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

2013 could be a make or break year for algae fuel

The allure of using algae to power the world’s vehicles has been at the heart of many business plans over the years — some that have failed spectacularly, and some that are still chugging along down the long road to commercialization. But 2013 could represent a pivotal year for some of the algae fuel leaders that have spent years raising funding, building pilot projects, and selling their algae into niche markets like as an ingredient in high-end face lotions.

The players

One of the companies that’s the farthest along is Solazyme, a South San Francisco-based company that went public in the spring of 2011. Solazyme was one of the first firms to focus on the alternative chemicals and personal care markets, developing a small but steady revenue stream as it braced itself for the difficulty of churning out its algae oil at a scale and cost that can compete with oil for transportation.

But Solazyme is now at the brink of ramping up its algae oil for fuel, too. This week the company said that its Brazilian joint venture with food processing giant Bunge — called Solazyme Bunge Produtos Renováveis — has received approval for a $120 million loan from the Brazilian Development Bank to build out its first commercial-scale algae fuel factory in Brazil. The factory is already under construction (it started in the summer of 2012) next to Bunge’s sugarcane mill in São Paulo (it uses sugar for a feedstock). Solazyme hopes it will be ready to go by the fourth quarter of 2013. Initially it will produce 100,000 metric tons per year, but eventually by 2016 it’s supposed to make 300,000 metric tons annually.

Solazyme also plans to reach commercial scale of its algae fuel in the U.S. soon, using a factory in Clinton, Iowa owned by agriculture giant ADM. That plant is supposed to make 20,000 metric tons of algae oil per year in early 2014, and eventually 100,000 metric tons per year. It also has its own smaller scale development factory in Peoria, Illinois.

Sapphire Energy is another company that is looking to cross through the so-called Valley of Death from low volume production to commercial scale that can one day compete with oil. The company has a 2,200-acre algae growing farm in Columbus, New Mexico, which has 70 ponds, each the size of a football field, as well as a refinery on site. The New Mexico refinery reportedly started producing oil in low volumes last summer and by 2014 is supposed to be able to make 1.5 million gallons of algae crude per year, and 10,000 barrels a day by 2018.

Sapphire and Solazyme are attacking the algae oil industry with different approaches. Solazyme grows its algae in closed fermentation tanks, while Sapphire is growing it in the open air on large plots of land. Open air ponds could theoretically be cheaper, but they face the problem of making sure they don’t get contaminated and disturbed by outside elements.

Another company working on algae fuel is Synthetic Genomics, which is the brainchild of genomics guru Craig Venter. Venter beat the U.S. government at being the first to sequence the human genome, and also led his team in recent years to be the first to make the world’s first synthetic bacterial cell, called the first artificial life form by many. The researchers built a synthetic chromosome and inserted it into a living bacterial cell, where it took over the cell and became an entirely new life form.

Synthetic Genomics was able to score a massive, potentially $600 million, development deal with Exxon. Last spring, Synthetic Genomics bought a 81 acre site in the Imperial Valley, near the Salton Sea, and it plans to scale up and test its algae strains there with 42 open ponds.

The costs

Scaling up all these new factories and farms take a colossal amount of money. But they’re needed because the algae oil needs to be produced at a huge scale to get it cheap enough to compete with oil.

The costs no doubt take a toll on these pioneers. Solazyme’s net losses are growing, and the company lost $58.52 million for the nine months ended September 2012, up from a $38.32 million net loss for the same time the year prior. The company will not likely be profitable for years, and it’s helping fund its production deal with ADM with equity. This week Solazyme said that it intends to sell $100 million worth of notes to help it build its projects.

Sapphire Energy raised at least $300 million from venture capitalists and investors like Cascade Investment, which is owned by Bill Gates. Good thing Sapphire got that money in the bank, because few venture capitalists these days are willing to put in hundreds of millions of dollars into such infrastructure for clean power projects. Sapphire also got $50 million in stimulus funding and a $54.4 million federal loan guarantee.

Synthetic Genomics has its potentially $600 million development deal with Exxon, though I’m not sure the status of that currently. Venter has said that biofuels made from algae that will be able to scale, and compete with oil, will have to be synthesized and will not come from nature. The Exxon deal was originally to research naturally occurring algae cells only (not synthetic ones), but Venter hopes Exxon will come around to funding the research based on synthetic algae cells.

