S.A. tender attracts 60 proposals for “next-gen” renewables and storage – The Tesla-Neoen big battery at the Hornsdale wind farm will likely account for around $20 million of the RTF. State energy minister Tom Koutsantonis highlighted the three proposals from Adelaide-based 1414 Degrees, which is developing a “silicon battery” that stores heat and energy, and is looking for its first commercial-scale demonstration project. This is the first reference I’ve found regarding this bid’s completion – and only two project descriptions have snuck out yet. I bet we see more than a few interesting ideas get built – Australia has very high energy costs, and public support for solar is very high. Probably the highest residential solar installation rate on a large power grid.

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The World Solar Challenge started about 8:30 AM local time, Darwin, Australia. 42 cars, in three categories, from 21 countries race for 3-7 days using mainly solar power. The race takes place every other year. Starting in Darwin and moving south, across the continent, ending in Adelaide, Australia.

The challenge’s primary goal is a ‘design competition to discover the world’s most efficient electric car.’

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Early Tuesday morning, news of lower than 2¢/kWh bids from Saudi Arabia’s first round bids on 300MW of 9.5GW solar power projects started popping up. Seven of eight bids were below 3¢/kWh, and two of eight bids broke a prior record low. Questions have arisen as to the sustainability of the bids outside of these unique circumstances.

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The International Energy Agency (IEA) has significantly upped their global installation predictions of new solar power and other renewable energy technology through 2022. This updated growth prediction is greatly based upon the significant acceleration of solar power being installed in China and the abruptly falling prices of large installations.
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Electrek Green Energy Brief: A daily technical, financial and political review/analysis of important green energy news. Featured Image Source

Just another Manic Monday as windfarms power electricity surge – WWF Scotland analysed wind power data provided by WeatherEnergy and found that wind turbines in Scotland provided 86,467MWh of electricity to the National Grid on October 2. Scotland’s total electricity consumption, including homes, business and industry, for Monday was 41,866MWh, meaning that wind power generated the equivalent of 206% of Scotland’s entire electricity needs on the day. What? When did this happen? Elon – I think its time for you to start selling electric cars with a charging infrastructure that is electronically tied to the wind production of Scotland. The rest of the manufacturing world need start placing metals production facilities in this place that will soon enough have some of the cheapest, cleanest electricity on the planet.

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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 Decathlon competition brings cutting-edge home designs to Denver – In 2005, decathlon homes included handheld devices with touch screens to operate systems in the houses. That year also saw several homes using LED lights, Silverman said, long before the next-generation of energy-efficient lighting was available at the local hardware store. How many of you have these features in your homes today? You should pay attention to these students because they’re integrating the technologies you’ll be using in the future.

• Thursday, Oct. 5, through Sunday, Oct. 8 from 11 a.m.–7 p.m.
• Monday, Oct. 9, from 1 p.m.–7 p.m.
• Thursday, Oct. 12, through Sunday, Oct. 15 from 11 a.m.–7 p.m.

Any locals going? Wanna post pictures in the comments section?

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For 15 years, the US Department of Energy has held the “Solar Decathlon,” a student competition which showcases sustainable technologies in the home.  Teams from around the world come together and build functional solar-powered houses from the ground up, then use those houses for two weeks.  The houses are then graded on ten different aspects of their design, with the largest combined score being the winner.  The competition has been happening approximately biennially since 2002.  This year it’s in Denver, Colorado at the University of Colorado.

The best part is: all of this is free and open to the public.  Every house is open for tours and knowledgeable students are on hand and ready to answer questions about their projects, and there is a “sustainability expo” with company booths focused on sustainability.  There are even workshops, an electric vehicle ride-and-drive (only Oct 14th 11am-3pm), and a career fair (Oct 10th 12-3pm).  Public visiting hours are 11am-7pm most days (1-7pm Monday Oct 9), though the Decathlon is closed to the public on Tuesday and Wednesday (Oct 10-11).  See the full list of things to do here.

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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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We have seen some pretty strange electric car charging solutions in the past, like solar panels deploying out of a car or chargers attached to a bear, but that’s something else.

A giraffe-looking electric car charging station powered by both solar and wind.
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