[amor de cosmos]

Largest Solar Rooftop In Europe Complete, In Germany!
Published on August 17th, 2013 | by Nicholas Brown

The largest self-consumption rooftop solar array in Europe has been completed, and it is of course located in Germany. It is eleven hectares in size, consists of 33,000 solar panels, and has a generation capacity of 8.1 MW (which could power up to about 1,846 homes).

The record-breaking solar roof is on top of the Pfenning Logistics distribution centre named multicube rhein-neckar, which is located in the Heddesheim municipality, a bit south of Frankfurt. The building was recently constructed and has been owned by Union Investment as of 2012.

Dennis Seiberth, president of international large-scale projects at the project development company Wirsol, said: “In this size we usually build solar parks.” He added that Wirsol was ambitious in its aims to build the plant in four weeks.

http://cleantechnica.com/2013/08/17/...te-in-germany/

São Paulo Aiming For 1 GW Of Solar Energy Capacity By 2020
Published on August 17th, 2013 | by Nathan

The Brazilian state of São Paulo — the economic and industrial heart of the country — is currently aiming to possess a total of at least 1 GW of solar energy capacity by the year 2020, a goal which is very achievable, according to a solar atlas of the region that was recently released by the state’s energy secretariat. The state of São Paulo possesses twice the maximum global solar irradiation of the solar powerhouse Germany.

São Paulo, which in addition to being the economic heart of the country is also the most populous state in Brazil, has a total solar power generation potential of 12 TWh per year in the areas with the absolute highest annual solar radiation, according to the new solar atlas. The areas in question total 732 square kilometers — 0.3% of the state’s total area of 248,209 square kilometers. It’s estimated that these areas could host at least 9,100 MW (9.1 GW) of installed capacity.

São Paulo is already well on its way to achieving its aforementioned goal of possessing 1 GW of solar energy capacity by 2020 — 207 MW of thermal solar capacity are already installed. The rest of the 1 GW target capacity will be split up thusly: a further 592 MW of thermal solar capacity, 50 MW of photovoltaic solar capacity, 50 MW of concentrated solar power, and 100 MW set aside for passive solar energy exploitation in the form of solar architecture projects.

http://cleantechnica.com/2013/08/17/...on-of-germany/

Can US Solar PV Costs Keep Falling?
Chris Nelder says that depends on what happens to soft costs.
Chris Nelder: August 16, 2013

Solar PV costs are still falling rapidly in the United States, but further cost reductions will depend largely on policymakers.

Those are the conclusions of a new paper from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Tracking the Sun VI [PDF].

The analysis covers more than 200,000 residential, commercial, and utility-scale PV systems in 29 states, representing 72 percent of all grid-connected PV capacity in the United States as of 2012, and tracks installed prices before any incentives or tax credits, in 2012 dollars, from 1998 through 2012, with some preliminary 2013 data.

http://www.greentechmedia.com/articl...s-keep-falling

Are Utilities Ready for the Coming Death Spiral?
Jigar Shah, Stephen Lacey and Richard Caperton discuss the impact of distributed energy on utilities.
Stephen Lacey: August 16, 2013

Utilities may soon be on the verge of a "death spiral" as more customers leave the grid and implement distributed energy technologies like solar. A similar shift happened in telecom as the rise of mobile phones made copper lines nearly obsolete.

This week, we'll ask what lessons the utility sector can learn from telecom companies that have already navigated the shift to distributed technologies. (And for another take on the issue, read Scott Clavenna's piece on the utility-telecom connection.)

We'll also discuss why some in the Tea Party and other unlikely groups are supporting renewables, as well as ask what we've learned about grid management ten years after the notorious 2003 blackout in the Northeast U.S.

http://www.greentechmedia.com/articl...g-death-spiral

Canadian Solar sees grid parity for big solar in 5 years
By Giles Parkinson on 16 August 2013

Global solar manufacturing giant Canadian Solar expects that solar power will be competitive with fossil fuels in many countries with five years.

In an interview with RenewEconomy, chief commercial officer Yan Zhuang said utility-scale solar costs were currently around 15c/kWh. But within five years this would fall to around 10c/kWh. By this time, fossil fuels will be around the same price.

However, Zhuang said the arrival of cost competitive energy storage would be a key for solar’s future growth, because the output needed to be delivered.

“Storage is just so important now – whether we are moving to self consumption (at the residential and commercial level) and at utility-scale. It will become a game changer because we need to shift the load. But we are not quite there yet.”

Once storage became a viable commercial option, Zhuang said that residential solar would then truly be at “grid parity”. He said residential rooftop was not at grid parity yet because “there was no sun in the evening”.

But he said solar was already at grid parity for commercial users with daytime loads, and for off-grid locations where diesel or other expensive fuels were the only option.

http://reneweconomy.com.au/2013/cana...-5-years-24484

New rechargeable flow battery enables cheaper, large-scale energy storage
Design may support widespread use of solar and wind energy.
Jennifer Chu, MIT News Office
August 16, 2013

MIT researchers have engineered a new rechargeable flow battery that doesn’t rely on expensive membranes to generate and store electricity. The device, they say, may one day enable cheaper, large-scale energy storage.

The palm-sized prototype generates three times as much power per square centimeter as other membraneless systems — a power density that is an order of magnitude higher than that of many lithium-ion batteries and other commercial and experimental energy-storage systems.

The device stores and releases energy in a device that relies on a phenomenon called laminar flow: Two liquids are pumped through a channel, undergoing electrochemical reactions between two electrodes to store or release energy. Under the right conditions, the solutions stream through in parallel, with very little mixing. The flow naturally separates the liquids, without requiring a costly membrane.

The reactants in the battery consist of a liquid bromine solution and hydrogen fuel. The group chose to work with bromine because the chemical is relatively inexpensive and available in large quantities, with more than 243,000 tons produced each year in the United States.

In addition to bromine’s low cost and abundance, the chemical reaction between hydrogen and bromine holds great potential for energy storage. But fuel-cell designs based on hydrogen and bromine have largely had mixed results: Hydrobromic acid tends to eat away at a battery’s membrane, effectively slowing the energy-storing reaction and reducing the battery’s lifetime.

To circumvent these issues, the team landed on a simple solution: Take out the membrane.

http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2013/r...rage-0816.html