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  #201  
Old Posted Apr 6, 2013, 11:31 PM
amor de cosmos amor de cosmos is offline
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Arizona State University becomes home to 1MW PV system
By Julia Chan - 05 April 2013, 13:39
In News, Power Generation, Project Focus

Arizona State University's (ASU) polytechnic campus in Mesa, Arizona, has become home to a 1MW PV system engineered and constructed by PV developer SunPower.

The system represents the first commercial deployment of SunPower’s C7 Tracker technology, a tracking system which, the company claims, concentrates the sun's power seven times to achieve one of the lowest levelized costs of electricity (LCOE) for solar power plants available today.

The C7 Tracker combines single-axis tracking technology with rows of parabolic mirrors which reflect light onto SunPower Maxeon solar cells. These cells have an efficiency of 22.8%.

In addition to building the system, SunPower is also operating and maintaining the facility which is expected to generate enough power to meet the demands of around 225 homes.
http://www.pv-tech.org/news/arizona_..._1mw_pv_system

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Un concentrateur solaire érigé au parc Innovation
Publié le 26 mars 2013 à 08h59 | Mis à jour le 26 mars 2013 à 08h59

(Sherbrooke) Un projet unique au Canada voit le jour dans le parc Innovation de l'UdeS. Au cours des prochaines semaines, un concentrateur solaire sera érigé au sud de l'Institut interdisciplinaire d'innovation technologique 3IT. L'infrastructure d'environ huit mètres, qui pourra produire de l'électricité, permettra de mener un projet de recherche sur l'énergie solaire, plus spécifiquement en photovoltaïque.

«Des sites comme ceux-là, il n'y en a pas beaucoup sur la planète», lance Vincent Aimez, professeur à la faculté de génie de l'Université de Sherbrooke et directeur du développement de partenariats scientifiques dans le domaine des nanotechnologies.

Les travaux viennent tout juste de commencer à proximité du 3IT.

Le démonstrateur sera équipé de miroirs (une surface d'environ 100 mètres carrés), qui serviront à renvoyer la lumière du soleil sur les cellules photovoltaïques. L'équipement, doté de moteurs, pourra suivre le soleil au fil de la journée. Avec l'outil de recherche grandeur nature, le soleil sera concentré mille fois à l'endroit où il arrive sur les cellules.
http://www.lapresse.ca/la-tribune/ec...innovation.php

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Mexico's Thatched-Roof CocoCabañas Resort is Powered Entirely by Solar Energy
by Lori Zimmer, 04/05/13

Tucked away on the Isla de Navidad peninsula on Mexico’s Central Pacific coast is the beautifully rustic, solar-powered CocoCabañas Resort. The native bamboo Cabaña guest rooms are just a stone’s throw from the pristine Coconut Beach. Best of all, the entire resort is powered by a massive solar array, which provides lighting, hot water, and power for ceiling fans in the naturally cool escape.



The resort’s sophisticated photovoltaic system is made up of 2400 W Isofoton solar panels, 24 Trojan L-16 batteries and 2 SMA Sunny Island 4200 W inverters for AC power. The complex system provides enough power for all lights, ceiling fans, refrigerators, well pumps, swimming pool pump, entertainment systems, computers, communications equipment, washer/dryers and power outlets. There is also a 12 kW Onan propane generator on site for emergency backup energy.

CocoCabañas is the ultimate eco-escape, giving guests an isolated beach experience far from the reaches of their normal lives.
http://inhabitat.com/mexicos-thatche...-solar-energy/
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  #202  
Old Posted Apr 8, 2013, 3:29 PM
amor de cosmos amor de cosmos is offline
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IHS Report Forecasts Global PV to Exceed 35GW in 2013
08 April 2013

Global photovoltaic (PV) installations are forecast to exceed 35 gigawatts (GW) in 2013, equivalent to growth of 12%, according to recently released analysis from IHS Research. IHS also reaffirmed its earlier prediction that global PV installations surpassed 30GW in 2012, with final analysis showing that installations, in fact, grew 14% to reach 31.4GW last year.

These findings and the latest PV demand projections for 2013 and beyond were recently issued by the IHS solar team, which comprises analysts from the IHS acquisitions of IMS Research, iSuppli, and Emerging Energy Research. Contrary to many other more pessimistic predictions for the industry, IHS foresees the PV industry to continue along its double-digit growth path in 2013 and to exceed 35GW for the first time.
http://www.solarnovus.com/index.php?...rticle&id=6420

Quote:
Uttar Pradesh Offers 200 MW Solar PV Tender
by Zach
on April 7, 2013

It’s hard to keep up with all the big solar news coming out of India. One of the most recent stories worth noting is that Uttar Pradesh has put out a tender for 200 MW of solar PV power.

The downside to the tender is that the state utility is just offering a power purchase agreement (PPA) for a 10-year period. Nonetheless, one would assume that any solar projects built would be used to send electricity to the grid for a much longer period of time. Solar panels last for decades, and some have speculated they may even produce a notable amount of electricity for a century.

Any bids selected for this offer are expected to receive approval by June 10, 2013.
http://solarlove.org/uttar-pradesh-o...lar-pv-tender/

Quote:
Switzerland: 40% price drop for turnkey PV module systems
08. April 2013 | Markets & Trends, Applications & Installations | By: Vera von Kreutzbruck

Prices for turnkey PV module systems have dropped around 41 percent in 2012 compared to 2011, according to a report released today by German consultants Photovoltaikzentrum.

A total of 402 photovoltaic system operators and 94 installers were interviewed for the report. The average price per kilowatt of installed photovoltaics in 2012 was 2.947 Swiss Francs (€ 2.422), which represents a 41% decrease, in comparison to 2001’s price of 4.984 Swiss Francs per kilowatt.

In early 2013 feed-in tariffs were cut 8%. Last year, the FITs were reduced three times: first through an 8% cut at the beginning of the year, March saw another 10% cut and October an additional 15%. These measures have helped lower the installation prices of photovoltaic plants in Switzerland, but they still have not fallen to parity with German prices.

According to Photovoltaikzentrum, 50% of the photovoltaic modules installed in Switzerland come from Germany, while only 30% are imported from the Far East.
http://www.pv-magazine.com/news/deta...ems_100010821/

Quote:
Downstream Solar Player Clean Power Finance Wins $37M Equity Round
Edison International buys in as the power sector moves into solar financing.

Herman K. Trabish: April 8, 2013

A $37 million equity round just completed by Clean Power Finance (CPF) more than doubles funding for an important residential solar finance player. Edison International (NYSE:EI) and two other power sector investors buying into the deal is also big news.

This round brings total investment in the firm to more than $62 million with investment from Kleiner Perkins Caulfield & Byers, Google Ventures, Claremont Creek Ventures, Clean Pacific Ventures and Sand Hill Angels. Hennessey Capital joined in this round, as did Edison and “two other major power sector companies” which declined to be named but which, CPF told GTM, “look a lot like Edison.”


http://www.greentechmedia.com/articl...M-Equity-Round

Quote:
PanelClaw Announces Program to Reduce Soft Costs in Solar
08 April 2013

PanelClaw has announced a new program that guarantees the time required to install its flat roof racking systems. Additionally, PanelClaw will cover the costs of shipping as well as the required Professional Engineering (PE) wind and seismic project stamps for all of its flat roof products in the U.S. A part of a new series of initiatives, the program lowers upfront project costs to enable its partners to win more business.


The new PanelClaw Partner Program includes an installation rate guarantee, which guarantees the time required to install its flat roof products for all first time users of the product. The guaranteed rate is established once layout is finalized and modules are selected.

It also covers the freight cost for flat roof products is covered throughout the 48 contiguous United States, with shipping to the nearest ports for projects in Puerto Rico and Hawaii.
http://www.solarnovus.com/index.php?...rticle&id=6422

Last edited by amor de cosmos; Apr 8, 2013 at 3:52 PM.
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  #203  
Old Posted Apr 9, 2013, 4:16 PM
amor de cosmos amor de cosmos is offline
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GTM Solar Summit 2013: Where Will Module Costs Bottom Out?
50 cents a watt is the new normal for module costs. How much further can technology take us? We pose the question to executives from Applied Materials, Hanergy, Hanwha and Suniva.

Shyam Mehta: April 8, 2013

With GTM’s sixth annual Solar Summit less than three weeks away, we're taking a closer look at the topics and themes that will come under the microscope. As always, module costs continue to be an area of considerable interest. Module costs for best-in-class Chinese producers such as Jinko Solar and ReneSola are set to drop below the 50 cent per watt mark in 2013 -- something which few (if any) industry roadmaps anticipated. There is currently little clarity around variables like what the cost curve looks like from here on out, the ultimate cost floor for manufacturing modules, and how we'll get there.

These are precisely the themes that will be tackled on a panel titled "Where Will Module Costs Bottom Out?" at the Solar Summit. Joining the discussion will be some battle-scarred industry veterans that live and breathe solar manufacturing: Charlie Gay (President, Applied Materials Solar), Jeff Zhou (President, Hanergy Holding America), Chris Eberspacher (Chief Technology Officer, Hanwha Solar) and Bryan Ashley (Chief Marketing Officer, Suniva). Below are some of the topics we'll be discussing.

Roadmaps and Benchmarks:

Efficiency Tradeoffs:

Consumables Costs:

Technology Investment Cycles:

Evolution Versus Revolution:

N-Type Technology:

Hanergy and Thin Film:
http://www.greentechmedia.com/articl...sts-bottom-out

Quote:
News Release NR-1913
NREL Launches Initiative to Build Solar Performance Database
April 9, 2013

The U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) has launched an initiative to build an open-source database of real-world performance from solar facilities across the country. As part of DOE’s SunShot Initiative, the Open Solar Performance and Reliability Clearinghouse (O-SPaRC) will give the private market tools to develop investment vehicles to tap low-cost public capital.

“The O-SPaRC dataset will provide the market with critical data on the long-term performance of residential and commercial solar facilities,” NREL Senior Financial Analyst Michael Mendelsohn said. “This is an important step to tapping the public capital markets and offers the potential to significantly lower the cost of solar energy.”
http://www.nrel.gov/news/press/2013/2166.html

Quote:
Downstream solar dominates VC funding scene
09. April 2013 | Industry & Suppliers, Investor news, Markets & Trends, Top News | By: Max Hall

Downstream solar companies dominated the global venture capital (VC) fundraising arena in the first quarter of 2013, finally benefiting from historically cheap panel prices, according to consultants Mercom Capital Group.

In its Q1 2013 Solar Funding and M&A report, Mercom reveals end customers such as solar leasing companies and system providers dominated for the first time since it started tracking solar VC levels.

The top two deals in the first three months of the year saw OneRoof Energy raise $30 million from Hanwha and Sungevity given $28 million from five investor funds.

CSP developer eSolar raised $12.8 million, flexible thin film tech company crystalsol sourced $11m and there was $7 million apiece for portable solar system company Goal Zero and solar system provider PsomasFMG as solar lease companies raised $75 million in eight deals and thin film companies brought in $25 million in six deals.
http://www.pv-magazine.com/news/deta...ene_100010829/

Quote:
Crowdfunded solar begins in earnest in California
08. April 2013 | Markets & Trends, Global PV markets | By: Jonathan Gifford

After what has proven to be a lengthy process, a Californian solar startup has received the go-head to offer US$100 million in projects to Californian investors. Mosaic, formerly Solar Mosaic, is the startup which will offer the solar crowdfunding platform.

Crowdfunding has had a major impact on creative industries and for some technology projects in the US in recent years, with the site Kickstarter the most prominent. After a long wait, the startup Mosaic has got the all clear to offer $100 million of projects in California, after a long approval process.

Mosaic was previously able to fund a number of projects, worth $300,000, in less than 24 hours, in its first crowdfunded solar projects. Previously it had offered a group of projects, which is labeled "beta" projects, on a trial basis – some of which have already paid back investors.
http://www.pv-magazine.com/news/deta...nia_100010825/

Quote:
Buffett rumor sees Suntech stock surge
09. April 2013 | Global PV markets, Industry & Suppliers, Investor news, Markets & Trends | By: Max Hall

With shares in insolvency hit solar manufacturer Suntech leaping yesterday to close at US$0.48 on rumors Warren Buffett is interested in a purchase, all eyes will be on the stock when the market reopens at 3.30 pm today.

Shares in Suntech, whose main Suntech Wuxi unit was forced into insolvency proceedings on March 20, rose as much as 28% on the rumor, eventually closing 16% up.

