[amor de cosmos]

Los Angeles unveils 350 MW solar program
23. May 2013 | Applications & Installations, Global PV markets, Industry & Suppliers, Markets & Trends, Top News | By: Edgar Meza

Los Angeles is moving forward with two major new projects that will offer California’s sprawling metropolis a combined 350 MW of solar power utilizing a combination of feed-in-tariff (FiT) and request for proposal (RFP) pricing systems as it transitions from coal power to green energy.

The city of Los Angeles is making major strides in its adoption of solar energy as it finalizes a 150 MW local project and greenlights a new 200 MW utility scale facility.

The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) last month agreed on an additional 50 MW of local solar to complement a 100 MW project approved in January. At the same time, the board of Water and Power commissioners paved the way for a 200 MW utility scale solar array in the Mojave Desert, located north of the city.

The 150 MW feed-in tariff program, combined with the new 200 MW project, “is an important part of LADWP’s transition away from coal power,” the company announced this week.

http://www.pv-magazine.com/news/deta...ram_100011458/

May 22, 2013
Innovation could bring flexible solar cells, transistors, displays

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. – Researchers have created a new type of transparent electrode that might find uses in solar cells, flexible displays for computers and consumer electronics and future "optoelectronic" circuits for sensors and information processing.

The electrode is made of silver nanowires covered with a material called graphene, an extremely thin layer of carbon. The hybrid material shows promise as a possible replacement for indium tin oxide, or ITO, used in transparent electrodes for touch-screen monitors, cell-phone displays and flat-screen televisions. Industry is seeking alternatives to ITO because of drawbacks: It is relatively expensive due to limited abundance of indium, and it is inflexible and degrades over time, becoming brittle and hindering performance.

"If you try to bend ITO it cracks and then stops functioning properly," said Purdue University doctoral student Suprem Das.

The hybrid material could represent a step toward innovations, including flexible solar cells and color monitors, flexible "heads-up" displays in car windshields and information displays on eyeglasses and visors.

"The key innovation is a material that is transparent, yet electrically conductive and flexible," said David Janes, a professor of electrical and computer engineering.

http://www.purdue.edu/newsroom/relea...-displays.html

Installing Rooftop Solar Is Unfair, Says Energy Group
May 22, 2013

The Energy Supply Association of Australia, or ESAA, is a group whose membership appears to include just about every company that is involved in the generation or distribution of electricity in Australia. They have just released a very interesting discussion paper called, “Who pays for solar energy?” I think it’s very nice of them to put out a report like this and try to educate people, but oddly enough for a group that’s intimately involved with the electricity sector, they somehow neglected to mention several very important benefits that rooftop solar provides Australians. Also, they express concern for low-income households that cannot take advantage of rooftop solar, but then suggest a solution that would hit low-income households harder than high-income ones. How they could have made a mistake like that is beyond me. I can only assume they just didn’t think it through, as I’m sure they couldn’t possibly be motivated only by pecuniary interest.

The paper focuses on network charges which have increased dramatically in Australia over the past five years due to power companies expecting electricity demand to rise and investing heavily in distribution infrastructure, which turned out to be a bad idea when demand dropped instead due to improved efficiency and rooftop solar. But, strangely enough, rather than simply providing a space for ESAA members to apologise for their mistake and the unnecessary hardship they caused Australians, the paper instead decides to blame their customers for not buying enough electricity.

While I can understand that the ESAA’s members would prefer it if Australians bought more electricity, blaming the customer seems to show a profound lack of understanding of how markets work. If a business loses market share due to competition, they can either win back customers by improving their product or lowering prices, or they can accept that the market has changed and adapt to the new conditions. Blaming the customers for not buying enough may be cathartic if the business happens to be run by five year olds, but never results in a beneficial outcome.

http://cleantechnica.com/2013/05/22/...-energy-group/

Utilities want higher charges to shade business model from solar
By Giles Parkinson on 20 May 2013

The electricity supply industry has resumed and intensified its efforts to change the tariff system for rooftop solar households, in a bid to protect revenues that are falling and their business models that are eroding because more customers are producing their own electricity.

A new discussion paper was released this weekend, “exclusively” to News Ltd newspapers which enthusiastically took up the chance to demonise the cost of renewables once again.

The upshot of the paper is that households with rooftop solar are “avoiding” network costs, and these in turn are being passed on to other users, which the electricity supply industry says are mostly less wealthy households.

The ESAA estimated the current total of “avoided” costs at $340 million, or around $30 per household.

To put this into context, this sum is – according to the ESAA’s own data – just one eleventh of the cross-subsidy paid by households with no air conditioning.

The ESAA estimates these air con network costs at $330 per household, and it is certainly not “hidden”, because it has been one of the key reasons why networks have been “supersizing” their grids over the last few years, at an aggregate cost of nearly$40 billion.

And herein lies the contraction in the ESAA position. Does the ESAA suggest that air conditioning households should be hit with higher fixed tariffs to pay for network extensions? No, of course not, because the increased use of air conditioners adds to the revenue pool of the electricity industry, and they want to get a return on their grid investment.

The use of solar, however, detracts from the incumbents because rooftop solar households draw less electricity from the grid – leading to the now well documented “death spiral.”

http://reneweconomy.com.au/2013/util...om-solar-92600