The Falling Cost Of Solar Energy Is Surprising Everyone

Everyone's talking about all the new oil and gas being produced thanks to new drilling methods.

But there's another narrative nipping at the shale boom's heels: solar energy.  And it's expanding just as fast.

It's just that the scale is not quite the same. But that's changing.

Citi has just named solar photovoltaics, which convert solar radiation into electric currents via semiconductors, to its list of 10 world-disrupting technologies.

In a note this week in advance of the disruption report, Citi's Jason Channell said that in many cases, renewables are already at cost parity with established forms of electricity sources. 

The biggest surprise in recent years has been the speed at which the price of solar panels has reduced, resulting in cost parity being achieved in certain areas much more quickly than was ever expected; the key point about the future is that these fast ‘learning rates’ are likely to continue, meaning that the technology just keeps getting cheaper.

Below is a chart showing where "socket" or grid parity has already been achieved. (Grid parity is when a source of power becomes cost competitive with other sources.) The lines represent the pattern of expanding solar power in a given year — so at peak solar exposure, parts of the southwest U.S. are now already capable of meeting their electricity needs via solar panels. 

Citi

He also adds this cool chart showing that the Age of Renewables has only just begun. 

Citi

Channell writes:

The rapidly expanding parity provides enormous scope for growth in the solar industry, driven by standalone economics as opposed to subsidies, which are becoming ever scarcer in an austerity-driven world.

As a previous Saudi oil minister once noted, “The stone age didn’t end for a lack of stones...”, and this substitutional process can be well demonstrated looking at the US energy mix over the longer term.

Gas isn't going away, but renewables are coming on strong.

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/citi-the-solar-age-is-dawning-2013-5#ixzz2SK0CfxNi

Source : businessinsider, Rob Wile , May 2, 2013, 11:03

Will Utilities Embrace Distributed Energy?

Disruptive technological changes are at work but utilities are hamstrung by outdates business models and regulations.


How will utilities maintain the grid infrastructure in an age when people consume less energy from the utility?

A homeowner who puts solar panels on his roof immediately slashes his monthly electricity bill and gains a measure of independence from the utility. As more distributed energy technologies take hold, utilities in the U.S. are wondering out loud what their future holds.

It’s not just falling prices of solar photovoltaic panels that are slowly moving power generation out to the edge of the grid network. More people are looking at natural gas generators and energy storage systems that complement grid power and provide backup power during outages. And there are more ways to save electricity, such as efficient appliances and reports to encourage efficiency, or demand response to shave peak power use through smart thermostats. (See, Nest Thermostat Slays Peak Power.)

Earlier this year, industry group the Edison Electric Institute (EEI) published a Disruptive Challenges report outlining the risks to the financial well-being of utilities from distributed energy. It recommends a push to reexamine policies that create incentives for renewable energy, particularly net metering, and advocating pricing changes that ensure utilities can recover the cost of maintaining the physical grid infrastructure.

David Crane, the CEO of NRG Energy, which owns power plants and provides residential utility service, called distributed solar a “mortal threat” to utilities earlier this year. Last week, he predicted that the natural gas industry will “disintermediate the electric power industry” and provide power-generating appliances in people’s homes, which could be fuel cells, microturbines, or types of Stirling engines.

“These energy-producing appliances on the cusp of being deployed will allow people to walk away from the grid and produce electricity in their home,” Crane said at the Bloomberg New Energy Finance conference last week.

The transition from a heavily centralized power grid to one with rooftop solar panels, natural gas generators at homes and businesses, plug-in electric vehicles, and technologies to reduce electricity use is clearly underway. Crane’s comments and the EEI report reflect the unease rippling through the traditionally slow-moving utility industry. The question is how utilities react to this transition and how that affects the future of electricity service.

Earlier this week, experts at the Advanced Energy Conference in New York City discussed how disruptive forces at play in electric power pose thorny questions, but offered few obvious paths for utilities to profit from them. Although there are a number of progressive utilities, their comments suggest that most utility industry companies will resist the dramatic changes imposed by technological changes.

The problem isn’t just that utilities will be marginalized if consumers and businesses can generate power themselves and only use the grid is backup. When customers use fewer kilowatt-hours either through efficiency or distributed generation, it cuts off utilities’ source of revenue and the way they fund up-keep of power lines, substations, and other equipment. Although rules vary, in general utilities propose infrastructure upgrades and state regulators approve those decisions and the rate of return they can make on those investments.

