Wind Power Thread

[amor de cosmos]

Warren Buffet Spends $1 Billion on Largest Land-Based Wind Power Purchase Ever
by Julie M. Rodriguez, 12/18/13

Warren Buffet’s utility company, MidAmerican Energy Holdings Co, announced yesterday that it had placed a massive order for 448 wind turbines, worth $1 billion. The turbines, which will be installed in Iowa, represent the largest order to date for a land-based wind energy project.

$1 billion may sound like a lot, but when you look at the numbers behind the deal, it starts to make sense. Not only is wind the cheapest source of power in Iowa right now, turbine prices have also fallen by 26% worldwide since 2009. Siemans, the manufacturer of turbines in question, is pointing to the purchase as a sign that wind power is becoming competitive even without government subsidies.

This move is part of a long-term strategy on Buffet’s part — his company is already planning to slowly close down some of its coal-powered plants in 2015 as the new turbines start to go online. He’s pointed out before that utilities can easily make investments in clean energy if they simply retain some of their earnings each year, and now it seems he’s decided to lead by example.

http://inhabitat.com/warren-buffet-s...purchase-ever/

[amor de cosmos]

The 13 major clean energy breakthroughs of 2013
By Jeff Spross on 19 December 2013

3. The next generation of wind turbines is a gamechanger. May of 2013 brought the arrival of GE’s Brilliant line of wind turbines, which bring two technologies within the turbines to address storage and intermittency concerns. An “industrial internet” communicates with grid operators, to predict wind availability and power needs, and to optimally position the turbine. Grid-scale batteries built into the turbines store power when the wind is blowing but the electricity isn’t needed — then feed it into the grid as demand comes along, smoothing out fluctuations in electricity supply. It’s a more efficient solution to demand peaks than fossil fuel plants, making it attractive even from a purely business aspect. Fifty-nine of the turbines are headed for Michigan, and two more will arrive in Texas.

9. New age offshore wind turbines that float. Offshore areas are prime real estate for wind farms, but standard turbines require lots of construction and are limited to waters 60 meters deep or less. But Statoil, the Norwegian-based oil and gas company, began work this year on a hub of floating wind turbines off the coast of Scotland. The turbines merely require a few cables to keep them anchored, and can be placed in water up to 700 meters. That could vastly expand the amount of economically practical offshore wind power. The hub off Scotland will be the largest floating wind farm in the world — and two floating turbines are planned off the coast of Fukushima, Japan, along with the world’s first floating electrical substation.

13. Wind power is now competitive with fossil fuels. “We’re now seeing power agreements being signed with wind farms at as low as $25 per megawatt-hour,” Stephen Byrd, Morgan Stanley’s Head of North American Equity Research for Power & Utilities and Clean Energy, told the Columbia Energy Symposium in late November. Byrd explained that wind’s ongoing variable costs are negligible, which means an owner can bring down the cost of power purchase agreements by spreading the up-front investment over as many units as possible. As a result, larger wind farms in the Midwest are confronting coal plants in the Powder River Basin with “fairly vicious competition.” And even without the production tax credit, wind can still undercut many natural gas plants. A clear sign of its viability, wind power currently meets 25 percent of Iowa’s energy needs and is projected to reach a whopping 50 percent by 2018.

http://reneweconomy.com.au/2013/13-m...kthroughs-2013

[amor de cosmos]

Researchers Find Ways to Minimize Power Grid Disruptions from Wind Power
For Immediate Release
Matt Shipman | News Services
Dr. Aranya Chakrabortty
Release Date: 01.02.14
Filed under Releases

Researchers from North Carolina State University and Johns Hopkins University have found that an increase in the use of wind power generation can make the power grid more fragile and susceptible to disruptions. But the researchers didn’t just identify the problem – they have also devised a technique for coordinating wind power generation and energy storage in order to minimize the potential for such power disruptions.

Typically, the power flowing through the transmission lines of a power grid suffers from small “oscillations,” or deviations from the norm, after a disturbance. Generally, these oscillations are mitigated by means of controllers inside the power generators. However, if the controls are not strong enough, the oscillations may be “sustained,” reducing the efficiency of power transfer and posing a threat to the stability of the grid. If not controlled properly, these oscillations can even lead to widespread power outages – such as the 1996 blackout that hit the West Coast of the U.S.

The researchers found that, under certain circumstances, wind power generators can make these oscillations worse. This is because wind farms produce power erratically. After all, the amount of power being produced by wind farms depends on how hard the wind is blowing. Furthermore, the nature of these oscillations strongly depends on where the wind farms are located in the grid.

“To counteract this problem, we have designed a technique that coordinates the activity of controllers inside the wind turbines and battery management systems to even out the flow of power from wind farms into the grid,” says Dr. Aranya Chakrabortty, an assistant professor of electrical engineering at NC State and senior author of a paper describing the work.

http://news.ncsu.edu/releases/wms-ch...rtty-wind2014/

Credit Suisse: Renewables to meet 85% of US energy demand growth
By Zachary Shahan on 2 January 2014
Clean Technica

Credit Suisse on December 20 released a report with some quite bullish projections regarding renewable energy growth and generation in the United States, which someone in the solar industry kindly passed on to me. Here’s the short summary:

Our take: We see an opportunity for renewable energy to take an increasing share of total US power generation, coming in response to state Renewable Portfolio Standards (RPS) and propelled by more competitive costs against conventional generation. We can see the growth in renewables being transformative against conventional expectations with renewables meeting the vast majority of future power demand growth, weighing on market clearing power prices in competitive power markets, appreciably slowing the rate of demand growth for natural gas from the power sector, and requiring significant investment in new renewables.

What percentage of future growth does Credit Suisse say might come from renewables? About 85%.

Renewables will meet most of US demand growth. We estimate that ~85% of future demand growth for power through 2025 (including the impact of coal plant retirements) could be met by renewable generation with compliance to the existing 30 mandatory and 8 voluntary RPS programs. From this we would see over 100 GW of new renewable capacity additions with wind and solar market share more than doubling from 2012 to 2025.

Other key points are that falling wind and solar costs make them competitive with natural gas, even ignoring externalities. As a result, Credit Suisse has cut its natural gas projections considerably. “We estimate renewables slowing the rate of natural gas demand growth from power generation to <0.5 bcf/d through 2020 versus our prior estimate of 1.0-1.2 bcf/d even when taking into account planned coal plant shutdowns and assumed nuclear plant retirements.”

I think this report and the revisions implicitly highlight something very interesting that is going on in the energy industry. Renewable energy costs are primarily based on the cost of the technologies themselves, while fossil fuel costs are largely based on the fuel sources. As renewable energy grows, the technology costs come down. The opposite is true for fossil fuels. Forecasts should take this into account, but they routinely seem to underestimate renewable technology cost drops, and thus also underestimate renewable energy growth. Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, and others that are a bit better at these projections are quickly shifting their forecasts to catch up with the renewable energy revolution we’ve been seeing. This new report from Credit Suisse analysts is certainly one of the most positive I’ve seen. The title of the first section says it all: “Renewables Are Economic and Disruptive to Conventional Markets.”

Credit Suisse analysts see Renewable Energy Standards (RES) as driving much of the coming growth, but they aren’t shy about saying (repeatedly) that renewables are also now cost competitive, and that technology improvements just keep advancing their prospects.

“We think old-line arguments against renewables – too expensive, too intermittent, too remote – will continue to fade, allowing a resource base that is underappreciated in the market but is positioned to have a broad impact on power and energy markets.”

http://reneweconomy.com.au/2014/cred...enewables-2025

[amor de cosmos]

UK Breaks Several Wind Power Generation Records in December 2013
by Lidija Grozdanic, 01/07/14

The UK broke a series of wind energy records in December 2013, including the most wind power produced in a single month. In December, Britain generated a total of 2,841,080 megawatt hours (MWh) – about 10 percent of the country’s total power demand. The amount of energy generated from wind turbines last month is enough to power 5.7 million homes in the country.

In the week between the 16 and 22 December, 2013, wind energy power plants generated 783,889 MWh of electricity, according to renewable energy trade association RenewableUK, which coordinates statistics and intelligence on marine and wind power in the UK and its waters.

On December 21, wind farms generated 132,812 MWh and supplied 13 percent of the country’s total electricity demand that day, breaking a single-day generation record.

