[amor de cosmos]

Germany Agrees: There Is A Solar-Powered Solution To Greek Debt Crisis
April 1, 2013

It was a deal that looked all but dead last year, but now Germany and Greece have formally agreed to an initiative that will enable Greece to profit from one of its most valuable natural resources: the sun. The new Germany-Greece solar power agreement calls for Germany to lend its investment dollars and its low-cost solar know-how (which we’ve been eyeballing enviously here in the U.S.) to create new green jobs in its financially strapped EU cousin, while providing that country with a sustainable export product and solve a geopolitical energy issue, to boot.

The Germany-Greece Solar Power Agreement

Greece already has the makings of a strong but slowly growing solar power sector. The Germany-Greece agreement, which was signed last Thursday, calls for Germany to take the lead in helping the country to rev up its solar power production with an investment of $319,000 (250,000 euros).

That represents one-fourth of the program’s initial phase, which was formulated by the European Union’s Task Force for Greece. Other members of the EU will chip in the rest for a total of one million euros.

http://cleantechnica.com/2013/04/01/...ar-production/

Current Solar Module Efficiency Nowhere Near Its Potential, Especially Thin-Film Solar & CPV (Chart)
April 1, 2013

National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) Director Dan Arvizu recently gave a keynote speech during the 2013 International Renewable Energy Conference (part of Abu Dhabi Sustainability Week), which I was lucky enough to attend*. His speech covered a large variety of cleantech topics, and most of the points he made have been covered extensively here on CleanTechnica. However, a couple of his points stood out to me as rather interesting and relatively uncovered.

Some of them are the foci of the interviews I conducted with him after his presentation (see the posts linked on the bottom of this article). But I decided to leave a couple of the points out of our interviews since they’re pretty straightforward and the chart presenting them is available on the NREL website, and now right here:



The takeaway points from the chart are:

1. The current efficiencies of all types of solar modules and solar cells are nowhere near their theoretical efficiency limits. (And that’s not to say the theoretical limits can’t also increase.)
2. Thin-film solar (CdTe) is especially ripe for efficiency improvements (commentary on that below), as are concentrated photovoltaics (CPV).

http://cleantechnica.com/2013/04/01/...lar-cpv-chart/

Citigroup: How solar module prices could fall to 25c/watt
By Giles Parkinson on 1 April 2013

Energy analysts at global investment bank Citigroup suggest that the cost of solar PV modules could fall beyond most expectations in coming years – and reach a cost of just 25c a watt by 2020.

The prediction is included in an analysis of the market forces that are likely to shape the world’s energy future in the coming year. We reported on the major part of that report last Thursday, but Citi’s estimates on the cost of solar PV are intriguing, because they are well below most forecasts.

The rate of decline in the cost of solar PV in recent years has confounded most experts, even the optimists within the solar industry itself, and it has certainly taken the conventional power industry completely by surprise.



Citigroup’s report paints a very different picture in the two scenarios painted by the Citi team led by Jason Channell.

The first scenario, dubbed “single speed” expands on recent experience, which shows that the cost of solar PV has fallen around 22 per cent for each doubling in installed capacity. This is a variation of Moore’s Law, which held that there is a doubling of chip performance in computer hardware every 18 months.

Based on a continuation of that trend, and forecasts of solar PV capacity rising from around 100GW now to 500GW by 2020, Citi’s predictions fall in line with the market average, with a module cost of around 53c/Watt. Citigroup says any variations would be dictated by short term supply or demand effects.

But, in its “three speed” scenario, Citi works on the assumption that the cost of solar PV modules has evolved through three phases. The first was the ‘experimental’ phase, prior to 1988; the second was the ‘industry-development’ phase between 1998 and 2008; and the third was the ‘mass-production’ phase, after 2008.

http://reneweconomy.com.au/2013/citi...-25cwatt-41384

150-MW Imperial County Solar Plant Expected Online in 2014
April 1, 2013 Kathleen Zipp : 0 Comments

First Solar, Inc. has acquired the 150-megawatt (MWac) Solar Gen 2 power project from an affiliate of The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. Energy Power Partners and a third equity partner for the project. Construction of the facility, which is located in Imperial County, Calif., near El Centro, is expected to start this year and be completed in 2014.

The photovoltaic (PV) solar plant will generate enough electricity to power more than 60,000 average California homes, displacing more than 115,000 metric tons of CO2 per year (the equivalent of taking 22,000 cars off the road) and saving 93,000 metric tons of water per year.

The electrical output of the project will be purchased by San Diego Gas & Electric Company (SDG&E) under a 25-year power purchase agreement. Solar Gen 2 is expected to provide on average more than 800 construction jobs in Imperial County, an area currently suffering from high unemployment.

http://www.solarpowerworldonline.com...nline-in-2014/