According to the IEA, the spot price for ‘mono crystalline’ solar panels fell from 72¢/W to 45¢/W over 2017. That 27¢/W drop represents a 37.5% fall.
Mono crystalline solar panels offer at least 10% more efficiency than poly crystalline in the same hardware package/size/weight, and today – in key markets – are only 6% more expensive.
Electrek Green Energy Brief: A daily technical, financial, and political review/analysis of important green energy news.
China Flooded U.S. With Solar Panels Before Trump’s Tariffs – Fourth-quarter deliveries from China were almost 11 times higher than in the first nine months of 2017, according to a report Friday by Bloomberg New Energy Finance. Manufacturers also hauled panels and cells across the border from Mexico, Canada and other countries to beat the import duties that were announced last month. Key point for folks buying solar – does your contractor have a connection to some of these panels? Were they all bought by bigtime developers for their projects alone? It looks like SunPower made some imports as well – so they’ve probably got decently priced product still. If you’re buying right now – use this knowledge as pricing leverage if a contractor’s price is a bit strong.
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Musk Notches a Small Win Against Buffett in Nevada – At its peak in August of 2015, the Las Vegas solar market had monthly volumes of over 700 ($14 Million assuming an average of $20,000 per system). The peak in August of 2015 was more than 3x the installation volume for all of 2016. Following the passing of AB 405, the market has rebounded to nearly 200 a month – a healthy recovery, which should continue in 2018, but still a fraction of the frothy market in 2015. The author said ‘small’ victory because they’re a solid optimist, forward-looking. ‘Pyrrhic’ victory could also be the case. If you look at their chart, residential solar has been smashed relative to what it was. Of course – the original growth of residential solar was huge and fast in Nevada, so maybe something had to be done. In the end I’d argue that Buffett won, and Buffett will end up selling a lot more electricity than he would have. Though, with Buffett building a lot more solar now – and residential growth coming back – ‘we’ win the long game.
The solar panel industry is fighting physics’ stubborn hold on the secrets of photons exciting electrons – and the results of this atomic level focus are showing up for regular people.
A trio of solar efficiency records have been brought forward recently: Hanergy’s thin film unit developed a 25% solar panel, Trina Solar broke 25% with an IBC solar cell, and a lab in Europe has set an amazing record of a 26% solar cell using a standard, simple ‘p-type’ technology.
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SolarEdge, the Israeli Inverter maker posts a 70% increase in full-year revenue blowing far beyond analyst expectations. The stock was up yesterday almost 25% on the news, and if you are long on SEDG (first of all congrats on the new yacht), you tripled your money over the past year. We’ve covered SolarEdge products quite a bit on Electrek, but what is happening here is that they are becoming the de facto solar inverter maker with their DC voltage optimizer strategy vs. the more expensive micro-inverter strategy employed by many rivals. Will they run away with the market? What new technologies will they bring to make going solar easier and more efficient? Stay tuned…
Tesla spells out why markets are failing battery storage, big and small – Soon enough, we’ll look at powergrids that act this way as archaic. Limiting to society. “However, the true value of this rapid response is not fully recognised. The fastest contingency FCAS market is six seconds, while the Tesla Powerpack response time is <200ms (milliseconds).” It wants to see a market for fast frequency response that recognises the value of batteries (and presumably other inverter-based technologies) to fill that void, in much the same way that settlement periods are being reduced from 30 minutes to 5 minutes. Here’s the biggest part of this equation – when an instantaneous power source acts to smooth out power grid imbalances, versus waiting 6 seconds, you can actually build 90% less of these specialized peaker plants. This hardware – energy storage with fast acting batteries – has just ended an entire market worth tens of billions.
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Germany mulls free public transport to quash air pollution menace – It’s real tough to lower our individual carbon footprints. The Netherlands managed to move to bikes. New York City and other subway heavy cities have done amazing jobs. Germany is a large country, with challenging climate issues (don’t want nuclear, but still have coal). Plus – people like me see Germany as a high-speed aggressive sports car. Well…Tesla has shown me that high-speed aggressive sports cars don’t have to pollute. Maybe we all can change.
