Category:

Battery Makers See a Big Break Coming — No, Seriously This Time

Energy storage developers have been saying for a decade that the industry’s on the verge of a big breakthrough that will finally turn the battery into a major player in the power market. At least this time around, they’ve got customers backing them up. Utilities Southern California Edison and San Diego Gas & Electric said at a storage conference last week that supply from batteries now competes against natural-gas fired plants that start up when demand peaks. Storage developers are inking deals with big corporations including InterContinental Hotels Group Plc and Whole Foods Markets Inc., which want to install storage units to save on power bills. Batteries account for a tiny fraction of global power resources. The technology has been prohibitively expensive and, until recently, relatively unproven. The U.S. government’s Argonne National Laboratory, the same one that built the first nuclear reactor to generate power, just offered its help […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
Category:

Renewables Shrug Off Slumping Oil as Investment Remains Steady

Renewable energy investment held firm in the third quarter, indicating the industry is weathering a slump in the cost of oil and coal. Financing for projects including wind, solar, biofuels and biomass fell 1 percent to $70 billion worldwide, compared with the same period a year ago, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance. For the first nine months of the year, investment eased 2 percent to $197.9 billion, the London-based researcher estimated. Surging interest in the U.S., Brazil and China offset a 48 percent plunge in funding for projects in Europe, long the leader in clean-energy technologies. The industry’s capital needs declined because of a drop in the cost of wind power plants, which in the U.K. and Germany are now competitive with fossil fuels even without subsidies. Industry executives will discuss the trends at a conference hosted by New Energy Finance in London next week. “On a global […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
Category:

U.S. studying offshore wind farm impacts

U.S. government reviewing potential impacts off offshore wind farm construction starting with Rhode Island program. File photo by Teun van den Dries/Shutterstock WASHINGTON, Sept. 29 (UPI) — Starting with a development off the Rhode Island coast, the federal government said it was studying the real-time impacts of offshore wind farm construction. The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management said it started its Real-Time Opportunity for Development Environmental Observations — or RODEO — program with Rhode Island. BOEM Chief Environmental Officer William Brown explained the program will provide real-time data on potential environmental impacts and seafloor disturbances related to wind farm installation offshore. "The first opportunity to conduct this research is through the historic Deepwater Wind project," he said. The Rhode Island government in May 2014 signed off on environmental permits for what will become the nation’s first offshore wind farm, Deepwater Wind’s Block Island project. The wind farm will generate […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
Category:

Feds to Lease Ocean Floor Off N.J. Coast for Windmills

ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. (AP)—The federal government plans to lease nearly 344,000 acres of the ocean floor off the coast of New Jersey to companies interested in building offshore windmills to generate electricity. The Interior Department and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management say that if fully developed, the leases could result in enough wind-generated electricity to power 1.2 million homes. The leases are to be sold Nov. 9. “On the heels of this summer’s historic ‘steel-in-the-water’ milestone for the nation’s first commercial offshore wind farm, today’s announcement marks another major step in standing up a sustainable offshore wind program for Atlantic coast communities,” Interior Secretary Sally Jewell said Wednesday. In July, construction started on Deepwater Wind’s $225 million, 30-megawatt offshore wind project off Block Island in Rhode Island that will provide electricity to Block Island and Rhode Island mainland consumers. So far, 13 companies have been qualified to bid […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
Category:

Israel’s 300 Days of Sun No Help as Offshore Gas Eclipses Solar

Yosef Abramowitz, the developer of the Ketura solar field. After struggling to grow citrus trees on a stretch of parched desert, Israel’s Kibbutz Ketura instead devoted the land to harvesting the country’s most abundant resource: sunshine. Yet as the kibbutzniks seek to expand their solar installations, the government is proving almost as formidable an obstacle as the scorched soil ever was. “Israel has the technology and plenty of sunshine, but the government is completely ignoring the renewables industry,” said Yosef Abramowitz, a solar energy advocate who helped found Arava Power Co., the developer of the Ketura field. With more than 300 days of sunshine per year and a world-class tech sector, Israel should be a hotbed of solar, but it has lagged behind places such as cloudy Germany and the rainy Netherlands. That’s because in recent years, geologists have discovered huge gas fields just off Israel’s coast, making the […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
Category:

