Tea Party Takes On Georgia Power Over Lack Of Solar Energy

The fight to bring cheaper, clean energy to Georgia is uniting some unlikely allies. Renewable energy advocates and leaders of the Atlanta Tea Party are taking on utility giant Southern Co., and its subsidiary Georgia Power, over resisting the call to expand its development of solar energy.

As Debbie Dooley, co-founder of the Atlanta Tea Party explained in an interview with Climate Progress, the group's interest in the debate is quite simple: "The free market has been one of the founding principles of the Tea Party since it began and a monopoly is not a free market."

In Georgia - as in many states - utilities are granted a monopoly over the ability to sell power, which means that customers have no choice in where they get their electricity. A major provision of the monopoly is that Georgia Power act in the best interest of ratepayers, regulated by the Public Service Commission.

Dooley said the Tea Party believes consumers should be able to exercise choice when it comes to their energy source and the activists she works with don't want to be dependent on one or two energy sources. And Dooley's effort is not aimed at reducing carbon emissions - in fact, she doesn't believe in global warming - but based on their view that solar is a commonsense alternative for Georgia ratepayers that could function without subsidies.

As this atypical coalition has come together to introduce competition into the electrical provider market and challenge Georgia Power's long-held monopoly, Southern Co. continues to ignore consumer demand and market trends. In a recent speech to the Atlanta Press Club, Southern Co. CEO Tom Fanning said, "There may come a time in the next decade when these things will be more competitive. It's just not right now."

One reason for this may be that distributed energy resources, like solar, threaten the core business model of utilities. As David Roberts explains in depth on Grist, an expansion of rooftop solar, for example, is a major risk to the utility model because it reduces demand for their most valuable product and goes straight at utilities' main profit centers.

And the Tea Party isn't the only unlikely voice for solar in Georgia. Lauren "Bubba" McDonald of the Public Service Commission also wants more solar in Georgia, although his plan would work within the existing utility structure. McDonald told Climate Progress that his decades of experience as a state lawmaker and as an elected member of the PSC, along with research and observation of the solar industry, has led him to believe the time is right for a significant expansion of solar energy in Georgia. He cited a study conducted by Arizona State University that ranks Georgia in the top five for potential benefits from solar expansion, but 38th in actual solar deployment.

The PSC, made up of five Republicans, is currently debating Georgia Power's long-term plan for meeting the state's energy needs. Despite the rapidly declining cost of solar and increasing pressure from solar companies and other advocates, the plan includes no new provisions for solar energy. Amending the plan requires a majority of commissioners and the vote is currently scheduled for mid-July.

Motivated by the intent to give consumers reliable electricity at the best price, McDonald is working on a plan for a robust expansion of solar in the state, which he intends to present to his colleagues in the next week. As the Atlanta Journal Constitution explains, it "would require massive fields of solar panels - presumably installed across south Georgia, where land is cheap, sunshine is plentiful, and the imminent closing of several coal-fired Georgia Power plants is being looked upon with dread by local communities."

Even if the Public Service Commission forces Georgia Power to expand its use of solar power in their energy plan, Dooley said the fight is far from over. She plans to continue her efforts by pushing for upcoming legislation that would allow private companies to set up solar farms and feed their energy into Georgia Power's grid, continuing to put pressure on Georgia Power for cost overruns at its Vogtle nuclear power plant, and possibly even challenging the law that grants monopoly rights to utilities.

Richard Caperton, Managing Director of Energy at the Center for American Progress, contributed.

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/06/06/2111561/tea-party-takes-on

For Powering Cars, Solar-Electric Is 'Orders Of Magnitude' More Efficient Than Biofuels

Climate Progress recently reported on a study that found both economic and environmental benefits if homes in the northeastern United States upgraded older heating systems by moving from heating oil to switchgrass. However, one point to emphasize was the findings were specific to those circumstances - the region, the homes, and that particular use.

Switchgrass was not nearly as good an idea for electricity generation or transportation fuel. Further confirming the need for a diversity of renewable solutions to our energy needs, a recent study determined that electricity generated by solar beats out biofuels for powering cars under myriad scenarios.

The report, put together by a team from the University of California, Santa Barbara and the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, and published in Enviornmental Science and Technology, compared five different approaches to see what was the most efficient way to power a compact passenger vehicle for every 100 kilometers driven:

1. Battery-electric vehicles (BEVs) run on electricity from solar power.
2. Battery-electric vehicles run on electricity from switchgrass.
3. Internal combustion vehicles (ICVs) run on switchgrass biofuel.
4. Battery-electric vehicles run on electricity from corn.
5. Internal combustion vehicles run on corn-based biofuel.

The analysis considered land-use, greenhouse gas emissions, fossil fuel use, and took into account the production and use life cycles of both the fuels themselves and the vehicles they power.

In terms of land-use, solar significantly out-performed all other options. It performed modestly better than switchgrass in terms of greenhouse gas emissions, and significantly better than corn-based biofuel. Solar was actually equal or slightly worse than switchgrass when it came to fossil fuel requirements over the totality of the life cycle, but it still out-performed corn-based internal combustion. (And, of course, gasoline.)

So all things considered, a pretty clear win for solar-powered electric battery vehicles:

A write up over at Green Car Congress has more details on the assumptions and variables in the study's modeling.

"PV is orders of magnitude more efficient than biofuels pathways in terms of land use - 30, 50, even 200 times more efficient - depending on the specific crop and local conditions," Roland Geyer, a UCSB Bren School of Environmental Science & Management Professor, told Science Daily. "You get the same amount of energy using much less land, and PV doesn't require farm land." The central bottleneck, as the report notes, is the low efficiency of photosynthesis:

Biofuels for ICVs and bioelectricity for BEVs use photosynthesis to convert solar radiation into transportation services, that is, they are sun-to-wheels transportation pathways. While photosynthesis has a theoretical maximum energy conversion efficiency of 33 percent, the overall conversion efficiency of sunlight into terrestrial biomass is typically below 1 percent, regardless of crop type and growing conditions.