Who knows if algae fuel will ever get there — if Venter is right, it’ll have to be a completey new type of synthetic super microbe that delivers algae oil as efficiently as possible. But 2013 is a year in which these three algae fuel players look to scale, and will spend a lot of money to get there.

Source : GigaOM

“Advanced energy” is an over trillion-dollar market, and actually grew in 2012

Both the cleantech sector and groups fighting climate change have suffered a major branding and marketing problem in recent years. Is “advanced energy” the hot term to use going forward? That’s what the non-profit the Advanced Energy Economy Institute (AEEI) are pushing and on Tuesday morning announced, via a report created by Pike Research, that the advanced energy sector is already an over $1 trillion sector, and it is estimated to have grown 19 percent in 2012.

That growth last year is in sharp contrast to the recent numbers that came out around cleantech in 2012. According to the Cleantech Group venture capitalists invested $6.46 billion globally into cleantech startups, which was down 33 percent from the $9.61 billion that VCs invested into cleantech startups in 2011 (see more in our GigaOM Pro research note).

It’s all in how you categorize it. So what is the advanced energy market? It includes all kinds of next-generation energy technologies, from more efficient transportation technology, to synthetic diesel and gasoline, to gas turbines to more efficient land use. “Advanced energy” technologies make energy consumption and generation “more secure, clean, and affordable,” but they don’t exclude some lower emission fossil fuel sources like natural gas. Coal seems to be the only thing left off the list.

Slicing it that way, Pike Research and AEEI say that the advanced energy market was a $1.1 trillion market globally in 2011, making it larger than the pharmaceutical manufacturing globally, or the international trucking sector. And with its growth in 2012, the U.S. now sees revenue of $157 billion from the advanced energy sector.

The group sums it up like:

With global energy consumption projected to rise nearly 40 percent by 2030, future prosperity depends on meeting this growing demand with energy that is secure, clean and affordable. Just as the Internet economy transformed society in unexpected ways, the advanced energy economy has the potential to create dramatic new opportunities for economic growth in the U.S. and around the world.

Source : GIGAOM 

13 solar startups to watch in 2013

We knew 2012 would be a tough year for many solar companies when we posted the top 10 trends to watch over a year ago. In 2013 expect to see a slow recovery that will continue to weed out more players in a market that still has too many manufacturers, including startups.

But that doesn’t mean there aren’t bright spots on the horizon, and major opportunities for certain kinds of solar startups in 2013. Here’s our list of 13 solar startups to watch in 2013 — some may be under the radar, but all have managed to do one of the following recently: raise money, build factories, launch innovative products and services or otherwise make progress despite the hard times (or because of it).

1). Solar Mosaic: The company brings solar power investments to the masses with its recently launched public online site. Residents of California and New York (as well as accredited investors) can invest in any of the projects for as little as $25 and get what should be a steady, long-term return (of 4.5 percent for the first projects). The company sold out three projectsless than 24 hours after the launch this week.

2). Alta Devices: Portable solar chargers could cut the number of batteries a soldier must carry onto the battle field and provide an alternative source of power for drones. Alta Devices is focusing on the military first with its highly efficient solar cells and hopes to use these contracts to scale upmanufacturing, slash costs and eventually enter the more conventional solar market where much cheaper solar cells now dominate.

3). Clean Power Finance: The company raises funds to offer power purchase agreements or leases for solar panel installers to market and sell them to homeowners. The company also launched an energy credit trading service and assembled a database of local permitting rules in 2012 so that retail service providers could spend less time and money for figuring out the paperwork they need to do.

4). GlassPoint Solar: With its novel greenhouse design for its solar thermal energy equipment, GlassPoint Solar is targeting the oil industry with its solar steam production, which pries loose oil from wells for easier extraction. Oil companies are warming up to using solar energy to produce steam rather than natural gas, which remains expensive in regions such as the Middle East.

5). QBotix: The company uses robots that move along a tracking system and tilt solar panels during the day to follow the sun. GPS and wireless technology are used to detect problems and monitor the systems.

6). Genability: How do you show customers the amount of energy savings they could achieve or money they could make by going solar? You need accurate data on utility rates, and that’s what Genability specializes in. The startup collects and crunches electric rates — which change often — from utilities across the country. SunPower, SolarCity and SunEdison are customers.