But if many more people lessen their reliance on power from utilities, the pool of available money to make those upgrades starts to shrink. The tab for upgrading the basic infrastructure, including smart meters, is hundreds of billions of dollars in the US in the next five years, says Bill Zarakas, principal at the consulting company the Brattle Group. Added on top are initiatives to make the grid more resilient in the wake of hurricane Sandy. Meanwhile, more efficient use of energy and muted economic growth means electricity growth nationally is essentially flat. “You’re really asking us to recover investments through sales but to sell less. It’s a bit of a disruption,” he says.

In a few cases, utilities have been able to earn revenue by owning rooftop solar arrays and other distributed energy assets, but that’s the exception. In New York, for instance, deregulation placed a de facto ban on utilities from owning power generation, which at the time meant centralized power plants. Now regulators are reconsidering those rules as distributed solar expands, says Kimberly Harriman of the New York Department of Public Service

In many ways, electric power is going through a similar transition to the telecom industry in the 1990s when deregulation introduced competition in local telephony, which cut off a reliable source of revenues for phone companies. “Distributed energy resource technology…can do to electric utility industry what wireless handheld technology has done to the telecom industry. This will be revolutionary,” said Paul DeCotis, vice president of power markets at Long Island Power Authority.

But Brattle’s Zarakas is skeptical that utilities can mimic the telecom industry’s transition and will somehow make up lost revenue from distributed generation and efficiency with add-on services. Telecom companies were able to offer much desired services—broadband Internet, mobile phone service, and content—but utilities don’t have any clear equivalents and aren’t normally in the business of offering innovative services, he says.

The disruption spills into the commercial world as well, where more universities and businesses are looking to establish microgrids that can “island” themselves from the grid if power goes out. (See, Microgrids Keep the Power Flowing Through Sandy.)

Overall, experts say that the basic funding mechanism for utilities needs to change so they have financial incentives to enable adoption of new technologies and encourage customer energy efficiency. Many changes along those lines could be a tough sell in the utility industry, which is famously conservative. But they may not have a choice. “Distributed generation is something that couldn’t be stopped even if we wanted to,” says Zarakas.

Source : MIT Technology Review, Martin LaMonica, May 3, 2013

WORLD’S LARGEST SOLAR POWER PLANT ONLINE IN UNITED ARAB EMIRATES

Waldpolenz Solar Park, was the world’s largest photovoltaic power system in 2008 at 40 MW output. The just completed Shams 1 is the world’s largest solar power system at 100 MW. [Source: Wikipedia]

They don’t do ‘small’ in the United Arab Emirates. The world’s thirteenth richest countrybuilds its own islands and boasts the tallest skyscraper in the world, the Burj Khalifa, which itself is surrounded by enough towering glass-covered skyscrapers to require afleet of robots to clean them. And now, this country that has risen from poverty to become the world’s thirteenth richest after striking oil, is doing renewable energy in a characteristically big way. They’ve just completed the world’s largest solar power station.

Built by Shams Power Company and named Shams 1, the gargantuan power station utilizes concentrating solar power, rather than the more well known solar voltaic system comprised of photovoltaic cell panels. A concentrating solar system differs from photovoltaic systems in that, rather than harnessing direct, they generate electricity from the sun’s heat. The parabolic mirrors concentrate heat onto receivers that contain either synthetic oils or, less commonly, liquid sodium or salt. The heat produced by the receiver is used to generate steam, which is used to drive a turbine that generates electricity.

Sham 1 includes 258,048 mirrors that cover about 628,000 square meters. The parabolic mirror design had been proven efficient at the Solar Electric Generating System (SEGS) in California’s Mojave Desert over the past two decades. All together, Sham 1’s parabolic array concentrate heat to produce 100 MW.

Shams 1′s array is built with parabolic mirrors that concentrate sunlight heat, which produces steam to turn a turbine and generate electricity. [Source: Wikipedia]

Compare the Shams 1 to the largest solar photovoltaic system in the United States, the White Sands Missile Range systemdedicated at the beginning of this year. Its 10 million kilowatt-hours of electricity per year allow it to provide 10 percent of the total power usage at White Sands, reducing the installation’s carbon emission by 7,400 tons per year. But while it is the largest in the US, at 4.1 MW, White Sands’ output is yet a fraction of what Shams 1 can produce.

If you’re going to build a large power array, with lots of sunlight, and flat, empty land, there’s no better place than the desert. The Shams 1 is located about 120 kilometers southwest of UAE’s capital Abu Dhabi. Now incorporated into the existing gas and power grids there, UAE hopes the power array will help bolster economic activity in the western, relatively underdeveloped part of the country.