News of the apparent interest from veteran investor Buffett's MidAmerican Solar company came from an anonymous source in a report by a news agency owned by the Hong Kong Economic Times and was carried by news agency Bloomberg yesterday after the share price surge.
http://www.pv-magazine.com/news/deta...rge_100010830/

Quote:
Solar power has reached grid parity in India and Italy
Michael Graham Richard
Energy / Renewable Energy
April 8, 2013

A recent Deutsche Bank report concludes that solar power has now reached grid parity, meaning that it costs the same as electricity from the power grid, in Italy and India (where the government's goal is 20GW of solar by 2022), and that by next year even more countries will reach parity.

The German bank has also increased its solar demand forecast for this year by 20% because of strong demand in places like India, the U.S., China (around 7 to 10 GW), the U.K. (around 1 to 2 GW), Germany and Italy (around 2 GW).
http://www.treehugger.com/renewable-...and-italy.html
http://inhabitat.com/solar-energy-re...dia-and-italy/

Quote:
SunPower Launches Commercial Solar Panels With World Record Efficiency — X-Series
by Zach
on April 8, 2013
under Rooftop Solar, Solar Modules, Solar PV Manufacturing, Solar Records

SunPower is the well known leader in solar module efficiency. It has raised the bar yet again with the release of some super efficient “ X-Series Solar Panels.”

As I reported less than one month ago, SunPower now holds the record, and second place, and third place in solar module yield tests. Those records were for SunPower’s E-Series solar panels. Now, SunPower is selling these X-Series solar panels, which have a world record efficiency of 21.5%. The target for these X-Series solar panels is the residential market.

Compared to conventional solar panels, SunPower reports that its X-Series panels should generate approximately 75 percent more electricity over the first 25 years of ownership (on a roof of the same size). By anyone’s standards, that’s impressive.

“The X-Series delivers more energy, higher reliability and superior aesthetics than conventional solar panels. The new world-record efficiency of this product line has received third-party validation by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL),” SunPower writes.
http://solarlove.org/sunpower-launch...ency-x-series/

Quote:
Twitter Founder Celebrates his Family's Solar Installation
08 April 2013

Jack Dorsey, the co-founder of tech companies Twitter and Square, joined his parents, Tim and Marcia Dorsey, to celebrate the completion of a 25 kilowatt solar energy system installed on the rooftop of their downtown business, MA Tech Services. The business’s solar panel system was designed and installed by local clean energy company Brightergy.

The solar array is estimated to produce 32,291 kilowatt hours of electricity each year, offsetting nearly 100% of MA Tech Services’ current annual electricity usage. It will also prevent the release of nearly 23 metric tons of carbon dioxide into the Missouri atmosphere each year. This is the environmental equivalent of planting 584 tree seedlings, or of recycling 8.5 tons of waste each year versus sending it to landfill.**
http://www.solarnovus.com/index.php?...rticle&id=6423

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EMBARGOED FOR RELEASE | April 8, 2013
‘Artificial leaf’ gains the ability to self-heal damage and produce energy from dirty water
Note to journalists: Please report that this research was presented at a meeting of the American Chemical Society.

NEW ORLEANS, April 8, 2013 — Another innovative feature has been added to the world’s first practical “artificial leaf,” making the device even more suitable for providing people in developing countries and remote areas with electricity, scientists reported here today. It gives the leaf the ability to self-heal damage that occurs during production of energy.

Daniel G. Nocera, Ph.D., described the advance during the “Kavli Foundation Innovations in Chemistry Lecture” at the 245th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society, the world’s largest scientific society. About 14,000 scientists and others are expected for the meeting, which continues through Thursday with almost 12,000 reports on advances in science.

Nocera, leader of the research team, explained that the “leaf” mimics the ability of real leaves to produce energy from sunlight and water. The device, however, actually is a simple catalyst-coated wafer of silicon, rather than a complicated reproduction of the photosynthesis mechanism in real leaves. Dropped into a jar of water and exposed to sunlight, catalysts in the device break water down into its components, hydrogen and oxygen. Those gases bubble up and can be collected and used as fuel to produce electricity in fuel cells.

“Surprisingly, some of the catalysts we’ve developed for use in the artificial leaf device actually heal themselves,” Nocera said. “They are a kind of ‘living catalyst.’ This is an important innovation that eases one of the concerns about initial use of the leaf in developing countries and other remote areas.”
http://portal.acs.org/portal/acs/cor...1-8b204e3b3770
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  #204  
Old Posted Apr 10, 2013, 4:15 PM
amor de cosmos amor de cosmos is offline
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First Solar Crushes CdTe Solar PV Efficiency Record
Can cadmium telluride PV efficiency give silicon a run for its money?

Eric Wesoff: April 9, 2013

First Solar (FSLR), the thin-film solar leader, just announced a new cadmium telluride solar module efficiency record that absolutely crushes the previous record, also held by First Solar.

First Solar achieved an NREL-confirmed efficiency of 16.1 percent, which erases the previous record of 14.4 percent that the firm set last year. First Solar also set a high mark for CdTe open-circuit voltage, an indicator of PV panel performance, hitting 903.2 millivolts. In addition, First Solar set a new world record for CdTe solar cell efficiency of 18.7 percent last month.

Setting records is one thing, translating that to commercial shipments is another -- and it's something First Solar has done well over the years.
http://www.greentechmedia.com/articl...iciency-Record

Quote:
IEA: Global solar capacity nearing 100GW milestone
By Nilima Choudhury - 10 April 2013, 11:17
In News, Power Generation

Despite the uncertainties plaguing the European and Chinese markets in particular, a new report has revealed that 28.4GW of solar PV capacity was installed in 2012, bringing total global capacity to 89.5GW.

The report, Snapshot of Global PV by the International Energy Agency, looked at 23 countries. It said that another estimated 7GW of capacity is in the pipeline which would increase the total to 96.5GW from 2011’s 28.9GW.

And the agency said that with installations worlwide difficult to quantify with precision, the 100GW milestone has already been passed in the first quarter of this year.
http://www.pv-tech.org/news/report_g...es_almost_90gw

Quote:
UK adds 350MW in Q1 2013
By Nilima Choudhury - 10 April 2013, 10:55
In News, Power Generation

In line with positive predictions for the UK solar industry, the country has completed at least 350MW of solar installations in the first quarter of 2013.

According to Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF), this includes a record number of large ground-mounted PV projects, which were able to take advantage of higher incentive rates before cuts came into effect on 1 April.

The UK has two separate incentive programmes, a feed-in tariff scheme for primarily small-scale PV systems and a Renewable Obligation Certificate (ROC) scheme for larger systems. Incentives under the ROC were reduced at the start of this month, while FiT rates will be cut on 1 May.
http://www.pv-tech.org/news/uk_adds_350mw_in_q1_2013
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  #205  
Old Posted Apr 11, 2013, 4:57 PM
amor de cosmos amor de cosmos is offline
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Sol Voltaics' Nano Process May Boost Solar Efficiency 25%
10 April 2013

Sol Voltaics unveiled SolInk, an economical nanomaterial that promises to increase the efficiency of crystalline silicon or thin film solar modules by up to 25% or more, leading to solar power plants and rooftop solar arrays that will generate far more electricity than today's best commercially available systems.

The increase in efficiency will allow SolInk-enhanced panels to deliver power at prices that competes directly against electricity from fossil fuel plants while improving the economics for manufacturers. Global demand for solar energy is expected to grow from 29.8 gigawatts of new solar installations in 2012 to 50.8 gigawatts in 2016, according to Greentech Media.

To date, Sol Voltaics has raised $11 million from private investors including Industrifonden, Foundation Asset Management of Sweden, Teknoinvest, Provider, Nano Future Invest and Scatec Energy of Norway. The company additionally has received public funding from the European Union, Vinnova, Nordic Innovation Center, and others. Sol Voltaics will raise $10 to $20 million this year.



Aerotaxy: A New Way to Manufacture Materials

Aerotaxy represents a new paradigm for mass producing the smallest structures inside electronic devices. Nanowires and nanotubes are typically produced through an epitaxial process, i.e. slowly grown as crystals on substrates. Because of the inherent physical limits of the epitaxial process, nanoparticles often need to be grown in place or harvested and sorted in batch processes that can be both time-consuming and expensive.

Aerotaxy creates nanomaterials by suspending and mixing active materials in carrier gas streams. The active materials bond to form larger, uniform structures while in flight: nanowires are literally grown in air. In this way, Aerotaxy can generate tens of billions of nanowires per second on a continuous basis.

The finished nanowires can be integrated into a solar panel or other products, or can be stored indefinitely. A 2012 paper published in Nature details how professor Samuelson and his team manufactured gallium arsenide nanowires with Aerotaxy.
http://www.solarnovus.com/index.php?...rticle&id=6437

Quote:
US installed 537MW of PV capacity in Q1 2013
By Julia Chan - 11 April 2013, 11:12
In News, Power Generation

A total of 537MW of PV capacity, representing 38 large-scale solar power projects, was installed in the US during the first three months of 2013, according to statistics published in the US Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s March Energy Infrastructure Update.

Compared with the first quarter of the previous year, just 264MW of PV was installed representing a total of 61 solar power plants.
http://www.pv-tech.org/news/us_insta...ity_in_q1_2013

Quote:
PV predicted to produce 110 TWh in 2013
10. April 2013 | Top News, Applications & Installations, Global PV markets, Industry & Suppliers, Investor news, Markets & Trends | By: Becky Beetz

According to a new report issued by the International Energy Agency (IEA), already installed photovoltaic systems will produce "at least" 110 TWh, or 110 billion kWh in 2013, thus representing 0.5% of global electricity demand. This corresponds to the annual energy consumption of the Netherlands, it says.

In line with figures from NPD Solarbuzz, "A snapshot of global PV 1992-2012," released by the IEA, through its Photovoltaic Power Systems Programme (PVPS), states that nearly 29 GW of photovoltaic systems were installed in 2012.

This brings cumulative capacity to around 96.5 GW, write the report’s authors, who remain skeptical that the 100 GW capacity mark has been passed, as the European Photovoltaic Industry Association (EPIA) claimed back in April.

Nevertheless, it states that photovoltaic technology has become a "major actor" in the global electricity sector. "At least 110 TWh, or 110 billion kWh will be produced in 2013 by PV systems already installed," write the report’s authors. "If this represents about 0.5% of the electricity demand of the planet, some countries have reached rapidly significant percentages. These 110 TWh represent the annual consumption of countries such as The Netherlands or Egypt."
http://www.pv-magazine.com/news/deta...013_100010851/

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Solar panels could destroy U.S. utilities, according to U.S. utilities
By David Roberts

Solar power and other distributed renewable energy technologies could lay waste to U.S. power utilities and burn the utility business model, which has remained virtually unchanged for a century, to the ground.

That is not wild-eyed hippie talk. It is the assessment of the utilities themselves.

Back in January, the Edison Electric Institute — the (typically stodgy and backward-looking) trade group of U.S. investor-owned utilities — released a report [PDF] that, as far as I can tell, went almost entirely without notice in the press. That’s a shame. It is one of the most prescient and brutally frank things I’ve ever read about the power sector. It is a rare thing to hear an industry tell the tale of its own incipient obsolescence.

I’ve been thinking about how to convey to you, normal people with healthy social lives and no time to ponder the byzantine nature of the power industry, just what a big deal the coming changes are. They are nothing short of revolutionary … but rather difficult to explain without jargon.



Now, into this cozy business model enters cheap distributed solar PV, which eats away at it like acid.

First, the power generated by solar panels on residential or commercial roofs is not utility-owned or utility-purchased. From the utility’s point of view, every kilowatt-hour of rooftop solar looks like a kilowatt-hour of reduced demand for the utility’s product. Not something any business enjoys. (This is the same reason utilities are instinctively hostile to energy efficiency and demand response programs, and why they must be compelled by regulations or subsidies to create them. Utilities don’t like reduced demand!)

It’s worse than that, though. Solar power peaks at midday, which means it is strongest close to the point of highest electricity use — “peak load.” Problem is, providing power to meet peak load is where utilities make a huge chunk of their money. Peak power is the most expensive power. So when solar panels provide peak power, they aren’t just reducing demand, they’re reducing demand for the utilities’ most valuable product.

But wait. Renewables are limited by the fact they are intermittent, right? “The sun doesn’t always shine,” etc. Customers will still have to rely on grid power for the most part. Right?

This is a widely held article of faith, but EEI (of all places!) puts it to rest. (In this and all quotes that follow, “DER” means distributed energy resources, which for the most part means solar PV.)
Due to the variable nature of renewable DER, there is a perception that customers will always need to remain on the grid. While we would expect customers to remain on the grid until a fully viable and economic distributed non-variable resource is available, one can imagine a day when battery storage technology or micro turbines could allow customers to be electric grid independent. To put this into perspective, who would have believed 10 years ago that traditional wire line telephone customers could economically “cut the cord?” [Emphasis mine.]