7). Semprius: The prices of silicon solar cells have tumbled in recent years thanks to mega factories by manufacturers mostly in China. To compete, solar cell manufacturing startups must develop something much more efficient that can find other uses as well. Semprius, like Alta Devices, is achieving this by using gallium-arsenide for its cells, but it also is making the solar panels for housing them. The company raised $7.5 million and opened a small factory in North Carolina last year and is targeting the military as well.

8). Stion: After Solyndra’s bankruptcy in 2011, few venture capitalists wanted to invest in using copper, indium, gallium and selenium (CIGS) to make ultra-thin solar panels (that’s the same material Solyndra was working with). Many CIGS startups went out of business or got scooped up in firesales. Stion has survived so far after lining up investments in Taiwan and Korea, and it started shipments from its Mississippi factory last year.

9). SoloPower: The company is another CIGS startup that has made progress toward commercializing its technology while its peers disappeared into oblivion. SoloPower turned on its 100MW factory in Oregon last year and secured a federal loan guarantee to help it expand if it meets milestones.

10). SCS Renewables: As interest in investing in solar power generation grows, investors will want to know where they can find quality projects. SCS Renewables runs a match-making service that also helps developers to massage their projects into presentable shapes in front of banks and other investors.

11). Silevo: With a new type of hybrid solar cell technology and its first factory in China instead of the U.S., where it’s headquartered, Silevo has mapped out a plan to scale up production and keep production costs low enough to attract customers with its efficient cells. 

12). TenKsolar: Out there in Minneapolis, tenKsolar has designed a wave-like solar energy system that combines solar panels with a reflective coating to direct more light to the solar cells. The unusual design caught the attention of Korean conglomerate Hanwha, which led a $15.5 million round in 2012.

13). OneRoof Energy: The startup teams up with roofers and electricians to sell rooftop solar systems and financing products such as leases as part of new roofing or re-roofing projects. OneRoof Energy is part of a group of solar installers, such as the now public SolarCity and high-profile startups Sungevity and SunRun.

Source : GigaOM

Lux’s 10 emerging tech companies to watch in 2013

While not all of the picks are focused on clean energy — one’s an enhanced oil recovery company — they all have early stage technology that could break through next year.

Lux Research has put together a group of cutting-edge emerging technology companies to watch in 2013 and we’re stoked that they’ve picked a whopping nine in the energy field. While they’re not all focused on clean energy — one’s an enhanced oil recovery company — they all have early stage technology that could break through next year.
We also haven’t heard of most of these firms, so I wanted to include the whole list here and see what you guys think of their choices. The picks include everything from startups to publicly traded companies, and from American firms to companies in Canada and Germany.
1). Beta Renewables: A $350 million joint venture between Gruppo Mossi & Ghisolfi and TPG, Italian company Beta Renewables is scaling up a commercial cellulosic ethanol factory, which it began operating in the fourth quarter of 2012 in Italy. The plant is supposed to eventually make 20 million gallons of cellulosic ethanol per year, starting from an initial volume of 40,000 tons. Beta Renewables uses enzymes to break down non-food biomass and then uses a fermentation process to turn it into biofuels.
2). Materials Innovation Technologies: The company makes carbon fiber parts for lightweight vehicles from recycled materials, and it’s also been working on natural fiber bio-based parts and recycled fiber parts. Founded in 2004, Materials Innovation Technologies has big partners like Boeing, and has a factory in Lake City, South Carolina.

3). N-Solv: N-Solv injects heated gas into oil sand reservoirs to extract more oil, but says its process is more efficient, more sustainable and cheaper than competitive processes. The company has a pilot plant that is supposed to start production in spring of 2013 in Alberta.