"Today's thin-film PV is at least 10-percent efficient at converting sunlight to electricity," Geyer explained - hence solar's superior performance. In fact, the WWF's Solar PV Atlas found that as far as land-use goes, solar is so efficient that less than 1 percent of global land areas would be needed to supply all the world's electricity needs in 2050.

Traditional corn-based biofuels are problematic on all sorts of levels: Carbon emissions from agricultural production over their full life cycle largely wipe out any carbon benefits at the point of actual vehicle use. They compete with human food supplies and food cropland, driving up global prices and contributing to global poverty and instability. And new cropland sequesters less carbon from the atmosphere than the grassland or forest it typically displaces.

Switchgrass and other cellulosic biofuels, while they avoid disrupting food supplies, are not immune to these other flaws either. On top of that, their commercial viability at any time in the near future is far from certain.

For the clean car fleet of the future, electrical and hybrid vehicles relying on a grid powered by solar - and presumably wind, hydroelectric, and such - still appears to be the way to go.

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/03/27/1783781/for-powering-cars-

Chinese Companies Projected To Make Solar Panels for 42 Cents Per Watt In 2015

Future cost drops from Chinese crystalline silicon solar producers will not be as steep as recent years, but they will still be significant.

Stephen Lacey, via GreenTechMedia

The cost of producing a conventional crystalline silicon (c-si) solar panel continues to drop. Between 2009 and 2012, leading "best-in-class" Chinese c-Si solar manufacturers reduced module costs by more than 50 percent. And in the next three years, those players - companies like Jinko, Yingli, Trina and Renesola - are on a path to lower costs by another 30 percent.

Check out [the above] chart outlining projected costs, which comes from GTM Research's Global Intelligence PV Tracker.

"Clearly, the magnitude of cost reductions will be less than in previous years. But we still do see potential for significant cost reductions. Going from 53 cents to 42 cents is noteworthy," says Shayle Kann, vice president of research at GTM Research.

With plenty of innovation still occurring in crystalline silicon PV manufacturing - including new sawing techniques, thinner wafers, conductive adhesives, and frameless modules - companies are able to squeeze more pennies off the cost of each panel. However, as the chart above shows, innovating "outside the module" to reduce the installed cost of solar will be increasingly important as companies find it harder to realize cost reductions in manufacturing.

Related Post:

• In Australia, Wind Power Is Already Cheaper Than Fossil Fuels, And Solar Is Right Behind

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/02/17/1604661/chinese-companies-

New 'Rock Candy' Process To Manufacture Silicon Could Make Solar Power Even Cheaper

By Tina Casey Via Clean Technica

Researchers at the University of Michigan have come up with a low-cost way to manufacture high-grade silicon, based on a concept familiar to anyone who has tried to make rock candy at home. If the breakthrough can be translated into a commercially viable process, it would make ultra-cheap solar tech like V3Solar's Spin Cell (which we were just raving about the other day) even cheaper.

Ironically, funding for the research project came from the American Chemical Society Petroleum Research Fund, but maybe they know something we don't.

Cooking Up a Batch of Low-Cost Silicon

Silicon is the key component of conventional solar cells. It comes from silicon dioxide, aka sand, which is one of the cheapest and most abundant materials on Earth, but converting sand into high grade silicon is a high cost, energy intensive process with a pretty significant carbon footprint.

As described by U of Mich writer Kate McAlpine, the new process works at just 180 degrees Fahrenheit, which is a far cry from the 2,000 degrees needed for conventional silicon manufacturing.

The method basically consists of covering a liquid gallium electrode (gallium is a soft whitish metal that has a melting point around room temperature) with a layer of a solution based on silicon tetrachloride (a colorless, flammable liquid).

As in conventional silicon processing, electrons from the metal convert the silicon tetrachloride into raw silicon. The new twist is that by using soft metal with a low melting point, the research team was able to get the raw silicon to form crystals without exposing the solution to additional heat.

A Ways to Go for Low Cost Silicon

The team has observed films of silicon crystals forming on the liquid gallium electrodes, but so far the individual crystals are only about 1/2000th (yes that's 1/2000th) of a millimeter in diameter.

There is still a long way to go before the process jumps from the lab into commercial viability, and the next steps include experimenting with other metal alloys that have low melting points.

Meanwhile, other routes to low-cost silicon based solar power are at or near commercial development, and they could go even lower if the U Mich research pans out.

One approach, illustrated by the aforementioned V3Solar Spin Cell (which by the way began life as Solarphasec), is to squeeze more power out of conventional solar cells by reconfiguring the solar module.

The Spin Cell reboots the typical flat solar panel into a 3-D cone. Along similar lines, MIT researchers have come up with a solar "tower of power" that takes advantage of 3-D angles.

The 3-D concept can also be internalized, as demonstrated by a company called (what else) Solar3D.

On a completely different note, the Obama Administration is also focusing on lowering the "soft costs" of solar power, which typically account for half the cost of a completed solar installation.

The Petroleum Research Fund

Well, here's hoping. In any case, the really interesting part of the story is the involvement of the Petroleum Research Fund, which states at the top of its home page that its mission is to support "fundamental research directly related to petroleum or fossil fuels."

In its vision statement following that declaration, the Fund waxes a little more expansive, describing itself as dedicated to "significantly increasing the world's energy options," though directly after the following note appears: "Proposals will no longer be considered in solar power, which includes photovoltaics and solar cells."

Apparently the U Mich project got in under the wire, but it shouldn't be surprising that a grant-making organization with roots in the petroleum industry was at least once open to solar power research.