Utility investors are accustomed to large, long-term, reliable investments with a 30-year cost recovery — fossil fuel plants, basically. The cost of those investments, along with investments in grid maintenance and reliability, are spread by utilities across all ratepayers in a service area. What happens if a bunch of those ratepayers start reducing their demand or opting out of the grid entirely? Well, the same investments must now be spread over a smaller group of ratepayers. In other words: higher rates for those who haven’t switched to solar.

That’s how it starts. These two paragraphs from the EEI report are a remarkable description of the path to obsolescence faced by the industry:
The financial implications of these threats are fairly evident. Start with the increased cost of supporting a network capable of managing and integrating distributed generation sources. Next, under most rate structures, add the decline in revenues attributed to revenues lost from sales foregone. These forces lead to increased revenues required from remaining customers … and sought through rate increases. The result of higher electricity prices and competitive threats will encourage a higher rate of DER additions, or will promote greater use of efficiency or demand-side solutions.

Increased uncertainty and risk will not be welcomed by investors, who will seek a higher return on investment and force defensive-minded investors to reduce exposure to the sector. These competitive and financial risks would likely erode credit quality. The decline in credit quality will lead to a higher cost of capital, putting further pressure on customer rates. Ultimately, capital availability will be reduced, and this will affect future investment plans. The cycle of decline has been previously witnessed in technology-disrupted sectors (such as telecommunications) and other deregulated industries (airlines).


If nothing is done to check these trends, the U.S. electric utility as we know it could be utterly upended. The report compares utilities’ possible future to the experience of the airlines during deregulation or to the big monopoly phone companies when faced with upstart cellular technologies. In case the point wasn’t made, the report also analogizes utilities to the U.S. Postal Service, Kodak, and RIM, the maker of Blackberry devices. These are not meant to be flattering comparisons.

Remember, too, that these utilities are not Google or Facebook. They are not accustomed to a state of constant market turmoil and reinvention. This is a venerable old boys network, working very comfortably within a business model that has been around, virtually unchanged, for a century. A friggin’ century, more or less without innovation, and now they’re supposed to scramble and be all hip and new-age? Unlikely.
http://grist.org/article/solar-panel...u-s-utilities/
http://inhabitat.com/us-utilities-fe...-obsolescence/

Quote:
NRG Skirts Utilities Taking Solar Panels to U.S. Rooftop
By Christopher Martin and Naureen S. Malik - Mar 25, 2013

NRG Energy Inc. (NRG), the biggest power provider to U.S. utilities, has become a renegade in the $370 billion energy-distribution industry by providing electricity directly to consumers.

Bypassing its utility clients, NRG is installing solar panels on rooftops of homes and businesses and in the future will offer natural gas-fired generators to customers to kick in when the sun goes down, Chief Executive Officer David Crane said in an interview.

NRG is the first operator of traditional, large-scale power plants to branch into running mini-generation systems that run a single building. The endeavor strikes at the core business of utilities that have earned money from making and delivering electricity ever since Thomas Edison flipped the switch on the first investor-owned power plant in Manhattan in 1882.

Consumers are realizing “they don’t need the power industry at all,” Crane, 54, said in an interview at this year’s MIT Energy Conference in Cambridge, Massachusetts. “That is ultimately where big parts of the country go.”



‘Potential Threat’

“It is obviously a potential threat to us over the long term,” said Jim Rogers, chairman and chief executive officer of Duke Energy Corp. (DUK), the largest U.S. utility owner.

Duke’s earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization grew 25 percent last year to $6.43 billion, compared with NRG’s 15 percent decline to $1.59 billion.

Other energy companies are challenging traditional utilities by providing rooftop solar panels to power individual buildings. That includes SolarCity Corp. (SCTY), which raised $92 million in its December initial public offering. The San Mateo, California-based company had installed 287 megawatts of commercial and residential solar projects, as of the end of last year.



Disrupting Utilities

Utilities are aware that generating power at customer sites will disrupt their business.

“There’s been a huge effort to build solar on the rooftop, both residential and commercial,” Duke’s Rogers said, as well as systems that generate power at industrial sites. “All of this is leading to a disintermediation of us from our customers.”

Duke is also considering a move into rooftop solar, a business that presents an “opportunity in the short term,” Rogers said.

In the long term, however, he recognizes that his business could become far less important.

“If the cost of solar panels keeps coming down, installation costs come down and if they combine solar with battery technology and a power management system, then we have someone just using us for backup,” he said.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/print/...s-rooftop.html

Quote:
Case Study
Nano-Manhattan: 3D Solar Cells Boost Efficiency While Reducing Size, Weight and Complexity of Photovoltaic Arrays

Unique three-dimensional solar cells that capture nearly all of the light that strikes them could boost the efficiency of photovoltaic (PV) systems while reducing their size, weight and mechanical complexity.

The new 3D solar cells capture photons from sunlight using an array of miniature “tower” structures that resemble high-rise buildings in a city street grid. The cells could find near-term applications for powering spacecraft, and by enabling efficiency improvements in photovoltaic coating materials, could also change the way solar cells are designed for a broad range of applications.

“Our goal is to harvest every last photon that is available to our cells,” said Jud Ready, a senior research engineer in the Electro-Optical Systems Laboratory at the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI). “By capturing more of the light in our 3D structures, we can use much smaller photovoltaic arrays. On a satellite or other spacecraft, that would mean less weight and less space taken up with the PV system.”

The 3D design was described in the March 2007 issue of the journal JOM, published by The Minerals, Metals and Materials Society. The research has been sponsored by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, the Air Force Research Laboratory, NewCyte Inc., and IP2Biz®. A global patent application has been filed for the technology.

The GTRI photovoltaic cells trap light between their tower structures, which are about 100 microns tall, 40 microns by 40 microns square, 10 microns apart -- and built from arrays containing millions of vertically-aligned carbon nanotubes. Conventional flat solar cells reflect a significant portion of the light that strikes them, reducing the amount of energy they absorb.

Because the tower structures can trap and absorb light received from many different angles, the new cells remain efficient even when the sun is not directly overhead. That could allow them to be used on spacecraft without the mechanical aiming systems that maintain a constant orientation to the sun, reducing weight and complexity – and improving reliability.

“The efficiency of our cells increases as the sunlight goes away from perpendicular, so we may not need mechanical arrays to rotate our cells,” Ready noted.
http://www.gtri.gatech.edu/casestudy...ost-efficiency
http://inhabitat.com/3d-textured-sol...space-station/

Quote:
2013/4/11
Innovative self-cooling, thermoelectric system developed

Researchers at the UPNA/NUP-Public University of Navarre have produced a prototype of a self-cooling thermoelectric device that achieves “free” cooling of over 30ºC in devices that give off heat. It is a piece of equipment that acts as a traditional cooler but which consumes no electricity because it obtains the energy it needs to function from the very heat that has to be dissipated.

The researchers want to apply this system to power converters and transformers present in power stations that produce renewable electrical power employing, for example, wind, solar photovoltaic, solar thermoelectric and hydraulic energy.David Astrain-Ulibarrena, of the UPNA/NUP’s Department of Engineering, Mechanics, Energy and Materials and head researcher in the project, explains what the system consists of: “When these devices are functioning, they heat up and need to be cooled down.In many cases, heat exchangers with fans are used which naturally need to be powered externally and consume a certain amount of electrical power. What we do is take advantage of the heat flow emitted by the power converter and transformer to produce the electrical power needed to make the fans work. That way we achieve the cooling of the device and control its temperature, but without any energy cost."
http://www.basqueresearch.com/berria...I#.UWbluzfEXd4
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  #206  
Old Posted Apr 12, 2013, 4:41 PM
amor de cosmos amor de cosmos is offline
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Germany’s Photovolt Development Plans 400MW Solar Farm
11 April 2013

April 12 (Bloomberg) — Photovolt Development Partners GmbH, a German developer of solar projects, plans to build a 400-megawatt plant on an island in southwestern Japan.

The company will develop the plant for TeraSol G.K. on Ukujima in Nagasaki prefecture, Managing Director Peter Gerstmann said in an e-mailed response to questions.

The Berlin-based company is developing the station with partners and the project may cost 90 billion yen ($905 million) to 110 billion yen including the cost of an undersea cable, he said. The cable, about 55 kilometers (34 miles) long, will link the plant to the grid network of Kyushu Electric Power Co.

Construction is scheduled to start in the second half of this year. It may take 2 1/2 years before the plant starts running, according to Gerstmann.
http://about.bnef.com/bnef-news/germ...mw-solar-farm/

Quote:
Arizona Utility Picks Up Solar Installation Pace
After adding a record 148 megawatts of solar in 2012, Arizona Public Service expects to bring on-line more than double that amount this year.

Earthtechling, Pete Danko: April 12, 2013

If solar power is going to be big in the United States, it better be big in sun-drenched Arizona. And it’s getting there.

The state’s largest electricity utility, Arizona Public Service, said last week that it added a record 148 megawatts of solar capacity in 2012, impressive enough on its own. But in 2013, new capacity should come in at more than twice that figure.

“APS will have more than 600 megawatts of solar on the system by the end of 2013, generating enough electricity to serve 150,000 customers,” Don Brandt, APS chairman and CEO, said in a statement. “This puts us well on pace to meet the Arizona Renewable Energy Standard, which calls for APS to get 15 percent of our power from renewable sources by 2025.”

During 2012, Arizona passed New Jersey as No. 2 in the U.S. in installed solar capacity, with 1,097 megawatts as of the end of the year. (California was at 2,902 megawatts and New Jersey was at 971 megawatts.)

Much of the new APS capacity expected to arrive this year will come from one huge plant: the 250-megawatt Solana Generating Station, from which APS will purchase 100 percent of the power produced.
http://www.greentechmedia.com/articl...tallation-pace

Quote:
GTM Solar Summit 2013: Transition to a Post-Subsidy Reality
Can we live without incentives?

Shayle Kann: April 11, 2013

Greentech Media’s 6th annual Solar Summit is less than two weeks away, and it’s shaping up to be our biggest yet. The agenda is full, with more than 90 world-class speakers on topics ranging from technology (modules, inverters, balance of systems components, and more) to markets (the U.S., China, Latin America, and more). We’ll spend hours dissecting today’s global solar market and predicting tomorrow’s dynamics in great, and sometimes excruciating, detail.



These are the issues we will be discussing during the Solar Summit session titled “The Transition to a Post-Subsidy Reality” on April 23. Joining the discussion will be four panelists from different walks of solar life:
  • Gregory Bernosky, Manager, Renewable Energy Program, Arizona Public Service (APS)
  • Edward Fenster, co-CEO, Sunrun
  • Albie Fong, Key Accounts Executive, Talesun Solar
  • Nat Kreamer, Chief Executive Officer, Clean Power Finance

Some of the topics we’ll be discussing:

The Basic Question:

Defining Terms:

Understanding Demand Growth:

The Transition:

The Role of Utilities:

Bottlenecks:
http://www.greentechmedia.com/articl...e-without-them

Quote:
Report: Solar takes 100% share of new US grid-connected electricity in March
By Julia Chan - 12 April 2013, 10:04
In News, Power Generation

Solar energy has achieved a milestone after it emerged that for the first time, solar accounted for all new utility electricity capacity added to the grid in the US in March.

The landmark was revealed the US Federal Energy Regulatory Commission's March Energy Infrastructure Update — which focuses exclusively on larger facilities and does not include energy generated by net-metered installations.

It found that 44MW of PV capacity was installed last month following the start-up of seven new projects located in California, Nevada, New Jersey, Hawaii, Arizona, and North Carolina.

The report also reveals that solar had a strong presence in the first quarter of this year with 537MW of PV added to the grid in the US during the three-month period.

“This speaks to the extraordinary strides we have made in the past several years to bring down costs and ramp up deployment,” said Rhone Resch, president and CEO of the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA). “Since 2008, the amount of solar powering US homes, businesses and military bases has grown by more than 600 percent—from 1,100MW to more than 7,700MW today. As FERC’s report suggests, and many analysts predict, solar will grow to be our nation’s largest new source of energy over the next four years.”
http://www.pv-tech.org/news/report_s...ty_capacity_in

Quote:
A solar booster shot for natural gas power plants
April 11, 2013
Frances White, PNNL

PNNL’s concentrating solar power system reduces greenhouse emissions — at a price that’s competitive with fossil fuel power

RICHLAND, Wash. – Natural gas power plants can use about 20 percent less fuel when the sun is shining by injecting solar energy into natural gas with a new system being developed by the Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. The system converts natural gas and sunlight into a more energy-rich fuel called syngas, which power plants can burn to make electricity.

