Green Energy

Rocky Mountain Institute expands Community Solar across the country – The article is a good read because it gives guidelines on how to get better pricing for community solar projects. The main drivers – get a competitive RFP versus a single quote (and write the RFP well!), bundle your project with up to 20MW of other projects, increase contract length, and work with utilities when placing the system. RMI was able to work pricing down from 8.5¢/kWh to as low as 5¢/kWh – a 40% savings. I agree with this model – its easier said than done to collect and organize 20MW, but it happens.

Japan developing wind market – What’s an island with zero natural resources to generate energy to do? Surround itself with wind farms is one way to go. The goal is to get around 10GW by 2020 – an amount that would represent 4.5% of electricity capacity. Currently, Japan has about 45GW of solar power installed and manufacturers are looking to expand the volume of energy storage installed to better manage the intermittents.

India’s powergrid getting $500M to upgrade transmission – The Asian Development Bank is putting the money up. I am sure the government of India is backing the loan, and I’m betting that the solar developers who are hoping to build 40GW of solar are going to be paying off the loan at a rate of around 0.1¢ to 1.0¢/kWh to transport their electricity from the fields to the cities. What’s more important than anything though – this is being built and the machines and expertise to create this type of hardware will grow globally.

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JinkoSolar gives 9GW of guidance for solar panels in 2017 – In 2015, the USA installed 7.3GW of solar power. In 2017 – this one company will manufacture 20% more than the US’ 2015 needs. In the 4th quarter 2016 – Jinko shipped 1.7GW of solar panels. Jinko, while the largest solar panel manufacturer, is one of many.

USA losing jobs to South Korea/China in polysilicon manufacturing as a result of trade war – When the USA decided to tax solar panels and cells coming from China, they knew that somewhere China would respond. In 2013 the USA was proud of being a net exporter of solar power related technologies – led by polysilicon. That is no longer the case. Check out the chart of volume shifting from the USA. Taxing solar from China has led to a loss of jobs and production capability in the USA for polysilicon, increased the price of imported solar panels, lowered the number of installation jobs and slowed our progression toward cleaning this planet. Of course, I get that the purpose of the tax was because we wanted to protect American jobs manufacturing solar panels…how’d that work out in reality though? Much Chinese manufacturing is now building in Vietnam and Thailand to send to the USA anyway, skipping the tax.

I guess today is the day to announce your rate electricity rate increases – Philidelphia, Central/North California, and Hawaii made it into my feed yesterday. A few weeks ago I saw my home state of Massachusetts pushing for 7 and 11%. Anything in your news feed – or, more importantly, real life? Price of US energy have been down three years.

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30MW/120MWh lithium battery system online in California – world’s largest grid-tied system: Key quote, ‘California Public Utilities Commissioner Michael Picker said, “I didn’t expect to see these kinds of prices in batteries until 2022, 2024 …we are far in advance of where we expected to be.”’ This pricing, along with utility-scale solar power being at least half a decade ahead of its predicted price falls, means we ought to expect significant volume come online because of economics alone.

South Carolina solar developers pushing for state level tax benefit – A few interesting data points from the article, 1. ‘Landowners earn on average about $750 a year per acre in rental income,’ 2. 91 potential solar farm projects in South Carolina are on hold pending legislation, 3. Those 91 projects on hold would generate about $217 million in one-time property taxes for hardware sales 4. and $12.6 million in annual property taxes, up from the roughly $21,000 that they now pay as agriculture properties, 5. Solar companies had invested $5.4 billion in northern neighbor North Carolina and $1.9 billion in the southern neighbor Georgia. One number that was missing – how many MW installed would those 91 projects be?

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NASA takes a cool picture – Link is to NASA’s website, with an easy before and after comparison system. 850MW of solar PV, some mountains, and a river from space. Pretty cool.

Co-location of solar & pollinator friendly plants – NREL did a great presentation, and now it is becoming a thing in real projects. This technique is new to me – but it reminds me greatly of other co-location techniques like solar+fish, +parking lots, +vegetables, +pathways, +roadways and more. Each of these co-location partners are worth money and increase the return on investment of solar projects. I’d like to see low-light vegetable farms built on top of parking lots outside of supermarkets or apartment complexes.

