Xcel Energy, electricity utility of Colorado, received a batch of bids whose medians were 2.1¢/kWh and 3.6¢/kWh for wind and solar power plus energy storage, respectively. The pricing was released in the public version of the ‘2017 All Source Solicitation.’
The world’s previous low for solar plus storage was a 4.5¢/kWh project in Arizona.
Google is officially off-setting 100% of its energy usage with either wind or solar power. The company signed contracts on three wind power plants in recent days to bring them over 3GW of production capacity.
Google’s energy infrastructure investments have totaled over $3.5 billion globally, with about two-thirds being in the US.
India has laid out plans to auction off 20.6GW of solar power in their 2017-2018 fiscal year, with an additional plan to auction off 30GW in 2018-19 and the same 2019-20.
This volume is part of a 100GW goal of solar power to be built by 2022 as part of the country’s goal of 175GW of Renewable Energy.
The US House of Representatives passed a tax-reform bill on Nov. 16 that would change the amount of tax credit each kWh of wind power created gets going forward. The US Senate, disagreeing, has returned a bill without this change.
While being argued, signed projects at various stages of development are on hold – and some estimate $50 billion worth of planned wind projects might not be developed.
I’ve made a mistake – I’m sorry. In my haste and excitement to see show off solar power – I’ve given it undue credit. Wind Power got these bids and I initially misinterpreted a piece of ambiguous information. While solar power did amazingly get a bid at 1.97¢ – it did not break below the recently set Saudi Record. Anything written in this article hereafter has been updated.
Per a press release from the Centro Nacional de Control de Energía (Cenace) of Mexico, the department received bids for 3TWh of solar wind electricity, with the lowest bids being 1.77¢/kWh coming from Italian multinational ENEL Green Power.
This record low price of green electricity on earth, just beats out the 1.79¢/kWh from Saudi Arabia, and is part of a pattern marching toward 1¢/kWh bids that are coming in 2019 (or sooner).
The largest wind turbine blade manufactured in Spain to date, 73.5m (241ft), was transported from the factory to the port in Castellón, Spain on October 20th. LM Wind Power, the manufacturer, filmed the 3.5 hour, 45km (28m) trip show off their product – and made an entertaining mini-film to boot.
German company Max Bögl Wind AG has built the world’s tallest wind turbine. The turbine ‘hub’ is 178m (584ft) tall, and the tower’s total height – to the tips of the upward extended blades – is 246.5m (809ft).
For every meter increase in turbine height, annual energy output is increased 0.5-1% due to lower turbulence and higher wind speeds.
In Delaware County, Iowa, a local landowner found 15 rabbits, with their neck’s broken, spread at the base of a wind turbine. A local land manager said it is likely they were placed to lure and potentially kill eagles with the wind turbines.
Wind power provided Iowa with more than 36% of its electricity in 2016. More than any other state in the USA, and second only to coal for total electricity within Iowa.
On Saturday, a record 24.6% of total electricity came from wind power sources in the 28 countries of the European Union. The majority of this wind electricity was generated onshore (88.7%) vs offshore (11.3%).
With Europe moving into the high wind production winter period, we expect a new season of records being broken. And with massive scale construction continuing for offshore wind farms, these records of 2017 will soon look quaint.
Jeff Bezos atop a wind farm breaking it in with a bottle of bubbly is pretty intense. Amazon’s founder made his way up one of more than 100 new wind turbines in Texas celebrating a major renewable energy project coming online.
The 253-megawatt “Amazon Wind Farm Texas” in Scurry County is part Amazon’s long-term goal to reach 100% renewable energy. As of the end of 2016, the company was beyond 40% – and expects to break 50% before the end of 2017.
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. Expand Expanding Close
The world’s first floating wind farm is now feeding into Scotland’s electricity grid. The $260M pilot project, majority owned by Statoil, is the first commercial development in the floating wind field. All prior floating wind turbines were research focused.
Floating wind is being developed because 80% of the Europe’s wind resources are located in water too deep for traditional fixed bottom wind turbines to reach. Additionally, just west of Europe, in the North Atlantic, there is enough wind to power the entire world.
Warren Buffett owned MidAmerican Energy is upgrading wind turbines in Iowa early in their lifetimes in order to take advantage of the newest innovations in gear boxes and blades. Since only small parts of the already developed wind farms need be upgraded – these moves will increase the profitability of the farms. Wind turbines are evolving at a fast enough pace that waiting for standard end of life (30 years) means leaving money on the table.
