Reliability and low cost? Isn't that what critics say renewable energy is missing? If wind and solar can supply 99.9% of the nation's energy needs, then geothermal, hydro, biofuels, and some others can make up the balance.
From Science Daily:
Renewable energy could fully power a large electric grid 99.9 percent of
the time by 2030 at costs comparable to today's electricity expenses,
according to new research by the University of Delaware and Delaware
Technical Community College.
A well-designed combination of wind power, solar power and storage in
batteries and fuel cells would nearly always exceed electricity demands
while keeping costs low, the scientists found.
"These results break the conventional wisdom that renewable energy is
too unreliable and expensive," said co-author Willett Kempton,
professor in the School of Marine Science and Policy in UD's College of
Earth, Ocean, and Environment. "The key is to get the right combination
of electricity sources and storage -- which we did by an exhaustive
search -- and to calculate costs correctly."
The authors developed a computer model to consider 28 billion
combinations of renewable energy sources and storage mechanisms, each
tested over four years of historical hourly weather data and electricity
demands. The model incorporated data from within a large regional grid
called PJM Interconnection, which includes 13 states from New Jersey to
Illinois and represents one-fifth of the United States' total electric
grid.
Unlike other studies, the model focused on minimizing costs instead
of the traditional approach of matching generation to electricity use.
The researchers found that generating more electricity than needed
during average hours -- in order to meet needs on high-demand but
low-wind power hours -- would be cheaper than storing excess power for
later high demand.
Storage is relatively costly because the storage medium, batteries or
hydrogen tanks, must be larger for each additional hour stored.
One of several new findings is that a very large electric system can be run almost entirely on renewable energy.
"For example, using hydrogen for storage, we can run an electric
system that today would meeting a need of 72 GW, 99.9 percent of the
time, using 17 GW of solar, 68 GW of offshore wind, and 115 GW of inland
wind," said co-author Cory Budischak, instructor in the Energy
Management Department at Delaware Technical Community College and former
UD student.
A GW ("gigawatt") is a measure of electricity generation capability.
One GW is the capacity of 200 large wind turbines or of 250,000 rooftop
solar systems. Renewable electricity generators must have higher GW
capacity than traditional generators, since wind and solar do not
generate at maximum all the time.
The study sheds light on what an electric system might look like with
heavy reliance on renewable energy sources. Wind speeds and sun
exposure vary with weather and seasons, requiring ways to improve
reliability. In this study, reliability was achieved by: expanding the
geographic area of renewable generation, using diverse sources,
employing storage systems, and for the last few percent of the time,
burning fossil fuels as a backup.
During the hours when there was not enough renewable electricity to
meet power needs, the model drew from storage and, on the rare hours
with neither renewable electricity or stored power, then fossil fuel.
When there was more renewable energy generated than needed, the model
would first fill storage, use the remaining to replace natural gas for
heating homes and businesses and only after those, let the excess go to
waste.
The study used estimates of technology costs in 2030 without
government subsidies, comparing them to costs of fossil fuel generation
in wide use today. The cost of fossil fuels includes both the fuel cost
itself and the documented external costs such as human health effects
caused by power plant air pollution. The projected capital costs for
wind and solar in 2030 are about half of today's wind and solar costs,
whereas maintenance costs are projected to be approximately the same.
"Aiming for 90 percent or more renewable energy in 2030, in order to
achieve climate change targets of 80 to 90 percent reduction of the
greenhouse gas carbon dioxide from the power sector, leads to economic
savings," the authors observe.
Cheaper solar panels on the way
Finally! I was hoping that government incentives, high fuel prices, and other factors would push down the price of photovoltaic (PV) panels, making solar power a viable alternative to fossil fuels. It's been a long, slow process, but between economies of scale and technological development, we're getting there.
In addition to lowering the price of panels, increasing their efficiency, learning how to deploy them, and developing panels that use more of the sunlight spectrum to generate electricity, are all helping to make our transition to sustainable energy something I might see in my lifetime.
From Earth Times:
Solar panel image; Credit: © Shutterstock
Cheaper solar energy is on the way through more sustainable roof
tiles that generate high levels of renewable energy, say American
scientists.
As there is enough sun falling on domestic roofs to potentially supply most, if not all of America's electricity, scientists are excited about future prospects.
Tiles that take electricity from the sun, and can be fitted just like traditional roofing, are already commercially available.
Now, solar cells created from "earth-abundant" materials are more productive, affordable and flexible than ever, making it easier to deploy photovoltaics into new areas of buildings, the scientists believe.
The scientists' comments came during a sustainability symposium at the American Chemical Society's (ACS) 244th National Meeting & Exposition. ACS is the world's largest scientific society.
One of those taking part, Harry A. Atwater, Ph.D., says, "Sustainability involves developing technology that can be productive over the long-term, using resources in ways that meet today's needs without jeopardizing the ability of future generations to meet their needs. That's exactly what we are doing with these new solar-energy conversion devices."
The new photovoltaic devices use freely-available cheaper metals such and copper and zinc, described as "earth-abundant materials". They replace indium, gallium and other "rare earth" elements. These often come from foreign countries. For instance, China mines more than 90% of the rare earth elements in batteries for hybrid cars, magnets, electronics and similar high-tech products.
Dr Atwater and James C. Stevens, Ph.D., described how to replace expensive rare earth metals in photovoltaic devices with cheaper and more sustainable materials.
Dr Atwater, a California Institute of Technology physicist, and Dr Stevens, Dow Chemical Company chemist, led collaboration between the two in researching and developing new electronic materials to be used in solar power generation devices.
New devices using zinc phosphide and copper oxide shattered records for the amount of electrical current and voltage generated by thin-film solar energy conversion devices that were made with zinc and copper.
The advance reinforces evidence that zinc phosphide and copper oxide could achieve very high efficiencies and produce electricity at a similar cost to coal-fired energy plants within 20 years.
Dr Stevens assisted in the development of Dow's PowerHouse Solar Shingle at the end of 2011, which generates electricity and can be fitted like traditional roofing. The special shingles make use of copper indium gallium diselenide photovoltaic technology. Dr Stevens and his team are now aiming to incorporate sustainable earth-abundant materials into PowerHouse shingles.
He says, "The United States alone has about 69 billion square feet of appropriate residential rooftops that could be generating electricity from the sun. The sunlight falling on those roofs could generate at least 50 percent of the nation's electricity, and some estimates put that number closer to 100 percent. With earth-abundant technology, that energy could be harvested, at an enormous benefit to consumers and the environment."
The ACS symposium has also heard about:
Moves by mining company Molycorp to increase and update its
Mountain Pass, Colorado, facilities to boost production of rare earth
elements with more eco-friendly and cheaper technology.
A summary of the challenges of how to maintain a
sustainable supply of critical materials from rare earth elements to
more abundant metals such as copper.
A new material that can recover rare metals from the
800 billion gallons of wastewater that comes from mining and oil and gas
drilling annually.
The American Chemical Society
is a nonprofit body that has more than 164,000 members. It is a
worldwide leader in giving access to chemistry-related studies through
its many databases, peer-reviewed journals and scientific conferences.
Its main bases are in Washington, D.C., and Columbus, Ohio.
In addition to lowering the price of panels, increasing their efficiency, learning how to deploy them, and developing panels that use more of the sunlight spectrum to generate electricity, are all helping to make our transition to sustainable energy something I might see in my lifetime.
From Earth Times:
As there is enough sun falling on domestic roofs to potentially supply most, if not all of America's electricity, scientists are excited about future prospects.
Tiles that take electricity from the sun, and can be fitted just like traditional roofing, are already commercially available.
Now, solar cells created from "earth-abundant" materials are more productive, affordable and flexible than ever, making it easier to deploy photovoltaics into new areas of buildings, the scientists believe.
The scientists' comments came during a sustainability symposium at the American Chemical Society's (ACS) 244th National Meeting & Exposition. ACS is the world's largest scientific society.
One of those taking part, Harry A. Atwater, Ph.D., says, "Sustainability involves developing technology that can be productive over the long-term, using resources in ways that meet today's needs without jeopardizing the ability of future generations to meet their needs. That's exactly what we are doing with these new solar-energy conversion devices."
The new photovoltaic devices use freely-available cheaper metals such and copper and zinc, described as "earth-abundant materials". They replace indium, gallium and other "rare earth" elements. These often come from foreign countries. For instance, China mines more than 90% of the rare earth elements in batteries for hybrid cars, magnets, electronics and similar high-tech products.
Dr Atwater and James C. Stevens, Ph.D., described how to replace expensive rare earth metals in photovoltaic devices with cheaper and more sustainable materials.
Dr Atwater, a California Institute of Technology physicist, and Dr Stevens, Dow Chemical Company chemist, led collaboration between the two in researching and developing new electronic materials to be used in solar power generation devices.
New devices using zinc phosphide and copper oxide shattered records for the amount of electrical current and voltage generated by thin-film solar energy conversion devices that were made with zinc and copper.
The advance reinforces evidence that zinc phosphide and copper oxide could achieve very high efficiencies and produce electricity at a similar cost to coal-fired energy plants within 20 years.
Dr Stevens assisted in the development of Dow's PowerHouse Solar Shingle at the end of 2011, which generates electricity and can be fitted like traditional roofing. The special shingles make use of copper indium gallium diselenide photovoltaic technology. Dr Stevens and his team are now aiming to incorporate sustainable earth-abundant materials into PowerHouse shingles.
He says, "The United States alone has about 69 billion square feet of appropriate residential rooftops that could be generating electricity from the sun. The sunlight falling on those roofs could generate at least 50 percent of the nation's electricity, and some estimates put that number closer to 100 percent. With earth-abundant technology, that energy could be harvested, at an enormous benefit to consumers and the environment."
The ACS symposium has also heard about:
New solar energy system mimics sunflowers
It's no wonder that the future of renewable energy is a hybrid of technology and mimicry of nature. The sunflower has evolved over many thousands of years to efficiently harvest the energy of the sun.