GA politicians wants to remove power from Public Utility Commission – When electricity companies were given publicly approved monopolies, the Public Utility Commission was created to balanced out the natural greed of self interest. The electric utilities, still, have many times violated the public’s trust. Now, a politician in Georgia thinks the Commission ought not have influence on how much renewable energy a power company should purchase. Of course, they use the excuse of freedom and market capitalism – but I bet they’re not considering a carbon tax to balance out ignored externalities. Watch the news as renewables now grow at 200GW clips in the coming years – you thought the politicians were getting strung about before?

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Exxon, again yesterday via its blog, pushing for carbon tax and *government intervention* – Exxon wants a carbon tax because internal combustion vehicles will slowly disappear while natural gas, which Exxon is heavily invested in, replaces coal. A carbon tax on coal is about double natural gas – and Exxon is losing serious money on expensive oil investments. Plus an interesting phrase from a company that constantly attacks government: At ExxonMobil, we’re encouraged that the pledges made at last year’s Paris Accord create an effective framework for all countries to address rising emissions; in fact, our company forecasts carbon reductions consistent with the results of the Paris accord commitments. Governments can help advance the search for energy technologies by funding basic research and by enacting forward-looking policies. If you’re Exxon, you can doubly win – support a carbon tax that hurts your competition, while also making it look like you’tr supportinf international climate change agreements (many say a $40/ton carbon tax will mean we meet both Paris and Clean Power Plan goals). My prior thoughts on this topic.

World’s largest wealth fund urged to consider infrastructure investments – If $900B worth of investment money were pushed to invest 5% in renewable infrastructure, then we’d get the equivalent of 50GW of solar power from Norway alone. Money like this would flow from many soverign wealth funds globally, and it will join private capital from groups like BlackRock. These renewable investments are being considered for two reasons – they’ve shown long term stability, and they align with the fund’s general do no harm matra. Good, clean money being made.

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How the electric utilities can survive by become a public darling – It is time for the electric utility to fight for its life, and it must fight the automobile industry that is trying to hold onto internal combustion engines. Electricity usage is falling in the USA and moving away from centralized management – so how does a utility grow? They begin to fuel electric vehicles – and in order to win that game, they’re going to have to fight for electric vehicles by lobbying politicians. If the utilities do fight for electric vehicles, and this is where you need see the graphs shown in this article, then they have a chance at truly helping climate change. Right now, in the USA, if we cleaned up 100% of our electricity infrastructure – we’d still be serious polluters because transportation is a bigger polluter than electricity – but if we took out transportation and electricity…

Attorney General getting sued by Exxon over climate change – First off, #ExxonKnew knew climate change was human caused in the middle 1970s. Their own scientists told them. The key is, they then told the world’s public that there was doubt – that climate change wasn’t real. Tobacco Companies had for decades engaged in “a pattern of racketeering activity” geared to “deceive the American public about the health effects and addictiveness of smoking cigarettes.” Now, change out references to tobacco and health, for oil and climate. Now – Exxon is attacking in order to limit the effectiveness of Massachusetts Attorney General Healey. Just letting you know – I’ve put $$$ toward her re-election campaign.

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Tesla has made its first quarterly announcement since it purchased SolarCity in late 2016. Understandably, it seems SolarCity’s own Gigafactory has been renamed Gigafactory 2. The SolarCity integration being an ongoing process warranted notice in the header lines of the document  – with this first page quote reiterating the logic in purchasing SolarCity:

With the acquisition of SolarCity, we have created the world’s only integrated sustainable energy company, from generation to storage to transportation.

Multiple references were made to bettering the cash positions of the company by focusing solar power sales on cash deals that generate immediate revenue versus lease sales. It was stressed that Tesla’s plan to do this was strongly underway – cash sales increased from Q3’16 to Q4’16 from 13% to 28%, while from increasing 7X from the 4% in Q4’15. Of the 203MW installed in the quarter – 56MW were cash sales totaling $77 million. Those $77M were added in only six weeks – $500-667M in cash sales for 2017 (low end adjusted as there is always a bump in 3rd/4th quarter)?