Solar power has long been used as an economical way to provide energy to remote oil fields, where grid connections would be difficult if not impossible.

Given the energy intensity of harvesting unconventional oil, most notably from Canada's tar sands, low-cost power in any form would be a welcome development for the petroleum industry.

- Tina Casey, reprinted from Clean Technica with permission

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/01/25/1497561/new-rock-candy-pro

Solar Panel Prices Continue 'Seemingly Inexorable Decline'

The cost of crystalline silicon (c-Si) photovoltaic (PV) panels in the US continues to fall despite the imposition of anti-dumping and illegal subsidy tariffs on imports from China.

By Andrew Burger, via Cleantechnica

US imports of crystalline silicon solar cells and channels from China fell to their lowest level in at least two years even amid the peak, year-end selling season based on federal government data, the Coalition for American Solar Manufacturing (CASM) yesterday announced in a press release.

US imports of c-Si cells and modules from China totaled $50.5 million in November, down from $75 million in October, and less than one-fifth the $278 million from October 2011, according to the Census Bureau's "US Imports of Merchandise" database, CASM reported. Silicon PV cell and module imports from China are expected to be about one-third lower in 2012 than they were in 2011. Imports from China totalled about $1.7 billion through November this year, down from $2.4 billion in the year-ago period.

Solar PV system costs continued their seemingly inexorable decline all along the value chain in 2012, according to industry data....

Though imports from China have dropped substantially, the sharp rise in prices foreseen by some have yet to materialize.

The unsubsidized cost of renewable power produced from solar and wind energy will be no more expensive than that from oil, natural gas, and coal by the end of the decade, Energy Secretary Steven Chu predicted during a speech at a Pew Charitable Trusts event late March before the Commerce Deptartment and ITC had made their final determinations on Chinese import duties. Chu pegged installed solar PV grid parity at around $1 per watt.

This would mean reducing the cost of solar modules, or panels, to around $0.50/W, with corresponding reductions in remaining balance-of-system (BOS) costs of solar PV system installations. A GTM research report from late July forecast that this will happen a lot sooner, by 2016.

Prices for solar PV modules and panels have been falling fast from 2008 right on through 2012, according to industry data. The marginal weekly spot price of silicon solar modules (panels) was $0.654 per Watt, with a low price of $0.54 and a high of $1.00 per Watt as of January 16, 2013, according to PV Insights data.

The median installed price of residential and commercial PV systems in California dropped between 3% and 7% during the first six months of 2012, following year-over-year reductions of between 11% and 14% in 2011, according to the most recent Department of Energy Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory's "Tracking the Sun" report.

Overall, installed costs for home solar PV panels for all of 2012 ranged between $1750 and $2500 per kilowatt (kW), or $1.75-$2.50 per watt, according to Renewable Green Energy Power data.

By Andrew Burger, excerpted from Cleantechnica with permission

Related Posts:

• The Year In Solar Power: Prices Crash, Sales Soar, Industry Restructures, Saudis Leap In, CSP Suffers
• Three Charts That Illustrate Why Solar Has Hit A True Tipping Point

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/01/22/1478311/solar-panel-prices

The Year In Solar Power: Prices Crash, Sales Soar, Industry Restructures, Saudis Leap In, CSP Suffers

by Vince Font, via Renewable Energy World

This year was a big year for solar, both domestically and globally, with some unlikely players throwing their hats into the ring and upping the ante on achievable power generating capacity. Here's a wrap-up of some of the year's most impactful events in the solar industry, with a little added perspective from some experts in the field.

Financial Innovation and Collaboration Takes the Solar Cake

If you ask Tom Kimbis what he thinks was one of the most important developments of 2012 for solar energy, he may tell you something you didn't quite expect to hear. Kimbis, VP of External Affairs for the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA), says that much of the credit for what's being seen as a landmark year for downstream solar growth belongs not to technical innovations, but financial innovations - the kind that are making it increasingly possible for people everywhere to be able to afford solar without having to take out a second mortgage on their homes.

"Innovation can take place throughout the entire value chain," Kimbis said. "We've seen phenomenal innovation with the various leasing and third party ownership models that have driven the markets in the U.S. forward more than the increase in cell efficiency."

According to the U.S. Solar Market Insight Report, which was released by SEIA and GTM Research, 2012 has seen total installed solar capacity in the United States reach 1,992 MW. This far exceeds the annual total capacity reached in 2011, which was 1,885 MW - a not inconsiderable accomplishment, considering that 2012 isn't even over yet. There were 684 MW of solar capacity installation in the third quarter of 2012 alone, and in that same time frame the residential PV sector installed over 118 MW of capacity.

Kimbis credits the biggest quarterly growth yet for U.S. residential PV to an increase in third party solar leasing options for consumers, which he likens to financial options that car buyers have - where instead of having to pay cash, leasing or financing options help make ownership a possibility. "Overcoming that first cost issue is what the third party ownership's all about," Kimbis said.

Upstream financial collaborations also led to the green lighting of numerous global projects in 2012, including the Letsatsi and Lesedi solar farms in South Africa. Both were made possible by dollars from U.S. developer SolarReserve and two local companies, Intikon Energy and Kensani Capital. In Peru, OPIC came together with Latin America's development bank CAF and investment firm Conduit Capital Partners for the funding of two solar projects that will result in a combined solar capacity of 40 MW.

Oversupply Goes Up, PV Cost Goes Down

Despite a boom in solar demand in the United States in 2012 and a growth rate which SEIA estimates will be at about 70 percent over last year (compared to 14 percent global market growth), the reality of global PV panel oversupply remains an issue of concern.