From Hydrogen Fuel News
Researchers engineer solar energy system capable of heliotropism
Researchers from the University of Wisconsin-Madison have taken a lesson from nature in developing a new kind of solar energy system. The system may be capable of harvesting solar radiation more efficiently throughout the day as it would adapt to the changing position of the sun. The system is based on a phenomenon that researchers have observed in sunflowers. Throughout the day, sunflowers will rotate from east to west, with their leaves also changing position in order to harvest as much solar power as they can. This process is called heliotropism.New system adapts to the position of the sun
Researchers have engineered a solar energy system that is capable of mimicking heliotropism quite accurately. While it is not the first solar energy system that is capable of seeking out the sun and positioning itself for maximum exposure, it does not use the conventional GPS-directed method of these systems. Instead, researchers leveraged the properties they have seen in innovative materials that allow for the passive adaptation of the system to the position of the sun.LCE’s and carbon nanotubes enable heliotropism
The system is comprised of a combination of liquid crystalline elastomer (LCE) and carbon nanotubes. LCE’s are exhibit change contrast and contraction when exposed to heat. Carbon nanotubes have the ability to absorb a wide range of light waves, making them valuable components to a solar energy system. The solar energy system is equipped with a mirror, which focuses sunlight onto an array composed of LCE’s and carbon nanotubes. When the LCE’s are heated, they contrast, allowing the system to bend toward the source of heat, thereby enabling the system to track the movements of the sun.Solar energy system made possible through emergence of new materials
Though this is a simplistic approach to the harvest of solar energy, it has only been made possible due to the emergence of new materials in the past few years. These materials have allowed researchers to experiment with new solar energy systems and make these systems more efficient and capable of generating electricity through the collection of sunlight.Germany sets new solar power record, institute says
Other than the first and second world wars, the Germans are pretty well known for the good ideas and long-range planning. If they're developing solar power at a pace unmatched by other nations, there's a good reason for it. And that reason is likely their acknowledgment that renewable energy is key to economic success and national security for the future. Dependence on fossil fuels is what leads the U.S. into wars and bad alliances. If we had invested in solar, wind, and hydro the trillion or so dollars that we spent on the Iraq war, we would lead the world in renewable energy production today.
From Reuters:
German solar power plants produced a world record 22 gigawatts of electricity per hour - equal to 20 nuclear power stations at full capacity - through the midday hours on Friday and Saturday, the head of a renewable energy think tank said.
The German government decided to abandon nuclear power after the Fukushima nuclear disaster last year, closing eight plants immediately and shutting down the remaining nine by 2022.
They will be replaced by renewable energy sources such as wind, solar and bio-mass.
Norbert Allnoch, director of the Institute of the Renewable Energy Industry (IWR) in Muenster, said the 22 gigawatts of solar power per hour fed into the national grid on Saturday met nearly 50 percent of the nation's midday electricity needs.
"Never before anywhere has a country produced as much photovoltaic electricity," Allnoch told Reuters. "Germany came close to the 20 gigawatt (GW) mark a few times in recent weeks. But this was the first time we made it over."
The record-breaking amount of solar power shows one of the world's leading industrial nations was able to meet a third of its electricity needs on a work day, Friday, and nearly half on Saturday when factories and offices were closed.
Government-mandated support for renewables has helped Germany became a world leader in renewable energy and the country gets about 20 percent of its overall annual electricity from those sources.
Germany has nearly as much installed solar power generation capacity as the rest of the world combined and gets about four percent of its overall annual electricity needs from the sun alone. It aims to cut its greenhouse gas emissions by 40 percent from 1990 levels by 2020.
SUNSHINE
Some critics say renewable energy is not reliable enough nor is there enough capacity to power major industrial nations. But Chancellor Angela Merkel has said Germany is eager to demonstrate that is indeed possible.
The jump above the 20 GW level was due to increased capacity this year and bright sunshine nationwide.
The 22 GW per hour figure is up from about 14 GW per hour a year ago. Germany added 7.5 GW of installed power generation capacity in 2012 and 1.8 GW more in the first quarter for a total of 26 GW capacity.
"This shows Germany is capable of meeting a large share of its electricity needs with solar power," Allnoch said. "It also shows Germany can do with fewer coal-burning power plants, gas-burning plants and nuclear plants."
Allnoch said the data is based on information from the European Energy Exchange (EEX), a bourse based in Leipzig.
The incentives through the state-mandated "feed-in-tariff" (FIT) are not without controversy, however. The FIT is the lifeblood for the industry until photovoltaic prices fall further to levels similar for conventional power production.
Utilities and consumer groups have complained the FIT for solar power adds about 2 cents per kilowatt/hour on top of electricity prices in Germany that are already among the highest in the world with consumers paying about 23 cents per kw/h.
German consumers pay about 4 billion euros ($5 billion) per year on top of their electricity bills for solar power, according to a 2012 report by the Environment Ministry.
Critics also complain growing levels of solar power make the national grid more less stable due to fluctuations in output.
Merkel's centre-right government has tried to accelerate cuts in the FIT, which has fallen by between 15 and 30 percent per year, to nearly 40 percent this year to levels below 20 cents per kw/h. But the upper house of parliament, the Bundesrat, has blocked it.
From Reuters:
German solar power plants produced a world record 22 gigawatts of electricity per hour - equal to 20 nuclear power stations at full capacity - through the midday hours on Friday and Saturday, the head of a renewable energy think tank said.
The German government decided to abandon nuclear power after the Fukushima nuclear disaster last year, closing eight plants immediately and shutting down the remaining nine by 2022.
They will be replaced by renewable energy sources such as wind, solar and bio-mass.
Norbert Allnoch, director of the Institute of the Renewable Energy Industry (IWR) in Muenster, said the 22 gigawatts of solar power per hour fed into the national grid on Saturday met nearly 50 percent of the nation's midday electricity needs.
"Never before anywhere has a country produced as much photovoltaic electricity," Allnoch told Reuters. "Germany came close to the 20 gigawatt (GW) mark a few times in recent weeks. But this was the first time we made it over."
The record-breaking amount of solar power shows one of the world's leading industrial nations was able to meet a third of its electricity needs on a work day, Friday, and nearly half on Saturday when factories and offices were closed.
Government-mandated support for renewables has helped Germany became a world leader in renewable energy and the country gets about 20 percent of its overall annual electricity from those sources.
Germany has nearly as much installed solar power generation capacity as the rest of the world combined and gets about four percent of its overall annual electricity needs from the sun alone. It aims to cut its greenhouse gas emissions by 40 percent from 1990 levels by 2020.
SUNSHINE
Some critics say renewable energy is not reliable enough nor is there enough capacity to power major industrial nations. But Chancellor Angela Merkel has said Germany is eager to demonstrate that is indeed possible.
The jump above the 20 GW level was due to increased capacity this year and bright sunshine nationwide.
The 22 GW per hour figure is up from about 14 GW per hour a year ago. Germany added 7.5 GW of installed power generation capacity in 2012 and 1.8 GW more in the first quarter for a total of 26 GW capacity.
"This shows Germany is capable of meeting a large share of its electricity needs with solar power," Allnoch said. "It also shows Germany can do with fewer coal-burning power plants, gas-burning plants and nuclear plants."
Allnoch said the data is based on information from the European Energy Exchange (EEX), a bourse based in Leipzig.
The incentives through the state-mandated "feed-in-tariff" (FIT) are not without controversy, however. The FIT is the lifeblood for the industry until photovoltaic prices fall further to levels similar for conventional power production.
Utilities and consumer groups have complained the FIT for solar power adds about 2 cents per kilowatt/hour on top of electricity prices in Germany that are already among the highest in the world with consumers paying about 23 cents per kw/h.
German consumers pay about 4 billion euros ($5 billion) per year on top of their electricity bills for solar power, according to a 2012 report by the Environment Ministry.
Critics also complain growing levels of solar power make the national grid more less stable due to fluctuations in output.
Merkel's centre-right government has tried to accelerate cuts in the FIT, which has fallen by between 15 and 30 percent per year, to nearly 40 percent this year to levels below 20 cents per kw/h. But the upper house of parliament, the Bundesrat, has blocked it.
Solar panels now a plug-in appliance
I remember reading (and maybe posting to this blog) about solar panels that consumers could buy and plug in. I think they were in development at the time. Well now they've come to market. For those who are intimidated by the idea of expensive installations, or maybe want to tip-toe into photovoltaic (PV) for the home, this is a huge leap. It won't be long before homeowners can go to their nearest hardware store or home-improvement store, pick up a solar kit, and be generating their own solar power by dinner time.
Such a product could be a "gateway" for homeowners. Once they see how easy it is and what the payback is, they might invest in a larger solar array installed on their roof or in their backyard.
From Cnet:
It's a green-energy geek's dream do-it-yourself project: attach a few solar panels to your deck and watch your electric bills go down. Now one company is selling such a product.
SpinRay Energy has developed a system that lets consumers install up to five solar panels on their decks and plug them into an outdoor power outlet. People can install one panel at a time, and get up to 1,000 watts of power with five installed.
The main electrical components of the system have the UL safety certification, including the solar panel and the microinverter, which converts direct current from the panels to household alternating current. If there is a loss of grid power, the panels will stop delivering current because it could be a danger to line workers, according to the company.
SpinRay Energy is selling the DIY kit through a few retailers, including Amazon. There are just a few reviews, but people who installed the panels say they work as advertised. The deck kit, sold for $1,099.95 on Amazon, comes with brackets that attach to a deck or for setting up panels in a yard. The panels should qualify users for a 30 percent federal tax credit for renewable energy.
The idea of making a solar panel "appliance" that a person could install without an electrician has been pursued for years. But there is reason for caution, say solar industry professionals.
A representative from the renewable energy retail company AltE Store voiced some concerns when I described the product, starting with safety and UL certification. When I said the product has UL certification, he noted that many solar companies have come and gone, so he questioned the warranty.
He added that professional installers not only ensure safety but also help consumers pick good locations for solar panels.
The president of SpinRay Energy, Arthur Chew, said he has had five panels installed on his deck for months without incident. He brought building inspectors to look at the installation, but since it is a plug-in device, it's considered an appliance and doesn't need special permits.
As for skepticism from solar industry pros, he noted the panels use relatively new technology in the microinverter and people in the industry may be opposed to DIY solar because it cuts professionals, such as installers and electricians, out of the picture.
"Our plug-and-play systems are not a replacement for a rooftop solar system. They should be considered a stepping stone for those interested in being green and to learn the benefits of solar," Chew told me. He noted the warranties for the panel and microinverter, which are made by other companies, are in line with the sort of warranties offered by other commercial companies.
Such a product could be a "gateway" for homeowners. Once they see how easy it is and what the payback is, they might invest in a larger solar array installed on their roof or in their backyard.
From Cnet:
It's a green-energy geek's dream do-it-yourself project: attach a few solar panels to your deck and watch your electric bills go down. Now one company is selling such a product.
SpinRay Energy has developed a system that lets consumers install up to five solar panels on their decks and plug them into an outdoor power outlet. People can install one panel at a time, and get up to 1,000 watts of power with five installed.
The main electrical components of the system have the UL safety certification, including the solar panel and the microinverter, which converts direct current from the panels to household alternating current. If there is a loss of grid power, the panels will stop delivering current because it could be a danger to line workers, according to the company.