4). Imprint Energy: Imprint Energy makes zinc-based flexible, slim batteries for electronics. The company, based in Alameda, Calif., was founded in 2010 and the technology was developed at the University of California, Berkeley.
5). Phosphagenics: The only non-energy company on the list, Phosphagenics is an Australian publicly-traded biotech company that makes skin-based drug delivery technology (like a patch or a cream).
6). Azzurro Semiconductors: A German semiconductor maker that develops gallium nitride on silicon substrates, called GaN-on-Si. These semicondcuctors are used to makes LEDs and as the basis for power electronics. The company is backed by Good Energies, Emerald Technology Ventures, Wellington Partners Venture Capital and GoodVent.
7). Enbala Power Networks: Enbala creates a network that can manage building power devices — like boilers, chillers, and battery stations — to sell what’s called regulation services, or making sure the grid is kept in balance in real time, to utilities and power companies. With headquarters in Toronto, the company is backed by Walsingham Growth Partners, Chrysalix Energy Venture Capital, and others.
8). Boulder Ionics: The company makes ionic liquids that can be used as the electrolyte for energy storage technologies like batteries and ultracapacitors. The company raised $4.3 million from Pangaea Ventures, 9th Street Investments, CalCEF Clean Energy Angel Fund, JSR Corporation and Protonic Capital. The company also has a $1 million grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF), U.S. Air Force (USAF) and U.S. Navy (USN).

9). Silevo: One of the few companies on the list we’ve profiled, Silevo’s solar cells use silicon to convert sunlight into electricity, but its cells use more efficient single-crystal silicon (as the substrate) and amorphous-silicon to manipulate the voltage and current of the cells. The company also uses copper instead of silver, which is more expensive, to create the ultra thin lines that ferry electricity out of solar cells. The result is a solar cell that is more efficient at converting sunlight into electricity than the dominant silicon-only cells on the market today.

10). Desalitech: Desalitech is a water desalination tech company that says its water cleaning process is more reliable, flexible and costs 20 percent than competitors. Israeli water company AquAgro Fund and private equity fund Liberation Capital are investors.

Source : GigaOM

Une technologie israélienne convertit du CO2 en carburant avec de l’énergie solaire

Convertir les gaz à effet de serre en carburant grâce à l’énergie solaire

http://www.bulletins-electroniques.com/actualites/70824.htm

Une compagnie israélo-australienne va utiliser la technologie solaire développée à l’Institut Weizmann afin de réduire les émissions de dioxyde de carbone provenant de la combustion du lignite (charbon). L’entreprise a été récemment fondée en Israël par NewCO2Fuels, une filiale de la société australienne Greenearth Energy, qui a acquis une licence mondiale exclusive pour cette technologie auprès de Yeda, le département de l’Institut Weizmann responsable de la valorisation de la recherche.

La technologie développée à l’Institut Weizmann utilise de l’énergie solaire concentrée afin de dissocier le dioxyde de carbone (CO2) en monoxyde de carbone (CO) et oxygène (O2). Cette méthode, développée à l’Institut Weizmann par le Prof Jacob Karni, permet également de dissocier l’eau (H2O) en hydrogène (H2) et de l’oxygène (O2) en même temps qu’il élimine le CO2.

Le monoxyde de carbone (CO), soit seul, soit mélangé avec de l’hydrogène, peut alors être utilisé comme combustible gazeux (par exemple dans les centrales électriques), ou converti en combustible liquide comme le méthanol, qui peut être stocké, transporté ou utilisé pour alimenter des véhicules à moteur.

La méthode a été couronnée de succès dans les essais réalisés en laboratoire. NewCO2Fuels est en train de construire un réacteur solaire pour la conversion du CO2 à l’échelle industrielle. Une partie du développement est en cours d’exécution actuellement, en collaboration avec l’Institut Canadien pour les Energies et la Recherche Appliquée, à l’Institut Weizmann.

Greenearth Energy s’attend à ce que la nouvelle compagnie israélo-australienne aide à exploiter les vastes ressources de lignite situées dans l’Etat de Victoria (sud-est de l’Australie), dont l’utilisation a été limitée jusqu’à présent par les quantités importantes de CO2 produites par ce type de charbon. La possibilité de convertir le CO2 en carburant proprement et efficacement pourra transformer le lignite en carburant respectueux de l’environnement.

Pour en savoir plus, contacts:
- Prof. Jacob Karni – tél. : 972-8-934-3785 – Jacob.Karni@weizmann.ac.il
- Site web de Yeda, la société de transfert de technologie de l’institut Weizmann: http://www.yedarnd.com
- Site web de NewCO2Fuels: http://newco2fuels.co.il/

Sources : Bulletins électroniques, Smart Planet

Aux États-Unis, Coca, Google et San Francisco parmi les 20 leaders des énergies renouvelables sur site

Le distributeur Walmart, BMW, Coca-Cola et la ville de San Francisco sont les plus gros producteurs d’énergies renouvelables sur site. Parmi les autres leaders figurent entre autres Google et l’armée de l’air.

par Heather Clancy

Au cours des 18 derniers mois, la position des États-Unis quant à l’aide fédérale apportée à la technologie des énergies renouvelables a radicalement changé. À tel point que le crédit d’impôt pour la production d’énergie éolienne qui a contribué à la mise en place de nombreux parcs éoliens terrestres devrait expirer à la fin de l’année.