"Our system will enable power plants to use less natural gas to produce the same amount of electricity they already make," said PNNL engineer Bob Wegeng, who is leading the project. "At the same time, the system lowers a power plant's greenhouse gas emissions at a cost that's competitive with traditional fossil fuel power."

PNNL will conduct field tests of the system at its sunny campus in Richland, Wash., this summer.

With the U.S. increasingly relying on inexpensive natural gas for energy, this system can reduce the carbon footprint of power generation. DOE's Energy Information Administration estimates natural gas will make up 27 percent of the nation's electricity by 2020. Wegeng noted PNNL's system is best suited for power plants located in sunshine-drenched areas such as the American Southwest.

Installing PNNL's system in front of natural gas power plants turns them into hybrid solar-gas power plants. The system uses solar heat to convert natural gas into syngas, a fuel containing hydrogen and carbon monoxide. Because syngas has a higher energy content, a power plant equipped with the system can consume about 20 percent less natural gas while producing the same amount of electricity.

This decreased fuel usage is made possible with concentrating solar power, which uses a reflecting surface to concentrate the sun's rays like a magnifying glass. PNNL's system uses a mirrored parabolic dish to direct sunbeams to a central point, where a PNNL-developed device absorbs the solar heat to make syngas.
http://www.pnnl.gov/news/release.aspx?id=981
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  #207  
Old Posted Apr 13, 2013, 5:05 PM
amor de cosmos amor de cosmos is offline
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First Solar Shines as the Solar Industry Falters
First Solar’s strong finances are helping fund innovation and drive down the cost of solar power.

By Kevin Bullis on April 12, 2013

Innovation in solar cell technology has slowed as startups struggle to get a foothold in a tough market and solar panel manufacturers delay purchasing the equipment they need to manufacture more efficient cells. But First Solar, one of the world’s largest solar companies, continues to invest in boosting the efficiency of its solar cells.

The company, which is based in Tempe, Arizona, announced this week that it had set a new world record in efficiency for thin-film cadmium telluride solar panels. The equipment it uses to produce the record-setting panels will eventually be installed on all its production lines. It also announced the acquisition of Tetrasun, a startup with high-efficiency silicon technology that First Solar hopes to bring to market next year. First Solar’s stock jumped from $29 to over $40 on Tuesday and is still above $35 a share.

First Solar is able to make these investments because it is in a much better position than other major solar manufacturers, most of which are either declaring bankruptcy or on the brink of it (see “Why We Need More Solar Companies to Fail” and “Solar Downturn Casts a Shadow over Innovation”). It’s doing better for at least two reasons. Its solar panels are cheaper to make than conventional silicon solar panels, which has given it better profit margins. And it was one of the first companies to expand beyond making solar panels to become a project developer, designing and installing complete solar power plants. These projects create a steady market for First Solar’s panels and help it drive down costs in areas besides the panels themselves, which account for less than a quarter of the expense of solar power. The company’s good balance sheet and project experience also help lower the risk to investors, helping it secure better financing rates. And financing is now the biggest single contributor to the cost of solar power, accounting for 36 percent of the total for large installations and even more for smaller ones.

The industry is “getting so good on the technology that finance costs and project development costs are becoming dominant,” says Raffi Garabedian, First Solar’s chief technology officer. “We’re entering an era—the next five years, I think—where a lot of effort is going to be applied to reducing the cost of financing these systems.”
http://www.technologyreview.com/news...ustry-falters/

Quote:
SolarCity Sees Energy Storage ‘Viable’ Within 10 Years, CEO Says
12 April 2013

April 12 (Bloomberg) — SolarCity Corp., the solar power provider led by billionaire Elon Musk, will complete about 100 energy storage systems for customers this year and plans to expand as costs decline, according to its chief executive officer.

“It’ll be a viable product in the next ten years,” SolarCity CEO Lyndon Rive said today in an interview in San Francisco. “We don’t know yet how big the next phase is going to be, but this is a long term investment, full stop,” he said. “We will solve the storage issue.”

The San Mateo, California-based company is installing 8 kilowatt-hour battery packs provided by Tesla Motors Inc. and combining them with energy management systems that allow for remote monitoring. Storage will be crucial to balance the U.S. electric grid as solar expands from 1 percent of total generation capacity today, according to Rive.
http://about.bnef.com/bnef-news/sola...ears-ceo-says/
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  #208  
Old Posted Apr 15, 2013, 3:58 PM
amor de cosmos amor de cosmos is offline
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Germany installs 775 MW of PV in Q1 2013
15. April 2013 | Top News, Applications & Installations, Global PV markets, Markets & Trends, Investor news | By: Sandra Enkhardt

Germany reportedly added 290 MW of new photovoltaic capacity in March, according to the Federal Environment Minister. While the Federal Network Agency’s figures are still to be released, if the information proves true, the solar subsidy degression planned for May could decelerate.

According to Germany’s Federal Environment Minister, Peter Altmaier, new photovoltaic systems totaling 290 MW were added in March. If this figure is confirmed by the Federal Network Agency – expected no earlier than the end of April –then a total of 775 MW of photovoltaics were installed in Q1 2013.



If this proves correct, the government mandated photovoltaic construction limit of 2.5 to 3.5 GW would be exceeded by more than 1.8 GW. As such, feed-in tariffs would fall by a further 1.8% in May, to between €0.1082 to €0.1563/kWh, depending on system size.

If more is installed in March than 290 MW, then solar subsidies would fall by 2.2% in May.
http://www.pv-magazine.com/news/deta...013_100010887/

Quote:
Germany: New PV research lab opens in Berlin
15. April 2013 | Research & Development | By: Edgar Meza

The Free University of Berlin and the Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin (HZB) has opened a new laboratory for photovoltaic research in the German capital.

Employing Electron Paramagnetic Resonance (EPR) technology, researchers hope to develop new methods that could lead to new materials for thin film solar cells and other PV applications.

High-resolution EPR spectroscopy can detect defects and impurities at the atomic level that occur during the manufacturing process and cause errors in the design of ultra-thin films for solar cells.
http://www.pv-magazine.com/news/deta...lin_100010895/

Quote:
Adapt or Die? Private Utilities and the Distributed Energy Juggernaut
Will disruptive change kill or strengthen private utilities?

Chris Nelder: April 15, 2013

Last week I reviewed some of the disruptive challenges that the private, investor-owned utility (IOU) sector is facing in the transition to distributed renewable energy production, and they are serious. Last month, NRG Energy's CEO David Crane called distributed solar "a mortal threat" to the IOU's business.

The question we all must grapple with is how the utility industry will be transformed by these disruptions, and what the effect will be on consumers.

The first issue is price. The IOUs have warned that more distributed power generation will drive up grid power prices for consumers. That may be true, to a limited extent, but the accounting is complex and the result is anything but straightforward. New coal, nuclear, and gas power plants are expensive too. As I explained last week, within a decade -- less than half the expected lifetime of these long-lived capital assets -- they are likely to be more expensive than renewables.



IOU: Intransigent, obstinate, and unwilling

Faced with the prospect of having their revenue streams from generation, transmission and distribution slowly leak away as more distributed renewable power joins the grid, it appears most of the IOUs would rather fight than switch.

PG&E, one of two California IOU monopolies, has a long record of fighting this trend even as it touts itself as a progressive utility. As I detailed in 2010, when Community Choice Aggregation (CCA) entities began to appear in response to residents' demands for more renewable power than their utilities would offer, PG&E fought them vigorously. First it sponsored a public relations campaign under the guise of a “Common Sense Coalition.” When that failed, it put $35 million into a ballot proposition disguised as an appeal to protect the voters’ "right to choose." The proposition would have foreclosed on the possibility of any further CCAs being created in the state, and prevented the one CCA that did exist from expanding its service area. It also failed.

Now, according to a recent E&E story, PG&E is trying to weaken California's net metering law, which requires utilities to credit consumers for electricity put onto the grid by their rooftop solar systems. The California IOUs have fought consistently to artificially cap the amount of electricity generated under net metering as it was raised from an initial 2.5 percent, to 5 percent in 2010, then to 11.6 percent in 2012. PG&E now claims that the net metering law is unfair, because solar owners use transmission and distribution lines but pay less for those services (and contribute less into state assistance programs for lower-income residents, which are funded by grid power consumption) as they draw less power from the grid.



Adapt or die

Two weeks ago on Greentech Media, cleantech investor Rob Day opined that utilities should respond to the distributed generation threat by allowing their existing business to shrink until it's essentially just a wire management business, while branching out into new business niches like efficiency upgrades and financing through unregulated subsidiaries. "They would need to embrace that the grid will be the source of kilowatt-hours of last resort in many cases, and stop trying to make their margin off of the kilowatt-hour thus sold," Day wrote. "But it's going to happen to them if they don't get out in front of it. They need to eat their own lunch before someone else does."

Day is right that such a transformation could be a "win for the shareholders of IOUs." But that would take vision, and an appetite for risk and entrepreneurial leadership, which the change-averse utility industry does not have. As Washington, D.C.-based independent energy consultant Scott Thomasson told me, it would require "a cultural shift" that goes against the grain. The intrusion of private equity into the sector that Day wrote about -- the "other financiers and other startups" who "take advantage of IOU inaction" -- amount to "a hostile takeover," Thomasson says, and "the IOUs have no interest in it."



If the IOUs sleep on energy transition, consumers will find other ways to connect rooftop solar and other distributed generation to the grid without restriction. There is no good justification for a cap on net metering other than slowing down energy transition, which is not in the public interest.

In short, the private utility business will either be made obsolete or transformed back into public utilities.
http://www.greentechmedia.com/articl...rgy-Juggernaut

Last edited by amor de cosmos; Apr 15, 2013 at 4:18 PM.
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  #209  
Old Posted Apr 16, 2013, 5:25 PM
amor de cosmos amor de cosmos is offline
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A Major Advance in Solar Module Testing?
A first-of-its-kind climate chamber does continuous real-time readings under light.

Herman K. Trabish: April 16, 2013

Eternal Sun’s Large Area Steady State Simulators (LASSs) appear to represent a major advance in solar panel testing because they allow test labs to do a combination of things that they have not been able to do before.

First, explained Eternal Sun Business Development Manager Clemens Bauer, they allow climate-variable testing while the modules are exposed to light.

And, added CTO Stefan Roest, they are designed to allow continuous readings of the module’s performance in real time.

According to PV Evolution Labs CEO Jenya Meydbray, this would be the first test chamber on the market with both of these capabilities. Some test chambers, he added, offer a wiring option that makes continuous real-time climate variable readings possible, but only in a dark test chamber.
http://www.greentechmedia.com/articl...Module-Testing

Video Link


Quote:
French developer proposes 250 MW Spanish PV project
16. April 2013 | Global PV markets, Markets & Trends, Applications & Installations | By: Vera von Kreutzbruck

French photovoltaic developer Dhamma Energy is planning to install a 250 MW photovoltaic plant in Extremadura, Spain, according to Spanish newspaper El Periódico de Extremadura.

The project is at an early stage. The company has solicited the municipality of the city of Mérida to lease between 200 and 300 hectares state-owned land for the photovoltaic project.

The total amount of investment expected is €270 million (US$ 352 million) and the project will initially generate a profit of around €10 million, according to Mérida city’s mayor Pedro Acedo.
http://www.pv-magazine.com/news/deta...ect_100010912/

Quote:
ADB makes $85 million available for Thai PV projects
16. April 2013 | Applications & Installations, Industry & Suppliers | By: Becky Beetz

The Asian Development Bank has announced it will make US$85 million available for the construction of three photovoltaic projects in Thailand, worth 57 MW.

The plants, to be located in Thailand’s Nakhonpathom and Suphanburi provinces, will be developed under the country’s very small power producer program. The generated electricity is expected to be sold to Provincial Electricity Authority.

According to the initial environmental examination submitted in February, construction is scheduled to take around 11 months to complete. Polycrystalline photovoltaic technology will be employed, with REC expected to deliver the necessary modules. Meanwhile, the inverters will come from SMA.

In addition to providing an around $52 million loan to Solarco Solar Co. Ltd, ADB has said it will make a further $33 million available to the special-purpose company, owned by Yanhee EGCO Holding Co., Ltd, under its Clean Technology Fund.
http://www.pv-magazine.com/news/deta...cts_100010911/

Quote:
Rajasthan is second state to cross 500MW capacity mark
By Nilima Choudhury - 16 April 2013, 11:27
In News, Power Generation

Total installed PV capacity in the Indian state of Rajasthan has passed 500MW, reaching 510.25MW at the end of the 2012-13 fiscal year.