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California going for 100% renewable electricity by 2045 – A California politician has submitted a bill requiring the state to go 100% renewable electricity by 2045. California is the largest US state by population and GDP, and if it were on its own it is often said it’d be among the top ten economies in the world. With a Massachusetts politician also pushing for 100% electricity by 2035 and renewable energy by 2045, we might have two states totaling 47 million people (plus Hawaii sometime in the 2030s) investing in research, technology, and installation of whole new power systems for decades to come.

Mexico solar bid at 2.69¢/kWh – I remember back in 2011-2013 when I worked for Beghelli, and was training the Mexico sales teams on solar power. The country has great sunlight resources, especially in the northwestern desert that is located just south of New Mexico, Arizona and California – some of the best photons in the world. Residential electricity is expensive – with a progressive pricing form that has four to five tiers that get increasingly more expensive with more total usage. Located all over the country were black cisterns on the roofs of homes to heat water. Less than three cents a watt – with no incentives, just south of the US border. That means those prices are coming here soon.

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Australian residential energy storage systems increased from 500 to 6,750 – Key data point: payback in 7 years. Major factor – electricity in Australia is expensive. Retorts – solar + energy storage is going down in price, while prices of energy seemingly forever increase. Long term prognosis – Australia, a country with one of the highest levels of residential solar installation volume in the world, will grow their energy storage market significantly as prices of energy storage fall further. We’ve already crossed the economic point – 7-10 year ROI – where residential customer exhibit strong buying signals. This is already spreading to other high cost areas (Hawaii, Southern California, Germany, Massachusetts, etc).

Germany limiting renewable development – Main reason: too much intermittent energy, not enough tools to manage its flows and storage. Germany know that it needs to build new transmission lines to move the large amounts of off shore wind to the south – but there are plenty of political arguments against. Energy storage is coming hard – so that will help, but goals of nearly 100% renewable/clean by 2050, lots of work is needed.

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Saudi Arabia has officially launched a request for proposals (RFP) for 300MW of solar power – the RFP sits at the front end of a 9.5 GW solar rollout by 2023. The proposed project’s site has gone through full pre-development work with those site assessments will be made available to qualified parties. Bid due date is March 20th.

Earlier this month, Energy Minister Khalid Al-Falih said that “the terms on renewable contracts will be motivating so that the cost of generating power from these renewable sources will be the lowest in the world.” The previous lowest bid was by a Japanese-led group in Au Dhabi for 2.3¢/kWh as part of a ‘side bid’ of 1,170MW.

As we saw in India’s recent bids, government support and intelligently designed programs will lead toward record low prices when expectations scale to the multi-gigawatt level.

With the continued increases in solar panel efficiency, and falling solar module and utility-scale power plants, we expect that someone will bid 1.99¢/kWh or lower.

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70% of Mongolian herders have solar power – If the planet goes to crap because we’re fools and allow it to, its people like this – living as close to the land as possible – who will keep the species alive. And now they have access to electricity. When I traveled in China/Pakistan back in the summer of 2008, I saw a yurt with solar power. They have a radio and a refrigerator for medication. As well, fresh yak yogurt/milk is a taste that must be acquired.

Why liberals should support recently suggested carbon tax – The two main argument by liberals against the recently suggested carbon tax by Republicans in the USA are that 1. $40/ton is 1/5th what academics say the true cost is and 2. Its revenue neutral – without investing in infrastructure we’re just going to spend our carbon dividend on more oil and natural gas because we have no alternative opportunity. The article models that suggest $40/ton will meet current legislative goals set forth by the Clean Power Plan and the Paris Agreement – if that is the case, then I would have to grudgingly accept…however – I won’t stop pushing for infrastructure incentives. If we don’t build infrastructure to replace natural gas/coal/internal combustion – we won’t win the planet back.

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In this week’s top stories: Tesla Autopilot’s Autosteer update on HW2, Elon Musk’s underground transportation network in SpaceX’s parking lot, Hyundai IONIQ‘s pricing, TSLA milestones, the latest solar & EV news, and much more.