The previous monthly record was set in October 2013 with 1,956,437 MWh, which met around 8 percent of UK’s electricity demand that month, 2 percent less than in December. According to RenewableUK’s data, the amount of electricity generated by wind is even greater than that, since the statistics taken into account refer to electricity monitored by National Grid and do not include small wind farms that generate energy for local networks.

http://inhabitat.com/uk-breaks-sever...december-2013/

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India Plans Offshore Wind Energy Agency, Minister Says
9 January 2014

Jan. 9 (Bloomberg) — India plans an agency to oversee the development of offshore wind farms as the country’s best sites on land fill up, prompting it to promote projects at sea.

The Ministry of New and Renewable Energy will seek cabinet approval soon to set up the agency, the government said today in a statement, citing Renewable Energy Minister Farooq Abdullah.

India is already Asia’s biggest wind-turbine market after China in terms of annual installations. The country has built 20 gigawatts of projects onshore, drawing about $16.5 billion a year in investment. Now it’s looking to expand at sea since most of the best sites on land are occupied and poor roads limit the introduction of larger, more productive turbines.

http://about.bnef.com/bnef-news/indi...minister-says/

7 January 2014 Last updated at 20:20 ET
David Shukman
Science editor
China on world's 'biggest push' for wind power

China has embarked on the greatest push for renewable energy the world has ever seen.

A key element involves more than doubling the number of wind turbines in the next six years.

Already the world's largest producer of wind power, China plans further massive increases.

From a current installed capacity of 75 gigawatts (GW), the aim is to achieve a staggering 200GW by 2020.

By contrast, the European Union countries together have just over 90GW of installed wind capacity.

The far western province of Xinjiang is one of seven areas designated for wind development.

Against a backdrop of snow-capped mountains, turbines are massed in their thousands over the frozen desert.

New units are being installed in a frenzy of construction in which the pace of work has been accelerated.

Jiang Bo, an engineer with the manufacturer Goldwind, told me: "Seven years ago we could only do one wind turbine in about two days - but our current speed is that we can do two in one day."



Ma Jinru, a vice president of Goldwind, looks forward to a time when fossil fuels will be scarcer and subject to carbon pricing.

"One day in the future when the resources become limited and the price gets higher and pollution gets worse, then society will charge the social cost for that, so in the long term the cost of wind energy can be cheaper than coal.

"And the cost of wind energy will drop through technical innovation, so the wind energy sector will have a huge huge growth in the whole electricity supply."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-25623400

Energy News
New Battery Material Could Help Wind and Solar Power Go Big
Low-cost materials could make storing hours of power from a wind farm economically feasible.
By Kevin Bullis on January 8, 2014

Utilities would love to be able to store the power that wind farms generate at night—when no one wants it—and use it when demand is high during the day. But conventional battery technology is so expensive that it only makes economic sense to store a few minutes of electricity, enough to smooth out a few fluctuations from gusts of wind.

Harvard University researchers say they’ve developed a new type of battery that could make it economical to store a couple of days of electricity from wind farms and other sources of power. The new battery, which is described in the journal Nature, is based on an organic molecule—called a quinone—that’s found in plants such as rhubarb and can be cheaply synthesized from crude oil. The molecules could reduce, by two-thirds, the cost of energy storage materials in a type of battery called a flow battery, which is particularly well suited to storing large amounts of energy.

If it solves the problem of the intermittency of power sources like wind and solar, the technology will make it possible to rely far more heavily on renewable energy. Such batteries could also reduce the number of power plants needed on the grid by allowing them to operate more efficiently, much the way a battery in a hybrid vehicle improves fuel economy.

In a flow battery, energy is stored in liquid form in large tanks. Such batteries have been around for decades, and are used in places like Japan to help manage the power grid, but they’re expensive—about $700 per kilowatt-hour of storage capacity, according to one estimate. To make storing hours of energy from wind farms economical, batteries need to cost just $100 per kilowatt-hour, according to the U.S. Department of Energy.

The energy storage materials account for only a fraction of a flow battery’s total cost. Vanadium, the material typically used now, costs about $80 per kilowatt-hour. But that’s high enough to make hitting the $100 target for the whole system impossible. Michael Aziz, a professor of materials and energy technologies at Harvard University who led the work, says the quinones will cut the energy storage material costs down to just $27 per kilowatt-hour. Together with other recent advances in bringing down the cost of the rest of the system, he says, this could put the DOE target in reach.

http://www.technologyreview.com/news...-power-go-big/

Organic mega flow battery promises breakthrough for renewable energy
Harvard technology could economically store energy for use when the wind doesn’t blow and the sun doesn’t shine
January 8, 2014

Cambridge, Mass. – January 8, 2014 – A team of Harvard scientists and engineers has demonstrated a new type of battery that could fundamentally transform the way electricity is stored on the grid, making power from renewable energy sources such as wind and solar far more economical and reliable.

The novel battery technology is reported in a paper published in Nature on January 9. Under the OPEN 2012 program, the Harvard team received funding from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency–Energy (ARPA-E) to develop the innovative grid-scale battery and plans to work with ARPA-E to catalyze further technological and market breakthroughs over the next several years.

The paper reports a metal-free flow battery that relies on the electrochemistry of naturally abundant, inexpensive, small organic (carbon-based) molecules called quinones, which are similar to molecules that store energy in plants and animals.

The mismatch between the availability of intermittent wind or sunshine and the variability of demand is the biggest obstacle to getting a large fraction of our electricity from renewable sources. A cost-effective means of storing large amounts of electrical energy could solve this problem.

The battery was designed, built, and tested in the laboratory of Michael J. Aziz, Gene and Tracy Sykes Professor of Materials and Energy Technologies at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS). Roy G. Gordon, Thomas Dudley Cabot Professor of Chemistry and Professor of Materials Science, led the work on the synthesis and chemical screening of molecules. Alán Aspuru-Guzik, Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, used his pioneering high-throughput molecular screening methods to calculate the properties of more than 10,000 quinone molecules in search of the best candidates for the battery.



“Our studies indicate that one to two days' worth of storage is required for making solar and wind dispatchable through the electrical grid,” said Aziz.

To store 50 hours of energy from a 1-megawatt power capacity wind turbine (50 megawatt-hours), for example, a possible solution would be to buy traditional batteries with 50 megawatt-hours of energy storage, but they'd come with 50 megawatts of power capacity. Paying for 50 megawatts of power capacity when only 1 megawatt is necessary makes little economic sense.

For this reason, a growing number of engineers have focused their attention on flow battery technology. But until now, flow batteries have relied on chemicals that are expensive or difficult to maintain, driving up the energy storage costs.

http://www.seas.harvard.edu/news/201...newable-energy

[amor de cosmos]

EnerVault Nears Completion of Its First Commercial-Scale Flow Battery
The company says it’s prepared to beat DOE’s cost targets for redox flow batteries.
Stephen Lacey
January 9, 2014

Founded in 2008, California-based storage startup EnerVault has remained relatively quiet on its progress.

The flow battery market is, after all, defined more by grandiose claims from companies than by commercial projects in the ground.

But with $24.5 million in funding and an executive team hailing from SunPower, Tesla, and a range of battery, power plant engineering and fuel cell companies, EnerVault is now going public with its performance expectations.

"We've been particularly quiet about achievements," said Jim Pape, EnerVault's CEO and former president of residential and commercial solar at SunPower. "Part of that is our investors; part of that is that we don't want to put out statements we have to later jump over."

http://www.greentechmedia.com/articl...e-flow-battery

ConEdison Solutions Provides Wind Power for Ohio Honda Plant (2)
9 January 2014

Jan. 9 (Bloomberg) — ConEdison Solutions, the energy services unit of Consolidated Edison Inc., is providing electricity from two wind turbines to a Honda Motor Co. factory in Ohio, reducing the site’s demand from local power companies.

The 1.6-megawatt General Electric Co. turbines went into operation today at the Russells Point, Ohio, auto factory, according to a statement. ConEdison Solutions owns and operates them and Honda is buying the electricity under a long-term contract.

The plant is the first major automotive factory in the U.S. to get a “substantial” amount of its energy from on-site wind turbines, according to the statement. A growing number of industrial and commercial customers are using electricity generated locally and buying less from utilities.

The turbines are installed “behind the meter, so all the power goes directly to the facility,” Jorge Lopez, chief executive officer of ConEdison Solutions, said in an interview. “We’ve seen a resurgence in distributed generation.” Distributed-generation systems, including rooftop solar panels and industrial fuel cells, are installed on-site and provide power directly to users.