According to Rajasthan Renewable Energy (RREC), the agency responsible for implementing solar policy in Rajasthan, the state added 5MW of grid-connected PV in fiscal year 2010-2011, 191MW in 2011-2012 and then jumped by 314MW in the most recent fiscal year (see image 2).

Hari Manoharan, analyst at Indian consultancy RESolve, attributes this “boom” phase beginning in late 2011 to early 2013 to projects commissioned under phase 1 of the Jawaharlal Nehru National Solar Mission (JNNSM), India's national solar programme.

Fewer than 50% of projects were completed under phase I of JNNSM. Bids for Phase II have been delayed up to the end of April or beginning of May.

Manoharan said additional installed capacity this year would be driven predominantly by Rajasthan’s Renewable Energy Certificate (REC) programme. Approximately 70MW has been added under REC so far in 2013.

“It is likely that this trend will continue into 2013, with additional projects coming up under the REC mechanism and further capacity additions coming up under the recently announced state solar policy,” said Manoharan.
http://www.pv-tech.org/news/rajastha..._capacity_mark

Quote:
Italy’s total installed capacity reaches 16.7GW
By Nilima Choudhury - 16 April 2013, 10:07
In News, Power Generation

Italy has completed 214MW of new PV capacity this March.

This compares to approximately 126MW registered in February and 232MW for January.

The Italian energy agency Gestore dei Servizi Energetici SpA states this brings Italy’s total solar PV installed capacity to 16.7GW.

However, state support for PV will come to an end when the Conto Energia V programme hits its cap of €6.7 billion (US$8.7 billion), which the industry fears could negatively impact future installation figures.
http://www.pv-tech.org/news/italys_t...reaches_16.7gw

Quote:
New findings on hydrogen production in green algae
[Published 2013-04-16]

New research results from Uppsala University instil hope of efficient hydrogen production with green algae being possible in the future, despite the prevailing scepticism based on previous research. The study, which is published today in the esteemed journal PNAS, changes the view on the ability of green algae – which is good news.

The world must find a way of producing fuel from renewable energy sources to replace the fossil fuels. Hydrogen is today considered one of the most promising fuels for the future and if hydrogen can be produced directly from sunlight you have a renewable and environmentally friendly energy source.

One biological way of producing hydrogen from solar energy is using photosynthetic microorganisms. Photosynthesis splits water into hydrogen ions (H+) and electrons (e-). These can later be combined into hydrogen gas, (H2) with the use of special enzymes called hydrogenases. This occurs in cyanobacteria and green algae, which have the ability to use energy from the sun through photosynthesis and produce hydrogen through their own metabolism.

That green algae can produce hydrogen under certain conditions has been known and studied for about 15 years, but low efficiency has been a problem, i.e. the amount of energy absorbed by the algae that is transformed into hydrogen. One enzyme that has the ability to use sunlight to split water into electrons, hydrogen ions and oxygen is Photosystem II. Several studies have shown that some of the electrons from the enzyme are used to produce hydrogen gas under special conditions. But some have stated that most of the hydrogen gas gets its energy from other paths in the metabolism of the green algae. This would entail that it is not a matter of actual direct production of hydrogen from sunlight, and that green algae are no more efficient as energy crops than plants.
http://www.uu.se/en/news/news-docume...el&na=&lang=en

Quote:
Research uses mirrors to make solar energy cost competitive
Blacksburg, VA , April 12, 2013
Virginia Tech College of Engineering

If the current national challenge to make solar energy cost competitive with other forms of energy by the end of this decade is met, Ranga Pitchumani, the John R. Jones III Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Virginia Tech, will have played a significant role in the process.

U.S. Secretary of Energy Steven Chu announced the Department of Energy’s SunShot Initiative in February 2011. Its objective was to reduce the installed cost of solar energy systems by about 75 percent in order to allow widespread, large-scale adoption of this renewable clean energy technology.

Following the announcement, Pitchumani was invited to direct the Concentrating Solar Power (CSP) program for the SunShot Initiative towards its ambitious goals.

“The SunShot goal is to get solar energy technologies to achieve cost-parity with other energy generation sources on the grid without subsidy by the year 2020. That’s an aggressive mission which calls for several subcomponent innovations and ingenious system designs to drive costs down, while improving efficiencies,” said Pitchumani.

“Concentrating solar power technologies use mirrors to reflect and concentrate sunlight to produce heat, which can then be used to produce electricity,” Pitchumani explained. These technologies present a distinct advantage over photovoltaic (PV) cells in their ability to store the sun’s energy as thermal energy, and represent a subset of the SunShot Initiative.
http://www.eng.vt.edu/news/research-...st-competitive
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  #210  
Old Posted Apr 17, 2013, 4:12 PM
amor de cosmos amor de cosmos is offline
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Solar Power Record In Germany — 22.68 GW — Infographic
April 16, 2013

On Monday, the 15th of April, 2013, the approximate 1.3 million solar power systems in Germany set a new domestic/world record by reaching a peak power output of 22.68 GW at noon.

The New Normal

This new record is almost 0.5 GW above the “old” record of 22.2 GW, which was set on May 25th, 2012. Allthough I love celebrating all solar records, the biggest news might be that “just” 22.68 GW is apparently no longer newsworthy in Germany, because above 15-20 GW of solar have become a regularity.

During the first two weeks of April, solar surpassed the 20 GW mark on several occasions and made a meaningful contribution to the domestic power supply on every single day. For everybody remotely familiar with German or Central European weather conditions, it’s needless to say that it wasn’t all sunshine & cloudless skies in April.




http://cleantechnica.com/2013/04/16/...w-infographic/

Quote:
US: 99% of installed PV systems in 2012 were net-metered projects
17. April 2013 | Markets & Trends | By: Vera von Kreutzbruck

Net-metered projects continue to grow in the U.S., as annual capacity surpassed 2 GW for first time in 2012, according to a report on new trends and solar power connections by U.S. electric utilities released by the Solar Electric Power Association (SEPA).

There were three main trends identified by SEPA this year. For the first time ever, annual solar capacity surpassed 2 GW, reaching 2.4 GW. The total installed capacity is now said to be 6.1 GW. The second trend found was in the utility-scale photovoltaic market, which recorded a 46% rise in annual capacity. Last year, 1.1 GW were added, a 250% increase over 2011.

The last trend detected was the sustained growth of net-metering projects which, at 1.15 GW, accounted for 99% of all installed photovoltaic systems in 2012. Currently, there are about 3.5 GW of net-metered projects in the country.

The data analyzed in this report includes two categories: the megawatts measuring utility’s solar capacity; and the installed solar watts-per-customer. In 2012, it took a minimum of 65 MW to make the megawatt rankings list, compared to 45 MW in 2011, and just 20 MW in 2010.
http://www.pv-magazine.com/news/deta...ts-_100010943/

Quote:
Clenergy plans 300 MW PV project for China
17. April 2013 | Applications & Installations, Industry & Suppliers | By: Becky Beetz

Clenergy has announced it will develop 300 MW worth of photovoltaic power plants in China’s Lijiang city by the end of 2015 together with CGN Solar Energy.

The Chinese solar company announced the signing of a number of strategic cooperation agreements in Lijiang. One of them will see Clenergy and CGN Solar Energy develop 300 MW worth of photovoltaic plants by 2015. RMB 3.9 billion (around US$631.5 million, €481 million) is expected to be invested in the project.
http://www.pv-magazine.com/news/deta...ina_100010940/

Quote:
Solimpeks working on 500 kW Turkish PV plant
17. April 2013 | Applications & Installations, Industry & Suppliers | By: Becky Beetz

Solimpeks subsidiary, Seiso is currently working on a 500 kW photovoltaic rooftop plant in Turkey. It is expected to be one of the biggest projects of its kind in the country, when completed next month.

The Turkish solar company is in the process of installing a 500 kW photovoltaic plant on the roof of Mercan Mermer’s factory building, located in Burdur, in the south of Turkey.

The plant is expected to comprise 2,120 Panasonic HIT photovoltaic modules when complete, scheduled for early May. The necessary inverters will be supplied by Power One.
http://www.pv-magazine.com/news/deta...ant_100010928/

Quote:
Michigan Tech Scientist's Discovery Could Lead to a Better Capacitor
Last Modified 10:17 AM, April 16, 2013
By Marcia Goodrich

April 16, 2013—

A new process for growing forests of manganese dioxide nanorods may lead to the next generation of high-performance capacitors.

As an energy-storage material for batteries and capacitors, manganese dioxide has a lot going for it: it’s cheap, environmentally friendly and abundant. However, chemical capacitors made with manganese dioxide have lacked the power of the typical carbon-based physical capacitor. Michigan Technological University scientist Dennis Desheng Meng theorized that the situation could be improved if the manganese dioxide were made into nanorods, which are like nanotubes, only solid instead of hollow. However, a stumbling block has been making manganese dioxide nanorods with the right set of attributes. Until now, researchers have been able to grow nanorods that either have the best crystalline structure or were aligned, but not both.

Now, Meng’s research group has developed a technique to grow manganese dioxide nanorods that are not only straight and tall (at least by nano-standards), but also have the optimal crystal structure, known as α-MnO2.

This minimizes the internal resistance, allowing the capacitor to charge and discharge repeatedly without wearing out. That’s a recipe for a better capacitor: it can store more energy, extract that energy more quickly, and work longer between rechargings. Plus, it can be used over and over again. Even after Meng’s group recharged their capacitor more than 2,000 times, it was still able to regain over 90 percent of its original charge.



Capacitors made with manganese dioxide nanorods could help hybrid and electric vehicles accelerate more quickly or could be coupled with solar cells. “The process also opens the door for many other applications, not just supercapacitors,” says Meng.
http://www.mtu.edu/news/stories/2013...tory88254.html

Quote:
Better ROI For Low-Income Families That Go Solar In Belgium
by Zach
on April 16, 2013

Something you hear over and over again is that solar power is primarily for the wealthy. While it is actually increasingly for the middle class, thanks to falling solar power costs, there’s no avoiding the fact that it is substantially harder for low-income families to go solar. However, a region of Belgium has decided to change that.

Wallonia, “the predominantly French-speaking southern region of Belgium” (according to our friend Wikipedia), has set up a solar support mechanism (called Qualiwatt) that provides a higher/faster return on investment (ROI) for low-income households than for middle- or high-income households… not that the middle- or high-income households get a poor ROI. (H/t Renewables International for the find.)


http://solarlove.org/better-roi-for-...ar-in-belgium/
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  #211  
Old Posted Apr 18, 2013, 4:29 PM
amor de cosmos amor de cosmos is offline
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Germany: PV storage subsidies expected in May
08. February 2013 | Markets & Trends, Industry & Suppliers, Storage & smart grids | By: Sandra Enkhardt

The new subsidies for battery storage systems will apply retroactively to all photovoltaic systems installed this year and have a maximum capacity of 30 kW. The German Environment Ministry and KfW state bank have not made any official announcements, however, the program is expected to be introduced in the coming week.

The media has been covering the news relating to storage subsidies for photovoltaic plants for weeks now. An official announcement of the program, however, is yet to be made.

Word is that details of the program will be released next week. Already on Tuesday, Bayern-based Enerix stated in a press release that the government has already released details of the program. Upon further investigation, it came to light that the Bayern CSU parliament member Karl Holmeier provided the information on the program. It is planned that the new KfW program "Renewable energy - Storage" will commence in May.
http://www.pv-magazine.com/news/deta...may_100010135/

Quote:
Arizona Solar Fights On
But the worst impacts of a recent regulatory shift are still to come

Herman K. Trabish: April 17, 2013

The solar industry in Arizona is beginning to register the hurt from aggressive policy decisions made by the state’s energy commission, as Greentech Media heads to Phoenix for its sixth annual Solar Summit, April 22-24.

In January, the Arizona Corporation Commission (ACC) put an unannounced $38.3 million hit on the state’s photovoltaic (PV) solar industry when it eliminated performance-based incentives (PBIs) provided to commercial solar system buyers by the state’s two investor-owned utilities (IOUs). It also drastically reduced the upfront incentives (UFIs) provided by the IOUs to residential solar system buyers.

Arizona Public Service (APS) was scheduled to reduce its PBIs for commercial systems to $20.8 million for 2013. Tucson Electric Power (TEP) was scheduled to go to $10.5 million. Both will now go to zero.

In addition, a scheduled $400,000 allotment for APS UFIs was cut to $100,000, and a scheduled $1.7 million set-aside for TEP UFIs was cut completely.