SpinRay Energy is selling the DIY kit through a few retailers, including Amazon. There are just a few reviews, but people who installed the panels say they work as advertised. The deck kit, sold for $1,099.95 on Amazon, comes with brackets that attach to a deck or for setting up panels in a yard. The panels should qualify users for a 30 percent federal tax credit for renewable energy.
The idea of making a solar panel "appliance" that a person could install without an electrician has been pursued for years. But there is reason for caution, say solar industry professionals.
A representative from the renewable energy retail company AltE Store voiced some concerns when I described the product, starting with safety and UL certification. When I said the product has UL certification, he noted that many solar companies have come and gone, so he questioned the warranty.
He added that professional installers not only ensure safety but also help consumers pick good locations for solar panels.
The president of SpinRay Energy, Arthur Chew, said he has had five panels installed on his deck for months without incident. He brought building inspectors to look at the installation, but since it is a plug-in device, it's considered an appliance and doesn't need special permits.
As for skepticism from solar industry pros, he noted the panels use relatively new technology in the microinverter and people in the industry may be opposed to DIY solar because it cuts professionals, such as installers and electricians, out of the picture.
"Our plug-and-play systems are not a replacement for a rooftop solar system. They should be considered a stepping stone for those interested in being green and to learn the benefits of solar," Chew told me. He noted the warranties for the panel and microinverter, which are made by other companies, are in line with the sort of warranties offered by other commercial companies.
Apple’s Biogas Fuel Cell Plant Could Go Live By June
Mention "renewable energy" to most people, and they think solar (usually photovoltaic, or PV). While most of my posts are about solar (it's in the news a lot), wind, hydro, geothermal, and biomass are all sources of renewable, or sustainable, power.
From Wired
Apple says that a biogas-powered fuel cell system that will help
power its Maiden, North Carolina, data center could be up and running as
early as June, much earlier than previously expected.
The company made the disclosure in a Wednesday regulatory filing with the North Carolina Utilities Commission.
First reported by Greensboro News & Record, the filing offers a few more technical details on the 4.8 megawatt facility, which will be comprised of 24-200 kilowatt fuel cell systems that will “sit on a common concrete pad out of doors.” Each system will have six power-generating modules, Apple says.
The fuel cells take methane — in this case, produced by animal waste — and convert that to electricity. Apple’s installation will be built by California’s Bloom Energy, and it will be the largest such fuel cell installation built outside of the utility industry, the News & Record reports.
The first of Apple’s fuel cells could be online as early as June, and Apple expects to have the whole facility up and running by the end of November. Apple isn’t saying publicly what it will cost — that part was filed under seal.
Apple’s trying to turn around its reputation as a dirty energy user with the Maiden facility, which powers its iCloud. Right next to the biogas plant, Apple’s building a massive 20-megawatt solar array.
From Wired
Apple plans to power this Maiden, North Carolina, data center with biogas.
The company made the disclosure in a Wednesday regulatory filing with the North Carolina Utilities Commission.
First reported by Greensboro News & Record, the filing offers a few more technical details on the 4.8 megawatt facility, which will be comprised of 24-200 kilowatt fuel cell systems that will “sit on a common concrete pad out of doors.” Each system will have six power-generating modules, Apple says.
The fuel cells take methane — in this case, produced by animal waste — and convert that to electricity. Apple’s installation will be built by California’s Bloom Energy, and it will be the largest such fuel cell installation built outside of the utility industry, the News & Record reports.
The first of Apple’s fuel cells could be online as early as June, and Apple expects to have the whole facility up and running by the end of November. Apple isn’t saying publicly what it will cost — that part was filed under seal.
Apple’s trying to turn around its reputation as a dirty energy user with the Maiden facility, which powers its iCloud. Right next to the biogas plant, Apple’s building a massive 20-megawatt solar array.
Company's Black Silicon Cells Have Lowest Reflectance Ever Recorded for Silicon Solar Cells
The efficiency freight train rolls on with another breakthrough:
From MarketWatch:
Scientists at Natcore Technology Inc., using simple liquid bath processes, have created a black surface on a silicon wafer with an average reflectance in the visible and near-infrared region of the solar spectrum of 0.3%, making it the "blackest" silicon solar cell surface ever recorded. Compared with standard production cells now available, this represents a tenfold reduction in reflectance over that portion of the spectrum, which is the source of about 80% of the usable power that can be drawn from sunlight.
From MarketWatch:
Scientists at Natcore Technology Inc., using simple liquid bath processes, have created a black surface on a silicon wafer with an average reflectance in the visible and near-infrared region of the solar spectrum of 0.3%, making it the "blackest" silicon solar cell surface ever recorded. Compared with standard production cells now available, this represents a tenfold reduction in reflectance over that portion of the spectrum, which is the source of about 80% of the usable power that can be drawn from sunlight.
The black color of black silicon results from the near-total absence
of reflected light from the porous wafer surface. With solar cells,
"blackness" is highly desirable because it indicates that incident
light is being absorbed for conversion to energy rather than being
reflected and thus wasted.
Quantitatively, reflectance is the proportion of light striking a
surface that is reflected from it. Thus a reflectance of 0.3% means
that only 0.3% of incident light is reflected from the solar cell's
surface, while 99.7% of incident light is absorbed by the cell and is
available for conversion into electrical energy.
A tenfold reduction in reflectance would mean that up to 3% more
usable light would get into the cell, effectively increasing the cell
efficiency by that amount. (An 18% efficient cell becomes an 18.5%
cell, for example.)
But there are additional benefits to be derived from black silicon. A
panel made from black silicon solar cells will produce significantly
more energy on a daily basis than will a panel made from cells using
the industry standard antireflective coating. First, because it
reflects less light. Second, because it performs better during the
morning and afternoon hours when the sun hits at an angle. (It also
outperforms standard cell panels on cloudy days.) Its higher energy
output, combined with a lower cost using Natcore's patented process,
could quickly make black silicon the global solar technology of
choice.
Natcore's process began with an uncoated, textured silicon wafer that
had an average reflectance of approximately 8%, giving it a mottled
gray appearance. First, nanoscale pores were etched into the wafer
surface by submerging it for a few minutes in a liquid solution at
room temperature. Next, using the company's liquid phase deposition
(LPD) process, Natcore scientists filled the pores and then
over-coated them with silicon dioxide. This combination step both
coated and passivated, thereby allowing lower reflectance. After the
surface treatments were completed, the wafers were taken to the State
of Ohio's Photovoltaic Research and Development Center at the
University of Toledo, where the reflectance was measured.
This is the latest milestone in Natcore's drive to improve the
performance of solar cells. Conventional cells, with antireflective
coatings made via a chemical vapor deposition process that requires a
high-temperature vacuum furnace and hazardous gases, have a
reflectance of about 4%. With black silicon, the U.S. Department of
Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) lowered the
number below 2%. Now Natcore's technology has reduced it to 0.3%, or
virtually zero. "Absolute black is to reflected light as absolute
zero is to heat," says Dr. Dennis Flood, Natcore's Chief Technology
Officer. "And getting close to zero reflectance with a process that
we can use for the production of commercial solar cells is simply
astounding."
Natcore was recently granted an exclusive license by NREL to develop
and commercialize a line of black silicon products based on NREL
patents. Natcore's reflectance accomplishment came about as a natural
part of its work associated with that license.
"We are already working with two equipment manufacturers to design a
production tool," says Natcore President and CEO Chuck Provini. "The
tool would make 2,000 black silicon wafers per hour. We'll establish
other parameters in our lab. When the design is completed, we'll take
orders for the tool. We have already begun talking with potential
customers in Italy, China and India."
"This latest achievement further strengthens our position as the sole
provider of the best antireflection control technology available to
silicon solar cell manufacturers," adds Provini.
William Farris, NREL's Vice President of Commercialization &
Technology Transfer, says "NREL has a long history of working with
companies to move renewable energy technologies to the market. We're
encouraged and gratified at Natcore's success as it relates to our
commercial license agreement for NREL's black silicon technology."
Statements in this press release other than purely historical factual
information, including statements relating to revenues or profits, or
Natcore's future plans and objectives, or expected sales, cash flows,
and capital expenditures constitute forward-looking statements.
Forward-looking statements are based on numerous assumptions and are
subject to all of the risks and uncertainties inherent in Natcore's
business, including risks inherent in the technology history. There
can be no assurance that such forward-looking statements will prove
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Innovative 3-D designs from an MIT team can more than double the solar power generated from a given area
Improving efficiency (and driving down the cost per watt) is the holy grail of photovoltaic (PV) panel makers. MIT's new design doesn't look at the panels as much as how they're arranged. Last year a kid looked at mimicking the way a tree positions its leaves as a more efficient way of arranging panels. Now researchers at MIT are stacking them in a way that produces twenty times the power from the same square footage of land (or building roof).
From MIT News:
Intensive research around the world has focused on improving the performance of solar photovoltaic cells and bringing down their cost. But very little attention has been paid to the best ways of arranging those cells, which are typically placed flat on a rooftop or other surface, or sometimes attached to motorized structures that keep the cells pointed toward the sun as it crosses the sky.
Now, a team of MIT researchers has come up with a very different approach: building cubes or towers that extend the solar cells upward in three-dimensional configurations. Amazingly, the results from the structures they’ve tested show power output ranging from double to more than 20 times that of fixed flat panels with the same base area.
The biggest boosts in power were seen in the situations where improvements are most needed: in locations far from the equator, in winter months and on cloudier days. The new findings, based on both computer modeling and outdoor testing of real modules, have been published in the journal Energy and Environmental Science.
“I think this concept could become an important part of the future of photovoltaics,” says the paper’s senior author, Jeffrey Grossman, the Carl Richard Soderberg Career Development Associate Professor of Power Engineering at MIT.
The MIT team initially used a computer algorithm to explore an enormous variety of possible configurations, and developed analytic software that can test any given configuration under a whole range of latitudes, seasons and weather. Then, to confirm their model’s predictions, they built and tested three different arrangements of solar cells on the roof of an MIT laboratory building for several weeks.
While the cost of a given amount of energy generated by such 3-D modules exceeds that of ordinary flat panels, the expense is partially balanced by a much higher energy output for a given footprint, as well as much more uniform power output over the course of a day, over the seasons of the year, and in the face of blockage from clouds or shadows. These improvements make power output more predictable and uniform, which could make integration with the power grid easier than with conventional systems, the authors say.
The basic physical reason for the improvement in power output — and for the more uniform output over time — is that the 3-D structures’ vertical surfaces can collect much more sunlight during mornings, evenings and winters, when the sun is closer to the horizon, says co-author Marco Bernardi, a graduate student in MIT’s Department of Materials Science and Engineering (DMSE).