Honda estimates the turbines will supply about 10 percent of the factory’s power and will help the company reduce global greenhouse-gas emissions. Excess electricity from the turbines will be provided to the auto plant’s neighbors.

http://about.bnef.com/bnef-news/con-...honda-factory/

Wind Aids Grid as Cold Hits Conventional Power
U.S. grid operators find huge amounts of conventional power offline because of the cold; wind industry says the situation proves that a diverse mix of sources is needed.
Earthtechling, Pete Danko
January 9, 2014

Renewable energy critics harp on the variability of wind and solar production, suggesting that this increasingly manageable challenge is some kind of fatal flaw.

Meanwhile, these critics ignore the fact that conventional power sources are no sure things themselves, particularly when the going gets rough, as it has this week, when much of the U.S. has been hit with an extraordinary cold snap.

For instance, in Texas, cold weather on Monday knocked two facilities totaling 2,000 megawatts of capacity offline. “The decision Monday to issue a power conservation alert, asking Texans to lower their thermostats and avoid the use of major appliances, brought fears of a repeat of a 2011 ice storm during which close to a quarter of state’s power plants went out,” the Dallas News reported.

Then, on Tuesday afternoon, RTO Insider reported that PJM -- the mid-Atlantic power pool consisting of thirteen states and Washington, D.C. and serving around 60 million customers -- had some 36,000 megawatts of generation, a whopping 20 percent of its installed capacity, “unavailable due to forced outages.” Reuters said the agency was citing “weather-related mechanical failures and natural gas supply problems, as well as normal generation issues, for power plants being knocked offline Tuesday.”

With conventional generators struggling, the American Wind Energy Association was quick to note that all that wind power capacity added in recent years sure was coming in handy.

“As the cold and high winds first rolled into the Upper Midwest, the MISO grid operator saw very high wind energy output of around 8,000 megawatts, enough to supply 6 million average homes under typical conditions,” the AWEA said in a blog post.

The industry group added that in Texas, “the more than 2,000 megawatts of wind output on Monday morning was the critical difference keeping heaters running as the grid operator struggled with numerous outages at conventional power plants.”

http://www.greentechmedia.com/articl...entional-power

[amor de cosmos]

6 January 2014
Energy: too valuable to waste
Synthetic natural gas from excess electricity

"Power to gas" is a key concept when it comes to storing alternative energy. This process converts short-term excess electricity from photovoltaic systems and wind turbines into hydrogen. Combined with the greenhouse gas CO2, renewable hydrogen can be used to produce methane, which can be stored and distributed in the natural gas network. Empa researchers have now succeeded in further optimising this process.

The methanation process uses CO2, for example from biogas production, and this combined with hydrogen (H2) from excess renewable electricity, produces methane, which can not only be distributed simply and cost-effectively in the natural gas network, but can also be stored for longer periods of time. This means renewable energy is being used to produce a "quasi-fossil" fuel – the basic principle of "power to gas".

The Sabatier reaction, which produces combustible methane from hydrogen and CO2, has been known for a long time. Now researchers in the Empa "Hydrogen and Energy" Department have succeeded in greatly optimising the process. A catalyst is required to bring about the reaction of CO2 with hydrogen using as little energy as possible; this catalyst can, for example, be made of nickel. The gas molecules react more easily with each other on the surface of such a catalyst, reducing the energy required for the reaction to take place. This is referred to as sorption catalysis. Empa researcher, Andreas Borgschulte, and his team have now combined a nanoscale nickel catalyst with a zeolite. Zeolites are crystalline aluminosilicates with the ability to absorb water molecules and release them again when heated.

The principle is simple: the chemical reaction of hydrogen with CO2 produces not only methane (CH4), but also water (H2O). The researchers use the hygroscopic (i.e. water-binding) property of the zeolite to remove the resulting water from the reaction mixture. The chemical equilibrium then moves towards methane. Result: a higher yield of pure methane and a more efficient catalytic process. As soon as the zeolite is saturated with water, it can be "unloaded" again by heating and evaporation of the water, and is then re-used.

http://www.empa.ch/plugin/template/e...143418/---/l=2

[amor de cosmos]

Spain slashes emissions as wind becomes biggest energy source
By Emma Fitzpatrick on 13 January 2014

Spain’s greenhouse gas emissions have dropped almost 25 per cent on last year, the country’s grid operator reports, as the levels of wind and hydro generation increased dramatically.

Red Eléctrica de España (REE) released a preliminary report on the country’s power generation, which revealed for “the first time ever, [wind power] contributed most to the annual electricity demand coverage”.

According to BusinessGreen, which viewed the report, wind turbines contributed 21.1 per cent of electricity demand on the Spanish peninsula, just outdoing the country’s nuclear reactors, which provided 21 per cent.

Wind power and hydroelectric power production soared this year, increasing by 12 and 16 per cent, respectively, BusinessGreen said.

Throughout the year the all-time highs of wind power production were exceeded. On February 6th wind power recorded a new maximum of instantaneous power with 17,056MW (2.5 per cent up on the previous record) and that same day the all-time maximum for hourly energy was also exceeded reaching 16,918MWh.

Furthermore, in January, February, March and November wind power generation was the technology that made the largest contribution towards the total energy production of the system.

http://reneweconomy.com.au/2014/spai...y-source-16273

The top 10 clean energy developments of 2013
By Laurie Guevara-Stone on 13 January 2014

2013 was an exciting and inspiring year in many regards. And we’re not just talking the arrival of Prince George or the fact that the new Pope rides an electric bicycle. There were many remarkable clean energy developments that are helping to bring us closer to a clean, prosperous, and secure energy future. Here we list our top ten:

1. Renewables become cheapest option for many utilities

2. Utilities look toward new business models

3. Storage goes mainstream

4. Electric vehicles have banner year

5. Transportation apps are on the rise

6. Cities get serious about building efficiency

7. Deep energy retrofits are the new black

8. China tackles air pollution

9. Companies put a price on carbon

10. Industry gets efficient

http://reneweconomy.com.au/2014/the-...s-of-2013-2013

[amor de cosmos]

Google Investing $75 Million in 182-Megawatt Wind Farm in Texas
14 January 2014

Jan. 14 (Bloomberg) — Google Inc. is investing $75 million in a 182-megawatt wind farm in the Texas panhandle, expanding its support for renewable energy.

The Panhandle 2 project in Carson County is expected to be operational by the end of the year, Mountain View, California-based Google said today in a statement on its blog. The agreement with developer Pattern Energy Group Inc. was finalized in December.

Panhandle 2 will produce enough power for 56,000 homes, according to the statement. It’s Google’s 15th renewable-energy investment and the second in Texas. The company said it invested $200 million in the 161-megawatt Spinning Spur project in January 2013. It’s also buying electricity from a 240-megawatt wind farm in the state.

http://about.bnef.com/bnef-news/goog...farm-in-texas/

Grid-connected storage market set to explode
15. January 2014 | Storage & smart grids, Global PV markets, Industry & Suppliers, Markets & Trends | By: Edgar Meza

The grid-connected energy storage market will increase from 340 MW in 2013 to more than 6 GW in 2017, according to IHS. The U.S. is set to lead the sector.

A new report by market research firm IHS predicts that the United States will be the largest region for grid-connected energy storage installations between 2012 and 2017, accounting for 43% of installations during that period.

Commercial activity in the grid-connected storage market is currently limited to a small number of regions and IHS estimates that only 340 MW of systems were installed across 2012 and 2013, with these predominately demonstration projects.

However, installations will rapidly grow to more than 6 GW in 2017. The availability of financial incentives to reduce the upfront cost of an energy storage system (ESS), the introduction of energy storage procurement and installation targets and changes in electricity grid regulations that create business opportunities for an ESS in the grid will drive the acceleration, according to IHS.

"The grid-connected energy storage market is set to explode, reaching a total of over 40 GW of installations by 2022,” says IHS solar research manager Sam Wilkinson.

The report projects that growth will continue and by 2022, more than 40 GW of energy storage systems will be installed in grid-connected applications, including behind the meter, in the grid and co-located with renewable and conventional generators.

In the U.S., installations are currently driven by pay for performance rates for ESS providing frequency regulation services and by avoiding peak demand charges in commercial electricity tariffs. Longer-term, growth will be driven by legislation such as Assembly Bill 2414 ESS Procurement Targets and by the increasing need for flexible capacity as a result of growing levels of renewable penetration, IHS says.