In 2012, that oversupply led to a showdown between Chinese solar manufacturers and the United States Department of Commerce. Chinese manufacturers were accused of dumping their oversupply into the U.S. market at such low prices that they injured the ability of US-based solar manufacturers to compete fairly. This ultimately led to a decision by the International Trade Administration to levy tariffs to levy tariffs on the importation of solar modules using cells manufactured in China. In the final ruling, it was announced that the tariffs would range from 24 percent to 36 percent.

Alas, the old adage about every cloud having a silver lining may be very true, especially if you look at it from a global perspective. In 2012, oversupply led to low cost, which in turn drove an increased global expansion in development among wealthy and developing nations alike, all eager to capitalize on the low cost of materials.

Marc Norman, lawyer for Chadbourne & Parke LLP and director of the Emirates Solar Industry Association (ESIA), called this a possible case of "creative destruction" that's given developing countries an opportunity to enter the solar game.

Norman said that the low cost of solar PV could enable developing countries in particular to benefit from solar technology without even being connected to the power grid. "Solar technology can be applied off-grid," Norman said. "For example, in rural areas where there's a lack of infrastructure. There's a golden opportunity for more bottom-up market evolution, as opposed to a more traditional top-down approach."

Kimbis agrees, noting the inherent irony: "Falling pricing is a double edged sword. It's great for deployment, it's great for the consumer, and it's caused greater amounts of solar installation. On the other hand, falling prices have yielded smaller margins for manufacturers, making it tougher to survive in a very competitive climate."

Industry Jobs and Widespread Bankruptcies

In the United States, 2012 showed evidence that growth in the solar industry occurred at a much faster rate than other industries. According to The Solar Foundation's National Solar Jobs Census report, U.S. employment in the solar industry grew at a rate of 13.2 percent and the sector added 13,872 jobs in 2012, while Bureau of Labor statistics indicated that solar accounted for 1 out of every 230 jobs created.

This information may seem to fly in the face of the numerous solar company bankruptcies and consolidations that have taken place globally in the last year, but according to Kimbis, that's par for the course in an emerging industry.

"It's just like any other industry," Kimbis said. "Competition is extreme. This is something that the industry has known about for awhile; companies have been bracing for global competition for the last several years. It's a story which has repeated itself through everything from personal computing, to telecom, to the automobile industry."

Job outlook, while encouraging within the United States, was not so rosy in China in 2012. In November, it was reported that Suntech Power Holdings (which is the world's biggest maker of solar panels) would be shedding some 1,500 jobs in China to reduce operating costs and ratchet down on solar cell capacity.

Saudi Arabia: The Dark Horse

When discussing landmark events in solar, it's impossible to ignore what took place in Saudi Arabia earlier in 2012. In May, the King Abdullah City for Atomic and Renewable Energy (also known as K.A.CARE) established the goal to develop 54,000 MW of renewable energy capacity by 2030.

Why is an oil-rich nation like Saudi Arabia concerned with adopting renewable energy? Quite simply, to limit the local consumption of oil so that exports can be increased. With low cost access to oil and unchecked usage, it's believed that Saudi Arabia could find itself entirely out of the oil exportation business by 2030.

Under K.A.CARE's proposed plan, 41,000 MW of the total 54,000 MW capacity will come whole from solar: 16,000 MW from photovoltaic (PV) projects and 25,000 from solar thermal projects. As a first phase, 700 MW of utility-scale projects are set to be undertaken by the end of 2013.

Norman calls the K.A.CARE program "a massive game changer for the global renewable energy industry, and particularly solar" and says that it could also have a beneficial impact on the local job market in Saudi. Unemployment is estimated at around 10 percent in the Kingdom. "The government sees this as an opportunity to create a global center of excellence for renewables, in addition to job creation."

Norman explains that Saudi Arabia will require a certain percentage of local content on all renewables projects; this is seen as a means to stimulate the local job market.

2012's Impact on CSP

With the low cost of solar PV panels, some may wonder what impact 2012 had on the solar thermal market, of which concentrated solar power (CSP) is a big part. Did CSP suffer due to the comparatively low cost of solar PV? It depends on who you ask, really.

The answer to that question, according to Norman, is obvious. "As a result of the reduction in PV prices, CSP has taken a hit in the last few years," Norman said. "But they also have an advantage that can't be overlooked, and that's storage. Some developers have devised CSP plants that can store energy. That's something that PV technology can't measure up to at present."

Not everyone sees 2012 as having been a good year for CSP. Jigar Shah, partner at Inerjys Ventures, predicted the death of CSP as far back as 2007 and calls it a technology that's officially punched the big ticket. "I think in 2012, CSP basically died," Shah said. "Siemens shut down their CSP plant. Areva is building one unit in Morocco, but they shut down CSP plants in Australia and a few other places. BrightSource wasn't able to go public, so they've got an existing utility contract they're honoring with an existing DOE loan guarantee - and I don't think anyone believes that they're going to get a second contract. CSP is dead."

While the aforementioned U.S. Solar Market Insight Report mentioned several large scale CSP projects underway in the United States, it was reported that the third quarter of 2012 saw no new capacity installed in that segment.