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Arizona County put out Request for Proposal (RFP) for 1.5GW of solar power – Personally, this is the largest RFP I’ve seen in the US. There are headlines for projects in the Middle East at 5GW, one in India at 7.5GW and China sorta has an RFP of 20GW a year – but these nation-state led bids feel different than a county in the state of Arizona. 8,800 acres of desert (less than .005% of the more than 1.8 million acres of federal lands controlled by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) in La Paz County). This project will cost $1/W’ish – $1.5B in cost. And there is already a transmission line project in development to move the power. I’d love to get a commission on $1.5B…

23.6% achieved with perovskite – plus stability increases: The real reason I grabbed this article, other than a fascination with base level research, was this quote – ‘“The best silicon solar cell alone has achieved 26.3% efficiency,” says Zachary Holman, an assistant professor of electrical engineering at ASU’s Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering. “Now we’re gunning for 30% with these tandem cells, and I think we could be there within two years.”’ I’ve never heard of someone seriously considering hitting 30% with a silicon solar cell efficiency. Yesterday, we saw SunPower at 25% on a production line and how that was 50% greater than average panels – imagine the labs being at double average panels in two years with a cheaper product like perovskite…wow.

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SunPower hits 25% average efficiency – Getting to a certain efficiency in the lab is great, as setting that record tells us what is possible. More important in the real world – when your production line averages that high level efficiency. Not every solar cell that comes off the line is the same – during the binning process a solar manufacturer will test individual pieces to see how they turned out. The most efficient solar cells get put into the high-end, most expensive panels – the cells that test lower go to a different line of products. Something to consider – SunPower’s highest solar panels are in the 24% range, while the average panel being installed at the super cheap numbers you hear me talk about are at 16%. SunPower can fit 50% more electricity production in the same area. Also in article are quarterly/annual results.

Would you be interested in voting for a carbon dividend? – If the PR people can spin the term up – and help everyone ‘forget’ that it is a carbon tax, we’re all going to start singing the praises of a revenue neutral carbon dividen. The term itself won’t be the reason a carbon tax will win – broader society is in support of doing something, and broader society knows doing something costs money. However – for that extra 5-20% of the voters needed to boost it over the line, it’ll get the job done.

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Danish School Has Installed The World’s Largest Solar Facade – When the building is made of electricity generation material, from day one, we change the perception of what a building is. It’s no longer simply a structure to feed material, food, energy for hot, cold and light, etc. In soon time, a building without solar power will be the aberration. Check out the image and the different colored solar panels.

A quote for Wall Street from a CEO – SunPower expects that, “The intensity of competition will continue.” SunPower is taking a beating as the price difference between its market leading efficiency and the uber-economical spot market of 16% polysilicon gets wider. The competition is rough for the 16% manufacturers as well – Yingli might get delisted, and SolarWorld is cutting back employees to move up market. I recently asked a stock analyst to look at a solar cell equipment manufacturer – he said, ‘tight margins, lowering product values, global competition, rising Chinese products, etc.’ Sounds like every story on solar panel manufacturers.

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US solar market grows by 95% – Led by an enormous expansion of the utility solar power market, and complemented by solid growth in both the residential and commercial-industrial sectors, the solar power industry installed approximately 14,625MW. The average household – 2.6’ish people – needs about .01MW (10kW) to meet their home electricity needs. Installations of 100MW or more occurred in 20 states – the market is widening. The US is now home to 40GW of solar power spread across 1.3 million installations.

Sunergy, a Chinese solar panel manufacturer, building module assembly plant in California –  200 local jobs and 400MW of solar panels per year from this manufacturing line. Sunergy has spread manufacturing facilities around the planet in order to work around various tariff schemes. In order to not have product taxed by the Feds, the article suggested Sunergy would have to import solar cells from its facilities in Vietnam or South Korea. I wonder if that means there are going to be 400MW or really well priced solar panels available in the US soon? I’ll let the boss know.