Other regions that will see significant deployment of grid-connected energy storage systems (GCESS) will be Germany and Japan, where the installation of energy storage will be promoted by increasing renewable penetration, growing peak demand and the increasing financial attractiveness of self-consumption of renewable energy.

http://www.pv-magazine.com/news/deta...ode_100013945/

Enel secures $300 million for investment in Latin America
15. January 2014 | Markets & Trends, Global PV markets, Industry & Suppliers, Investor news | By: Edgar Meza

In Chile, Enel Green Power has begun construction on its first solar park in the country, the 36 MW Diego de Almagro facility.

Italian renewable energy giant Enel Green Power last week signed loan deals for $300 million for investment in Latin America.

Through its Chilean and Mexican subsidiaries, Enel Green Power secured two $150 million credit lines from Spanish bank Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria’s branches in Chile and Mexico.

Enel said in plans to use the $300 million to partially cover investments renewable energy project investments in both countries.

http://www.pv-magazine.com/news/deta...ica_100013948/

[amor de cosmos]

German minister plans prompt cut to renewable energy tariffs
BERLIN Sat Jan 18, 2014 10:49am EST

Jan 18 (Reuters) - Germany's economy minister wants to cut the support price paid for electricity from solar and wind power generators by about a third by 2015, according to a draft proposal for one of the most challenging economic reforms facing Chancellor Angela Merkel's new government.

Under the draft proposal the feed-in tariffs paid to renewable power generators will be cut to an average across all technologies of 12 cents per kiloWatthour (cent/kWh) by 2015 from 17 cents/kWh currently.

And Economy Minister Sigmar Gabriel, who also leads the Social Democrats (SPD), wants the reduction to start taking effect for some new projects from as early as next week, according to the draft seen by Reuters on Saturday.

"The old rates of support (under the old renewable energy law (EEG)) are applicable for wind energy plants that start operating by Dec 31, 2014 and that were authorised ... by Jan. 22, 2014," said the draft outline prepared for a cabinet meeting this week.

The economy ministry, has been merged under Merkel's right-left coalition with the energy portfolio and is run by Gabriel.

Europe's biggest economy is in the throes of shifting away from nuclear and fossil fuel-powered generation to so-called renewable sources, but the move has sent electricity costs for consumers soaring.

When striking a coalition deal late last year, Merkel's conservatives and Gabriel's SPD agreed to limit the growth of renewables and reform the discounts and subsidies afforded to industry for solar and wind power.

According to the draft, the capacity build-up of onshore wind plants and solar plants shall be reduced to 2,500 megawatts per year, while offshore wind parks will be expanded by 6,500 megawatts up to 2020. Bioenergy generation capacity will be increased by 100 megawatts a year.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/...0KS07S20140118

[amor de cosmos]

Graphs of the day: Peaker plants vs green power
By Jeff St John on 20 January 2014
GreenTech Media

Wind and solar power are transitioning from marginal to central players in the grid energy landscape. But wind and solar are also subject to the vagaries of daily and seasonal weather patterns, which means they sometimes can’t be relied on to meet the grid’s critical needs.

That’s particularly true when energy demand is peaking, and the grid turns to rarely used yet critical natural-gas-fired “peaker plants” as its resource of last resort. But could energy storage, demand response and other next-generation grid technologies turn renewable power into both a stable and a peaking resource?

This proposition is fueling debates over the future of the grid around the world.

Take Germany, where gas-fired plants are losing money to solar and wind power. Or look at Southern California, where plans for new resources to make up for power plant closures are pitting traditionalists, who say gas-powered peaker plants need to be part of the mix, against green advocates, who say that renewables plus new technologies can fill the gap without gas.

So who’s right? The answer, of course, is complicated, but one useful measure to start getting at the core of the issue is “capacity factor.” That’s a measure of how much energy a generation resource actually creates over the course of a day or a year, compared to how much it’s capable of generating, or its “nameplate” capacity.

http://reneweconomy.com.au/2014/duel...en-power-45671

New Hampshire introduces virtual net metering of renewables for utility customers
By Andy Colthorpe - 20 January 2014, 11:15
In News, Power Generation, Tariff Watch

The eastern US state of New Hampshire has put in place new interim rules governing the use of virtual net metering for renewable energy generators of up to 1MW capacity.

New Hampshire passed a net metering bill in July which permits owners of net metered renewable energy facilities to share the proceeds of electricity generated with other holders of electricity utility accounts. The latest amendment to Senate Bill 98 (SB 98), the legislative bill enabling virtual net metering, also known as group net metering, came into effect at the beginning of this year after a consultation with the Public Utilities Commission.

Under the new rules, renewable energy generators will sign up as ‘hosts’ of the programme. Bill payers purchasing electricity from the same utility company the host is contracted with can register to join a group with the host responsible for keeping an up to date list of group members.

It will then be the role of a distribution utility company to pay for the host generator’s surplus electricity on a monthly basis. By the beginning of June each year, if the group of consumers has used less electricity than was generated by the host, the host will be eligible for a payment adjustment based on the amount by which the host’s generated exceeded the group’s total use.

Net metering for individual customers has been in place in the state since 1998, with systems of up to 1MW eligible if they generate electricity using solar, wind, geothermal, hydro, tidal, wave, biomass, landfill gas, bio-oil or biodiesel. Combined heat and power systems using natural gas, wood pellets, hydrogen, propane or heating oil are also eligible, providing they have a system efficiency of at least 80%.

http://www.pv-tech.org/news/new_hapm...or_utility_cus

GE Backs German Renewables Subsidy Cuts in Slow Gas Market
By Alex Webb Jan 20, 2014 3:38 AM PT

General Electric Co. (GE) favors reforms to Germany’s energy policy as proposed by new Energy Minister Sigmar Gabriel, saying the reduced renewable energy subsidies will make the market more efficient.

Germany needs to focus energy spending on research and development rather than subsidies, Stephan Reimelt, GE’s head of energy in Germany, said in a telephone interview today. The company today sealed a 100 million-euro ($136 million) contract from Vattenfall SE to supply a gas turbine to a plant in Berlin.

“The direct market requirements for renewable energy is very important, and that is something that we see spelled out very clearly and that we support,” Reimelt said. “Germany should focus on innovation rather than subsidies and building. There is 230 million euros of R&D budget for this space and 20 billion euros of subsidies for renewables.”

Gabriel is proposing to reduce aid for onshore wind units by as much as 20 percent in 2015 from 2013 levels as Chancellor Angela Merkel’s third-term government intends to cut the cost of her plan to shutter Germany’s nuclear plants and move Europe’s biggest economy toward renewables. She said one of her top priorities is to modernize the system of clean-energy aid after rising wind and solar costs sent consumer power bills soaring.

Not Competitive

“The more renewables you bring into the grid, you have to take the fossil power out of the grid,” Reimelt said. “And so the projects and the operating power in gas turbines are heavily decreasing and being reduced to situations where most of these projects are not competitive any more. If you plan a project based on 8,000 operating hours rather than 1,000, you can imagine there is a fundamental difference.”

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-0...as-market.html

[amor de cosmos]

01/17/2014 11:10 AM print story email story
19 Countries Form Africa Clean Energy Corridor
SustainableBusiness.com News

19 countries have committed to developing an Africa Clean Energy Corridor to help the continent leap frog to renewable energy in the face of rising energy demand.

Led by the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), stakeholders believe a regional approach can attract the most investment and optimize the renewable energy mix.

The corridor will span eastern Africa, from Cairo to Cape Town, where transmission infrastructure is being built to meet growing energy demand.

Currently, Ethiopia hosts the continent's biggest wind farm and has plans for 800 megawatts of wind and 1 gigawatt of geothermal. The Corbetti Project is a new model for developing large scale power projects in Africa and is part of the Power Africa initiative that President Obama announced last summer.

IRENA will facilitate the large-scale, transborder initiative by:

• identifying renewable energy development zones - areas of high potential - where solar, wind, geothermal or biomass projects would be clustered;
• facilitating government planning so that renewable energy has bigger share of the energy mix;
• fostering new financing models and investment frameworks that can rapidly get projects on the ground;
• building the local knowledge base and leading public information campaigns.

Demand for electricity is expected to triple in Southern Africa, and quadruple in Eastern Africa over the 25 years, making the region’s current dependence on fossil fuels increasingly unsustainable both economically and environmentally, says IRENA.