Additional Solar Highlights from Around the World in 2012

• In June, Chile brought its largest PV plant online. Although modest in comparison with the scope of other global projects, the 1 MW Calama Solar 3 was an important step that has since resulted in increased interest among developers and investors. There were other notable Latin American solar developments in 2012, including two Peruvian solar farms (the already operational Tacna solar farm and the still in production Panamericana solar farm) whose combined generating capacity will reach 40 MW.
• In Germany, a 145 MW solar park in Neuhardenberg, Brandenberg, was constructed in a record-breaking five weeks. The solar park was finished just under the wire to beat the expiration of subsidies for PV installations greater than 10 MW in size. The construction of Neuhardenberg solar park, which is scheduled to be fully operational by the end of 2012, helped push Germany's total installed solar capacity for the year to over 7,000 MW.
• 8minuteenergy Renewables, a solar PV developer located in southern California, received the financial stamp of approval in November to proceed with construction on a project that, once in operation, will be the largest PV farm in the world. The Mount Signal solar farm, which is being constructed in Imperial Valley, will generate 800 MW (DC) of utility-scale energy.
• The Charanka Solar Park in Gujarat, India, is home to numerous independent solar power stations, occupying approximately 2000-hectares of land. While many the park's solar stations remain in production, 2012 saw its combined total output capacity reach nearly 700 MW.
• In an effort to shore up their enormous oversupply of solar panels, China decided in 2012 to underwrite a $1.6B loan - through the China Development Bank (CDB), which is seen as the engine behind the country's economic development - to essentially create downstream demand within its borders. The loan was given to Shanghai-headquartered Sky Solar, which earlier in 2012 broke ground on two PV projects in China: one 800-MW project in the Xinjiang Province, and another 50 MW plant in the Qinghai Province.

Vince Font is a professional freelance writer specializing in the fields of renewable energy, high tech, travel, and entertainment. Read his blog at www.vincefont.com or follow him on Twitter @vincefont. This piece was originally published at Renewable Energy World and was reprinted with permission.

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2012/12/30/1371031/the-year-in-solar-

Get Ready, Utilities: Solar Is Coming

by John Farrell, via Renewable Energy World

Quick question. Your state has good sunshine, lots of open rooftops, and the cost of solar energy has been falling by 10% per year. Do you think it will take 13 years to double the 10 megawatts (MW) of installed solar power?

Yes, if you're the largest corporate utility in my state, and willfully ignoring the economic trend. But 'no' if you make decisions based on data, because the price of unsubsidized solar electricity will undercut most utility retail electricity prices within a decade, enabling 200 times more solar (4,400 MW) than found in this utility's plans.

That's just one utility's wake up call in a new report from the Institute for Local Self-Reliance (ILSR), Commercial Rooftop Revolution, and it's far from the only one. By 2016, over 100,000 MW of unsubsidized rooftop solar will able to match grid electricity on price. Within 10 years, it will be 300,000 MW, enough to provide 10% of the nation's electricity. This affordable solar future presents a stark challenge to traditional utility planning and a clarion call for better electricity policy.

Some utilities have responded by clinging to the 20th century paradigm of centralized control. Virginia's Dominion Power, for example, expressed satisfaction at a recent conference at introducing standby charges on solar producers, ostensibly to help them recover the cost of "backing up" solar power.

On the other hand, many utilities and state regulatory commissions are finding the value in solar and realizing that perceived barriers aren't as large as they had feared. Austin Energy, a Texas municipal utility, now pays a non-subsidy premium for solar because it helps them offset expensive peak power purchases. In Hawaii, utilities who two years ago argued that the distribution grid was at its limit have been managing to accommodate thousands more solar projects on their grid systems.

Regardless of their predisposition toward solar power, utilities, regulators, and policy makers need to recognize that there's a revolution in electricity systems coming soon. Solar will become so affordable in the next 5-10 years that as many as 38 million homes and businesses will elect to produce their own power more cheaply from unsubsidized solar rather than buy it from their utility. That means policies that limit distributed generation will have to change: net metering limits must rise, permitting must be simplified, archaic "15% rules" will have to be driven by data not speculation.

Ultimately, as one Hawaii public utility commissioner has said, the paradigm for the electricity system will flip. Utilities will need to transition from being inflexible to being flexible. They'll switch from primarily running slow-response coal and nuclear power plants to finding the right mix of flexible natural gas or energy storage systems that can partner with low-cost wind and solar and advanced demand response to supply reliable electricity.

The forthcoming revolution in solar power promises more change in the next 10 years than utilities have faced in the last 100. And they had best get ready.

John Farrell directs the Energy Self-Reliant States and Communities program at ILSR and he focuses on energy policy developments that best expand the benefits of local ownership and dispersed generation of renewable energy. This piece was originally published at Renewable Energy World and was reprinted with permission.

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2012/12/16/1320311/get-ready-utilitie

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With an experienced staff of solar and electrical technicians, Milholland Electric provides rooftop solar panel installation and maintenance, emergency and routine electrical repairs, audio, data, and computer network cabling, and outdoor lighting and design.

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T. Boone Pickens Responds to Al Gore's Climate Speech

T. Boone Pickens Responds to Al Gore's Climate Speech: In a "My plan is better than your plan" kind of statement T. Boone Pickins announced: "Today, former Vice President Al Gore put forward a framework of a plan that is focused on global warming and climate issues. My plan is aimed squarely at breaking the stranglehold that foreign oil has on our country and the $700 billion annual impact it has on our economy. We import 70% of our oil and that number is growing larger every year. Vice President Gore's plan does not address this enormous problem, it is clear that he and I have two different objectives and our plans should be viewed with that in mind." Hmm...

Why is T. Boone Pickins important? He's a rich, very rich, richer than god, Texas Oil Man. And if nothing else recent history has shown that Texas Oil Men have an inordinate ability to make this country do things differently before.

The Pickins Plan (linked below) is to install a massive wind farm system in the Midwest. Conveniently it would begin in the Texas Panhandle area. His plan points to there being massive amounts of wind there. The other half of the plan is to use the electricity to liquify natural gas. The LNG would be used to drive cars and perhaps LNG can be burned directly in existing cars or with small modifications?

His plan has some good points. For example wind power only is delivered when the wind blows and the wind doesn't always blow when you need it most. The question is how to store wind power for use later. Doing something like liquifying natural gas is one way to store electricity, but there are other ways. For example air could be compressed and then later released through an air turbine.