Néanmoins, le soutien au niveau des États pour incorporer davantage de solaire, d’éolien, de biomasse, d’hydraulique, de géothermie et d’autres sources d’énergie propre continue d’être relativement fort. En témoignent deux exemples dans mon État de résidence, le New Jersey: le gouverneur vient de signer un nouveau projet de loi visant à accroître l’attractivité des investissements dans le solaire et PSE&G cherche à investir 883 millions de dollars supplémentaires dans des projets qui aideraient à transformer des décharges et des installations industrielles inexploitées en parcs solaires et qui inspireraient une plus grande capacité distribuée sous la forme de projets résidentiels.

L’Agence américaine de protection de l’environnement (EPA) dresse plusieurs listes qui classent les entreprises, organisations et communautés les plus actives en matière d’énergies propres. L’une de mes listes favorites est celle des 20 leaders de la production sur site, car elle comptabilise les projets proprement dits (les autres listes comptabilisent aussi les crédits d’énergies renouvelables).

La liste à mi-2012 vient de paraître, et je n’ai pas été surprise d’apprendre que Wal-Mart Stores figurait en tête, une position basée sur le nombre faramineux de ses projets en cours. L’EPA estime qu’environ 4% de l’énergie du distributeur est actuellement fournie par des sources renouvelables, soit près de 114,9 millions de kilowattheures (kWh).

Voici les 20 premiers au complet, classés en fonction du nombre de kWh renouvelables par an:

1 – Walmart (114,9 millions de kWh, soit 4%) – Biogaz, solaire et éolien

2 – BMW Manufacturing (61,8 millions de kWh, soit 37%) – Biogaz

3 – Coca-Cola Refreshments (47,5 millions de kWh, soit 6%) – Biogaz

4 – U.S. Air Force (39,7 millions de kWh, soit moins de 1%) – Biogaz, solaire et éolien

5 – Ville de San Francisco (31,8 millions de kWh, soit 4%) – Solaire

6 – Kohl’s Department Stores (28,4 millions de kWh, soit 2%) – Biogaz

7 – SC Johnson & Sons (27,9 millions de kWh, soit 15%) – Biogaz

8 – Ville de San Jose, en Californie (27,5 millions de kWh, soit 15%) – Biogaz et solaire

9 – Ville de San Diego (20,3 millions de kWh, soit 8%) – Biogaz, mini-hydraulique et solaire

10 – Ville de Portland, dans l’Oregon (13,8 millions de kWh, soit 8%) – Biogaz, mini-hydraulique, solaire et éolien

11 – Encina Wastewater Authority (11,9 millions de kWh, soit 70%) – Biogaz

12 – Adobe Systems (11,6 millions de kWh, soit 19%) – Biogaz

13 – Station d’épuration de la ville de Tulare, en Californie (11,3 millions de kWh, soit 45%) – Biogaz et solaire

14 – Google (10,6 millions de kWh, soit moins de 1%) – Biogaz et solaire

15 – Safeway (9 millions de kWh, soit moins de 1%) – Biogaz, solaire et éolien

16 – Université de l’Iowa (8,7 millions de kWh, soit 3%) – Biomasse

17 – Ville de Santa Cruz, en Californie (6,6 millions de kWh, soit 58%) – Biogaz et solaire

18 – Zotos International (5,5 millions de kWh, soit 51%) – Éolien

19 – Laboratoire national des énergies renouvelables (5,34 millions de kWh, soit 27%) – Solaire et éolien

20 – Université de Central Michigan (5,1 millions de kWh, soit 8%) – Biomasse

Source : Smart Planet

IBM squeezes more power from new solar cell

The more sunlight a solar cell can convert into electricity, the cheaper the solar power. Companies like IBM are turning to new materials to try to break efficiency barriers for solar cells.