80% of Southern Africa's energy comes from coal, which will need to expand without the growth of renewables because demand is growing at 4% a year. East Africa relies on natural gas for 60% of electricity, with demand rising 6% a year.

“Lifting the African population out of energy poverty cannot be fulfilled if a business-as-usual approach is followed,” says Mosad Elmissiry, Head of Energy at the New Partnership for Africa’s Development, an African Union implementing body. “We need a drastic transformation in our approach to developing renewable energy, to be sure renewables are fully utilised. The Clean Energy Corridor can support and further advance the implementation of the regional and continental initiatives already on the ground for further utilisation of renewable energy in Africa.”

http://www.sustainablebusiness.com/i...splay/id/25446

• Video Link

[amor de cosmos]

China’s Wind Power Sector Foresees a Recovery in 2014
Liu Yuanyuan, International Correspondent
January 21, 2014 | 0 Comments

Although some reports indicated that the wind power sector in China showed minimal growth in 2013, the actual situation was not so grim. Recently released statistics pointed to a recovery in the industry, with newly installed capacity rising 24 percent year on year, the bid invitation price rising nearly 15 percent, and the average year-on-year annual wind farm utilization time increasing by more than 100 hours. Newly installed capacity is expected to maintain a growth rate of 20 percent over the next few years, as the grid connection becomes easier and the Chinese government establishes more favorable policies.

Data for 2013 show the wind power industry in China has bottomed out. Last year, the industry recorded newly installed capacity of 16.1 GW, 24 percent more than the 13.0 GW installed in 2012 and bringing the total to 90 GW. The recovery was also reflected in the bid-invitation price for wind turbine generators, which improved to 4,000 yuan ($US 670)/KW in 2013 from a low of 3,600 yuan ($US 600)/KW in June 2011.

According to Shi Pengfei, Honorary Chairman of the Chinese Wind Energy Association, there were three main reasons for the recovery. Firstly, the Ministry of Finance has begun to pay the additional subsidies for renewable energy up front, significantly reducing the time necessary for developers to obtain the subsidies so they can be turned around and deployed. Secondly, the decline in the coal price vastly improved the financial positions of China’s five largest power generation groups, allowing them to allocate more investment in the renewable energy sector. Lastly, developers have realized that they can no longer so viciously cut the bid-invitation price for wind turbine generators, as this would lead to poor quality equipment and in turn have a negative effect on their productivity. In the first half of 2013, the capacity in tender invitations totaled 8.8 GW, an increase of 100 percent year on year.

The limitation on wind power supply saw relief last year, with the average wind farm utilization exceeded 2,000 hours, compared with 1,900 hours in 2012, according to Shi Lishan, Deputy Head of the New and Renewable Energy Division at the National Energy Administration.

In 2014, several favorable policies will be rolled out. At the beginning of the new year, the National Energy Administration issued the Notice on Building Offshore Wind Power Projects, according to which the administration will choose several of the larger projects in several provinces this year as the ones to develop, said Shi. In addition, the watchdog organization will issue the long-awaited Quota Management Methods on Renewable-Energy Power, a document delineating a clear schema for the quota distribution of renewable energy for power generating companies, grid companies and provinces. This will allow all parties to deploy more wind power and PV power projects as the seek to make full use of their quotas.

http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/...covery-in-2014

01/21/2014 04:48 PM
Wind Shatters Records, to Be the Leading Source of Electricity, For Which Country?
SustainableBusiness.com News

There is now one country in the world where wind energy is the primary electricity source - you'd expect it to be Denmark, but it's Spain.

Before we get to Spain, let's look at Denmark, which also has big news to report: throughout December, wind supplied 54.8% of the country's electricity and 68.5% during Christmas week, reports The Copenhagen Post. Sure, demand is down during that week when people are off from work, but it's still impressive that on December 21, wind turbines produced enough electricity to exceed demand - 102%.

In 2013, wind parks produced 11.1 billion kilowatt hours of energy from 4.792 gigawatts of capacity - meeting 33.2% of all electriciity consumed in Denmark.

As a comparison, China installed 16.1 GW of wind capacity in 2013 alone!

http://www.sustainablebusiness.com/i...splay/id/25456

[amor de cosmos]

GDF Suez Selling Power From 99-Megawatt Wind Farm to BC Hydro
23 January 2014

Jan. 23 (Bloomberg) — GDF Suez SA’s Canadian unit began selling electricity from a 99-megawatt wind farm in British Columbia to the provincial power authority.

The C$325 million ($293 million) Cape Scott project is now in operation on Vancouver Island and is jointly owned by GDF Suez Canada, Mitsui & Co. and Fiera Axium Infrastructure Inc., the French energy company said today in a statement.

The wind farm has 55 1.8-megawatt Vestas Wind Systems A/S turbines. BC Hydro agreed to purchase the power under a 20-year contract.

http://about.bnef.com/bnef-news/gdf-...m-to-bc-hydro/

[amor de cosmos]

News Release NR-0414
NREL Study: Active Power Control of Wind Turbines Can Improve Power Grid Reliability
January 20, 2014

The Energy Department’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), along with partners from the Electric Power Research Institute and the University of Colorado have completed a comprehensive study to understand how wind power technology can assist the power grid by controlling the active power output being placed onto the system. The rest of the power system’s resources have traditionally been adjusted around wind to support a reliable and efficient system. The research that led to this report challenges that concept.

The study, “Active Power Controls from Wind Power: Bridging the GapsPDF”, finds that wind power can support the power system by adjusting its power output to enhance system reliability. Additionally, the study finds that it often could be economically beneficial to provide active power control , and potentially damaging loads on turbines from providing this control is negligible. Active power control helps balance load with generation at various times, avoiding erroneous power flows, involuntary load shedding, machine damage, and the risk of potential blackouts.

“Utilities and independent system operators are all seeking strategies to better integrate wind and other variable generation into their electric systems,” NREL Analyst Erik Ela said. “Few have considered using wind power to support power system reliability.”

The study included a number of different power system simulations, control simulations, and field tests using turbines at NREL’s National Wind Technology Center (NWTC). The study developed proposals for new ancillary services designs in U.S. wholesale electricity markets, studied how wind power affects system frequency in the western U.S. with and without active power control, and tested the use of active power control at the NWTC to better understand the performance and structural impacts on wind turbines when providing active power control to the electric system.

“Although many of the control strategies have been proven technically feasible and are used in many regions of the world, only a limited number of wind turbines in the United States are currently providing active power control,” Ela said. “The reason is that the stakeholders – system operators, manufacturers, regulators and the plant owners – all have different goals and perspectives. This report covers many different aspects of the topic in order to address the diverse viewpoints throughout the wind industry.”

Wind is one of the fastest growing sources of power generation – supplying up to 20% of electricity in many areas of the world. In some regions of the U.S., wind sometimes provides more than 50% of the electric power. The challenge with integrating high concentrations of wind power into electric systems is that it is a variable, uncertain resource, commonly considered “non-dispatchable.”

The forms of active power control considered in this study are synthetic inertial control, primary frequency control (PFC), and automatic generation control (AGC) regulation. For wind power to provide active power control services, three things must happen:

• The wind power response needs to improve power system reliability; not impair it
• It must be economically viable for wind power plants as well as electricity consumers. Because power plants may incur additional capital costs for the controls and reduce the amount of energy it sells to the market, there must be an incentive to provide the service
• Active power control should not have negative impacts on the turbine loading or induce structural damage that could reduce the life of the turbine.

http://www.nrel.gov/news/press/2014/7301.html

Could Wind Emerge As a Major Provider of Frequency Regulation?
Analysis shows that by adjusting power output, wind farms can provide money-making frequency regulation services.
Martin LaMonica
January 24, 2014

Wind energy suffers from an image problem: because it's intermittent, wind complicates the grid’s operation and requires fossil fuel power plants for backup. But wind farms could actually improve power reliability in an economic way, according to a recent study.

In an analysis, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) showed that wind farms can quickly change their output to provide frequency regulation, a service grid operators rely on to ensure reliable power delivery. The finding could change how regulators, grid operators and wind-farm owners view wind energy.

Today, natural gas power plants are often used for frequency regulation. They ramp up output to maintain a balance between power supply and demand, which keeps the grid’s frequency signal stable.

Wind turbines can perform the same function by lowering their output, according to NREL wind analyst and study co-author Erik Ela. By changing the pitch of their blades slightly, wind turbines can make second-by-second curtailments that allow grid operators to keep the power supply and demand balance, he said.