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Enphase and Panasonic announce AC module partnership – My gut is that soon enough, all solar panels will come with integrated panel level electronics. I lean more toward something like SolarEdge because I like DC voltage coming to the inverter (and potentially batteries/car charger/etc) – however – Enphase has shown that homeowners and installers want the simplicity, and flexibility of an Enphase installation. And you know what, it seems there’s enough space in the market for these two groups to make enough money to drive innovation. I’m excited to watch.
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Project Bo aims to save babies’ lives with reliable solar/battery power – “Three of our oxygen-dependent babies died last night when the power went off. Not good enough in 2017. Low-cost tech e.g. affordable solar power must be a priority for saving newborn lives” Project Bo was established to see this never happens again. There is a philosophical aspect to solar power – its distributed nature bringing power – literally – to the people, its direct connection to a piece of our lives that we can almost always depend on – the sun. The reality of our world is that resources – technology, energy and finances – are not distributed evenly. However, we as humans are amazingly inventive with small amounts of these resources – electricity in particular. And just a small amount of electricity can save human beings. Solar can help with that. They accept donations. Thanks, Michael.
Huawei’s first residential energy management system, the “FusionHome Smart Energy Solution”, is being launched in Australia, with availability this quarter.
Originally announced last year in June for Europe and shown off at Solar Power International in Las Vegas this fall, the new system is aiming for a ‘1-size-fits-all solution’ for residential energy management purposes.
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The ‘PV Celltech 2018‘ conference in Malaysia is coming up. The program topics themselves (PDF) are enough to give me pause and think about perspectives at this stage of a growing industry. Topics – 1. Cell technology trends impacting the 100GW+ landscape; 2. Why P-Type Multi continues to dominate solar cell manufacturing; 3. Production equipment and materials for advanced cell architectures; 4. N-Type solar cell mass production at the GW stage; 5. Mono Wafer supply at the 50GW+ level; and more. The industry is grappling with continued growth at amazing rates, while also evolving its technological base. There are multiple dimensions of intertwined evolution – a global dance of machines and business and people.
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Both China and the European Union have expressed a demand for ‘compensation’ from the US as solar panel manufacturers. Reuters showed an interesting difference between the complaints though: China said it was asserting its right as a major exporter to demand compensation, and said it believed the U.S. measures broke numerous WTO rules versus The EU request said Germany was a major exporter and cited WTO rules under which it could demand compensation. The EU move follows similar steps by China, Taiwan and South Korea, but unlike them it did not accuse the United States of breaking WTO rules. I can’t really answer a question like this – are rules broken? – as I am not an expert on the topic and it seems these folks are getting into nuances. Of interest is that the US has a similar action going on against India.
Solar power jobs in the US fell by 3.8% in 2017 – a total of approximately 9,800 jobs per The Solar Foundation’s annual jobs survey. This partially aligns with current projections of total solar installations falling by approximately 20% in 2017.
The numbers under the hood are far more complex though. The largest, most developed markets were hit hardest. California itself lost over 13,000 total solar jobs, while Massachusetts and Nevada lost 3,052 and 1,807, respectively. We saw growth in job count in 29 states and Washington DC.
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Mission Solar to double solar module manufacturing – The move by Mission to add more module lines follows on its announcement shortly after the Section 201 decision that it was hiring 50 workers so as to reach its full 200 MW of module capacity. It also follows on the company securing a supply contract with PetersenDean Roofing and Solar. There are definite expansions of solar panel manufacturing in the USA. ITEK, Solaria, Solartech Universal and First Solar – are the pure American plays – with a Tesla/Panasonic hybrid in Buffalo. CSUN and Jinko – international groups – have also announced expansions within last year. Interestingly, SunPower is holding off a US based expansion as leverage to not tax its imported products. The numbers of jobs aren’t huge in the factory directly, but there are jobs at partners and suppliers that aren’t easily accounted for. An evolving – growing – market.