Wringing more solar electricity from low-cost materials is a major focus for scientists and those who want the world to get away from using fossil fuels for electricity. Researchers at IBM recently announced that they were able to do just that with a new type of compound that uses cheaper ingredients than what goes into some of the solar panels today.

The researchers reported in Advanced Energy Materials that they fabricated solar cells with copper, zinc, tin and sulfur (CZTS) that for the first time could convert 11.1 percent of the sunlight that falls on it into electricity. That’s a 10 percent improvement from the 10.1 percent efficiency IBM achieved last year and published in Progress in Photovoltaics.

The more electricity you can squeeze from the same set of materials, the lower the generation cost. So increasing the efficiency of solar cells is important to lower the price of solar electricity, which is currently more expensive than generating electricity from coal or natural gas. Coal and natural gas technologies have already benefited from decades of improvements, so replacing them with equally cheap power will take time.

Researchers at IBM and elsewhere are exploring the use of the CZTS compound partly because zinc and tin are more abundant and found in more diverse regions in the world than indium and gallium, which are used to make some of the solar cells today. Recent conflicts over rare earth elements have shown that the path to building a world of clean energy technologies, such as batteries for electric cars and wind turbines, can have major geopolitical roadblocks.

I caught up with IBM’s solar researcher David Mitzi, who also is a co-author of the new paper on CZTS, earlier this year to find out why IBM is investing in CZTS research. Aside from the benefit of cheaper and more available materials, the CZTS compound, because of its crystal structure, also could lead to thinner solar cells than those made with silicon, which is the most common material for making solar cells today. Thinner cells means using less materials and doing so, presumably, at lower costs.

The pace of efficiency improvement in CZTS cell research since the mid-1990s also is a big draw for IBM, Mitzi told me. In 2008, the most efficient CZTS cell achieved 6.7 percent efficiency, and IBM reported a record 9.7 percent efficiency in 2010. A year after that, the company pushed that figure to 10.1 percent.

Mitzi and his fellow researchers are gunning for 15 percent efficiency in order to position CZTS cells competitively against other solar cell technologies. Several companies that produce copper-indium-gallium-selenide (CIGS) solar cells are getting efficiencies in the mid-teens. First Solar is making solar cells in the lower end of the mid-teen range but claims to be on its way to increase that to 17.3 percent some day. Most of the silicon solar cells can get a bit higher efficiency except for SunPower, which is rolling out cells that can hit 24 percent at times.

The goal is to get to 15 percent in about two years, Mitzi said. Achieving that milestone won’t be easy, he acknowledged. Being able to get higher efficiency isn’t enough. Figuring out how to make those high-efficient cells cheaply is key, and that will involve a lot of trial and error in designing and running factory equipment.

IBM isn’t interested in making and selling CZTS cells though. The company is working with partners that might one day commercialize IBM’s research. The partners include Solar Frontier (a CIGS solar cell maker), Tokyo Ohka Kogyo (a semiconductor equipment supplier) and DelSolar (a silicon solar cell maker).

While IBM marches forward, another company that has been working on its own CZTS cells seems to be stumbling. AQT Solar is reportedly looking for a buyer of its intellectual property and equipment. AQT was focused on developing CIGS solar cells before switching to using the CZTS compound. Earlier this year, AQT’s CEO, Michael Bartholomeusz, talked about commercializing the CTZS technology in 2013.

Source : GigaOM

SOLAIRE : UNE CENTRALE SUR RAILS EN CONSTRUCTION

Des ingénieurs espagnols étudient la possibilité de placer les panneaux réfléchissant sur des rails pour maximiser le rendement des centrales solaires à concentration.

Le Centre Technologique Avancée des Energies Renouvelables (CTAER), en Espagne, explore une nouvelle possibilité pour engranger un maximum de rayons solaires avec un minimum de panneaux. En construction depuis le début 2012 dans le désert deTabernas, sa centrale solaire thermique d'expérimentation alignera des panneaux réfléchissant montés rails. Disposés de manière concentriques autour de la tour, ils pourront ainsi optimiser leur placement face à la course du soleil. D’après les simulations du CTAER, la production globale d’une telle centrale à géométrie variable serait dopée de quelque 17% par rapport à une centrale classique.

Le concept de centrale solaire à géométrie variable détaillé en vidéo (en espagnol).

