[amor de cosmos]

Analysis: Renewables turn utilities into dinosaurs of the energy world
By Geert De Clercq
PARIS | Fri Mar 8, 2013 4:13am EST

(Reuters) - Every new solar panel installed on European rooftops chips away at power utilities' centralized production model. Unless they reinvent themselves soon, these giants risk becoming the dinosaurs of the energy market.

The industry faces drastic change as renewable energy turns consumers into producers and hollows out the dominance of utilities. With their stocks at decade lows and a millstone of debt around their necks, Europe's utilities have little margin for error.

In Germany, where 22 percent of its electricity came from renewable sources in 2012, the big four utilities - E.ON, RWE, EnBW and Vattenfall Europe - are nearly absent in this new sector.

Of the 71 gigawatts of renewable energy capacity installed at the end of 2011, the four owned just 7 percent, environment ministry data show. A gigawatt roughly corresponds to the capacity of one nuclear plant.

Individuals owned 40 percent of renewables capacity, energy niche players 14 percent, farmers 11 percent, various energy-intensive industrial companies 9 percent, and financial companies 11 percent. Small regional utilities and international utilities owned another 7 percent.

In the solar industry the big four are even more marginal, having ceded 97 percent to investors from outside the power industry, Lueneburg University researcher Mario Richter said.

"Utilities produce electricity, and here's a new technology for producing electricity, and they are not in there. They have completely missed the opportunity," Richter said.

Richter, who has interviewed 20 German utilities managers about the impact of renewables on their firms, said it has taken them years to acknowledge the potential of solar and wind.



WINNERS IN THE POWER GAME

If utilities are the losers in this game, the winners are solar panel and windmill makers, the hundreds of small firms that install solar systems, and the thousands of consumers who have turned their roofs into mini-power plants.

Other winners are companies in the energy efficiency business: building materials firms like Saint Gobain that sell double glazing, chemical firms like Recticel that sell insulation, and heating systems manufacturers like privately owned Vaillant and Viessmann, which sell heat pumps, solar systems and energy-saving equipment.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/...92709E20130308

SolarAid sales increase by 600%
By Nilima Choudhury - 06 March 2013, 10:29
In News, Power Generation

SolarAid, a British charity, has announced that sales of its solar lights to the African market will exceed 320,000, forecasting £2.08 million (US$3.14 million) by the end of March this year.

The charity’s aim is to eradicate the need for kerosene for lighting from Africa by 2020 by bringing light to nearly 60 million African households.

From April 2011 to March 2012 SolarAid sold 51,811 units which rose to 228,000 at the end of 2012, beating last year’s sales by almost 600%. By finding a route to mass market in Africa, it claims it is on course to make solar lanterns an everyday household item.

Pippa Palmer, Managing Director of SolarAid, said: “Solar has a crucial role to play in the developing world where countless communities are trapped in a cycle of perpetual poverty by costly and deadly kerosene. By offering the chance to buy a clean tech alternative, SolarAid makes a life-changing difference to these communities and the children within them – a difference that could ultimately change the environmental and economic fortunes of Africa.

“We are filled with excitement at the prospect of achieving the hugely ambitious mission we have set ourselves: leading the world in eradicating the kerosene lantern from Africa by 2020.,” said Palmer.

http://www.pv-tech.org/news/solaraid...ncrease_by_600
http://solarlove.org/solaraid-sees-6...ease-in-sales/

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