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U.S. installs nearly 4 GW of solar in Q4 2017 – GTM Research has given its preliminary estimate for installations over the full year 2017 at 11.8 GW, a 22% decline from 2016 levels. Down 22% from the record-setting 2016. What amount of this was hangover and what amount the Suniva/Trump Tax? What amount was the residential lease company shrinking and cash purchases just starting to grow? Residential and Utility fell – Small business/Commercial/Industrial grew. In my opinion – good report!
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Sign up for South Australia’s Virtual Power Plant – We covered the new Tesla-South Australia virtual power plant yesterday. Today’s link is where you can sign up for the program if you’re a local. This example of energy usage seems so intelligent – a machine smart enough to coordinate energy storage, solar power, and the broader power grid into a single mesh network of electricity. This is the future of our energy networks. Watch this program, it’s coming to you soon.
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Four people arrested at CMP’s Augusta headquarters during solar power protest – Four protesters, including Levin, from a group calling itself “Speak The Truth to CMP,” were willfully arrested after refusing to leave the property when told they were trespassing. Anna Barnett, a North Yarmouth resident, added, “Many of us were not aware that CMP, our utility, played a key role in killing last year’s solar bill, and they are at it again this year. CMP is working against our community’s best interests here and we need to hold them accountable.” The world is no longer silent on the challenges of renewable energy. If the utilities – that we the people allow to exist in created monopolies – are going to attack, and steal, and lie – we’re coming for you.
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Colorado’s NREL — a workhorse in national solar, wind research — faces “devastating” cuts in Trump budget proposal – It’s that season of the year, where partisan politics are flung for the purpose of shock and awe versus doing some proper, patient work. Last year the Executive Office suggested significant cuts to the Department of Energy’s renewable energy and efficiency budget. The Senate reversed most of those cuts. This year again though – the Executive Branch has requested a stronger budget cut, 72%. The US Government’s budget for 2017 was approximately $4,094 billion. The Department of Energy’s renewable energy and energy efficiency groups get about $2 billion a year. They’re scientists and researchers building the technologies that drive our attacks against climate change. 0.05% – five hundredths of a percent – of the US governments budget.
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Taiwan follows South Korea into WTO complaint over new US solar duties – Now two countries, major trade partners with the United States, have joined a legal case against the Suniva+Solar World solar tariff. I wonder how quickly these groups could push a case like this through the World Trade Organization. When I inquired on this topic with a smart professional in this field a long while ago, they said court cases like this took two plus years before any results were yielded, if that (note that the US and India have been in a similar trade case since 2011-2013).
Electrek Green Energy Brief: A daily technical, financial, and political review/analysis of important green energy news.
Utility CEO: new renewables will be cheaper than existing coal plants by the early 2020s – Unsubsidized new wind: 2.0-2.5 cents per kilowatt-hour/Unsubsidized new solar: 3.0-4.0 cents per kilowatt-hour/Variable operating costs of existing coal or nuclear plants: 3.5-5.0 cents per kilowatt-hour. Let me point out a few key phrases in this proclamation: New renewables, existing coal/nuclear – That means building new hardware, from the ground up, is cheaper than using old hardware. And then the kicker, unsubsidized. Of course, this is before we start to consider the subsidies that fossil fuels get – free pollution.
Now that solar power is here, and without a doubt racing toward being a leading source of global electricity, we’ve now got some really cool, established solar power systems. Some on Earth, some above, some giant, some small. The flexibility of solar power is part of its magic.
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US confirms nations exempt from solar import tariffs – Imports from exempted countries are restricted to 3% of annual US crystalline silicon solar imports per country and 9% for all exempt countries combined. It is not yet clear how the tariffs will be reimposed once the limitations of 3% or 9% have been reached. There are over a hundred countries on the list, so I’m not going to include all of them here. However, here are four countries of note – India, Turkey, Brazil and Pakistan. The first three have solar manufacturing capacity in place or under construction, and Pakistan got headlines this weekend for offering Trina Solar tax incentives to build a factory. My gut says it’s India, if anyone at all, who exports panels to the USA. And interestingly – those Indian solar panels have a high probability of being Chinese manufacturers building factories elsewhere.