A big flaw in his plan is that while Oil has a looming peak oil situation there is also a natural gas peak. While natural gas is more widely available today than is oil, it will eventually also come into short supply. By moving to natural gas based "energy" we'd still be dependent on fossil fuel, and we'd only be delaying the real problem.

Article Reference: 

http://www.pickensplan.com/

extvideo: 

America's Best Places For Alternative Energy

The "cubic mile of oil"--a metric roughly equivalent to the amount of oil consumed worldwide each year--is frequently used to explain the challenge facing solar, wind, geothermal and biomass power. What would it take to replace the amount of energy in a cubic mile of oil? The best location for specific technologies varies, and some areas are best for one technology or another. Some places are windy, others sunny, the wind varies from season to season, and geothermal power is easily tapped only in volcanic regions.

The Texas panhandle was recently highlighted by oilman T. Boone Pickens. But that's not the only place where the wind blows strong, it just happens to be one which Mr. Pickens is fond of.

The deserts of the U.S. Southwest are great places for solar power. The most insolated place in the country is Inyokern in southern California. Ensconced on the eastern edge of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, Inyokern covers 11 square miles of Kern County in the dust-choked Mojave Desert. Those 11 square miles receive more solar insolation annually than any other comparably sized locale in North America. FPL Energy recently announced plans to build a massive 2,000-acre solar power plant in the area called the Beacon Solar Energy Project.

Article Reference: 

America's Best Places For Alternative Energy

extvideo: 

California utility to spread 'solar power plant' across rooftops

I've written about similar ideas before, namely that there is a lot of land area containing large warehouse-style buildings that have flat roofs. These buildings could then have roof-top solar panels. There is breaking news (links below) that Southern California Edison is launching a program to install solar panels on commercial rooftops

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The program calls for SCE to put enough solar photovoltaic panels on commercial buildings to turn out 250 megawatts of electricity, enough to supply about 162,000 homes....Once completed, the panels will take up 65,000,000 square feet of roofs in Southern California, or 2 square miles.

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The $875 million initiative also marks the first big move into so-called distributed energy by a major utility. Instead of building a centralized power station and the expensive transmission system needed to transmit electricity to the power grid, Edison will connect clusters of solar arrays into existing neighborhood circuits. A significant hurdle for the massive megawatt solar power plants planned for California’s Mojave Desert is the need in some cases to build multi billion-dollar transmission systems through environmentally sensitive lands to bring the electricity to coastal metropolises....Here’s how the solar roofs initiative will work: Edison will lease warehouse rooftop space from building owners. (The target area is the fast-growing “Inland Empire” of Riverside and San Bernardino counties.) The utility will contract for the installation of the arrays and will retain ownership of the solar systems. California regulators appear inclined to approve the project, which will be financed by a hike in utility rates.

Anybody who drives through modern industrial or office parks knows that there are vast expanses of rooftop space available. As I pointed out in my earlier posting on solar roof tops it's even easier to see this using maps.google.com or other online map services.

Article Reference: 

California utility to spread 'solar power plant' across rooftops

SoCal Edison makes $875M bet on solar

http://www.sce.com/PowerandEnvironment/renewables/Solar/

California utility to add 250 MW in solar cells

California Utility to Install Solar Panels

California utility to turn roofs into solar power plants

ProLogis Announces First U.S. Roof Lease to Southern California Edison for 2.2 Megawatt Solar Panel Installation

SCE files application for renewable energy program

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Why does First Solar stand alone?

"First Solar, which makes cadmium-telluride solar cells, is having one of those years that corporate managers and investors dream about." They're having great sales etc but the article asks why there aren't competitors coming into the market to make cadmium-telluride solar panels. They discuss several aspects but it appears there are two.

One is their process. "In a sense, the entire thin film solar industry is a competition around who can build a better machine. The CIGS solar cell companies will all have similar products. The difference between them lay in how they produce those cells..."

The second is that Cadmium can be toxic. Nickel-Cadmium batteries are generally banned for the same reason. This can scare people away.

Article Reference: 

Why does First Solar stand alone?

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Solar Thermal Water Heater For Less Than Five Dollars

A tutorial going over construction of a simple solar powered hot water heater. The 'five dollar' price is under the assumption you have access to a pile of discarded parts, so I'd expect a higher cost. For example, a solar hot water heater is a simple device, you have a sheet of glass behind which is located some piping to pump water which is heated by sunlight. The tutorial suggests using discarded heat exchangers from old refrigerators with slight modifications.

Article Reference: 

Solar Thermal Water Heater For Less Than Five Dollars

Getting the price right for solar

The photovoltaic panel industry is looking to decrease the price of the products. So long as their price is uncompetitive related to the entrenched technologies solar power will remain a niche business. If solar power is to fulfill its destiny in helping us clean our environment and have a clean earth, the price must become competitive.

"We have to cut the cost in half of where we are today, and we can do that with a lot of the technologies and solutions available to us today," said Charlie Gay, vice president and general manager of Applied Material's solar business group, while speaking at Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Energy 2.0 conference last month.

...Many solar manufacturers make their products out of silicon and use machines similar to those used in the chip industry, but solar panel makers won't be benefiting from Moore's Law, a phenomenon in the chip industry where power increases as cost go down.

Article Reference: 

Getting the price right for solar

U.S. cities hot for hydrogen

This article starts with a demonstration hydrogen plant in Las Vegas built by Air Products. Apparently the plant is becoming a popular spot for visitors who they hope will see the hydrogen economy in operation and bring their excitement home with them.

The article discusses that the most common use for hydrogen fuel cell vehicles today is evaluation by municipal departments. This is like the evaluation programs conducted for electric vehicles over the last couple decades.