The time is ripe for such an innovation, Grossman adds, because solar cells have become less expensive than accompanying support structures, wiring and installation. As the cost of the cells themselves continues to decline more quickly than these other costs, they say, the advantages of 3-D systems will grow accordingly.
“Even 10 years ago, this idea wouldn’t have been economically justified because the modules cost so much,” Grossman says. But now, he adds, “the cost for silicon cells is a fraction of the total cost, a trend that will continue downward in the near future.” Currently, up to 65 percent of the cost of photovoltaic (PV) energy is associated with installation, permission for use of land and other components besides the cells themselves.
Although computer modeling by Grossman and his colleagues showed that the biggest advantage would come from complex shapes — such as a cube where each face is dimpled inward — these would be difficult to manufacture, says co-author Nicola Ferralis, a research scientist in DMSE. The algorithms can also be used to optimize and simplify shapes with little loss of energy. It turns out the difference in power output between such optimized shapes and a simpler cube is only about 10 to 15 percent — a difference that is dwarfed by the greatly improved performance of 3-D shapes in general, he says. The team analyzed both simpler cubic and more complex accordion-like shapes in their rooftop experimental tests.
At first, the researchers were distressed when almost two weeks went by without a clear, sunny day for their tests. But then, looking at the data, they realized they had learned important lessons from the cloudy days, which showed a huge improvement in power output over conventional flat panels.
For an accordion-like tower — the tallest structure the team tested — the idea was to simulate a tower that “you could ship flat, and then could unfold at the site,” Grossman says. Such a tower could be installed in a parking lot to provide a charging station for electric vehicles, he says.
So far, the team has modeled individual 3-D modules. A next step is to study a collection of such towers, accounting for the shadows that one tower would cast on others at different times of day. In general, 3-D shapes could have a big advantage in any location where space is limited, such as flat-rooftop installations or in urban environments, they say. Such shapes could also be used in larger-scale applications, such as solar farms, once shading effects between towers are carefully minimized.
A few other efforts — including even a middle-school science-fair project last year — have attempted 3-D arrangements of solar cells. But, Grossman says, “our study is different in nature, since it is the first to approach the problem with a systematic and predictive analysis.”
David Gracias, an associate professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at Johns Hopkins University who was not involved in this research, says that Grossman and his team “have demonstrated theoretical and proof-of-concept evidence that 3-D photovoltaic elements could provide significant benefits in terms of capturing light at different angles. The challenge, however, is to mass produce these elements in a cost-effective manner.”
From MIT News:
Intensive research around the world has focused on improving the performance of solar photovoltaic cells and bringing down their cost. But very little attention has been paid to the best ways of arranging those cells, which are typically placed flat on a rooftop or other surface, or sometimes attached to motorized structures that keep the cells pointed toward the sun as it crosses the sky.
Now, a team of MIT researchers has come up with a very different approach: building cubes or towers that extend the solar cells upward in three-dimensional configurations. Amazingly, the results from the structures they’ve tested show power output ranging from double to more than 20 times that of fixed flat panels with the same base area.
The biggest boosts in power were seen in the situations where improvements are most needed: in locations far from the equator, in winter months and on cloudier days. The new findings, based on both computer modeling and outdoor testing of real modules, have been published in the journal Energy and Environmental Science.
“I think this concept could become an important part of the future of photovoltaics,” says the paper’s senior author, Jeffrey Grossman, the Carl Richard Soderberg Career Development Associate Professor of Power Engineering at MIT.
The MIT team initially used a computer algorithm to explore an enormous variety of possible configurations, and developed analytic software that can test any given configuration under a whole range of latitudes, seasons and weather. Then, to confirm their model’s predictions, they built and tested three different arrangements of solar cells on the roof of an MIT laboratory building for several weeks.
While the cost of a given amount of energy generated by such 3-D modules exceeds that of ordinary flat panels, the expense is partially balanced by a much higher energy output for a given footprint, as well as much more uniform power output over the course of a day, over the seasons of the year, and in the face of blockage from clouds or shadows. These improvements make power output more predictable and uniform, which could make integration with the power grid easier than with conventional systems, the authors say.
The basic physical reason for the improvement in power output — and for the more uniform output over time — is that the 3-D structures’ vertical surfaces can collect much more sunlight during mornings, evenings and winters, when the sun is closer to the horizon, says co-author Marco Bernardi, a graduate student in MIT’s Department of Materials Science and Engineering (DMSE).
The time is ripe for such an innovation, Grossman adds, because solar cells have become less expensive than accompanying support structures, wiring and installation. As the cost of the cells themselves continues to decline more quickly than these other costs, they say, the advantages of 3-D systems will grow accordingly.
“Even 10 years ago, this idea wouldn’t have been economically justified because the modules cost so much,” Grossman says. But now, he adds, “the cost for silicon cells is a fraction of the total cost, a trend that will continue downward in the near future.” Currently, up to 65 percent of the cost of photovoltaic (PV) energy is associated with installation, permission for use of land and other components besides the cells themselves.
Although computer modeling by Grossman and his colleagues showed that the biggest advantage would come from complex shapes — such as a cube where each face is dimpled inward — these would be difficult to manufacture, says co-author Nicola Ferralis, a research scientist in DMSE. The algorithms can also be used to optimize and simplify shapes with little loss of energy. It turns out the difference in power output between such optimized shapes and a simpler cube is only about 10 to 15 percent — a difference that is dwarfed by the greatly improved performance of 3-D shapes in general, he says. The team analyzed both simpler cubic and more complex accordion-like shapes in their rooftop experimental tests.
At first, the researchers were distressed when almost two weeks went by without a clear, sunny day for their tests. But then, looking at the data, they realized they had learned important lessons from the cloudy days, which showed a huge improvement in power output over conventional flat panels.
For an accordion-like tower — the tallest structure the team tested — the idea was to simulate a tower that “you could ship flat, and then could unfold at the site,” Grossman says. Such a tower could be installed in a parking lot to provide a charging station for electric vehicles, he says.
So far, the team has modeled individual 3-D modules. A next step is to study a collection of such towers, accounting for the shadows that one tower would cast on others at different times of day. In general, 3-D shapes could have a big advantage in any location where space is limited, such as flat-rooftop installations or in urban environments, they say. Such shapes could also be used in larger-scale applications, such as solar farms, once shading effects between towers are carefully minimized.
A few other efforts — including even a middle-school science-fair project last year — have attempted 3-D arrangements of solar cells. But, Grossman says, “our study is different in nature, since it is the first to approach the problem with a systematic and predictive analysis.”
David Gracias, an associate professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at Johns Hopkins University who was not involved in this research, says that Grossman and his team “have demonstrated theoretical and proof-of-concept evidence that 3-D photovoltaic elements could provide significant benefits in terms of capturing light at different angles. The challenge, however, is to mass produce these elements in a cost-effective manner.”
A Solar Project Even a President Could Love
Spend any time on a western road trip, and you'll see miles and miles of barren, sun-drenched land that looks ideal for solar farms. Since many power lines follow highways, the easy proximity of the farms to transmission is already in place.
From Good:
At Copper Mountain Solar 1, almost a million solar panels cover more than 450 acres, standing in neat, straight lines on a patch of cleared desert. President Obama will visit the facility today to see of the nation's largest solar projects in person. If renewable energy continues to thrive, this type of power plant that could provide a growing portion of the country’s electricity.
From Good:
At Copper Mountain Solar 1, almost a million solar panels cover more than 450 acres, standing in neat, straight lines on a patch of cleared desert. President Obama will visit the facility today to see of the nation's largest solar projects in person. If renewable energy continues to thrive, this type of power plant that could provide a growing portion of the country’s electricity.
The first panels started going up on this site in June 2008. Sempra U.S. Gas & Power, the company behind the project, called it El Dorado Energy Solar, and when it opened, in January 2009, it was the largest thin-film solar plant in the country. As a rule, thin-film panels convert less sunlight into energy than classic silicon panels, but they’re cheaper to build. In 2008, First Solar, the company that supplied the panels for El Dorado, had broken through an industry barrier: Its panels cost less than $1 per watt to manufacture.
That first El Dorado installation was relatively small, with 167,000 panels and a capacity of 10 megawatts of energy. By the time it opened, though, Sempra was already expanding its solar footprint on the site—by the end of 2010, the company had added another 775,000 panels. The two projects combined made Copper Mountain Solar 1, a 58-megawatt plant that can power about 17,000 average households, the company estimates. The current incarnation is temporary, too: The company is working now on Copper Mountain Solar 2, which will add another 150 megawatts, and planning Copper Mountain Solar North, which will rate up to 220 megawatts.
Sempra, based in San Diego, follows a couple of principles when developing renewable energy projects like this one. All its solar projects so far have been sited on previously disturbed land or in designated energy zones, the company says. Although the sunny desert lands that work so well for solar projects may seem to have little value, they’re rich environments, often populated by endangered species, and are hard to regenerate once the desert surface is cracked and dug up. To minimize solar plants' impacts, then, it's best to place them on desert land that humans have already messed up. Copper Mountain Solar 1, for instance, is built on land once used for agriculture.
Sempra also looks for sites with access to existing transmission lines, which can hook their projects up to the grid with minimum time, expense, and environmental heartache. Copper Mountain Solar 1 lies just outside of Boulder City, Nevada, the site of a massive renewable energy project—the Hoover Dam—and the infrastructure that goes with it.
These solar projects are being built on private, not public land, but government support for renewable energy has still helped shape them. The California utility Pacific Gas & Electric contracted with Sempra to buy the power generated from Copper Mountain Solar 1 for 20 years and the power generated from Copper Mountain Solar 2 for 25. Because California is requiring utilities to source one-third of their power from renewables by 2020, companies like PG&E need renewable supplies like this one. And while this particular project doesn’t bear the black mark of having received a government loan guarantee—the program from which the much-maligned Solyndra benefitted—another of Sempra’s solar projects does. Having already found a buyer for its power, though, it’s unlikely to default on its loan.
Copper Mountain Solar 1 also created green jobs, although not many permanent ones in Boulder City—the plant only requires five people to run. Construction did require 350 temporary laborers, and although some of those people could be working on the next iteration of the project, Copper Mountain Solar 2 doesn’t have quite as many slots. These number don’t match up to the level of job creation projects like the Hoover Dam managed to gin up.
Copper Mountain Solar 1 is a model project; the president wouldn’t be visiting it otherwise. But models provide a template. Projects like this one could be replicated, and they’ll need to be, if clean energy is going to have a chance.
Solar 15% Returns Beat Treasuries From Buffett to Google
The low interest rate environment is creating lots of opportunities. It had been my hope that we (the global "we") would use the recession as a time for investing in alternative energy, so when demand picked up (with the economy), we would be better positioned to avoid the impact of higher fossil fuel costs.