The APS residential UFIs were scheduled to go to $6.96 million. That was cut to $2.65 million. TEP’s residential UFIs were cut from $1.46 million to $744,000.

The UFIs were paid at the rate of $0.10 per watt. The PBIs were based on competitive solicitations and were expected, due to increasingly competitive solar costs, to fall to about $0.05 to $0.06 per kilowatt-hour this year.
http://www.greentechmedia.com/articl...olar-fights-on

Quote:
Which Country Saw a 20,000% Increase in Clean Energy Investing?
No, it’s not China.

Katherine Tweed: April 18, 2013

If you only glance at clean energy investment in the past year, you’ll see a marked decline in most areas of the globe. But not all.

In the Pew Charitable Trust’s fourth annual report, Who’s Winning the Clean Energy Race? 2012 Edition, Pew and Bloomberg New Energy Finance found that while investment dropped from 2011 to 2012 in G20 countries, it was up by more than 50 percent in non-G20 countries.

And then there’s South Africa. It’s easy to see big gains when you’re starting from nearly zero, and that’s exactly what’s going on in the country. Clean energy investment was up 20,000 percent to about $5.5 billion for 2012 in South Africa, with $4.3 billion for solar and most of the rest going to wind energy.

South Africa’s clean energy program relies largely on reverse auctions that challenge the market to bid in the lowest possible price for projects, said Ethan Zindler, head of policy analysis at Bloomberg New Energy Finance. The country is aiming to have 3.7 gigawatts of renewables by the end of 2016. South Africa’s investment catapulted it into the top ten from nearly last place.
http://www.greentechmedia.com/articl...rgy-investment

Quote:
New US$1.6 billion polysilicon plant planned in Malaysia
By Mark Osborne - 18 April 2013, 10:02
In News, Fab & Facilities, Materials

A petrochemical construction firm based in Saudi Arabia plans to build a state-of-the-art polysilicon plant in Sarawak, Malaysia, expected to being production in 2016.

Project Management & Development Company (PMD) said the plant would cost around US$1.6 billion to build, while its Kuala-Lumpur based affiliate, Cosmos Petroleum & Mining Sdn Bhd, would become the owner and operator.

The polysilicon industry has experienced two years of rapidly falling ASPs, forcing a significant number of small-scale and some large companies to shutter plants. Significant overcapacity and inventory overhangs have dogged the sector, yet the subsequent price declines were crucial to PV module manufacturers lowering prices and opening a number of new unsubsidised markets.
http://www.pv-tech.org/news/new_us1....ed_in_malaysia

Quote:
Weekly ≤50kWp Solar PV installations break 8MW barrier
By Peter Bennett
18 April 2013, 11:24 Updated: 18 April 2013, 15:40

The latest solar installation figures published by the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) reveal that weekly installations have broken the 8MW barrier for the first time in 2013.

The week ending 14 April saw a total of 2,013 ≤50kWp installs registered on the central database – representing 8.3MW of capacity. The level of capacity installed is 25% larger than last week’s figures with 340 more installations.

Installations in the 0-4kWp band continue to demand the deployment figures with 1,894 systems registered. The 4-10kW and 10-50kW continue to show incremental growth with 50 and 69 installations respectively.
http://www.solarpowerportal.co.uk/ne...w_barrier_2356

Quote:
News Analysis: This Tool Could Be A Solar Industry Game-Changer
April 18, 2013 Frank Andorka : 0 Comments

Talk about pleasant surprises.

Three days after I wrote an article about how Ohio’ is trying to stunt the industry’s growth in my state, The Solar Foundation (TSF) announced they were launching a new website called State Solar Jobs, which details the number of solar jobs by state.

This could revolutionize the way the solar industry tells its story to consumers and, by extension, the legislators who, through their policy decisions, could accelerate — or annihilate — the industry.

Poll after poll shows 90% or more of Americans support the solar industry, but it’s always been a challenge to help them quantify why they support it. With this new resource, they’ll be able to explain the real impact solar has in their communities.

Andrea Luecke, executive director of TSF, said the time had come to expand on the foundation’s annual National Solar Jobs Census that the industry breathlessly awaits each year.

“Projections say the industry will install 3.3 GW this year in the United States, with more than 4 GW planned for 2014,” Luecke says. “That proves that solar is hitting every state in the union. It was time to create a universal tool like this.”

According to the census, the U.S. solar energy industry employs 119,016 Americans, and solar employment grew 13.2 percent in 2012, making it one of the fastest growing industries in the country.

That makes solar important, not just in the traditional states like California, Arizona and New Jersey, but also (as I argued on Monday) in places like Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Texas.
http://www.solarpowerworldonline.com...-game-changer/

Quote:
Small in size, big on power: New microbatteries a boost for electronics
4/16/2013 | Liz Ahlberg, Physical Sciences Editor

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Though they be but little, they are fierce. The most powerful batteries on the planet are only a few millimeters in size, yet they pack such a punch that a driver could use a cellphone powered by these batteries to jump-start a dead car battery – and then recharge the phone in the blink of an eye.

Developed by researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the new microbatteries out-power even the best supercapacitors and could drive new applications in radio communications and compact electronics.

Led by William P. King, the Bliss Professor of mechanical science and engineering, the researchers published their results in the April 16 issue of Nature Communications.

“This is a whole new way to think about batteries,” King said. “A battery can deliver far more power than anybody ever thought. In recent decades, electronics have gotten small. The thinking parts of computers have gotten small. And the battery has lagged far behind. This is a microtechnology that could change all of that. Now the power source is as high-performance as the rest of it.”

With currently available power sources, users have had to choose between power and energy. For applications that need a lot of power, like broadcasting a radio signal over a long distance, capacitors can release energy very quickly but can only store a small amount. For applications that need a lot of energy, like playing a radio for a long time, fuel cells and batteries can hold a lot of energy but release it or recharge slowly.

“There’s a sacrifice,” said James Pikul, a graduate student and first author of the paper. “If you want high energy you can’t get high power; if you want high power it’s very difficult to get high energy. But for very interesting applications, especially modern applications, you really need both. That’s what our batteries are starting to do. We’re really pushing into an area in the energy storage design space that is not currently available with technologies today.”
http://news.illinois.edu/news/13/041...lliamKing.html
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  #212  
Old Posted Apr 19, 2013, 5:07 PM
amor de cosmos amor de cosmos is offline
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German Record Clean-Energy Output Beats Fossil Plants, IWR Says
18 April 2013

April 18 (Bloomberg) — German solar and wind generators with a record 36 gigawatts of combined capacity produced power today, at times exceeding fossil-fired plants, the Muenster- based IWR renewable energy institute said.

Of the 70 gigawatts of peak power capacity needed at mid- day, more than half were wind and solar units, the IWR said today in an e-mailed statement, citing data from power exchange EEX. At times, the clean-energy generators fed more electricity into the German grid than their fossil-fired counterparts, the IWR said.
http://about.bnef.com/bnef-news/germ...ants-iwr-says/

Quote:
Solar Smackdown: Utilities Take On Rooftops
Will rooftop solar spell doom for electrical utilities? Fears are running rampant, and San Antonio’s CPS Energy is acting to scale back net metering credits.

Earthtechling, Pete Danko: April 19, 2013

It’s the utilities vs. rooftop solar, and with PV becoming more accessible and installations soaring, the fight is heating up.

In San Antonio, the municipally owned CPS Energy last week said it will slash the value of the credit for solar produced from rooftop installations. Its claim is a central one made by the utilities: as more people produce their own power through rooftop solar -- and reduce their electricity bills -- utilities are left unable to meet their cost of maintaining the energy infrastructure. CPS Energy said it had two options: reduce the amount it credits solar households for rooftop-produced solar, or raise rates for everyone.

These power company fears about distributed solar aren’t new; investor-owned utilities in California have long fought to temper net metering and community solar, for instance. But the issue is top of mind now amid widespread discussion of a report [PDF] by the utility trade association Edison Electric Institute that said solar photovoltaics, along with battery storage, fuel cells, geothermal energy systems, wind, micro turbines, and electric vehicle (EV) enhanced storage, “could threaten the centralized utility model.”

CPS Energy seemed to waste little time in moving to keep the upper hand. Here’s how Cris Eugster, executive vice president and chief strategy and technology officer for the utility, explained the move in a statement:
Costs to install photovoltaic systems continue to fall, making them increasingly available for more customers. And with that growth, the costs of the utility infrastructure are borne by fewer customers -- those who don’t have solar systems. To ensure that solar customers continue to enjoy the benefits of any distributed energy they produce, and pay a fair share of the infrastructure that they rely on, we’re taking a different approach. This is really important in San Antonio, where one quarter of the community’s residents are at or below the poverty level, and monthly energy bills absorb a larger portion of their monthly budgets.
http://www.greentechmedia.com/articl...ke-on-rooftops

Quote:
Republicans Revolt as Arizona’s Utility Proposes Cut in Solar Programs
“That’s not the conservative way and it’s not the American way.”

Herman K. Trabish: April 18, 2013

As Greentech Media heads to Phoenix for its annual Solar Summit, April 22-24, it will find an Arizona solar industry in bipartisan tumult. Arizona Public Service (APS), the state’s dominant investor-owned utility, proposed doing away with the Arizona renewables standard (RES) distributed generation (DG) carve-out and net metering.

“APS was ordered to address how it would comply with the RES rules if direct cash incentives were no longer available and it no longer received Renewable Energy Credits (RECs) from customers,” an APS representative testified to the Arizona Corporation Commission (ACC), which regulates the state’s utilities. “APS proposes to track the energy produced...[but] there would no longer be a requirement that affected utilities acquire a particular amount of RECs.”

“They view the recent election of an all-Republican ACC as an opportunity to kill the independent solar market in Arizona,” said Jason Rose, spokesperson for Tell Utilities Solar Won’t Be Killed (TUSK), a newly formed organization led by former Arizona Republican Congressman Barry Goldwater, Jr.

TUSK believes it would be “very un-Republican” to take energy choice away from Arizonans, Rose said.

"We have no greater resource than our sun,” Goldwater states on the TUSK website. “We can't let solar energy -- and all its advantages and benefits it provides us -- be pushed aside by monopolies wanting to limit energy choice. That's not the conservative way and it's not the American way."

TUSK’s statewide March 20-21 poll oversampled Republicans, yet still showed “exceptionally strong support for solar programs in Arizona and particularly net metering,” according to Rose.

The APS call for an end to net metering, Rose said, “is very bad politics and very bad policy.”
http://www.greentechmedia.com/articl...Solar-Programs

Quote:
State Solar Jobs Map Press Release
April 18, 2013

119,000 Jobs Strong: The Solar Foundation Releases First-Ever Solar Industry Jobs Numbers for All 50 States

Interactive map with shareable state profiles provides new insight on solar market, policies, and jobs

WASHINGTON, D.C. – The Solar Foundation (TSF), an independent nonprofit solar research and education organization, today announced the release of its State Solar Jobs Map (www.solarstates.org), a web-based tool providing the first-ever solar jobs numbers for each of the fifty states. These new state numbers build upon TSF’s National Solar Jobs Census 2012, which found that the U.S. solar energy industry employs 119,016 Americans and that solar employment grew 13.2 percent over the prior year, making it one of the fastest growing industries in the country.

The interactive map also presents information on the relative size of solar industry subsectors in each state and allows users to explore how their state measures up to others in terms of key solar policies, jobs per capita, and number of homes powered by solar energy. Thousands of data points from a combination of high-quality sources including TSF’s National Solar Jobs Census 2012 and the Solar Energy Industries Association’s National Solar Database were analyzed via a dual methodology to develop the jobs estimates that are the focus of this unprecedented effort.

“Our greatly-anticipated State Solar Jobs Map provides the most credible and comprehensive glimpse to date of solar employment at the state level,” said Andrea Luecke, TSF Executive Director. “These jobs figures demonstrate that the U.S. solar industry remains a powerful source of local job creation. In comparing our estimates with data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, we find that California now has more solar workers than actors and that there are more solar jobs in Texas than there are ranchers. Economies of scale are also making our industry more labor efficient, requiring only one-third the number of workers to install a megawatt of solar today as it did in 2010.”

The top ten states for solar jobs in 2012 were: California, Arizona, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Colorado, New York, Texas, Michigan, and Ohio. In comparing solar employment estimates from today’s release with previous state figures that examined solar jobs in only a few states, six states – California, Arizona, Pennsylvania, Texas, Colorado, and New York – are in the top ten for the third year in a row. Many of the highest-ranked solar jobs states are also those with the greatest cumulative installed capacity in the nation.
http://thesolarfoundation.org/state-...-press-release

Quote:
California Has More Solar Jobs Than Actors
How does your state rank in solar jobs?