Normally, a wind farm operator would not want to curtail a wind farm, since they earn money based on how many megawatts-hours are sold. And because the fuel is free, wind power is typically tapped before other forms of power generation in wholesale energy markets. But in certain situations, a wind farm can earn more money by providing frequency regulation services, said Ela.

"Because the grid values these services so much, [wind farms] can actually earn more money by curtailing and providing services than if they’re providing energy," he said.

For example, there are times in the middle of the night when wholesale energy prices are negative because there is excess wind power. At those times, frequency regulation services would be more valuable than providing energy.

http://www.greentechmedia.com/articl...ncy-regulation

Forget Intermittency: NREL Says Wind Energy Can Boost Grid Reliability

We’ve all heard the warnings about how intermittent renewables could “crash” the grid if for instance all of a sudden the wind stops blowing and grid operators are left in the lurch for power when they need it. But what if wind turbines actually improve grid reliability?

May sound far-fetched to some people, but that’s exactly what the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) reports in the new study Active Power Controls from Wind Power: Bridging the Gaps.

Previous studies have focused on wind energy forecasting as the key to balancing wind’s availability and the power grid’s demand, but this new hypothesis could vastly expand the relationship between wind turbines and the grid.

*snip*

Intermittency Mitigated By Recent Developments

The traditional issue facing wind energy in this context is that it can’t be “turned on” by grid operators whenever they need it. Unless the wind is blowing, turbines can’t generate electricity.

But wind has shown its chops in helping keep the lights on as extreme weather has hit the U.S. in recent memory – just consider the fact that wind energy was credited with preventing blackouts in Texas and parts of the Midwest when the polar vortex spiked power demand and forced some power plants offline.

NREL’s report also notes that almost all grid operators across the U.S., as well as many power systems outside the areas covered by regional grids, are using wind farms in dispatch procedures to manage transmission congestion at five-minute intervals – meaning it’s now a generation resource to be dispatched (for free) when needed.

“Utilities and independent system operators are all seeking strategies to better integrate wind and other variable generation into their electric systems,” said Ela. “Few have considered using wind power to support power system reliability.”

http://cleantechnica.com/2014/01/24/...d-reliability/

Energy News
Startup Thinks Its Battery Will Solve Renewable Energy’s Big Flaw
Aquion has started production of a low-cost sodium-ion battery aimed at making renewable energy viable.
By Kevin Bullis on January 23, 2014

A former Sony TV factory near Pittsburgh is coming to life again after lying idle for four years. Whirring robotic arms have started to assemble a new kind of battery that could make the grid more efficient and let villages run on solar power around the clock.

Aquion, the startup that developed the battery, has finished installing its first commercial-scale production line at the factory, and is sending out batteries for customers to evaluate. It recently raised $55 million of venture capital funding from investors including Bill Gates. The money will help it ramp up to full-speed production by this spring.

Jay Whitacre, the Carnegie Mellon professor of materials science and engineering who invented the new battery, says it will cost about as much as a lead-acid battery—one of the cheapest types of battery available—but will last more than twice as long. And while lead is toxic and the sulfuric-acid electrolyte in lead-acid batteries is potentially dangerous, the new battery is made of materials so safe you can eat them (although Whitacre says they taste terrible). Nontoxic materials are also a good fit for remote areas, where maintenance is difficult.

Most importantly, by providing an affordable way to store solar power for use at night or during cloudy weather, the technology could allow isolated populations to get electricity from renewable energy, rather than from polluting diesel generators. Combining solar power and inexpensive batteries would also be cheaper than running diesel generators in places where delivering fuel is expensive (see “How Solar-Based Microgrids Could Bring Power to Millions”).

The batteries could allow the grid to accommodate greater amounts of intermittent renewable energy. As Aquion scales up production and brings down costs, the batteries could also be used instead of a type of natural gas power plant—called a peaker plant—often used to balance supply and demand on the grid. When recharged using renewables, the batteries don’t need fuel, so they’re cleaner than the natural gas power plants.

http://www.technologyreview.com/news...rgys-big-flaw/

[amor de cosmos]

India to Prepare Offshore Wind Plan Trade Group Says
By Alex Morales Jan 27, 2014 4:01 AM PT

India is seeking advice from the European Union on how to develop its potential for generating electricity from offshore wind turbines.

The four-year project will focus on the states of Gujarat and Tamil Nadu, according to the Global Wind Energy Council, which is working on the plan. The project is supported by 4 million euros ($5.5 million) of EU aid, the group said in a statement today.

India on Jan. 9 said it will establish an offshore wind agency. The country is already Asia’s biggest wind-turbine market after China, with 20 gigawatts of projects on land. It’s now looking to the sea because many of the best onshore sites have been taken, and poor roads make it more difficult to deploy larger, more productive turbines.

The project “falls perfectly in line with the vision of the government of India for development of offshore wind power in the country,” Alok Srivastava, joint secretary of the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy, said in the statement.

Currently, the bulk of the world’s offshore wind projects are in Europe, in the North, Irish and Baltic Seas. The only other substantial market is China, according to GWEC, which also identified Japan, Korea and Taiwan as having “exciting developments.”

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-0...roup-says.html

Jan 27, 2014
What Does it Cost to Convert Renewables into Electricity?
Study Compares the Cost of Electricity Production from Renewable Energy
Press Release 3/14, January 27, 2014



A study from the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems ISE compares the present costs for conversion of different energy forms into electricity and gives a prognosis for the further cost development up to 2030. The scientists in Freiburg analyzed both the levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) from renewables as well as from conventional energy technologies. They present comparative figures for new power plants constructed in Germany, which are based on solar, wind energy and biogas as well as brown coal, hard coal and gas. The study shows that the LCOE from renewables has decreased rapidly over the last years and has even caught up with the generation costs from conventional power plants. Forecasts for Germany indicate that the costs to produce electricity from PV and wind will be less than fossil fuel plants by 2030.

*snip*

Photovoltaics and Wind: Outlook and Forecast 2030

After evaluating and comparing all of the data, the scientists at Fraunhofer ISE present the following outlook: “By 2030 the electricity generation costs from PV will decline down to 0.06 - 0.09 euro/kWh. At this value, even small roof-installed PV systems will be able to compete with onshore wind and also with the higher generation costs in the future from brown coal, hard coal and combined cycle gas power plants,” says Prof. Eicke R. Weber, director of Fraunhofer ISE. Also, onshore wind will experience a decrease in the electricity generation cost, as compared to conventional power plants. At the latest, this technology will be competitive with brown coal in 2020, since with the progressing energy transformation, the number of full load operating hours will decline and the price of the carbon credits could increase. Upon comparing the different renewable technologies, the results of the study show that, in the future, the costs of PV and onshore wind will lie well below 0.10 euro/kWh. Both technologies will clearly win the race towards cost leadership. Although offshore wind has higher costs, it also has more hours at full load operation. The higher costs for biomass systems are balanced by its controllability.

http://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/en/pres...to-electricity

Fraunhofer ISE: Solar PV and onshore wind to generate electricity below cost of fossil fuels by 2030
By Mark Osborne - 27 January 2014, 14:48
In News, Power Generation, Market Watch

The levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) from both solar PV and onshore wind in Germany are expected to decline below that of fossil fuels by 2030, according to a new study conducted by the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems ISE.

The cost of electricity from onshore wind was found to have already fallen below the costs from hard coal and combined cycle gas power plants. The LCOE from onshore wind was found to be currently in the range of 0.05 and 0.11 €/kWh.

However, Fraunhofer ISE said that dependent on the number of full load operating hours measured for brown coal-fired power stations in Germany, the LCOE currently extends up to 0.053 €/kWh, while hard coal extends up to 0.080 €/kWh and combined cycle gas power plants LCOE can extend to up to 0.098 €/kWh.

“The cost of electricity generation is not the only decisive factor in determining the competiveness of renewable and conventional energy sources. The upstream and downstream costs also play a major role,” said Christoph Kost, project head at Fraunhofer ISE. “The ambient conditions such as the solar radiation and the wind availability as well as the financing costs and the risk premium for new power plants all influence the results substantially. Only by including these factors in our study are we able to realistically compare the levelized cost of electricity from the different technologies and thus convincingly present the cost-competitiveness of renewables.”

http://www.pv-tech.org/news/fraunhof...ity_below_cost

Citigroup Sees Capital Markets Reviving Renewables
By Sally Bakewell Jan 27, 2014 7:55 AM PT

Renewable-energy companies will derive more of their funding from bond markets as banks curb lending to the industry, Citigroup Inc. (C)’s head of environmental finance said.