From The San Francisco Gate:
U.S. solar developers are luring cash at record rates from investors ranging from Warren Buffett to Google Inc. and KKR & Co. by offering returns on projects four times those available for Treasury securities.
From The San Francisco Gate:
U.S. solar developers are luring cash at record rates from investors ranging from Warren Buffett to Google Inc. and KKR & Co. by offering returns on projects four times those available for Treasury securities.
Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Inc. together with the biggest Internet search company, the private equity company and insurers MetLife Inc. and John Hancock Life Insurance Co. poured more than $500 million into renewable energy in the last year. That's the most ever for companies outside the club of banks and specialist lenders that traditionally back solar energy, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance data.
Once so risky that only government backing could draw private capital, solar projects now are making returns of about 15 percent, according to Stanford University's center for energy policy and finance. That has attracted a wider community of investors eager to cash in on earnings stronger than those for infrastructure projects from toll roads to pipelines.
"A solar power project with a long-term sales agreement could be viewed as a machine that generates revenue," said Marty Klepper, an attorney at Skadden Arps Slate Meagher & Flom LLP, which helped arrange a solar deal for Buffett. "It's an attractive investment for any firm, not just those in energy."
Jim Barry, the chief investment officer on Blackrock Inc.'s renewable energy team, joins Pensiondanmark A/S Managing Director Torben Moger Pedersen in assessing infrastructure finance in a panel discussion hosted by New Energy Finance in New York today.
Predictable Cash
With 30-year Treasuries yielding about 3.4 percent, investors are seeking safe places to park their money for years at a higher return. Solar energy fits the bill, with predictable cash flows guaranteed by contract for two decades or more. Those deals may be even more lucrative because many were signed before the cost of solar panels plunged 50 percent last year.
Buffett's MidAmerican Energy Holdings Co. agreed to buy the Topaz Solar Farm in California from First Solar Inc. on Dec. 7. The project's development budget is estimated at $2.4 billion and it may generate a 16.3 percent return on investment by selling power to PG&E Corp. at about $150 a megawatt-hour, through a 25-year contract, according to New Energy Finance calculations. It will have 550 megawatts of capacity and is expected to go into operation in 2015, making it one of the world's biggest photovoltaic plants.
'Free Fuel'
"After tax, you're looking at returns in the 10 percent to 15 percent range" for solar projects, said Dan Reicher, executive director of Stanford University's center for energy policy and finance in California. "The beauty of solar is once you make the capital investment, you've got free fuel and very low operating costs."
The long-term nature of solar power-purchase deals make them similar to some bonds. And because a solar farm is a tangible asset, these investments also function much like those for infrastructure projects, with cash flows comparable to toll roads, bridges or pipelines, said Stefan Heck, a director at McKinsey & Co. in New York who leads their clean-tech work.
Once a project starts producing power, investors can earn a return that's "higher than most bonds," he said. "There are a lot of pension funds with long-term horizons that are very interested in this space."
Governments remain the biggest backers of the solar industry, and President Barack Obama's administration suffered criticism for investing in Solyndra LLC, a solar manufacturer that went bankrupt last year.
DIY Solar Panels Made of Grass That Anyone Can Make
While I've yet to see nations and corporations embrace renewable energy the way I had hoped they would, the pace of technological advancement continues unabated. New developments are announced almost daily now, and much of it involves lower costs and higher efficiencies - two factors that have kept the public from adopting solar energy faster.
From Green Prophet:
MIT researchers say that soon all we’ll need to harvest our vast solar resource is grass and stabilizing powder.
While Masdar and Suntech and other solar energy projects are laboring under expensive, high-tech materials in order to improve their energy-absorbing capability, MIT researchers in the United States are taking a different approach. They realized that nothing in nature absorbs energy as well as plants, so they have developed a solar technology that combines a small amount of grass (or other agricultural waste), a stabilizing powder made of zinc oxide and titanium oxide, and a glass or metal substrate which mimics the photosynthesis process. Eventually their technology will be so simple that anybody will be able to make their own solar panels for next to nothing.
Photosynthesis
According to the folks at Fastco Design, the MIT researchers have discovered how to “chemically stabilize plant-derived photosystem-I (PS-I), the structures inside plant cells that perform photosynthesis, on a substrate that creates electric current when exposed to light–all using readily-available materials.”
This solar cell then isolates PS-1 molecules and eventually carries an electrical current with the stabilizing powder.
So, instead of massive solar-panel producing factories that require a lot of natural materials, MIT’s technology could literally be packed in a small plastic bcationLng=
From Green Prophet:
MIT researchers say that soon all we’ll need to harvest our vast solar resource is grass and stabilizing powder. While Masdar and Suntech and other solar energy projects are laboring under expensive, high-tech materials in order to improve their energy-absorbing capability, MIT researchers in the United States are taking a different approach. They realized that nothing in nature absorbs energy as well as plants, so they have developed a solar technology that combines a small amount of grass (or other agricultural waste), a stabilizing powder made of zinc oxide and titanium oxide, and a glass or metal substrate which mimics the photosynthesis process. Eventually their technology will be so simple that anybody will be able to make their own solar panels for next to nothing.
Photosynthesis
According to the folks at Fastco Design, the MIT researchers have discovered how to “chemically stabilize plant-derived photosystem-I (PS-I), the structures inside plant cells that perform photosynthesis, on a substrate that creates electric current when exposed to light–all using readily-available materials.”
This solar cell then isolates PS-1 molecules and eventually carries an electrical current with the stabilizing powder.
So, instead of massive solar-panel producing factories that require a lot of natural materials, MIT’s technology could literally be packed in a small plastic bcationLng=
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Solar Forecasting: The Next Big Thing For Solar Power?
Well that's just common sense. Duh.
From Utility Products:
People who know about renewable energy are probably also aware of wind forecasting—workers who set up meteorological equipment to measure when, where and how strongly the wind will blow at the site of a proposed wind farm. Knowing this information can make wind turbines and the power they produce more economical and reliable.
The same can be said of knowing when and where the sun will shine, if you are the developer of a solar energy facility. The people you sell your energy to need to know they can rely on the resource you are responsible for—something you might not be certain of yourself if you don’t have the kind of information that solar forecasting can put at your fingertips.
Solar forecasting as a technology is still in its infancy, and one place where it is being developed is at the University of California’s San Diego campus, where the Department of Energy is taking an interest (to the tune of a $1.93 million grant in 2010 with $500,000 cost share from the California Energy Commission) in developing ways to make solar energy more reliable through the use of forecasting techniques.
“We’re not lowering the cost of installed photovoltaics. We’re increasing the value that they will give to the market by increasing the predictability of the output. Large solar systems in the future will be bidding into an economic system, so if you’re wrong, it costs you money. This is why an annual average approach isn’t good enough,” Washom said.
Measuring the solar resource is done with equipment that is neither new nor that expensive. The clouds and sky over the entire campus at San Diego can be measured using a single sky imager, which costs about $12,000 and can be installed in about 48 hours.
“The sky imager is a hemispherical mirrored bowl on the highest building on campus. It holds the reflection of every cloud in a 360-degree radius. An arm comes out over this bowl and takes a picture of it. It’s a fisheye mirror that is looking at every cloud in the sky at once. By doing this series of photos every few seconds you can determine the speed, direction, type and opacity of the clouds moving toward your solar field. What is more cutting edge than the camera itself, however, is the ability to process the massive amount of data generated by climate sensors and cameras.
“The cost of measurement is dropping dramatically. We’re also seeing the costs of wireless communications dropping dramatically. Independent of what we’re doing, the price of computing power and terabytes of storage is dropping and will get lower. So we’re taking advantage of a globally developing market movement in this field,” Washom said.
Using the data coming into the system from this hardware, a computerized model is created. This model can tell the grid operators how much sun can be expected to make it through the clouds and hit the installed PV panels.
“We know where the panels are because they’re fixed,” Washom said. “We know where the sun is down to the nanosecond. So the only thing between our panels and the sun would be a cloud. Other factors do come into play, but cloud cover is the biggest factor.”
The lead researcher and individual processing this data is Jan Kleissl, who, in addition to working on this project, is also a professor of environmental engineering at UC-San Diego.
“There is a lot more involved in solar forecasting than just taking pictures of clouds,” Kleissl said. “People have been taking pictures of the sky for as long as we’ve had electronics. But, what we’ve been working on is computers that can tell us about these clouds. We have to train the computers to do that. Where are the clouds, and, more importantly, where are they moving? Then comes the earth-sun geometry.
“Knowing how clouds are going to behave is key to forecasting how much energy can be extracted from the sun in a given minute, hour or even day. And how do clouds behave?
“They behave badly,” Kleissl said with a laugh. “In San Diego, the clouds are better behaved than in areas that might have a little more meteorological intensity to them.
“In places like Arizona, where utilities are also investing in solar energy, clouds are rare, but when they exist they will dissipate, thicken, roll over and change shape more unpredictably than they do in the relatively boring weather of sunny San Diego.
“To meet the challenge of stubbornly inconsistent weather patterns, a variety of technologies have to work in tandem. Satellite imagery and computerized forecasting models are also part of the system and developed under a $548k grant from the California Public Utilities Commission through the California Solar Initiative,” Kleissel said. “There is no one tool that can do everything. Think of it as a hand-off.”
The sky imager, for example, can be relied on to measure the sunlight that will be available for the next 5-20 minutes. After that, satellite imagery can predict the level of sun from 30 minutes to a few hours into the future. Beyond that, a computerized forecasting model that measures physical weather patterns can be called upon to look into the future by a 24-hour period.
“When these measurement methods work together on a single system, a clearer picture of how much power can be generated and transmitted emerges,” Byron Washom said. “We anticipate the ability to forecast intra-hour what your system will produce with up to a 90 percent degree of certainty. So this will be firm power instead of non-firm power, and firm power is of a higher value because you minimize the penalties of not meeting what you bid into the market that you were going to deliver.”
This is music to the ears of power utilities, who in California are being asked to add an increasingly large amount of renewable energy into their generation portfolios—yet might still not be convinced that they can rely on renewable power to meet demand.
“With solar forecasting, grid operators can smooth out solar energy by ramping spinning reserves up or ramping it down as the grid demands it,” Washom said.
“If you have too much PV, the ramp rates up and down can wreak havoc on the line voltage and power electronics used to stabilize the voltage. If on the other hand you know in advance about a lot of ramp ups or a lot of ramp downs, you can have some mitigating measures,” Washom said. “In doing real-time measurements of the actual ramp rates that are being incurred (both up and down), you can then begin to reexamine the standards and rules that limit the amount of PV on a distribution circuit before the host utility requires another engineering study.
“What this also means is that greater amounts of solar energy than previously thought possible can be safely and reliably included on a grid,” Washom said.
Kevin Meagher, chief technology officer at Power Analytics, the company whose software analyzes the incoming data on solar energy availability, agrees that solar forecasting could change the way people view solar energy.
“One of the things that had been poorly understood about PV is how to accurately understand how it’s going to perform. Until this year, the rule of thumb has been more than 15 percent penetration of PV on a distribution circuit triggers expensive engineering studies to determine if additional PV will disrupt your grid,” Meagher said. “What we’re finding is that the level of generation can be even greater than 15 percent on most circuits.”
“If grid operators know the energy potential of grid-tied solar assets with granularity down to one minute, the operator knows what to expect the grid impact will be. This makes solar energy a resource people can take more seriously,” Meagher said. “With more accurate data, the long-term potential of this technology is to treat solar energy as a more tangible resource. Like you would with a pile of coal, you’ll know how much energy there will be to draw upon.”
“It’s desirable to include even more solar energy onto the grid, but there are still changes that need to be made, and further advances in forecasting technology are still around the corner,” Kleissl said. “So far, some solar projects have energy storage and some have forecasting, but integrating the two is what you want.”
With energy storage as part of the system, an operator could store up and later dispatch solar energy during a predicted period of heavy cloud cover.
Over the next few years, researchers and engineers will work to continue to improve this technology—but Kleissel doesn’t expect any huge breakthroughs.
“The next step is to better merge and integrate these different models. This is all going to be incremental improvements,” Kleissel said. “Each step forward will bring about a lot more work.”
From Utility Products:
People who know about renewable energy are probably also aware of wind forecasting—workers who set up meteorological equipment to measure when, where and how strongly the wind will blow at the site of a proposed wind farm. Knowing this information can make wind turbines and the power they produce more economical and reliable.
The same can be said of knowing when and where the sun will shine, if you are the developer of a solar energy facility. The people you sell your energy to need to know they can rely on the resource you are responsible for—something you might not be certain of yourself if you don’t have the kind of information that solar forecasting can put at your fingertips.
Solar forecasting as a technology is still in its infancy, and one place where it is being developed is at the University of California’s San Diego campus, where the Department of Energy is taking an interest (to the tune of a $1.93 million grant in 2010 with $500,000 cost share from the California Energy Commission) in developing ways to make solar energy more reliable through the use of forecasting techniques.
 |
| photo courtesy of the U.S. Department of Energy ARM Climate Research Facility. |
“We’re not lowering the cost of installed photovoltaics. We’re increasing the value that they will give to the market by increasing the predictability of the output. Large solar systems in the future will be bidding into an economic system, so if you’re wrong, it costs you money. This is why an annual average approach isn’t good enough,” Washom said.
Measuring the solar resource is done with equipment that is neither new nor that expensive. The clouds and sky over the entire campus at San Diego can be measured using a single sky imager, which costs about $12,000 and can be installed in about 48 hours.
“The sky imager is a hemispherical mirrored bowl on the highest building on campus. It holds the reflection of every cloud in a 360-degree radius. An arm comes out over this bowl and takes a picture of it. It’s a fisheye mirror that is looking at every cloud in the sky at once. By doing this series of photos every few seconds you can determine the speed, direction, type and opacity of the clouds moving toward your solar field. What is more cutting edge than the camera itself, however, is the ability to process the massive amount of data generated by climate sensors and cameras.
“The cost of measurement is dropping dramatically. We’re also seeing the costs of wireless communications dropping dramatically. Independent of what we’re doing, the price of computing power and terabytes of storage is dropping and will get lower. So we’re taking advantage of a globally developing market movement in this field,” Washom said.
Using the data coming into the system from this hardware, a computerized model is created. This model can tell the grid operators how much sun can be expected to make it through the clouds and hit the installed PV panels.
“We know where the panels are because they’re fixed,” Washom said. “We know where the sun is down to the nanosecond. So the only thing between our panels and the sun would be a cloud. Other factors do come into play, but cloud cover is the biggest factor.”
The lead researcher and individual processing this data is Jan Kleissl, who, in addition to working on this project, is also a professor of environmental engineering at UC-San Diego.
“There is a lot more involved in solar forecasting than just taking pictures of clouds,” Kleissl said. “People have been taking pictures of the sky for as long as we’ve had electronics. But, what we’ve been working on is computers that can tell us about these clouds. We have to train the computers to do that. Where are the clouds, and, more importantly, where are they moving? Then comes the earth-sun geometry.
“Knowing how clouds are going to behave is key to forecasting how much energy can be extracted from the sun in a given minute, hour or even day. And how do clouds behave?
“They behave badly,” Kleissl said with a laugh. “In San Diego, the clouds are better behaved than in areas that might have a little more meteorological intensity to them.
“In places like Arizona, where utilities are also investing in solar energy, clouds are rare, but when they exist they will dissipate, thicken, roll over and change shape more unpredictably than they do in the relatively boring weather of sunny San Diego.
“To meet the challenge of stubbornly inconsistent weather patterns, a variety of technologies have to work in tandem. Satellite imagery and computerized forecasting models are also part of the system and developed under a $548k grant from the California Public Utilities Commission through the California Solar Initiative,” Kleissel said. “There is no one tool that can do everything. Think of it as a hand-off.”
The sky imager, for example, can be relied on to measure the sunlight that will be available for the next 5-20 minutes. After that, satellite imagery can predict the level of sun from 30 minutes to a few hours into the future. Beyond that, a computerized forecasting model that measures physical weather patterns can be called upon to look into the future by a 24-hour period.
“When these measurement methods work together on a single system, a clearer picture of how much power can be generated and transmitted emerges,” Byron Washom said. “We anticipate the ability to forecast intra-hour what your system will produce with up to a 90 percent degree of certainty. So this will be firm power instead of non-firm power, and firm power is of a higher value because you minimize the penalties of not meeting what you bid into the market that you were going to deliver.”
This is music to the ears of power utilities, who in California are being asked to add an increasingly large amount of renewable energy into their generation portfolios—yet might still not be convinced that they can rely on renewable power to meet demand.
“With solar forecasting, grid operators can smooth out solar energy by ramping spinning reserves up or ramping it down as the grid demands it,” Washom said.
“If you have too much PV, the ramp rates up and down can wreak havoc on the line voltage and power electronics used to stabilize the voltage. If on the other hand you know in advance about a lot of ramp ups or a lot of ramp downs, you can have some mitigating measures,” Washom said. “In doing real-time measurements of the actual ramp rates that are being incurred (both up and down), you can then begin to reexamine the standards and rules that limit the amount of PV on a distribution circuit before the host utility requires another engineering study.
“What this also means is that greater amounts of solar energy than previously thought possible can be safely and reliably included on a grid,” Washom said.
Kevin Meagher, chief technology officer at Power Analytics, the company whose software analyzes the incoming data on solar energy availability, agrees that solar forecasting could change the way people view solar energy.
“One of the things that had been poorly understood about PV is how to accurately understand how it’s going to perform. Until this year, the rule of thumb has been more than 15 percent penetration of PV on a distribution circuit triggers expensive engineering studies to determine if additional PV will disrupt your grid,” Meagher said. “What we’re finding is that the level of generation can be even greater than 15 percent on most circuits.”
“If grid operators know the energy potential of grid-tied solar assets with granularity down to one minute, the operator knows what to expect the grid impact will be. This makes solar energy a resource people can take more seriously,” Meagher said. “With more accurate data, the long-term potential of this technology is to treat solar energy as a more tangible resource. Like you would with a pile of coal, you’ll know how much energy there will be to draw upon.”
“It’s desirable to include even more solar energy onto the grid, but there are still changes that need to be made, and further advances in forecasting technology are still around the corner,” Kleissl said. “So far, some solar projects have energy storage and some have forecasting, but integrating the two is what you want.”
With energy storage as part of the system, an operator could store up and later dispatch solar energy during a predicted period of heavy cloud cover.
Over the next few years, researchers and engineers will work to continue to improve this technology—but Kleissel doesn’t expect any huge breakthroughs.
“The next step is to better merge and integrate these different models. This is all going to be incremental improvements,” Kleissel said. “Each step forward will bring about a lot more work.”
Solar Panels Compete With Cheap Natural Gas
Unfortunately, the true "cost" of cheap natural gas is not known. Poisoned or ruined wells, as well as the health problems from burning gas (not as bad as coal, but not negligible either), will result in costs borne by future generations or those who aren't enjoying the benefits of "cheap" gas today.
From NPR:
Renewable energy is growing rapidly in the U.S., with wind and solar industries enjoying double-digit growth each year. Part of that growth comes from more homeowners choosing to install solar panels.
With government subsidies, some people can even make a financial argument for installing the panels. But in recent years, the price of one fossil fuel — natural gas — has declined so much that solar panels are having difficulty competing.
The reason natural gas prices have fallen is because production is way up, thanks to hydraulic fracturing. Fracking, as it's called, is a controversial drilling technology that some say harms the environment. But the process has also made it possible to extract oil and gas once thought to be trapped in rock too deep underground for drillers to reach.
Due in large part to a combination of fracking and horizontal drilling, there's been a nearly 30 percent increase in the amount of natural gas produced in the U.S. since 2005.
"We've got a classic situation of supply and demand," says Kathryn Klaber, president of the Marcellus Shale Coalition, an industry group based outside Pittsburgh.
Natural gas demand has not gone up as quickly as supply, and Klaber says the price has dropped.
"A handful of years ago, natural gas could have been in the order of 12, 13, 14 dollars per million BTU," she says. "We're now down to three to four [dollars]."
This has allowed utilities that burn natural gas to produce electricity to hold the line on rates. For most of us, that's a good thing, but for those who've installed solar panels, it makes that investment less of a bargain.
Barbara Scott had 21 solar panels installed last March on her house in Media, Pa. Scott's family was the first in the community, and she was prepared to evangelize, "We can have open houses and write newsletter articles and promote the idea of solar," she said. But that was before the economics changed.
With government rebates and tax incentives, Scott says, her family spent $21,000 to install the system. She figured it would take eight years to recoup that investment.
A lot of other people had the same idea at the same time, which sent the price of solar energy credits down sharply in Pennsylvania. Scott says that added another seven years to the payback period.
On top of that, Scott says, electricity rates aren't going up as quickly as she thought they would, thanks in part to low natural gas prices.
"So that, again, adds another two years to our payback period," she says. "We're up to 17 years, which is, essentially, the life of the system. And we haven't even considered what happens if the system breaks or what it's going to cost to take the system off the roof and dispose of it. "
Despite this, Scott says she's still happy to have the panels on her house.
"But now, knowing it's — at best — a break-even proposition, we're not so comfortable telling other people to do it," she says.
Her experience raises questions about the viability of much larger, utility-scale solar projects built in recent years. But for them, the balance sheet looks different.
"They get a fixed price contract with a utility or somebody else who will buy that power from them," says Richard Caperton, director of clean energy investment at the Center for American Progress. Or with utilities, "they get to roll that into a rate base and recover that cost from electric power consumers."
Caperton says what's more interesting is to think about the wind, solar and even nuclear plants that are not being built now because producing with cheaper natural gas is more attractive to investors.
But natural gas prices could rise again quickly. If that happens, solar panels may seem like a good investment once again.
From NPR:
Renewable energy is growing rapidly in the U.S., with wind and solar industries enjoying double-digit growth each year. Part of that growth comes from more homeowners choosing to install solar panels.
With government subsidies, some people can even make a financial argument for installing the panels. But in recent years, the price of one fossil fuel — natural gas — has declined so much that solar panels are having difficulty competing.
The reason natural gas prices have fallen is because production is way up, thanks to hydraulic fracturing. Fracking, as it's called, is a controversial drilling technology that some say harms the environment. But the process has also made it possible to extract oil and gas once thought to be trapped in rock too deep underground for drillers to reach.
Due in large part to a combination of fracking and horizontal drilling, there's been a nearly 30 percent increase in the amount of natural gas produced in the U.S. since 2005.
"We've got a classic situation of supply and demand," says Kathryn Klaber, president of the Marcellus Shale Coalition, an industry group based outside Pittsburgh.
Natural gas demand has not gone up as quickly as supply, and Klaber says the price has dropped.
"A handful of years ago, natural gas could have been in the order of 12, 13, 14 dollars per million BTU," she says. "We're now down to three to four [dollars]."
This has allowed utilities that burn natural gas to produce electricity to hold the line on rates. For most of us, that's a good thing, but for those who've installed solar panels, it makes that investment less of a bargain.
Barbara Scott had 21 solar panels installed last March on her house in Media, Pa. Scott's family was the first in the community, and she was prepared to evangelize, "We can have open houses and write newsletter articles and promote the idea of solar," she said. But that was before the economics changed.
With government rebates and tax incentives, Scott says, her family spent $21,000 to install the system. She figured it would take eight years to recoup that investment.
Enlarge Jeff Brady/NPR Barbara Scott and Mac Given in Media, Pa., had 21 solar panels installed last March. With government rebates and tax incentives, Scott says, her family spent $21,000 to install the system.
On top of that, Scott says, electricity rates aren't going up as quickly as she thought they would, thanks in part to low natural gas prices.
"So that, again, adds another two years to our payback period," she says. "We're up to 17 years, which is, essentially, the life of the system. And we haven't even considered what happens if the system breaks or what it's going to cost to take the system off the roof and dispose of it. "
Despite this, Scott says she's still happy to have the panels on her house.
"But now, knowing it's — at best — a break-even proposition, we're not so comfortable telling other people to do it," she says.
Her experience raises questions about the viability of much larger, utility-scale solar projects built in recent years. But for them, the balance sheet looks different.
"They get a fixed price contract with a utility or somebody else who will buy that power from them," says Richard Caperton, director of clean energy investment at the Center for American Progress. Or with utilities, "they get to roll that into a rate base and recover that cost from electric power consumers."
Caperton says what's more interesting is to think about the wind, solar and even nuclear plants that are not being built now because producing with cheaper natural gas is more attractive to investors.
But natural gas prices could rise again quickly. If that happens, solar panels may seem like a good investment once again.
How solar power can help the billion people without electricity
We tend to think of solar power as something that industrialized nations can use to wean themselves from fossil fuels, but for those who don't have any power now, solar can transform their lives. Just like those solar-powered road signs and street lights that are far from any power lines, solar can help remote villages in developing countries around the world.
From The Guardian:
From The Guardian:
After the Durban talks last month, climate realists must face the reality that "shared sacrifice," however necessary eventually, has proven a catastrophically bad starting point for global collaboration. Nations have already spent decades debating who was going to give up how much first in exchange for what. So we need to seek opportunities — arenas where there are advantages, not penalties, for those who first take action — both to achieve first-round emission reductions and to build trust and cooperation.
One of the major opportunities lies in providing energy access for the more than 1.2 billion people who don't have electricity, most of whom, in business-as-usual scenarios, still won't have it in 2030. These are the poorest people on the planet. Ironically, the world's poorest can best afford the most sophisticated lighting — off-grid combinations of solar panels, power electronics, and LED lights. And this creates an opportunity for which the economics are compelling, the moral urgency profound, the development benefits enormous, and the potential leverage game changing.
The cost of coal and copper — the ingredients of conventional grid power — are soaring. Meanwhile, the cost of solar panels and LEDs, the ingredients of distributed renewable power, are racing down even faster.
If we want the poor to benefit from electricity we cannot wait for the grid, and we cannot rely on fossil fuels. The International Energy Agency, historically a grid-centric, establishment voice, admits that half of those without electricity today will never be wired. The government of India estimates that two-thirds of its non-electrified households need distributed power.
Fortunately, the historic barriers to getting distributed renewable power to scale in poor villages and neighborhoods are rapidly being dismantled by progress in technology, finance, and business models. Getting 1.2 billion people local solar power they can afford is within grasp — if we only think about the problem in a different way. In fact, the world can finish this job by 2020.
The poor already pay for light. They pay for kerosene and candles. And they pay a lot. The poorest fifth of the world pays one-fifth of the world's lighting bill — but receives only 0.1 percent of the lighting benefits. Over a decade, the average poor family spends $1,800 on energy expenditures. Replacing kerosene with a vastly superior 40 Wp (Watts peak) home solar system would cost only $300 and provide them not only light, but access to cell-phone charging, fans, computers, and even televisions.
Kerosene costs 25 to 30 percent of a family's income — globally that amounts to $36 billion a year. The poor do not use kerosene because it is cheap — they are kept poor in significant part because they must rely on expensive, dirty kerosene.
And the poor pay in other ways. A room lit by kerosene typically can have concentrations of pollution 10 times safe levels. About 1.5 million people, mostly women, die of this pollution every year, in addition to those who die from burns in fires.
So why do the poor use kerosene? Because they can buy a single day's worth in a bottle, if that is all they can afford. For the poor, affordability has three dimensions: total cost, up-front price, and payment flexibility. Solar power comes in a panel that will give ten, or even 20, years of light and power — but the poor cannot afford a ten-year investment up front. And many cannot handle conventional finance plans, which require fixed payments regardless of their income that month.
Nor, for the record, do the electrified middle class pay for electricity up front. When I moved into my house in San Francisco, I did not get a bill for my share of the power plants and transmission grid that give me power each month. I pay as I go, based on how many kwh's I use that month.
So lighting the lives of 1.2 billion people with off-grid renewable electricity requires three ingredients:
• Capital to pay for solar or other renewable electrical generation for 400 million households that depend on kerosene;
• Business models for those households to pay for the electricity they use, at the price it really costs, which is a lot less than kerosene;
• Financing, public policy, and partnerships to create the supply chains and distribution networks capable of getting distributed electrical systems to every household that needs them. (These needs might require $6 billion in credits and loan guarantees.)
The money is on the table. It's just on the wrong plates. Purchase and finance of solar power for 1.2 billion people would cost about $10 billion a year over a decade. The 11 countries with the largest number of households without electricity spent $80 billion each year subsidizing fossil fuel — only 17 percent of which benefits the poor. In 2010, the World Bank spent $8 billion on coal-fired power plants, few of which provided meaningful energy access to the poor. The UN's Clean Development Mechanism is proposing to give $4 billion a year to anything-but-clean coal-plants. So there is already far more capital in the system than is needed.
Even five years ago the business models did not exist to enable the poor to afford solar. Solar was much more expensive. The only alternative to buying a solar system with cash was a bank or micro-credit loan for which most of the poor could not qualify.
But the combination of dirt-cheap solar, the cell-phone revolution, and mobile phone banking has changed everything. There are almost 600 million cell-phone customers without electricity — using their phones very little, still spending $10 billion to charge them in town. There are hundreds of thousands of rural, off-grid cell towers powered by diesel — at a price of about $0.70/kilowatt hour. All over the world cell-phone towers are being converted from diesel to hybrid renewable power sources. So cell phone companies have a powerful motivation to get renewable power into rural areas, to get electricity to their customers, and to charge for electricity through their mobile phone payment systems.
At least three commercial models have been launched in the last several months. India's Simpa Networks — in partnership with SELCO in India and DT-Power in Ghana, India and Kenya — are testing models in which solar distributors can allow customers to pay for electricity through mobile banking "pay as you go" plans. Zimbabwe's Econet Power has launched an even more intriguing model, in which it provides its cell-phone customers with solar power as a customer benefit, charging them only $1 week to use a home solar system provided by Econet, with the bills tied to the customer's cell phone account.
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has proclaimed 2012 the Year of Universal Energy Access. His initiative is keyed not to the UN climate talks, but to the Rio +20 Earth Summit talks scheduled for June.
Imagine that at Rio, instead of embracing business-as-usual solutions to energy access, the world decided to empower the poor with the electricity they can truly afford — distributed solar?
What would the benefits be? In carbon terms alone, kerosene for lighting emits almost as much greenhouse-gas pollution as the entire British economy. 1.5 million lives a year would be saved from respiratory ailments. The available income for the world's poorest fifth would be increased by 25 to 30 percent — a pretty big development bang-for-the-buck. Numerous studies have shown that providing basic energy access increases household income by 50 percent or more by providing more time and opportunities for home-based income generation.
But the leverage is actually much greater. If one-fifth of the world is on solar, as these people prosper and can afford more electricity, they are going to expand solar systems, rather than turning to coal or nuclear. Their neighbors include the one-third of humanity with "spasmodic" electricity — wires that in rural areas work only at night, and in urban areas go down in the afternoon. These customers would find distributed solar far more reliable than the current grid. If we add those 2 billion to the 1.2 billion who are not on the grid, virtually half of humanity could be turning to renewable power as the cheapest, most reliable and most available form of energy. The fossil fuel interests would lose completely their current moral argument — that more carbon will power the poor.
That, I would argue is a phenomenal game-changer — and a powerful first step in building a trusting, low-carbon coalition of rich and poor nations. And that coalition could lay the groundwork for the more challenging global efforts that will be needed to stabilize and eventually restore the climate.