Stephen Lacey: April 18, 2013

Last year, the Solar Foundation issued a census of the solar industry showing 119,016 jobs spread around the country. Today the organization has updated that resource with an interactive map detailing where around the country those solar jobs are located.

The geographic results aren't a big surprise (e.g., 43,000 solar jobs in California vs. 50 solar jobs in Wyoming) and probably aren't all that helpful for anyone who already knows a little bit about solar. But the map combines the jobs data with a variety of other pieces of information on the number of companies operating, employment subsectors, solar resources, state targets, interconnection scores and electricity prices.

There are three obvious takeaways that the resource illustrates: Installation and project development jobs are by far the most dominant in solar; states with strong policies rank highest in numbers of jobs and businesses operating; and strong solar resources don't necessarily mean big employment numbers.
http://www.greentechmedia.com/articl...n-Movie-Actors

Quote:
Solar power is ‘fastest growing industry in US’
By Nilima Choudhury - 19 April 2013, 10:38
In News, Power Generation

The US solar energy industry employs 119,016 Americans and grew 13.2% in 2011-2012, making it one of the fastest growing industries in the country, according to a new web-based mapping tool.

The map developed by The Solar Foundation (TSF), an independent non-profit solar research and education organisation, also revealed that California has more than four times the number of solar employees than any other state in the US.

“These jobs figures demonstrate that the US solar industry remains a powerful source of local job creation. In comparing our estimates with data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, we find that California now has more solar workers than actors and that there are more solar jobs in Texas than there are ranchers,” said Andrea Luecke, TSF Executive Director.

“Economies of scale are also making our industry more labour efficient, requiring only one-third the number of workers to install a megawatt of solar today as it did in 2010.”
http://www.pv-tech.org/news/solar_po...t_grew_by_13.2

Quote:
Special deal on photon-to-electron conversion: Two for one!
New technique developed at MIT could enable a major boost in solar-cell efficiency.

David L. Chandler, MIT News Office
April 18, 2013

Throughout decades of research on solar cells, one formula has been considered an absolute limit to the efficiency of such devices in converting sunlight into electricity: Called the Shockley-Queisser efficiency limit, it posits that the ultimate conversion efficiency can never exceed 34 percent for a single optimized semiconductor junction.

Now, researchers at MIT have shown that there is a way to blow past that limit as easily as today’s jet fighters zoom through the sound barrier — which was also once seen as an ultimate limit.

Their work appears this week in a report in the journal Science, co-authored by graduate students including Daniel Congreve, Nicholas Thompson, Eric Hontz and Shane Yost, alumna Jiye Lee ’12, and professors Marc Baldo and Troy Van Voorhis.

The principle behind the barrier-busting technique has been known theoretically since the 1960s, says Baldo, a professor of electrical engineering at MIT. But it was a somewhat obscure idea that nobody had succeeded in putting into practice. The MIT team was able, for the first time, to perform a successful “proof of principle” of the idea, which is known as singlet exciton fission. (An exciton is the excited state of a molecule after absorbing energy from a photon.)

In a standard photovoltaic (PV) cell, each photon knocks loose exactly one electron inside the PV material. That loose electron then can be harnessed through wires to provide an electrical current.
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2013/p...sion-0418.html

Quote:
220,000 MW Of Distributed Solar Power By 2018 (Navigant Research Report)
by Zach
on April 18, 2013
under Market Research, Rooftop Solar, Solar $, Solar Research

Another day, another market research report is out (well, hundreds probably came out today). As always, though, it’s hard to pass up one on solar power. And the one today is even on distributed solar power.

According to Navigant Research (formerly Pike Research), 220 gigawatts (GW) — 220,000 megawatts (MW) — of distributed solar power capacity will be installed between 2013 and 2018.

“The global electric power industry is evolving from a financial and engineering model that relies on large centralized power plants owned by utilities to one that is more diverse, in terms of both the sources of generation and the ownership of the generation assets,” a press release about the new report states. “Distributed solar photovoltaic (PV) systems offer the benefit of producing electricity onsite, thereby reducing the need to build new transmission capacity and avoiding line losses.”

The new solar power capacity is supposed to represent about $540 billion in revenue.
http://solarlove.org/220000-mw-of-di...search-report/

Quote:
Physicians & Solar Companies Unite, Create “Californians Against Utilities Stopping Solar Energy”
by Zach
on April 18, 2013
under Activism, Jobs, Rooftop Solar, Solar Policy

If you ask the common person on the street what’s so good about solar power, they’ll likely say that it’s good for the environment. And, of course, they’d be right. Connect the environment dot to the health dot, and what that means is that solar power is much better for our health (than coal, natural gas, etc.).

Naturally, this should stimulate more solar power growth and more solar-friendly policies. Alas, we don’t live in a perfect (and sometimes quite an absurd) world. With solar power finally growing up and starting to threaten conventional solar industries, attacks on policies supporting its growth are increasing. Some California physicians have teamed up with solar companies (e.g. Sunrun, SolarCity,…) in order to fight back these attacks.

“A coalition of public health leaders and solar energy companies has formed CAUSE (Californians Against Utilities Stopping solar Energy) to combat monopoly utility efforts to kill rooftop solar. CAUSE is dedicated to maintaining a thriving solar industry in California, and to promoting the health and economic benefits that solar delivers to all Californians,” a press release published yesterday stated.

“The state’s investor-owned utilities—PG&E, SDG&E and SCE—are trying to end net energy metering (NEM), a successful policy in 43 states that gives consumers fair credit for the solar they deliver to the grid. In simple terms, it’s like rollover minutes on your cell phone bill. The utilities have taken aim at net metering to keep customers from taking action that would save ratepayers and taxpayers money while protecting public health. A January study by Crossborder Energy found that net metering will provide more than $92 million in annual benefits to ratepayers of California’s three investor-owned utilities.”
http://solarlove.org/physicians-sola...-solar-energy/
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  #213  
Old Posted Apr 22, 2013, 3:01 PM
amor de cosmos amor de cosmos is offline
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Wind-solar hybrid plants up to twice as efficient
22. APRIL 2013 | INDUSTRY & SUPPLIERS, RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT | BY: DAVID LUDWIG

Solar and wind power generation complement each other better than previously thought, according to a study released by the Reiner Lemoine Institut and Solarpraxis AG.

Combining wind turbines and photovoltaic systems results in up to twice the amount of electricity being generated across the same surface area, while shading losses caused by wind turbines amount to a mere 1 to 2% – much less than previously thought.

As an additional benefit, the construction of hybrid power plants does not require grid expansion because the plants generate wind and solar power at different times of day and during complementary seasons, ensuring the level of energy fed into the grid is more steady than that of wind or photovoltaic power plants alone.

"Until now, it was thought that the shadows cast on solar plants by wind turbines led to high yield losses. The study shows, however, that these shading losses are much lower than expected, provided the hybrid power plant is well designed," said Alexander Woitas, head of the engineering department at Solarpraxis AG, parent company of pv-magazine.com.
http://www.pv-magazine.com/news/deta...ent_100010997/

Quote:
Will Distributed Generation Banish Utilities Forever?
April 21, 2013 Frank Andorka : 0 Comments

In widely covered news, Jim Rogers, CEO of Duke Energy, said that the utility sees a threat from distributed energy resources. NRG Energy CEO David Crane came out and said that utilities should be concerned but they [NRG] will be providing a solution that attempts to capitalize on the opportunity. Both comments are related to an Edison report that was published earlier this year. The background coverage to my comments can be found at Bloomberg, Grist [1/2], RMI, Edison.
What stands in the way of disrupting utility models?

NRG knows that solar needs a combined solution with base-load generation to create a real threat to the utility business models. Regulated utilities have the ‘requirement to serve’ and therefore have the responsibility to provide the electricity consumers want when they hit the light switch even when a rooftop solar installation is not producing electricity. Being able to provide the guarantee to consumers that the light will come on when relying solely on distributed generation is the key to having consumers disconnecting from the grid. It is the fundamental answer to the question “What happens when the sun doesn’t shine?”

This guarantee is answered on a technical basis. Do the products and systems exist that will produce all of the energy a customer needs on site, even when the sun doesn’t shine? The answer is a resounding yes, and more importantly the value provided by these systems is greater than the utility alternative. What does such a system look like? The solution is unique to each user but could consist of one or more of these individual solutions:
  • Energy Efficiency
  • Rooftop Solar Generation
  • Fuel Cells or Cogeneration
  • Storage with analytics
http://www.solarpowerworldonline.com...ities-forever/
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  #214  
Old Posted Apr 24, 2013, 12:17 AM
amor de cosmos amor de cosmos is offline
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Greece adds 793 MW of PV in Q1 [Updated]
23. APRIL 2013 | APPLICATIONS & INSTALLATIONS, MARKETS & TRENDS, GLOBAL PV MARKETS | BY: ILIAS TSAGAS

Greece added 793 MW of photovoltaic projects in the first quarter of 2013, according to national electricity market operator (LAGIE). In March alone, 259 MW of new solar capacity was installed.

The Mediterranean country installed 247 MW of ground-mounted photovoltaic projects and 12 MW of rooftop installations in March, said LAGIE. The country’s cumulative capacity amounts to 2.2 GW.
http://www.pv-magazine.com/news/deta...ted_100010998/
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  #215  
Old Posted Apr 24, 2013, 4:30 PM
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News Release NR-2413
NREL Quantifies Significant Value in Concentrating Solar Power
CSP with thermal energy storage boosts California electric grid

April 24, 2013

Researchers from the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) have calibrated the significant value that concentrating solar power (CSP) plants can add to an electric grid.

The NREL researchers evaluated the operational impacts of CSP systems with thermal energy storage within the California electric grid managed by the California Independent System Operator (CAISO). NREL used a commercial production cost model called PLEXOS to help plan system expansion, to evaluate aspects of system reliability, and to estimate fuel cost, emissions, and other operational factors within the CAISO system. The analysis is detailed in a recent publication, Analysis of Concentrating Solar Power with Thermal Energy Storage in a California 33% Renewable Scenario, by Paul Denholm, Yih-Huei Wan, Marissa Hummon, and Mark Mehos.

NREL’s analysis was considered within the context of California’s renewable portfolio standard (RPS), which requires 33% of power be supplied by renewables by 2020. The specific focus was on the “Environmentally Constrained” 33% RPS scenario, which includes a high contribution of generation from photovoltaic solar energy systems. By also considering how the state could take advantage of CSP with thermal storage, NREL used the PLEXOS model to quantify the value of CSP in reducing the need for conventional power generation from fossil fuels, and compared this value to other sources of generation, including photovoltaics, which supply variable energy depending on the amount of sunlight available.
http://www.nrel.gov/news/press/2013/2180.html

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New material approach should increase solar cell efficiency
April 23, 2013

“When designing next generation solar energy conversion systems, we must first develop ways to more efficiently utilize the solar spectrum,” explained Lane Martin, whose research group has done just that.

“This is a fundamentally new way of approaching these matters,” said Martin, who is an assistant professor of materials science and engineering (MatSE) at Illinois. “From these materials we can imagine carbon-neutral energy production of clean-burning fuels, waste water purification and remediation, and much more.”

Martin’s research group brought together aspects of condensed matter physics, semiconductor device engineering, and photochemistry to develop a new form of high-performance solar photocatalyst based on the combination of the TiO2 (titanium dioxide) and other “metallic” oxides that greatly enhance the visible light absorption and promote more efficient utilization of the solar spectrum for energy applications. Their paper, “Strong Visible-Light Absorption and Hot-Carrier Injection in TiO2/SrRuO3 Heterostructures,” appears in the journal Advanced Energy Materials.

According to Martin, the primary feature limiting the performance of oxide-based photovoltaic and/or photocatalytic systems has traditionally been the poor absorption of visible light in these often wide band gap materials. One candidate oxide material for such applications is anatase TiO2, which is arguably the most widely-studied photocatalyst due to its chemical stability, non-toxicity, low-cost, and excellent band alignment to several oxidation-reduction reactions. As the backbone of dye-sensitized solar cells, however, the presence of a light-absorbing dye accounts for a large band gap which limits efficient usage of all but the UV portion of sunlight.
http://engineering.illinois.edu/news...ell-efficiency
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  #216  
Old Posted Apr 25, 2013, 3:05 PM
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IBM’s concentrated PV/thermal hybrid with water, air-con
By Solar Love on 25 April 2013

How does a cost-competitive photovoltaic system that is able to concentrate sunlight 2000 times and then capture 80% of the concentrated energy sound?

Pretty good, right?