I estimate an additional $51M/year in revenue from MidAmerican’s repowering.
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.
The whole planet can run on wind power if we really needed to.
A new study postulates that 3 million km2 of open ocean area in the windy North Atlantic could produce enough energy to satisfy the needs of the entire human species during the winter months, while it could cover the electricity needs of North America and Europe during the summer.
Global solar PV manufacturing capacity expansion plans rebound in Q1 – First quarter 2017 saw 10GW announced of solar power manufacturing capacity. With global capacity somewhere in the 115-135GW/year this is a big uptick – 7.5-8.5%. A few hours later, I get a Q2 announcement of a 2GW solar factory coming to Taiwan. This tells me that the demand of solar PV is predicted to continue to grow, and that significant investment in new factories, new machines and new technologies will continue. And since newer technologies, at the same price or lower than old technologies, are more efficiency – we will see continued increases in efficiency in the coming years.
Maryland governor has battery tax credit law on desk – The measure provides for a 30 percent tax credit on the installed cost of a storage system, capped at $5,000 for residential and $75,000 for commercial projects. The total credits awarded cannot exceed $750,000 in a year, and the program will run from 2018 through 2022. This is against state taxes – and state tax rates are lower than federal – so its not as strong as the federal incentive for solar, but its pretty close – and it will drive business. A Tesla PowerWall 2, costing $5500 retail plus about $500-2000 to install, will end up costing $4,200-5300 after $1,800-2300 tax credit.
Ohio House pushes law forward to lower renewable energy standards and eliminate penalties for failure to meet – Per article, Senate fate unclear, Governor indicates veto – however – House vote veto proof. The oil/coal/gas groups across the USA (Alec/Koch) will continually push at the legal systems hoping to get laws through wherever they can. This process will not stop while they see a political pathway – Republican control – and a chance to use lobbying money well. Hundreds of millions of dollars will be spent on campaigns, dinners, and plenty of illegal benefits to keep revenue streams consistent.
North Dakota House committee rejects ‘glorified moratorium’ on wind energy – “Since I’ve been a kid, you flipped the light switch on, the power’s always been there” – Politician attempting to use intermittent nature of wind power to require a three person committee to approve all wind systems. Later on this committee will be stacked as a strategic bottleneck – see Arizona. Story noted one politician bringing up list of federal coal tax benefits when solar incentives were mentioned. Good to see a rejection of the amendment – good to see the discussion.
754MW solar plant breaking ground in Mexico – Largest in the Americas. This past summer, I was excited to see 100MW projects in the news so often. My largest personal project in the 0.6MW range for perspective. Now it seems the headlines from the big news sources don’t break unless 500MW or more. These projects will cost more than $500M – that’s a lot of capital to raise, but, I often hear investors only wanting to invest large sums of money due to fixed costs. And in the big game – where Blackrock has $5T under management – $500M barely gets you in the door.
1.2GW for Maryland by 2020 – We’re in 2017, that’s 400MW/year if we don’t include 2020, if we do it then its still an impressive 300MW a year. Maryland’s 6M people will definitely feel the effect of the economic bump if the market grows at that rate. Massachusetts has a bit larger population, and slightly higher annual volume per year – but now has 20,000 solar employees. The projections here were of 1,000 jobs per year as volume grows, maybe more.
Low cost wind displacing coal – 56GW of coal at risk, that’s a big number – about 16% of the current stock around 339GW of coal. If wind runs at a 35% capacity factor and coal is around 60%, that’d mean about 96GW of wind to replace the at risk product – that would more than double the current US wind capacity. That’d be a lot of progress
[Editor’s note: We’re trying a new morning green energy briefing which should deliver every day by 9am ET. Please comment below] Expand Expanding Close
Today is the 46th Earth Day. Though from the perspective of the earth, it’s probably closer to its 1.6 trillionth day. Nonetheless, Earth Day is supposed to be an occasion to demonstrate your support for environmental protection.
You can show your support in very simple ways like using less energy or finally recycling those dead batteries that have been piling up in your junk drawer, or you can try to pick up some new habits and initiate yourself to new and greener technologies. Expand Expanding Close
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