Article Reference: 

U.S. cities hot for hydrogen

Full steam ahead for Nevada solar project

The Nevada Solar One power plant is essentially a tea kettle, just one that happens to take up 300 acres and can provide enough power for 15,000 homes. The plant, which will start to generate electricity for nearby Las Vegas in April, consists of approximately 184,000 mirrors arranged in long, parabolic arrays that focus the sun's energy on a receiver--a metal tube filled with oil that's encased in specialized glass--from German conglomerate Schott.

...The power generated by the plant, minus any subsidies, may not get to parity with electricity generated from conventional plants until around 2020, added Nikolaus Benz, a development manager for Schott.

...Schott, for example, has come up with a new coating for the glass tube on the receiver that lets 96 percent of the solar radiation through to the oil-filled metal tube sealed inside the glass.

Article Reference: 

Full steam ahead for Nevada solar project

Solar power in the parking lot

Google Plants Solar Trees: What are Solar Trees? Well, think of the typical parking lot. Rows of parking slots for cars, and scattered around the lot are trees. The trees might be giving some benefit from shade, but what else? As much as I like trees, parking lots seem like an innapropriate place, because the trees aren't close enough together to form a forest, plus the parking lot blocks the rain from reaching their roots, etc.

Instead Google is launching a project to install solar panels in their parking lots. The panels are on structures that put the panels above the lots, providing shade, and capturing sunlight to make electricity. According to the article their parking lots (and some panels on rooftops) will provide enough space to provide 30 percent of the power requirements of Google's headquarters complex.

To give you an idea of how this would work, I invite you first to use maps.google.com to inspect some typical office complexes. Enter "N 1st St & W Montague Expy, San Jose, CA 95134 and click it to the hybrid map. This location is the heart of Silicon Valley but is typical of office complexes worldwide. What I want you to look at is the relative percentages of rooftop, building, and parking lots. There's a very high proportion of flat areas, either the parking lots or rooftops.

Solar panels in the parking lot would require a structure to be built, simply some poles and an open roofing, that can hold the panels safely above the cars. This is a simple engineering exercise to design. The tricky part would be orienting the panels for southward exposure, but again that's just engineering. Essentially this is a "carport" with the roof made by solar panels.

Google isn't designing this on their own, but is working with an engineering company Energy Innovations. I found this company but their site doesn't discuss the "Solar Tree" projects so I am not sure this is the right company.

Searching for "Solar Trees" I found the 'Solar Grove' project by Kyocera that provides a great picturing of the solar carport idea.

UPDATE December 20, 2006

TreeHugger: Google's Solar Trees Due To Bloom This Spring has more information including a link to the proper company.

James Lovelock: The Earth is about to catch a morbid fever that may last as long as 100,000 years

James Lovelock is an independant scientist who has been nurturing the Gaia model of understanding the earth. He's published a string of books claiming the planet we call Earth is a living being he names Gaia. e.g. Gaia : A New Look at Life on Earth He began this work as a space scientist advising NASA on how would they determine whether there was "life" on other planets, such as Mars. That is, given the sparse set of instruments we can send to Mars, which ones should be sent to make the measurements required to determine whether "life" exists there. The question sent him to pondering life on this planet, leading him to recognize the planet as a whole being a living organism.

I say this to help give context to an article he has written fortelling a disastrous change in Gaia. The Earth is about to catch a morbid fever that may last as long as 100,000 years He's saying that the global warming phenemona is Gaia developing a "fever", that the historical record of this planet shows several fevers which occurred, and that in the past those fevers took 100,000 years to heal.

When earth has a "fever" it undergoes a climate change with an expansion of desert lands, the heat around the equator becoming unbearable for most life (including humans) and that as a result he expects billions of humans to die.

This may very well be what will occur. We are beginning to see alarming signs such as the melting of the permafrost in the arctic.

However in the recent few days I've heard a couple spiritual teachers talking about the apocalypse period described in the Book of Revelations. That book is a set of visions an early prophet received about the future of humanity. It's a rather disturbing part of the Bible since it describes a horrible war, disease, famine, environmental problems, and more. But the book also ends with a great deal of hope, with a "New Heaven and New Earth". The book is also hard to interpret and understand.

These two teachers, Ron Roth and Gregg Braden, have both studied the ancient writings of a wide range of traditions. They both said a similar thing about the Revelations. First, that many of the predictions in it have already come to pass. e.g. The Ukranian name for Chernobyl means "Wormwood" which, in Revelations, was a star that burned on the earth, which is essentially what happened at Chernobyl.

They both teach about the power of prayer, in an authentic form of prayer practiced by ancient mystics. Both, especially Gregg Braden, talk about the cycles of history recorded in the ancient texts and how the ancient teachings talk about a cataclysmic time which will happen about now. It's not just the book of Revelations, but other ancient traditions predicted apocalypse. But they all suggested prayer as the way humanity could avoid the fate.

It's not too late.

Solar powered streetlights offering Wi-Fi

Okay, this sounds cool, but scratching under the surface for a moment I don't see it. This research group in Scotland is working on street lighting which is both solar powered and includes a Wi-Fi transmitter. Sunlight powers streetlights, Wi-Fi access (By Steve Ranger, Special to CNET News.com, Published: January 5, 2006, 7:52 AM PST) The research is being conducted by the Abertay Centre for the Environment (ACE), based within the University of Abertay Dundee (UAD).

But ... what's the big deal..?? At least in the U.S. streetlights are already provided with power. And that power can already be used to power other devices hung on the streetlights. For example in the Christmas season when lighting is strung all along the street. More lately surveillance equipment is attached to the same streetlights, powered by the streetlights.

As for providing an Internet infrastructure this way. In 2001 Metricom deployed the Ricochet network using boxes attached to streetlights powered by the power already present in the streetlight.

There's nothing new here. Well, other than the solar panels. It's very nice to see solar panels used for this application. But I wonder what the tradeoff is which would makes this displace the existing way to do streetlights.