Such a system is currently being developed by researchers at IBM Research, Airlight Energy, ETH Zurich, and Interstate University of Applied Sciences Buchs NTB, after winning a three-year $2.4 million grant from the Swiss Commission for Technology and Innovation.

And in addition to generating electricity, the system can itself desalinate water and provide air-conditioning, useful features for the sunny and remote regions that the system is designed for.

An economical High Concentration Photovoltaic Thermal (HCPVT) system, that in addition to supplying electricity can desalinate water and provide air conditioning, is the complete package as far as many regions of the world are concerned.

The prototype system makes use of a large parabolic dish, composed of a number of mirror facets, which are coordinated to a sun tracking system. The system automatically repositions itself to the optimum angle for power generation.

The sunlight that hits the mirrors is reflected off of them onto a number of microchannel-liquid cooled receivers with triple junction photovoltaic chips. Every one of these 1×1 centimeter chips “can convert 200-250 watts, on average, over a typical eight hour day in a sunny region.” And there are hundreds of these chips in the design, providing a total of about 25 kilowatts of electrical power.
http://reneweconomy.com.au/2013/ibms...-air-con-82890

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A Homeowner’s Solar Cheat Sheet
April 25, 2013 Kathleen Zipp : 0 Comments

Most consumers don’t have experience shopping for solar. It can be difficult for them to detect shady language in contracts and they may miss steps in the purchasing process. Not to mention there are so many solar installers to choose from. How do residential solar consumers know which is the best pick for them?

Gigaom’s Ucilia Wang has put together a cheat sheet for just this. Here’s a summary of the article’s tips:
1. The initial query.
2. Learn about the incentives in your region.
3. How to pay for it.
4. Lease vs. power purchase agreement.
5. Gear research.
6. The promise.
7. Keeping the system running.
http://www.solarpowerworldonline.com...r-cheat-sheet/
http://www.businessweek.com/articles...r-solar-panels

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New Battery Design Could Help Solar and Wind Energy Power the Grid
April 24, 2013

Menlo Park, Calif. — Researchers from the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and Stanford University have designed a low-cost, long-life battery that could enable solar and wind energy to become major suppliers to the electrical grid.

"For solar and wind power to be used in a significant way, we need a battery made of economical materials that are easy to scale and still efficient," said Yi Cui, a Stanford associate professor of materials science and engineering and a member of the Stanford Institute for Materials and Energy Sciences, a SLAC/Stanford joint institute. "We believe our new battery may be the best yet designed to regulate the natural fluctuations of these alternative energies."

Cui and colleagues report their research results, some of the earliest supported by the DOE's new Joint Center for Energy Storage Research battery hub, in the May issue of Energy & Environmental Science.

Currently the electrical grid cannot tolerate large and sudden power fluctuations caused by wide swings in sunlight and wind. As solar and wind's combined contributions to an electrical grid approach 20 percent, energy storage systems must be available to smooth out the peaks and valleys of this "intermittent" power – storing excess energy and discharging when input drops.

Among the most promising batteries for intermittent grid storage today are "flow" batteries, because it's relatively simple to scale their tanks, pumps and pipes to the sizes needed to handle large capacities of energy. The new flow battery developed by Cui's group has a simplified, less expensive design that presents a potentially viable solution for large-scale production.
http://www6.slac.stanford.edu/news/2...owbattery.aspx

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  #217  
Old Posted Apr 26, 2013, 3:07 PM
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Nanostructures improve the efficiency of solar cells
25 April 2013

Researchers have been able to improve the efficiency of solar cells by coating the cell surface with extremely small nanoscale structures. The new technology has been shown to nearly eliminate the reflection losses of solar radiation. Cost-effective solar photovoltaic materials are being developed within the Academy of Finland’s research programme Photonics and Modern Imaging Techniques.

The nanostructured black silicon coating features very low reflectivity, meaning that a larger portion of the Sun’s radiation can be exploited. At Aalto University, a research team led by Assistant Professor Hele Savin is conducting studies on crystalline silicon solar cells, which are the main type of solar cells that are currently on the market.

“The advantages of silicon include the long-term stability, sufficiency, low cost and non-toxicity of the element, as well as the advanced production technology. Another benefit of these solar cells is their relatively high efficiency and technological compatibility with the manufacturing technologies currently used by the semiconductor industry,” Savin explains. The technology, however, still calls for development and improvement.
http://www.aka.fi/en-GB/A/Academy-of...f-solar-cells/

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Sharp Achieves 37.9% Solar Cell Conversion Efficiency
26 APRIL 2013

Sharp Corporation has achieved solar cell conversion efficiency*1 of 37.9%*2 using a triple-junction compound solar cell in which three photo-absorption layers are stacked together.

Sharp achieved this latest breakthrough as a result of a research and development initiative promoted by Japan’s New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (NEDO)*3 on the theme of "R&D on Innovative Solar Cells." Measurement of the value of 37.9%, which sets a new record for the world's highest conversion efficiency, was confirmed at the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST).

Compound solar cells utilize photo-absorption layers made from compounds consisting of two or more elements, such as indium and gallium. The basic structure of this latest triple-junction compound solar cell uses proprietary Sharp technology that enables efficient stacking of the three photo-absorption layers, with InGaAs (indium gallium arsenide) as the bottom layer.

By optimizing the relative proportions of indium, gallium, and arsenide, Sharp succeeded in increasing the efficiency with which the cell absorbs sunlight at its various wavelengths. This improvement enabled Sharp to achieve solar cell conversion efficiency*1 of 37.9%*2.
http://www.solarnovus.com/index.php?...rticle&id=6492

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Pentacene Coating Could Push Solar Cell Efficiency Beyond Shockley-Queisser Limit
WRITTEN BY SANDRA HENDERSON | 24 APRIL 2013

Thanks to a new coating developed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), solar cells could produce two electrons for every particle of light harvested at the green and blue wavelengths. The research advance could be the key to solar cell efficiencies beyond the Shockley-Queisser limit, which proposes that the ultimate conversion efficiency can never exceed 34% for a single optimised semiconductor junction.

The MIT researchers use the organic molecule pentacene to demonstrate singlet exciton fission, where two electrons are produced for each photon, instead of one. “The physics of what happens to an excited electron — or exciton — in this molecule is different from that of a typical semiconductor such as silicon,” says MIT engineering graduate student Nicholas J. Thompson, who is also a first author of the paper “External Quantum Efficiency Above 100% in a Singlet-Exciton-Fission-Based Organic Photovoltaic Cell,” published in Science. Typically, when a blue or green photon is absorbed and an electron is exited, much of its energy is lost in form of heat. “In our singlet fission device, the excited electron transfers some of its energy to another electron, both of which can be collected as current,” Thompson explains. “This process loses significantly less energy to heat, allowing for more sunlight to be captured and a more efficient cell.”
http://www.solarnovus.com/index.php?...rticle&id=6486
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  #218  
Old Posted Apr 28, 2013, 2:57 PM
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  #219  
Old Posted Apr 29, 2013, 3:16 PM
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Solar PV Module Revenues To Turn Upward, But Not Until 2015
April 29, 2013

Solar photovoltaic (PV) market analysts at NPD SolarBuzz see industry-wide PV module revenues increasing, but not until 2015.

Industry-average selling prices (ASPs) for PV modules dropped precipitously — some 50% year over year in 2012 — while end-user demand increased just 5%, NPD Solarbuzz notes in its latest 2013 Marketbuzz, Solarbuzz Quarterly, and annual downstream PV market reports.

PV cell and module manufacturers significantly expanded capacity in 2010 and 2011, with potential supply reaching 45 gigawatts (GW) as compared to 29 GW of actual demand. The huge supply overhang and precipitous price drops have since inflicted a lot of financial pain. Ongoing market and broader economic weakness and uncertainty in the US, Europe, and Asia is adding to the pressure, as governments pull back and reduce financial support, subsidies, and other incentives.
http://cleantechnica.com/2013/04/29/...ot-until-2015/

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Schneider Electric Collaborates With Cricketing Giant Sachin Tendulkar To Distribute Solar Lights In Rural India
April 29, 2013

On his 40th birthday, living legend of the cricketing world and arguably the best ambassador of cricket, Sachin Tendulkar joined hands with Schneider Electric to bring light to the lives of thousands of Indians struggling to access electricity in rural areas.

Schneider Electric plans to distribute LED-based lighting systems across 25,000 villages in India. The company will be joined by Sachin Tendulkar to promote the ‘Spreading Happiness’ non-profit organisation that will work at the village-level to distribute the lighting systems and educate people on its use.

Schneider Electric has developed an innovative lighting system called the In-Diya Lighting System, to cater to the needs of various types of consumers in rural India. Some remote areas of India have access to intermittent electricity while several rural areas have none at all: the In-Diya Lighting System would serve well consumers in both.

The system can be plugged directly into the AC supply, if available, and used directly. Conversely, it can be connected to a solar panel to charge a battery or be used directly. The company claims that the system can light up a 12 feet by 12 feet room for normal activities and would last for 50,000 hours over its lifecycle.
http://cleantechnica.com/2013/04/29/...n-rural-india/

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SunPower officially starts construction of joint 579MW Antelope Valley PV power plants
By Mark Osborne - 26 April 2013, 20:48

SunPower has begun constructing what will be the largest combined PV power plants, recently acquired by a subsidiary within investor Warren Buffett's empire.

The two co-located Antelope Valley Solar Projects (AVSP) have a combined 579MW capacity, making them the world’s largest PV projects when completed over the next two years.

The EPC contract is said to be worth between US$2 billion and US$2.5 billion to SunPower under a recently agreed purchase by MidAmerican Solar.

According to SunPower, the projects will provide up to 650 jobs during construction and generate more than US$500 million in regional economic impact. The projects are expected to provide enough energy to power approximately 400,000 average California homes when fully operational.
http://www.pv-tech.org/news/sunpower...pe_valley_pv_p

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Sunrun CEO accuses Arizona utility of trying to crush net energy metering
By Felicity Carus - 26 April 2013, 18:26

A leading solar installer accused Arizona's largest utility of trying to "crush" net energy metering earlier this week.

Arizona Public Service Company is currently conducting a series of technical workshops on the cost of solar in the state, the second largest market for distributed generation.

Arizona currently requires utilities to procure 15% of their electricity from renewable sources by 2025. The mandate also includes a 30% carve-out for distributed grid. APS has 24,000 customers who have installed solar systems on their homes or businesses, 16,000 of them net metered.

Ed Fenster, co-CEO of Sunrun, said: "Public opinion is clearly in favour of solar, including in Arizona, however, the utilities have taken the approach which is to say they are for solar [but] with their regulatory folks doing everything they can to crush net metering.
http://www.pv-tech.org/news/sunrun_c...nergy_metering
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  #220  
Old Posted Apr 30, 2013, 3:18 PM
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Los Angeles Celebrates Launch of Largest Municipal Solar Program in U.S.
Published April 29, 2013 08:44 AM

Los Angeles, a city more often known for its celebrity sightings and Hollywood stars, also shines bright in the solar arena. The City of Angels has dazzled in the last decade with a strong record of sustainability. So much so that on April 19th, local and national government representatives as well as business leaders gathered to celebrate the launch of the city's solar Feed in Tariff (FIT) program (Clean L.A. Solar Program) at the Los Angeles Business Council's (LABC) Sustainability Summit. The program focused on how to harness sustainability programs and regulatory initiatives for job growth.
http://www.enn.com/sustainability/article/45915

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Solar PV Energy Storage Market To Skyrocket
April 30, 2013

Energy storage may be the next big thing in cleantech, and in the energy sector as a whole. We have never had much energy storage in place across the world. Instead, we have built a tremendous amount of backup capacity. With the variability of wind and solar, their increasingly low costs, and the desire to have a renewably powered world, the drive for cost-effective storage has picked up in pace. And many new solutions seem to be on the horizon. Furthermore, as the market expands, economies of scale allow the manufacturing costs to drop considerably.

A new report from IMS Research, which is part of IHS Inc, finds that the market will grow from under $200 million in 2012 to $19 billion by 2017. That’s quite explosive growth.

The report, “The Role of Energy Storage in the PV Industry,” also finds that Germany will lead that growth. (Who’s surprised?)

“Following the introduction of an energy storage subsidy in Germany, global installations of PV storage systems are forecast to grow by more than 100 percent a year on average over the next five years, to reach almost 7 gigawatts (GW) in 2017 and worth $19 billion,” IMS Research writes. “Germany will account for nearly 70 percent of storage installed in residential PV systems worldwide in 2013.”
http://cleantechnica.com/2013/04/30/...-to-skyrocket/
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