White Sands took about six months to complete and cost the army $16.8 million. Shams 1 took nearly three years to build and cost $600 million. The gargantuan array already has an annual output of 210 gigawatt-hours. In ten years time the country plans on building up its parabolic trough systems to a capacity of 1.5 GW. If it does, the small country could become the world leader in concentrating solar power. At the moment that title belongs to the US who produces about 1 GW of concentrating solar power, followed by Spain at 500MW. But as its name suggests, Shams 1 is just the beginning. Despite its oil-rich land, UAE seems to be making a serious push to go green.

Source : Singularity Hub, Peter Murray, 2/4/13

Peel-and-stick solar panels can be integrated into everyday objects

Scientists at Stanford University have developed peel-and-stick solar panels, which can be attached to any surface.

Capturing solar energy efficiently and inconspicuously is something that the Solaroad cycle path has attempted in the Netherlands. Now scientists at Stanford University have developed peel-and-stick solar panels, which can be attached to any surface.

Currently, many solar panels take the form of large rigid structures and are placed out of clear sight. Researchers at the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the university – along with help from scientists in Colorado and Seoul – have now created thin, flexible substrates that can convert solar energy. A new process also allows the cells to be transferred from one surface to another without damaging them, meaning that they could be attached to almost anything – from mobile phones and business cards to windows and clothing. According to lead researcher Xiaolin Zheng, the new solar panel breakthrough offers “flexibility and attachment potential we’ve never seen before, and also reduces their general cost and weight”.

With this lightweight and portable innovation in solar power-gathering could this be the future of small-scale energy production?

Website: www.stanford.edu
Contact: xlzheng@stanford.edu
Spotted by: Katherine Noyes

Source: Springwise

Solar panels power playground add-ons

Energy company NRG Solar has installed photovoltaic panels at a school playground in New Orleans.

 

We have seen solar energy used in playgrounds before, with the Son-X Octavia adding an electronic game element to children’s swings. Now energy company NRG Solar has broadened this approach by installing photovoltaic panels at a school playground in New Orleans.

Located at the Dr Martin Luther King, Jr Charter School for Science and Technology in the Louisiana city, almost 400 panels have been included on a canopy that shelters the playground. The electricity generated is used to make the space more engaging for children, powering fans, water dispensers, garden irrigation systems and illuminated inspirational sayings. Additionally, the renewable energy can be diverted to power one-third of the school’s peak electricity demand if necessary.

Seeing as solar power can provide a more interactive environment for children without using unnecessary energy, perhaps all entrepreneurs working on outdoor installations or games should be considering solar power add-ons?
 

Website: www.nrgsolar.com
Contact: www.nrgsolar.com/whynrgsolar/contact
Spotted by: Murtaza Patel

Source: Springwise

Solar-powered kiosks in Africa offer groceries, light and electricity

The German-designed SOLARKIOSK aims to be a vital source of electricity and resources for those living in off-grid communities.
  Italy has already trialled solar powered utility kiosks in the form of Turin’s Smart Booth scheme. Taking this idea a step further, the German-designed SOLARKIOSK aims to be a vital source of electricity for those living in off-grid communities.

According to the team behind the project – which includes members of Berlin-based GRAFT architects – some 1.5 billion people still live in areas where there is no access to electricity. The SOLARKIOSK is a small booth that harnesses energy from the sun in order to provide communities with electricity. Having successfully launched its first booth near Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, residents can now access facilities such as mobile phone and car battery charging, refrigeration, music, TV and internet. The electric lights also provide a safer and cheaper alternative to the kerosene lamps often used by families in off-grid areas, which give off hazardous fumes. Electric cookers can help stop the deforestation that occurs to provide wood for heating food.

The startup aims to place networks of these kiosks in off-grid communities. Each one will be operated by a member of the local community, who will be trained on programs run by the company at high schools and universities in the area. These courses will teach them how solar power and solar products work and give them the skills to successfully run a small business. These operators can then employ others and pass on their knowledge.

SOLARKIOSK projects could cut the danger and costs associated with non-electric fuel consumption, provide employment and learning opportunities and give communities a place to socialize and connect with the outside world. Plenty of inspiration here for eco and socially-minded entrepreneurs!

Website: www.solarkiosk.eu
Contact: welcome@solarkiosk.eu
Spotted by: Murtaza Patel - Springwise