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Amtech Systems sees Solar PV industry in a ‘buy cycle’ – I was once told by a smart friend, ‘When there is a gold rush, sell pick axes.’ Ametch sells pick axe making machines. And if Amtech, a company that builds hardware to increase the volume of solar panels that can be made, is getting orders from solar panel manufacturers being forced to sell at 33¢/W – then I expect pricing to go lower on solar panels (big risk there). If manufacturers can still afford to buy new hardware to make more efficient (PERC cells) product – it will feed down the chain. Expect significant price falls in solar power to continue.

A coalition of governors, Red & Blue, are pushing Trump on Solar+Wind – 20 states representing 43% of the US population. I think being a political science/economics major in college is really paying off in the solar industry. One of the variables when I chose the industry was that I thought the political machine was tilting in favor of solar power in 2006 – 10+ years later the political machine has definitely tilted, but my oh my the tilts that have occurred.

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A path to 10TW (but actually about solar cell consistency in manufacturing) – The article is about finding a solution to the 10% or so of solar cells that go bad in the first six months of sunlight exposure – good research. What I found more interesting was their analysis on how to get to 10 terrawatts of solar power by 2030: reduce the cost of modules by 50%, increase the conversion efficiency of modules (the fraction of solar energy they convert into electricity) by 50%, and decrease the cost of building new factories by 70% – we’re currently at a total installed base 300-330GW, we’d need increase that about 30-33 times. It’d take 128 years at 2016’s record install pace.

India’s operational solar module production capacity tops 8GW – The largest plant is 1.2GW, and another 3GW+ of capacity can come online. While 5-8GW of capacity is only a small piece of the globes ~117GW of capacity, last year India did announce more capacity expansions than China – 17GW vs 13GW. To meet goals of 40GW in solar parks – India needs to be conscious of the whole solar panel supply chain as NREL says that is what truly sets China apart in solar panels. If the globe has China and India both significantly investing in clean energy – my optimism increases greatly.

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The US Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) released the December Energy Infrastructure Update – it includes a summation of the annual utility scale (1MW in size or greater) installations of electricity generation hardware. The report showed 26GW+ of power plants installed – 15GW of that being wind+solar and 1.2GW nuclear power. In addition to utility scale solar power  is somewhere between 4.8GW to 6.8GW’ish of private and business solar power. When accounting for each technology’s capacity factor – it turns out that roughly 65% of electricity generated from these installations will be clean and most of this hardware will run for decades.

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Building Integrated Photovoltaics (BIPV) – Nation’s largest being built: Tesla’s solar shingle is BIPV, and everything ONYX Solar does is BIPV. If our structures contain the solar panels, instead of us having to build them on later – 1. We’ll design more with solar integrated and 2. It might get even cheaper.

Arizona implements new rates, voluntary demand charge – This state pushes back hard against solar power, very conservative, but because of its sunlight still has to deal with the attack on the grid by solar power. As such, the laws on the right side of the political spectrum that drive solar originate here – while laws from the left side of the political spectrum are driven by Arizona’s large neighbor to the west. I like to watch – – what happens in Arizona sometimes happens in Nevada a year or two later, and then Florida.

Good PR for the solar world – Jimmy Carter leasing land for solar plant – Add this to putting solar power on his former residence and I’d say Carter is a pretty consistent guy.

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90% of new electricity capacity in Europe renewable (50%+ offshore wind) – In the US we saw that 67% of the electricity coming from hardware built in 2016 was clean, with wind+solar+nuclear doing the heavy lifting. In Europe, the capacity installed was 90% renewable. That’s hardware that is going to be producing energy with no additional fuel, only human upkeep, for decades on end. Clean energy.

What the world can learn from Australia’s no apology transmission system evolution –  First – key data point: The Aussies are cool with managing up to 40% of their grid being distributed, intermittent generation. Second – they’re adding really damn smart battery storage volume. And the third item, which also happens to be the “The third stage” of this transition: likely not occurring for another decade – involves the potential launch of a digital network optimization market, enabling peer-to-grid and perhaps also capable of supporting peer-to-peer market transactions, for energy and potentially other grid services. Hell yeah! A true transition allows you and I to sell energy directly with the utilities managing their resources and giving a medium to move the energy.

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