Green Energy

In this week’s top stories: Tesla’s 2017 Supercharger network expansion plans, Autopilot & launch mode limits, Musk’s tunnel digging company, the latest solar and EV news, and much more.

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It’s been a busy week for solar in two of the country’s sunniest states, for better or worse.

In a unanimous 3-0 vote, the Public Utilities Commission of Nevada decided yesterday to restore retail rate net metering to customers of the Sierra Pacific Power company.

At the same time, Arizona Corporation Commission voted to abolish net metering in favor of a lower so-called “export rate.” 
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A new report today from the guardian shared news of the first solar panel road opening in the Normandy village of Tourouvre-au-Perche. The French ecology minister, Ségolène Royal, introduced the new 1 km (0.6 mile) long solar road installation, which consists of 2,800 sq m (30,139 sq ft) of energy-producing panels.
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Solar power took the lead in new capacity additions for 2016 expected to be greater than 9.5GW of utility scale plus 4.5GW of distributed installations. The numbers could possibly be even higher with 2016 utility scale solar being so aggressive and 4th quarters being mecurial. When accounting for capacity factor (amount of time the hardware is actually pushing electrons onto the grid), solar power is 31% of new electricity, natural gas 41% and wind 20%. Solar almost doubled from 7.3GW in 2015, finishing third for overall US utility capacity additions.
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In the 3rd quarter of 2016, the United States installed 4,143 MW of solar power per a report released by Greentech Media’s Research Team – 191% greater than Q3’15. This volume represents the largest quarter in US history, even larger than the historically largest 4th quarters during the prior decade. Q1+Q2+Q3 of 2016 have already surpassed all of 2015’s total install amount. The 4th quarter is expected to be even larger – leading to 2016 overall being 88% greater than 2015. It looks like Americans installing solar power and the Department of Energy are turning their nose up to Donald Trump’s Chinese Hoax.

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We are really only starting to develop the energy potential of the giant nuclear reactor in space that we call the sun. We know that every day it sends enough energy to earth to power human civilization 10 times over, but we haven’t managed to scale ways to harvest it the way nature has done almost perfectly.

For generating electricity, photovoltaic cells on solar panels have been the method of choice, but even then there are different approaches, like large solar farms owned by electric utilities and investors or distributed solar installations on rooftops owned by homeowners and businesses. The latter has been an attractive solution to many: it decentralizes energy production and enables homeowners to get the direct benefits of solar energy.

But the question of scaling remains: how many houses and buildings can realistically benefit from solar? A study by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) tried to answer just that, and came to the conclusion that about 25% of the electricity needs in the US could come directly from rooftop solar installations.
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State of Florida law states only an approved and regulated electric utility is allowed to sell electricity to the public. The 1988 court case, PW Ventures, Inc. v. Nichols, clarified this position. With Tesla’s SolarCity announcing that they’ll service customers of Duke Energy and the Orlando Utilities Commission in the greater Orlando area, they’ll have to abandon their ‘solar lease’ model in Florida – a state with no solar incentives.

In this model, Tesla owns the solar power system and takes all incentives, then sells the homeowner discounted electricity in a 20-year contract. With a population greater than 20 million people, the third largest state is a ripe opportunity – and maybe a laboratory.

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India confirmed today that it completed its solar farm in Kamuthi, Tamil Nadu, and it is taking the title of ‘the world’s largest solar power plant’ with a capacity of 648 MW – significantly more than the previous largest solar farm, the Topaz Solar Farm in California with a capacity of 550 MW.

They released some impressive images of the massive farm built on an area of 10 sq km (3.9 sq miles) – you can see a picture above and a video below.
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The island of Ta’u in American Samoa has been using diesel generators and burning over 100,000 gallons of fuel per year in order to supply its nearly 600 residents with electricity. That’s no longer the case and the island is now virtually energy independent thanks to a new solar and battery installation by Tesla and SolarCity, which is now officially part of Tesla since the merger closed yesterday.
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Last night, the American people elected a climate change denier, Donald Trump, as their president for the next 4 years. Now Trump wasn’t elected based on his environmental policies, but nonetheless, that’s what the US will be stuck with for the next 4 years now that Trump and the Republican Party control the White House, the US Senate, and the US House.

Whether the US, or the world, can survive 4 years of climate change denial in US leadership remains to be seen, but considering that Trump warned that he will kill clean energy subsidies and all spending under Obama, we can get a good idea of what the short-term prospects look like for the clean tech sector.
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After announcing a new all-glass option similar to the Model 3, but available now on the Model S today, CEO Elon Musk went on a ‘Tweetstorm’ and revealed that Tesla could offer a similar option with embedded solar cells for the Model 3.

The roof would be able to generate solar energy to power the vehicle and/or the components inside…
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US electrical utilities are feeling pressure from distributed solar power and are proving that they will go to all ends to protect their monopoly positions. In Florida, the utilities are spending tens of millions of dollars to manipulate the electorate into voting for an amendment that limits solar power’s growth. In the last five years alone, the largest 25 utilities have spent more than $400 million on lobbying federal and state elections. This effort to control the political machine is worth trillions annually.

And now that we know 92% of people breathe unsafe air and more than 6 million a year die of it – that these utilities are slowing the transition to cleaner forms of energy means they are knowingly killing people.

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