U.S. residential solar capacity booming

U.S. solar industry report finds more residential use and momentum spreading across more U.S. states. Photo by Craig Russell/Shutterstock WASHINGTON, Sept. 9 (UPI) — With development spreading, the U.S. residential solar power market set a record during the second quarter with new installations, an industry report said. A report from the Solar Energy Industries Association with support from green energy market adviser GTM Research finds second quarter residential solar capacity grew 70 percent year-on-year to 473 megawatts. The report finds that 10 states have installed more than 10 MW of solar power during the second quarter, up from the four reported during second quarter 2013. The Lawrence Berkeley National Lab published a survey in August of about 80 percent of all U.S. residential and non-residential photovoltaic systems installed through 2014 and found national median installed prices declined 9 percent year-on-year for residential systems, 10 percent for small-scale, non-residential systems, […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
Category:

Germany’s E.ON eyes U.S. solar market

German energy company E.ON said it aims to expand its development across the U.S. solar power sector. File photo by Stephen Shaver/UPI DUSSELDORF, Germany, Sept. 2 (UPI) — German energy company E.ON said it was working to expand its footprint in the U.S. utility sector through its activity in large-scale solar projects. The German company said it started construction on the 20-megawatt Maricopa West solar project in southern California. With 89,000 panels, the company said it’s the second such large-scale project built by E.ON in California. In May, the state became the first in the nation with more than 5 percent of its total annual utility-scale electricity generation coming from solar power. California’s full-year 2014 solar power generation of 9.9 million megawatt hours was more than all other states combined , according to data from the federal Energy Information Administration. The German company’s first California project, the 20-megawatt Alamo […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
Category:

Fossil Fuels Losing Cost Advantage Over Solar, Wind, IEA Says

The cost of producing electricity from renewable sources such as solar and wind has dropped significantly over the past five years, narrowing the gap with power generated from fossil fuels and nuclear reactors, according to the International Energy Agency . “The costs of renewable technologies — in particular solar photovoltaic — have declined significantly over the past five years,” the Paris-based IEA said in a report called Projected Costs of Generating Electricity. “These technologies are no longer cost outliers.” The median cost of producing so-called baseload power that is available all the time from natural gas, coal and atomic plants was about $100 a megawatt-hour for 2015 compared with about $200 for solar, which dropped from $500 in 2010. Those costs take into account investment, fuel, maintenance and dismantling of the installations over their lifetimes and vary widely between countries and plants. For instance, commercial rooftop solar installations generate […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
Category:

Here’s One Thing Standing Between You and Even Cheaper Gasoline

Oil has lost a third of its value in two months, bringing U.S. drivers within pennies’ reach of $2.50 gasoline. But there’s at least one thing standing in the way of a steeper decline at the pumps: ethanol. While the crude rout dragged gasoline futures down about 60 cents a gallon, ethanol’s dropped a mere 15 cents — making it costlier than gasoline this week for the first time since January. Ethanol’s one thing that’ll keep gasoline prices from a total free fall. The biofuel’s value is being propped up by concern over yields for this year’s corn crop, its main feedstock. Meanwhile, refiners are required to blend the additive into gasoline to comply with the federal regulations. “Because they’re forced to blend, they’re blending a more expensive product,” Chris Knittel, professor of energy economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, said by phone. “A large fraction […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
Category:

Sun-Drenched Miners Look to the Skies to Cut Fuel Costs in Half

The DeGrussa copper and gold mine in Australia’s sun-scorched outback is getting a solar farm, the latest example of the industry embracing clean energy. The plant will replace about 5 million liters (1.3 million gallons) of diesel a year, a fifth of the mine’s energy needs. Energy generated by the system may eventually cost about half that of diesel-generated power, according to Sandfire Resources NL, the deposit’s owner. Miners including Rio Tinto Group are installing new solar plants from Chile to South Africa, betting they’ll deliver long-term savings even as tumbling oil prices cut power costs. The global solar-power market for mining companies may grow to about $2 billion a year by 2022 from about $42 million in 2013, according to Navigant Consulting Inc. “Solar-power providers are specifically targeting mines right now and it’s about replacing diesel,” Dexter Gauntlett, a senior research analyst at Navigant said by phone from […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple