July 29, 2011
Do you work in, or have dealings with, a renewable energy industry? Are you working as an engineer, scientist, policy executive, advocate, or manager in this field?
If so, now’s the time to be thinking of whether you can submit a paper to, or participate in, next year’s ASES National Solar Energy Conference. You can find the Call for Participation and Papers here.
Next year’s Conference is going to be very different from recent ones. It will be colocated with the biennial World Renewable Energy Congress under the umbrella heading of the World Renewable Energy Forum (WREF). It will take place in the LEED silver-certified Colorado Convention Center in downtown Denver, CO, from May 13 – May 18.
The theme of WREF 2012 will be EmPowering the World with Renewable Energy. It will look not only at how renewable energy technologies can address the environmental and energy crisis from an international perspective but also what it will take to integrate renewables into the world’s infrastructure on a very large scale. To accomplish this energy transition, it will not be enough simply to power our electric grids with renewable energy; we need also to empower people to play active roles in our energy transition, especially in developing nations.
We’ll be bringing you more information about WREF 2012 in Solar Citizen each month from now until next May, but you can check out the Call for Participation and Papers right here and now.
July 27, 2011
Regular readers of this newsletter must be well aware of the fraught history of Property-assessed Clean Energy (PACE) programs. We’ve been writing about this excellent new way of financing small-scale solar installations since January 2009, not long after the first PACE program was instituted in Berkeley, California. Following Berkeley’s success, twenty-seven states rushed to pass PACE-enabling legislation, clearing the way for local governments to create programs in which:
- The government entity raises funds, ideally from tax-free clean energy bonds;
- Homeowners and business owners can apply to use those funds for renewable energy or energy efficiency installations;
- The solar arrays (for example) are installed at no cost to the owner;
- The owner repays the lending agency through regular property tax assessments over an extended period, e.g., 20 years;
- Should the owner sell the property before the installation is paid for, the balance of the tax assessment is applied to the new owner.
Graphic courtesy of PACENOW campaign (www.PACENOW.org)
Of course, for every idea that catches fire there’s someone waiting with a bucket of water, and in this case it was the Federal Housing Finance Authority (FHFA), the overlord of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. FHFA considered the financial arrangement not a tax assessment but a loan, and thus could not stomach the notion that its mortgage operations would lose their senior lien position to a local authority. Last summer, then, FHFA instructed Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac not to underwrite mortgages for properties with a PACE assessment. Given the large number of home mortgages that end up being sold to these government mortgage agencies, FHFA’s action effectively killed the entire PACE movement.
(more…)
July 27, 2011
In what continues to be an era of slow growth for the U.S. economy, the domestic solar industry continued its impressive growth rate into the first quarter of 2011, according to a report released last month by the Solar Energy Industries Association and GTM Research.
Compared to the first quarter of 2010, the industry grew 66%, while domestic manufacturing of PV equipment grew at 31%. 2010 itself was an outstanding year; with 887 megawatts installed, it more than doubled the total for the year before, and the Q1 2011 figure represents over 28% of that 2010 annual figure.
This is not data to take to an international conference, however. Solar growth overseas has been accelerating even faster than at home, with the result that U.S. global market share has decreased since 2009 from 6% to 5.1%.
There is better news on the utility-scale front, however, where the U.S. could actually achieve world leadership. Some 1100 MW of concentrating solar and concentrating PV power is currently under construction, with eight times that much in the planning stage.
The report also shows that 88% of this year’s solar installations were in just seven states: California, New Jersey, Arizona, Pennsylvania, Colorado, New York and Massachusetts, a 12% increase on 2010′s figure. It appears that those states already leading the pack are finding reasons to increase their solar investment.
The full U.S. Solar Market Insight (TM) report can be found here.
June 30, 2011
We know that some portion of our Solar Nation subscribers are also members of the American Solar Energy Society (ASES), the nation’s oldest association of solar professionals and advocates. But for those of you who aren’t, here’s one big benefit of belonging to ASES: Solar Today magazine.
Solar Today connects you to the leading solar energy experts, tells you what’s going on in solar development today, and keeps you up-to-date on policy, technical, business and legislative issues concerning solar. Every October there’s a ‘Getting Started’ edition full of tips for anyone looking to use solar power for the first time. You can find up-to-the-minute news on-line, and link to the digital edition of the magazine, here.
Solar Today is one of many ASES membership benefits. You can get it by going here and joining ASES today.
June 30, 2011
Another popular ASES progam is the National Solar Tour, in which hundreds of people and business owners open their doors to show the public how they’re using solar power in their lives. It’s the world’s largest grass roots solar event.
Last year there were tours in every single state, and more than 160,000 interested people paid visits to solar homes and businesses.
Would you like to be a host this year? Tours will take place (in most areas) on October 1, and you can register as a host by going here.
Share the solar wealth!
June 30, 2011
Old friend and long-time toiler in the vineyards of renewable energy reporting Stephen Lacey, now writing for the ‘indispensable blog’ Climate Progress, writes this month about how quickly solar PV is approaching grid parity.
According to top solar executives in Stephen’s story: “solar PV is no longer a fringe, cost-prohibitive technology – but, rather, a near-commodity that is quickly becoming competitive with new nuclear, new natural gas, and, soon, new coal.”
From time to time in Solar Citizen, we’ve brought to your attention indications that solar PV is getting ever closer to traditional energy sources in cost per unit of energy…
February 2011: Solar Gaining on Natural Gas
January 2011: Renewable Energy Head-to-Head with Nuclear
November 2010: Solar Heading for Grid Parity
July 2010: Solar Cheaper than Nukes
…but it’s noteworthy to read in the Climate Progress report that, long before the decade is out, reductions in materials costs can even bring solar PV into serious competition with newly constructed coal plants. And that’s a comparison with coal as it’s actually priced, not the full cost accounting price of the stuff, which, as Scott Malone of Reuters points out, can be three times what the industry charges.
Reinforcement for these stories can be found in a report on the UK’s energy future released recently by the independent consulting firm Ernst & Young. According to their report, the price of solar modules should fall to $1/Watt by 2013 (half of the 2009 figure), due to continuing reductions in the cost of materials and improvements in efficiency. So this energy source that has been decried for so long by the coal industry as too expensive (and by no less an energy expert than Bill Gates as ‘cute’) is heading fast for grid parity. The question is now not if, but how soon.
And as for the coal industry, perhaps it’s just as well that so many proposals for new coal plants have been rejected of late. If built, they’d be white elephants–or at least very grubby ones.
June 30, 2011
How many of us have heard the dismissive statement about renewables – particularly solar and wind – to the effect that their intermittency prevents them from becoming serious players in the power market? It reminds us distantly of the politician who averred, some hundred years ago, that the U.S. Patent Office could be closed because everything that could be invented had been invented – that science and technology had nothing new to say and could not improve the status quo.
No, thought leaders in the renewables industries have not spent years baffled by what detractors portray as an insoluble problem. They do actually know that the wind does not blow constantly, that clouds have been known to hide the sun, and that nightfall happens on average every evening in tropical and temperate latitudes. And they know that there are solutions aplenty. (more…)
May 31, 2011
In a former chapter of his life, the Solar Nation Executive Campaigner helped found and run a grass-roots group supporting a proposed utility-scale offshore wind installation. The group’s efforts succeeded because it consistently presented factual data to counter wildly exaggerated claims by opponents and despite the fact that its shoestring budget was a couple of decimal points inferior to that of those opponents, whose coffers were kept well-filled by industry and political donors.
There’s an obvious parallel between that experience and that of advocacy groups operating at the national level, trying to draw the attention of federal legislators away from those whose contribution to the debate is expressed in dollar signs.
It’s a tough and sometimes dispiriting race. But for those of us pleading the case of renewable energy, it’s not a race we can afford to give up – not if we want truly clean energy and a stabilized climate to characterize our age and future ages.
So we still find ourselves fighting entrenched interests for whom energy and climate considerations come a very distant second to quarterly profits and re-election. Solar Nation monitors activities and developments both in Congress and at state level to find suitable openings for advocacy actions on energy and climate bills. It’s at the state level where many renewable portfolio standards and emissions limits first become law, and also where some of the fiercest fights to advance clean energy occur.
We know that timely, focused action at this level can reap great rewards. In the last six months:
- We fought to have Congress extend the Treasury Grant Program, which provides cash grants in lieu of tax credits for commercial solar installations; the program was extended for a full year in December;
- We focused attention on those U.S. House members co-sponsoring a series of bills to strip funding from the Environmental Protection Agency; that fight is still ongoing;
- We protested the decision of Department of the Interior to relocate the Solar Decathlon from the National Mall; it was subsequently restored to the National Mall (albeit a somewhat remote section of it, but certainly less remote than an inaccessible marina in Maryland);
- We supported Kentucky’s Clean Energy Opportunity Act; the bill moved quickly to the energy committee;
- We fought against the cutting from the federal budget of the Department of Energy’s Loan Guarantee Program, which underwrites many large-scale renewable projects, opening up the purses of private investors; the program survived the Congressional budget process in a straitened form;
- We protested the actions of Colorado’s Xcel Energy, which had peremptorily shut down its solar rebate program; the Utility responded with a program whose incentives rewarded performance rather than investment;
- We objected to a proposed bill in Florida that would have arrogated all solar development to the state’s largest utilities, disenfranchising independent solar developers; this bill was rejected by the state senate.
But the good guys still need some help to keep going and keep the bad guys off-balance. Can you make a donation to help us help America to become a solar nation? It’s tax-deductible, and easy to do. When you click on the DONATE button, you’ll be directed to our secure giving site, and your donation will keep us working for America’s future.
With thanks, from Solar Nation.
May 31, 2011
As photovoltaic installations become more commonplace across the country, the solar industry pays increasing attention to ways of reducing operational costs. Much of this effort is focused on system and installation costs, e.g., more efficient modules, standardized mounting systems, alternative materials, etc., but the effort can be brought to naught by balance-of-system costs, i.e., those costs not related to the actual hardware or the act of fixing it in place and making it work.
Devil in the Details
One of the most egregiously additive balance-of-system line items in a typical installation bill covers permitting costs. These are the direct and indirect charges related to the local jurisdiction signing off on a solar installation, and include fees levied by the city, county or state for the all-important piece of paper headed ‘permit’, not to mention the costs passed on by your installer for time spent pacing the corridors of power while waiting for that permit.
Permitting fees have become a significant component of total solar installations costs (up to 5% – 10%, depending on location) for several reasons. Typically, local jurisdictions are responsible for setting permitting requirements, which means that the officials charged with doing so are often unfamiliar with the technology and its requirements. The result can be permitting procedures that are not only unnecessarily complex but also inconsistent with those of neighboring jurisdictions, adding to the administrative burden borne by the solar installer operating in multiple areas. Within a local government operation, moreover, multiple departments may be required to review an application, stretching out that timeline and adding to total costs. And yet, a typical PV system in Albany is not so dissimilar from one in Wichita that a national standard for permitting practices could not be employed in both places. (more…)
May 31, 2011
A West Virginia entrepreneur is busy mapping and cataloging the solar power potential of every roof in the world.
You can read about his company, and how it might affect you, in this Forbes Magazine article.