La technologie du solaire thermique consiste à concentrer les rayons solaires, via des surfaces réfléchissantes, pour chauffer un fluide. Ce fluide chauffe ensuite de la vapeur et entraine une turbine couplée à un générateur électrique. Dans ce type de centrales, très dépendantes d’un ensoleillement direct, l'orientation optimale des surfaces réfléchissantes est capitale.

Des systèmes de « tracker » - une motorisation bi-axiale de chaque panneau – gèrent déjà cette orientation en temps réel. Mais le caractère fixe des panneaux empêche encore de capter la totalité du rayonnement à certaines heures. Le système de rails imaginé par le CTAER pourrait donc compléter le dispositif à condition que les coûts d’entretien restent limités. Essais à suivre…

Hugo Leroux

Source : Industrie & Technologies

Des robots poseurs de panneaux solaires pour réduire les coûts

Reducing labor costs could help make solar power more affordable.

As the price of solar panels has plummeted, the amount of solar power being generated worldwide is soaring. Yet solar still accounts for less than 2 percent of the world's total electricity capacity. And small wonder. Each square meter of solar panel generates around 145 watts of electrical power, enough to turn on just two or three light bulbs.

That means you'd have to cover the National Mall in Washington, D.C. five or six times over to match the peak capacity of a large fossil-fuel power plant. What's more, every one of those panels needs to be installed by hand.

Now companies such as PV Kraftwerker and Gehrlicher in Germany are developing mobile robots that can automatically install ground-mounted solar panels day and night, in all sorts of weather. PV Kraftwerker's robot is designed to assemble power-plant-grade solar panels, which are four times the size of the ones you'd see on a home.

The main idea is to save money on labor, which accounts for a growing fraction of the cost of solar power as panels get cheaper. According to PV Kraftwerker, a construction firm specializing in solar parks, installations that used to require 35 workers can now be done with just three workers in an eighth the time.

For a 14-megawatt solar plant, the company estimates, it might cost about $2 million to install the panels manually. Using the robot could cut that cost by nearly half. The company says that the robot, which lists for $900,000, could pay for itself in less than a year of steady use.

Robotic help could be a plus given Germany's ambitious plans to get a third of its electricity from renewable sources within eight years and 80 percent by 2050 (see "The Great German Energy Experiment"). Germany led the world in solar installations in 2011, putting up panels capable of generating around 7.5 gigawatts and covering an estimated 50 square kilometers of ground and rooftops.

PV Kraftwerker built its robot from off-the-shelf Japanese components. The machinery consists of a robotic arm mounted on an all-terrain vehicle with tanklike tracks. Suction cups grip the glass face of the solar panels and the arm swings them into place, guided by cameras that give the robot a three-dimensional view of the scene.

The robot's limitations give a glimpse of how hard it's going to be to completely automate the installation process. Much solar power in Germany is generated by rooftop arrays, but the shape and orientation of roofs is too varied for robots to handle. Even for small solar farms and those using ordinary-size panels, human workers are both faster and cheaper than the robot, says Markus Gattenlöhner, head of marketing at PV Kraftwerker.

Christian Hoepfner, a scientific director at the Fraunhofer Center for Sustainable Energy Systems (see "Redesigning Solar Power"), agrees that the role of robots will be limited. "But I can see the beauty of it for large, ground-mounted installations," he says. "When you think of huge fields covered with identical panels, you think, 'Why not have a robot do it?' As the size of installations increases, it's unavoidable."

So far, the PV Kraftwerker robot can only do one thing: lay panels on a metal frame that humans have already installed. Two people walking along beside the robot screw the panels to the frame and make electrical connections.

Yet robotic installation may become more common as other components get adapted to automation. PV Kraftwerker and other companies are also developing robots that, guided by GPS, can pound poles into the ground and then mount panels on them, eliminating the need for workers to install frames. Newer solar modules can be snapped or glued into position instead of being screwed in. Special plugs could even allow robots to make the electrical connections (see "New Solar Panel Designs Make Installation Cheaper").

Robots like these could be useful in bringing electricity to inhospitable environments. The government of Japan commissioned PV Kraftwerker to develop a version of its robot that could install a solar power plant largely on its own in radioactive areas near the site of the Fukushima nuclear-plant disaster. Gattenlöhner says the Japanese government wants the robot within six months.

Source : MIT Technology Review