One of the major opportunities lies in providing energy access for the more than 1.2 billion people who don't have electricity, most of whom, in business-as-usual scenarios, still won't have it in 2030. These are the poorest people on the planet. Ironically, the world's poorest can best afford the most sophisticated lighting — off-grid combinations of solar panels, power electronics, and LED lights. And this creates an opportunity for which the economics are compelling, the moral urgency profound, the development benefits enormous, and the potential leverage game changing.
The cost of coal and copper — the ingredients of conventional grid power — are soaring. Meanwhile, the cost of solar panels and LEDs, the ingredients of distributed renewable power, are racing down even faster.
If we want the poor to benefit from electricity we cannot wait for the grid, and we cannot rely on fossil fuels. The International Energy Agency, historically a grid-centric, establishment voice, admits that half of those without electricity today will never be wired. The government of India estimates that two-thirds of its non-electrified households need distributed power.
Fortunately, the historic barriers to getting distributed renewable power to scale in poor villages and neighborhoods are rapidly being dismantled by progress in technology, finance, and business models. Getting 1.2 billion people local solar power they can afford is within grasp — if we only think about the problem in a different way. In fact, the world can finish this job by 2020.
The poor already pay for light. They pay for kerosene and candles. And they pay a lot. The poorest fifth of the world pays one-fifth of the world's lighting bill — but receives only 0.1 percent of the lighting benefits. Over a decade, the average poor family spends $1,800 on energy expenditures. Replacing kerosene with a vastly superior 40 Wp (Watts peak) home solar system would cost only $300 and provide them not only light, but access to cell-phone charging, fans, computers, and even televisions.
Kerosene costs 25 to 30 percent of a family's income — globally that amounts to $36 billion a year. The poor do not use kerosene because it is cheap — they are kept poor in significant part because they must rely on expensive, dirty kerosene.
And the poor pay in other ways. A room lit by kerosene typically can have concentrations of pollution 10 times safe levels. About 1.5 million people, mostly women, die of this pollution every year, in addition to those who die from burns in fires.
So why do the poor use kerosene? Because they can buy a single day's worth in a bottle, if that is all they can afford. For the poor, affordability has three dimensions: total cost, up-front price, and payment flexibility. Solar power comes in a panel that will give ten, or even 20, years of light and power — but the poor cannot afford a ten-year investment up front. And many cannot handle conventional finance plans, which require fixed payments regardless of their income that month.
Nor, for the record, do the electrified middle class pay for electricity up front. When I moved into my house in San Francisco, I did not get a bill for my share of the power plants and transmission grid that give me power each month. I pay as I go, based on how many kwh's I use that month.
So lighting the lives of 1.2 billion people with off-grid renewable electricity requires three ingredients:
• Capital to pay for solar or other renewable electrical generation for 400 million households that depend on kerosene;
• Business models for those households to pay for the electricity they use, at the price it really costs, which is a lot less than kerosene;
• Financing, public policy, and partnerships to create the supply chains and distribution networks capable of getting distributed electrical systems to every household that needs them. (These needs might require $6 billion in credits and loan guarantees.)
The money is on the table. It's just on the wrong plates. Purchase and finance of solar power for 1.2 billion people would cost about $10 billion a year over a decade. The 11 countries with the largest number of households without electricity spent $80 billion each year subsidizing fossil fuel — only 17 percent of which benefits the poor. In 2010, the World Bank spent $8 billion on coal-fired power plants, few of which provided meaningful energy access to the poor. The UN's Clean Development Mechanism is proposing to give $4 billion a year to anything-but-clean coal-plants. So there is already far more capital in the system than is needed.
Even five years ago the business models did not exist to enable the poor to afford solar. Solar was much more expensive. The only alternative to buying a solar system with cash was a bank or micro-credit loan for which most of the poor could not qualify.
But the combination of dirt-cheap solar, the cell-phone revolution, and mobile phone banking has changed everything. There are almost 600 million cell-phone customers without electricity — using their phones very little, still spending $10 billion to charge them in town. There are hundreds of thousands of rural, off-grid cell towers powered by diesel — at a price of about $0.70/kilowatt hour. All over the world cell-phone towers are being converted from diesel to hybrid renewable power sources. So cell phone companies have a powerful motivation to get renewable power into rural areas, to get electricity to their customers, and to charge for electricity through their mobile phone payment systems.
At least three commercial models have been launched in the last several months. India's Simpa Networks — in partnership with SELCO in India and DT-Power in Ghana, India and Kenya — are testing models in which solar distributors can allow customers to pay for electricity through mobile banking "pay as you go" plans. Zimbabwe's Econet Power has launched an even more intriguing model, in which it provides its cell-phone customers with solar power as a customer benefit, charging them only $1 week to use a home solar system provided by Econet, with the bills tied to the customer's cell phone account.
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has proclaimed 2012 the Year of Universal Energy Access. His initiative is keyed not to the UN climate talks, but to the Rio +20 Earth Summit talks scheduled for June.
Imagine that at Rio, instead of embracing business-as-usual solutions to energy access, the world decided to empower the poor with the electricity they can truly afford — distributed solar?
What would the benefits be? In carbon terms alone, kerosene for lighting emits almost as much greenhouse-gas pollution as the entire British economy. 1.5 million lives a year would be saved from respiratory ailments. The available income for the world's poorest fifth would be increased by 25 to 30 percent — a pretty big development bang-for-the-buck. Numerous studies have shown that providing basic energy access increases household income by 50 percent or more by providing more time and opportunities for home-based income generation.
But the leverage is actually much greater. If one-fifth of the world is on solar, as these people prosper and can afford more electricity, they are going to expand solar systems, rather than turning to coal or nuclear. Their neighbors include the one-third of humanity with "spasmodic" electricity — wires that in rural areas work only at night, and in urban areas go down in the afternoon. These customers would find distributed solar far more reliable than the current grid. If we add those 2 billion to the 1.2 billion who are not on the grid, virtually half of humanity could be turning to renewable power as the cheapest, most reliable and most available form of energy. The fossil fuel interests would lose completely their current moral argument — that more carbon will power the poor.
That, I would argue is a phenomenal game-changer — and a powerful first step in building a trusting, low-carbon coalition of rich and poor nations. And that coalition could lay the groundwork for the more challenging global efforts that will be needed to stabilize and eventually restore the climate.
Texas Professor Has Bright Ideas for Solar Power
The hits just keep on coming? I fully expect an increasing cascade of technological break-throughs and other news to keep the renewable energy momentum growing.
From NPR:
By almost any measure, 2011 was a rough year for solar power in the U.S. Federal subsidies to Solyndra became the focus of a congressional investigation after the company went bankrupt. Other solar outfits are feeling pressure on two fronts: low-cost Chinese-manufactured panels are driving prices down around the world, and electricity from America’s newly unleashed natural gas reserves is making power from renewable sources seem less economical.
But at the end of the year, a scientist in Austin has brought a little sun into the forecast. Meet Xiaoyang Zhu, a chemistry professor at the University of Texas, and director of the Energy Frontier Research Center.
For the last few years Zhu and his team have been working on a way to dramatically increase the amount of energy harvested from Solar technology. Now, they think they’ve done it.
“So our recent discovery is this. If you have a light photon,” he says to me, then pauses. “I guess this concept is simple enough, yea?”
Well, maybe not for many of us. Here’s a little background. Solar panels capture energy from light photons. But when the photon is too hot, with energy too high, traditional techniques only capture part of it. Most of the light converts to heat. Zhu’s team has found away to absorb those photons into a plastic. To put them in what scientists call a “dark state.”
“In this dark state, this one electron whole pair becomes two electrons whole pair,” Zhu says. “Of course it’s very difficult to describe in common language. You hear about this thing called quantum weirdness?”
Again, I shake my head no.
It took some explaining – but here’s the upshot: In this “dark state” Zhu was actually able to harvest two electrons of energy from one hot photon.
“So, the conventional Solar panel. That efficiency theoretically is 31 percent. With our discovery the theoretical efficiency increases to 44 percent.”
That’s a more than 40 percent increase in the amount of energy that can be produced from a solar panel. But you can’t do it with traditional silicone photovoltaic cells. Remember, I said Zhu’s team has been using plastic to capture the energy.
“The advantage of course, is obvious when I say plastic,” he says. “It’s cheap.”
Engineering the new plastic semiconductor solar cells to the point that they could be commercially viable is Zhu’s next challenge. “A friend of mine at MIT, a group at MIT is actually trying to do that,” he says. “And the efficiency is not there yet.”
But he’s confident that within a few years, solar cells that can capture more energy than anything we have today will be reality outside the laboratory. And that should do a lot to spark greater interest in solar power.
From NPR:
By almost any measure, 2011 was a rough year for solar power in the U.S. Federal subsidies to Solyndra became the focus of a congressional investigation after the company went bankrupt. Other solar outfits are feeling pressure on two fronts: low-cost Chinese-manufactured panels are driving prices down around the world, and electricity from America’s newly unleashed natural gas reserves is making power from renewable sources seem less economical.
But at the end of the year, a scientist in Austin has brought a little sun into the forecast. Meet Xiaoyang Zhu, a chemistry professor at the University of Texas, and director of the Energy Frontier Research Center.
For the last few years Zhu and his team have been working on a way to dramatically increase the amount of energy harvested from Solar technology. Now, they think they’ve done it.
“So our recent discovery is this. If you have a light photon,” he says to me, then pauses. “I guess this concept is simple enough, yea?”
Well, maybe not for many of us. Here’s a little background. Solar panels capture energy from light photons. But when the photon is too hot, with energy too high, traditional techniques only capture part of it. Most of the light converts to heat. Zhu’s team has found away to absorb those photons into a plastic. To put them in what scientists call a “dark state.”
“In this dark state, this one electron whole pair becomes two electrons whole pair,” Zhu says. “Of course it’s very difficult to describe in common language. You hear about this thing called quantum weirdness?”
Again, I shake my head no.
It took some explaining – but here’s the upshot: In this “dark state” Zhu was actually able to harvest two electrons of energy from one hot photon.
“So, the conventional Solar panel. That efficiency theoretically is 31 percent. With our discovery the theoretical efficiency increases to 44 percent.”
That’s a more than 40 percent increase in the amount of energy that can be produced from a solar panel. But you can’t do it with traditional silicone photovoltaic cells. Remember, I said Zhu’s team has been using plastic to capture the energy.
Photo by Daniel Reese for KUT News.
Solar Energy Panels in Austin, Texas.
Engineering the new plastic semiconductor solar cells to the point that they could be commercially viable is Zhu’s next challenge. “A friend of mine at MIT, a group at MIT is actually trying to do that,” he says. “And the efficiency is not there yet.”
But he’s confident that within a few years, solar cells that can capture more energy than anything we have today will be reality outside the laboratory. And that should do a lot to spark greater interest in solar power.
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