In the existing system, streetlights are directly attached to the same power grid that supplies power to buildings. The wires are already there. A possible saving is if the streetlights would not require their own wiring but often streetlights are hung on the very same poles on which the wiring is run. At least this is the way it's done in the U.S.

New laws in California support clean energy resources

OFFICE OF THE GOVERNOR

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GAAS:467:05

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

09/29/2005

Governor Schwarzenegger Signs Bills to Encourage Alternative Fuels, Protect Environment

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger announced today that he has signed legislation that will encourage the use of alternative fuels and reduce California's reliance on foreign oil. He also signed legislation to increase energy efficiency, aimed at protecting California's environment.

"Californians have always led the way in protecting our lands and oceans and pioneering new forms of energy use that reduce our reliance on foreign fuels. Today, we are continuing that proud legacy with new legislation that will decrease our dependence on foreign oil and encourage the use of cleaner burning domestic fuels," said Governor Schwarzenegger. "We also must be more efficient in our current energy usage to better protect our environment. These bills will help California ensure reliable, cleaner and more cost-effective energy - and a cleaner environment."

Governor Schwarzenegger has signed the following legislation:

SB 975 by Senator Roy Ashburn (R-Bakersfield) - Air quality: biodiesel fuel.

• SB 975 encourages the use of biodiesel, a domestically produced alternative fuel that burns cleaner than conventional fuels and is often derived from waste products, potentially reducing our reliance on foreign oil and increasing available supplies. This bill permits public agencies and utilities to use biodiesel fuel in retrofitted vehicles and off-road diesel engines, encouraging adoption of the fuel.

SB 1037 by Senator Christine Kehoe (D-San Diego) - Energy efficiency.

• SB 1037 requires electrical and natural gas corporations to meet their unmet energy needs through all available energy efficiency and demand reduction resources before acquiring energy through other sources. The California Public Utilities Commission (PUC), in consultation with the California Energy Commission (CEC), is required to identify efficiency savings and establish efficiency targets.

AB 380 by Assemblymember Fabian Nunez (D-Los Angeles) - Electricity: electrical restructuring: resource adequacy.

• AB 380 requires the PUC, in consultation with the California Independent System Operator (Cal-ISO), to establish resource adequacy requirements for most load serving entities.

AB 515 by Assemblymember Keith Richman (R-Northridge) - State Water Project: solar photovoltaic panels and systems.

• AB 515 will allow private entities to lease space for solar photovoltaic panels above or adjacent to the State Water Project. The bill requires the Department of Water Resources to evaluate and approve proposals for solar panels and related systems and receive reimbursement for any costs.

AB 728 by Assemblymember Gloria Negrete McLeod (D-Chino) - Electricity: biogas digester customer-generators: net metering.

• AB 728 expands and extends the existing biogas pilot metering program. By extending the program, biogas-to-energy generators will be encouraged to move towards lower emitting technologies and build more cost-effective facilities. This critical technology converts waste products into energy.

AB 736 by Assemblymember Jerome E. Horton (D-Inglewood) - Public utilities: regulation.

• AB 736 will streamline the ability of utilities to sell, lease or transfer property of low value. This bill modifies PUC processes to allow for transactions of property valued at less than $5 million to move through an accelerated review and also sets up safeguards to ensure the PUC maintains discretion to conduct a more formal review if necessary.

AB 1007 by Assemblymember Fran Pavley (D-Agoura Hills) - Air quality: alternative fuels.

• AB 1007 requires the development and adoption of a state plan to increase the use of alternative transportation fuels by 2007. The Energy Commission and Air Resources Board will work to develop the recommendations in consultation with other agencies. This effort will establish a roadmap to help reduce our dependence on foreign oil.

AB 1182 by Assemblymember Ronald Calderon (D-Montebello) - Public Utilities Commission: work plan access guide.

• AB 1182 requires the PUC to make its annual work plan available on its website and also determine the feasibility of submitting advice letters electronically.

AB 1348 by Assemblymember Sharon Runner (R-Lancaster) - Antelope Valley Fairgrounds EE and PV Synergy Demonstration Project.

• AB 1348 authorizes a large photovoltaic solar energy system at Antelope County Fairgrounds. The project will generate clean solar power while reducing demand on the energy grid, especially during times of peak demand.

AB 1576 by Assemblymember Fabian Nunez (D-Los Angeles) - Electrical corporations: rates: repowering projects.

• AB 1576 will encourage the generation of cleaner, more efficient energy while also supporting the continued operation of previously existing generating facilities. This bill authorizes investor-owned utilities to enter into long-term contracts for the energy generated by repowered generation facilities.

Governor Schwarzenegger has taken many steps to improve energy efficiency and help clean the environment in California. The Governor set the nation's boldest green house gas emissions reduction targets and permanently funded the Carl Moyer Air Quality Program to reduce emissions. He has also signed legislation implementing a program permitting hybrid vehicles to drive in HOV and carpool lanes, accelerated California's renewable portfolio standard to receive 20 percent renewable power by 2010 instead of by 2017, and issued an executive order calling for "Green Buildings," an effort to increase the energy efficiency of state buildings by 20 percent by 2015.

The Governor has put forward a broad based energy plan to assure that California has a clean, affordable, available and reliable energy supply. Recently, the Governor detailed this comprehensive energy policy in a letter to the California Legislature dated August 23, 2005. With respect to resource adequacy, the PUC approved in October of 2004 the resource adequacy requirement, another central element of the Governor's electricity goals. The resource adequacy requirement directs utilities to identify and contract for adequate power supplies to meet demand, plus a 15 percent reserve margin. At the Governor's direction, the PUC moved up the implementation of this requirement to 2006, instead of 2008.