Green-bond sales and initial public offerings will expand after kicking off last year, Michael Eckhart said by telephone. Bonds backing clean-energy and environmental ventures may account for 10 percent to 20 percent of the $7 trillion-a-year market for the securities within a decade, he said.

Eckhart’s comments cast a positive light on an industry whose funding is threatened by cuts in support for renewables from governments in the U.S. and Europe. Money managers are seeking investments that highlight their green credentials while offering an alternative to more volatile equities.

“We’re going to see a multiplier effect as we scale up use of these mechanisms,” Eckhart said. “This is the beginning of a transition from bank loans and equity financings to refinancings in the capital markets for this industry. We talked about it three years ago. Now we’re doing the deals.”

Banks in Europe, the U.S. and Japan reduced lending to clean-energy projects as the economic crisis took hold. While they’ll retain a role in the industry as they can take on project risks that institutional investors can’t sustain, capital markets will increasingly provide finance, Eckhart said.

*snip*

Emerging Markets

The decline in investment was in part a result of falling technology costs, according to Eckhart. Lower spending in the U.S. and Europe, where nations cut subsidies and other support programs, will be offset by emerging-market growth, he said.

Expansion in such markets will drive up investment in 2014 and other countries around the world will increase spending in the following two years, he said. The resurgence of wind-power developments in the U.S., where an industry tax credit has been extended, may add about $15 billion a year alone, while growth in India, Africa and the Middle East will also pick up, he said.

“Renewable energy is starting to capture significant market share and hurt the incumbent competition,” he said. “The serious game is on.”

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-0...enewables.html

[amor de cosmos]

Wind Power Growth To Sharpen In Emerging Markets

New research from Navigant research predicts that demand for renewable energy in Africa and the former Soviet Union, as well as hiccups across the developed world, will see wind power experience fastest growth in emerging markets.

Several factors are hampering the growth of the market across the developed world, including austerity measures in a number of European countries, and a boom-and-bust cycle in the United States. These halts come at the same time that the emerging world are looking for technologies able to generate enough energy to support their burgeoning populations while at the same time creating less of an environmental impact than traditional generation techniques.

“Amidst the slowdown in the established markets, the demand for wind power in certain emerging markets will make these regions critical to the global wind market,” says Feng Zhao, research director with Navigant Research. “The opportunities arising in these underserved regions will not only help reduce the exposure of wind turbine manufacturers to ups and downs in the mainstream wind power markets, but will also hold the key for current leading turbine suppliers to maintain their leadership in the future.”

http://cleantechnica.com/2014/01/28/...rging-markets/
http://www.navigantresearch.com/rese...ets-assessment

In Texas, Wind Nears 10 Percent of Electricity Generation
Wind power’s share of electricity generation in Texas rose to 9.9 percent in 2013, more than double what it was five years ago.
Earthtechling, Pete Danko
January 27, 2014

Wind power generation in Texas continued its steady upward march in 2013, and it’s now on the doorstop of generating 10 percent of the state’s electricity supply.

New data from grid operator ERCOT showed that wind provided 9.9 percent of Lone Star State electrical generation last year, up from 9.2 percent in 2012. The 9.9 percent proportion represents a doubling in five years -- in 2008, wind was at 4.9 percent.

Wind owned a bigger slice of generation even though the pie grew, with Texans using 2.1 percent more electricity in 2013 compared to 2012. Wind’s share grew because the amount of wind generation rose by a whopping 9.7 percent, increasing from 29,803,361 megawatt-hours to 32,705,373 megawatt-hours.

As a percentage of overall energy generation, wind did best in the spring month of March, when its share was 15.2 percent, but wind output actually peaked in May, at 3,691,496 megawatt-hours. The low point in output was in September, at 1,711,160 megawatt-hours.

http://www.greentechmedia.com/articl...ity-Generation

[amor de cosmos]

Largest Wind Turbine In World Ready For Production
Originally published on ClimateProgress.
By Ari Phillips

On Tuesday the world’s largest and most powerful wind turbine swung into gear at the Danish National Test Centre for Large Wind Turbines in Østerild. The prototype V164-8.0 MW wind turbine is 720 feet tall, has 260-foot blades, and can generate 8 megawatts of power — enough to supply electricity for 7,500 average European households or about 3,000 American households.

A joint venture between Vestas and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, the turbine is slated to go into production next year and was designed to take advantage of the growing offshore wind industry across Europe.

“We have now completed the production, testing, and installation of the V164-8.0 MW as planned, thanks to the team’s intense effort during a time when Vestas has reduced its investments and lowered fixed costs,” Anders Vedel, Chief Technology Officer for Vestas, said. “We now look forward to evaluating the turbine’s performance on site.”

http://cleantechnica.com/2014/01/28/...dy-production/

2014 Will Be a Memorable Year for Cleantech
Bob Lockhart — January 13, 2014

Is January 13 too early to call 2014 a year to remember?

We have recently published our fifth annual white paper, Smart Utilities: 10 Trends to Watch in 2014 and Beyond. The free white paper, more than past editions, details the massive transformations facing utilities and their business models. Things are just so different now!

Navigant Research offers another peek into the future with our webinar, “The Year Ahead in Cleantech” on Tuesday, January 14 at 2 p.m. Eastern Standard Time. I have dramatically titled the Smart Utilities section of the webinar, “Everything You Know is Wrong.” Perhaps that’s overly dramatic, but so much is changing, it’s not far off. Key trends that will be discussed include:

• Distributed generation begins to rock utilities’ world: Utility business model are likely to change, perhaps dramatically, as they suffer the one-two punch of reduced energy revenue and increased payouts to distributed generators
• Solar power generation’s impact on distribution grids will be enormous: Some governments have aggressively supported residential solar generation while others have not - What happens in either case?
• New grid-balancing technologies that deal with distributed inputs can make granular, automated decisions that enable utilities to run grids more efficiently while remaining within mandated voltage ranges
• Energy efficiency may happen in our lifetimes: We have detected signs of life in the home energy market during 2013, with some encouraging pilot programs that may foretell new life for HEM, the forever stepchild of cleantech
• Utilities are changing their view of the smart grid: We observed some interesting behavior changes during 2013, among both utilities and the vendors that sell to them
• Smart grid applications continue their rise: Navigant Research has recently completed an examination of Smart Grid IT, and this seminar will discuss some of the leading applications

http://www.navigantresearch.com/blog...-for-cleantech

[amor de cosmos]

Gone With the Wind: Weak Returns Cripple German Renewables
By Gunther Latsch, Anne Seith and Gerald Traufetter
January 30, 2014 – 03:19 PM

Investments in renewable energy were supposed to be a sure thing, with wind park operators promising annual returns of up to 20 percent. More often than not, however, such pledges have been illusory -- and many investors have lost their principal to boot.

Three broadcasting vans. Ten camera teams. Some 50 journalists. There certainly wasn't any lack of attention being paid to Carsten Rodbertus last Thursday as he stepped up to the podium in an assembly hall in northern Germany belonging to the renewable energy firm Prokon. And the company founder, with his gray ponytail, didn't disappoint. The press conference quickly became a spectacle.

Several hundred employees welcomed Rodbertus with applause and shouts of "bravo" -- and that despite the fact that he had brought an insolvency trustee along with him. Still, Robertus insisted that the company was essentially healthy. Recently, he noted, workers had labored "12 days in a row for 12 hours a day" in an attempt to ward off bankruptcy.

The fact that they weren't successful is, according to Rodbertus, the fault of the company's investors, who backed the firm to the tune of €1.4 billion ($1.9 billion). Currently, many of them are demanding the returns that they were once promised: at least 6 percent interest per year or a refund of their principle if they wished to back out. Last week, the mounting claims led Prokon to declare bankruptcy -- 75,000 stakeholders could be left out in the cold.

Thus far, it is the highest profile failure of a business model that both politicians and investors praised for being doubly beneficial. Not only would investors boost their own accounts, but they would also help the environment at the same time. And because the state guaranteed high feed-in rates for 20 years, the promises made by financial advisors -- secure returns with a good conscience -- seemed plausible.

Indications are mounting, however, that green capitalism will not be able to meet all expectations. In courts around the country, complaints are mounting from wind park investors who haven't received a dividend disbursement in years or whose parks went belly up. Consumer protection activists are complaining that many projects are poorly structured and lack transparency. In the renewables sector, fear is spreading that the Prokon bankruptcy -- combined with plans for a reduction in the guaranteed feed-in tariff recently released by new German Economy Minister Sigmar Gabriel -- could scare away investors.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/...-a-946367.html

'Near Unanimous Support': Kansas Sends a Renewable-energy Message to America
Carl Levesque, AWEA
January 30, 2014 | 0 Comments

News out of the heart of America’s Heartland reminds us all of just how much America loves renewable energy.

The Wind Coalition and the Climate and Energy Project released new poll data showing that Kansans overwhelmingly — and we mean overwhelmingly — support the development of renewable energy resources in the their state. The poll, conducted by North Star Opinion Research, found that 91 percent of Kansas voters are strongly supportive of using renewable energy. It showed further that renewable energy is just as popular as it was in 2009, when Kansas first pursued renewable energy legislation. Last year, efforts to roll back the state’s renewable energy law failed in the legislature. Small wonder.

Again, 91 percent. That’s nine out of 10 people — people who are already well familiar with wind energy because it’s being developed in their state — who support renewables. Nine out of 10 translates into a great free-throw percentage in basketball; in polling, it’s almost unheard of. Moreover, it’s not often you can say a poll shows “near unanimous support statewide,” as the news release states.

Why do Kansans like renewables so much? Probably because renewables have been great for the state’s economy.

"Kansas has been a significant beneficiary of renewable energy investment with nearly $8 billion of dollars in new investment and more than 12,000 new jobs in a decade,” said Jeff Clark, Executive Director of The Wind Coalition. “This poll underscores the sentiment developers see in the field — Kansans want to develop renewable energy, and more of it.”

What’s almost as noteworthy as the sweeping support is its breadth. Kansas voters, the poll found, support the 2009 renewable energy law across the political spectrum. The poll found that the law receives a strong 73 percent show of support among Republicans, 75 percent among Independents and 82 percent among Democrats. And, two-thirds of voters would support increasing the state’s renewable energy standard, even if it meant a $1-2 increase on their bill.

http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/...age-to-america

The Road to Renewable Energy in Alberta, Canada
Randolph Seibold, Terra1 Renewables
January 30, 2014 | 0 Comments

It is well known in clean energy circles that Alberta, aside from the oil sands, has some of the best solar resources in North America. It also generates more emissions from coal-fired power plants than the rest of Canada combined, which amounts to about 51 percent of the country's power generation-based emissions. The road to bring more solar and renewable power online in the oil and gas province has proven to be a challenging one, given its lack of market incentives or favorable policies.

Shifting Landscape

Despite challenges, new installations for solar PV are roughly doubling each year. Gordon Howell of Howell-Mayhew Engineering estimates a 400 percent growth in the past five years. Skyfire Energy, a 12-year-old company serving Alberta, British Columbia and Ontario says it has grown its workforce from three to fourteen in the past five years, along with revenues.

Overall, the level of solar in the wind-dominated Alberta renewable energy industry is a tiny fraction of what is possible, given its robust level of sun-hours per year (concentrated in the province’s southern region). But there are many examples of the changing energy landscape for solar and renewable power in Alberta.

Its first-ever utility-scale PV plant is approaching construction in Brooks. GTE Solar, a subsidiary of GTE Power, is developing the 15-megawatt project. The Environment Canada building in Edmonton is finalizing its 300-kW PV system, one of the largest building-mounted systems in Western Canada. The 5-megawatt Lethbridge Biogas Cogeneration Facility has just completed construction and commenced operation. A similar facility is planned for Lacombe, using abundant cattle industry feedstocks (Alberta is home to over 2 million cows). And SAEWA (Southern Alberta Energy-from-Waste) coalition, now comprised of about 70 towns and counties, is moving forward on detailed engineering studies for a major facility in their region.

http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/...alberta-canada

[amor de cosmos]

U.S. Wind Power Building Boom Follows 92 Percent Crash
30 January 2014

Jan. 30 (Bloomberg) — More than 12,000 megawatts of U.S. wind farms were under construction at the end of 2013, the most ever, as developers raced to qualify for an expiring federal tax credit, according to the American Wind Energy Association.

That’s about 11 times the amount of wind power that went into service last year after installations plunged 92 percent to 1,084 megawatts, the Washington-based trade group said today in a statement.

Congress let the production tax credit lapse briefly at the start of last year, and uncertainty over the policy slowed wind development almost to a halt after 13,131 megawatts of new turbines were added in 2012. Once the credit was reinstated, it took much of the year for development activity to resume, said Liz Salerno, AWEA’s chief analyst.

“We knew 2013 was going to be lackluster after the record installations in 2012,” she said in an interview today. Now the industry is gearing up for significant growth, with 10,900 megawatts beginning construction in the fourth quarter. “That’s an unprecedented level of activity.”

Developers that signed contracts to sell wind power to utilities, and haven’t yet started construction should complete an additional 5,200 megawatts over the next two years, AWEA said.

http://about.bnef.com/bnef-news/u-s-...percent-crash/

How One Texas Town Is Big, Really Big, On Wind Power
By Rocky Mountain Institute Renewable Energy, Wind Power January 30, 2014

Denton, Texas, a bustling community near Lewisville Lake 30 miles northwest of Dallas, is known for its festivals and eclectic music scene, often compared to the Austin of 20 years ago. But Denton (pop. 113,000) is also a leader in clean energy, boasting more wind power per capita than any other city in the nation.

Denton’s electric utility company, Denton Municipal Electric (DME), has been municipally owned since 1905. Up until 2008, DME provided Denton with energy from a mix of equal shares gas and coal. But the advantage of being owned by its 48,000 customers means DME does what its customers want, which was more green energy.

In 2009, DME signed a multi-year power purchase agreement with NextEra Energy Power Marketing, which owns and operates the Wolf Ridge Wind Farm near Muenster, Texas, north of Denton. NextEra now sells 60 megawatts of wind power to DME, providing approximately 40 percent of Denton’s electricity needs on an average yearly basis.

According to Brian Daskam, energy services development officer for DME, “Having citizens own the company instead of shareholders, there’s the potential to make this decision to go green easier. We’re not putting out our monthly returns to shareholders who live all over the country. It’s people that live here. Denton is an environmentally progressive city, and it’s our job to get people what they want.”

Another thing DME had going was that it could invest in wind power without raising rates. The Wolf Ridge Wind Farm is only 30 miles from Denton, keeping transmission costs low, and allowing retail electricity prices to stay consistently below the north Texas deregulated market. (Denton residents payrock bottom residential prices of less than $0.06 per kWh.)

DME also receives electricity from methane captured from the local landfill. The landfill gas energy project, implemented in 2008, produces 1.6 megawatts of electricity, enough to power 1,600 homes. Homeowners who would like an even higher renewable mix can opt in to the GreenSense program, which uses RECs to achieve 100 percent renewable supply.

http://www.earthtechling.com/2014/01...on-wind-power/

Fastest Growth in Wind Power Will Occur in Emerging Markets
January 27, 2014

Several factors, including austerity measures implemented in a number of European economies and boom-and-bust cycles in the United States caused by fluctuating policy on production tax credits, are combining to limit the growth of wind power markets across much of the developed world in the coming years. At the same time, demand for wind power in Africa and the former Soviet Union is growing. Click to tweet: According to a new report from Navigant Research, while many established markets are experiencing flat or single-digit growth rates, the average compound annual growth rate for 10 selected emerging wind markets in Africa and the former Soviet Union from 2013 to 2023 will be 21.9 percent.

“Amidst the slowdown in the established markets, the demand for wind power in certain emerging markets will make these regions critical to the global wind market,” says Feng Zhao, research director with Navigant Research. “The opportunities arising in these underserved regions will not only help reduce the exposure of wind turbine manufacturers to ups and downs in the mainstream wind power markets, but will also hold the key for current leading turbine suppliers to maintain their leadership in the future.”

Many of these countries are starting from installed bases near zero, but will experience rapid growth starting around 2015, according to the report. South Africa’s Renewable Energy Independent Power Producer Procurement program, which calls for 3,320 megawatts (MW) of wind power, has been attractive for foreign investors since its launch in December 2011. In Russia, the world’s largest country by area, about two-thirds of the hinterland is beyond the reach of the centralized power grid, and wind provides the ideal solution for isolated communities that rely on expensive fuel for power generation.

http://www.navigantresearch.com/news...erging-markets