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Solar power getting brighter for U.S. grid

U.S. government approves first three solar projects under a plan for Western states that envisions enough power for 8 million households. UPI/Stephen Shaver WASHINGTON, June 2 (UPI) — The first solar energy projects were sanctioned under a fast-track program that envisions enough power for 8 million homes, the U.S. Interior Department said. U.S. Interior Secretary Sally Jewell announced the first three solar energy projects were approved according to the terms of the so-called Western Solar Plan . Once built, the three projects on public lands in Nevada will generate as much as 440 megawatts of energy, enough to meet the annual demands of about 132,000 homes. "Through thoughtful planning and upfront public participation, these solar projects demonstrate we can reduce permitting times, create certainty for energy developers, and achieve better outcomes for communities and the environment," Jewell said in a statement. The plan, steered by the department’s Bureau of […]

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British secretary calls for ‘solar revolution’

Incoming British energy and climate secretary calls for more effort to build up behind solar power capacity. File Photo by UPI/Bill Greenblatt. LONDON, May 15 (UPI) — Incoming British Energy Secretary Amber Rudd told her local newspaper she aims to usher in a "solar revolution" through the new administration. British Prime Minister David Cameron tapped Rudd as the head of the Department of Energy and Climate Change, at which she’s served since last year. From 2010-12, she was a minister in the British Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Select Committee. Rudd laid out part of her strategy in an interview with her local newspaper , the Hastings and St. Leonards Observer. "I want to unleash a new solar revolution," she said in the interview. "We have a million people living under roofs with solar panels and that number needs to increase." DECC last year said the country was in […]

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How Sustainable is Stored Sunlight?

Whether or not to include storage is no longer just an academic question. Driven by better battery technology and the disincentivization of grid-connected solar panels, off-grid solar is about to make a comeback. How sustainable is a solar PV system if energy storage is taken into account? Picture: Tesla’s lithium-ion home storage system. In the  previous article , we have seen that many life cycle analyses (LCAs) of solar PV systems have a positive bias. Most LCAs base their studies on the manufacturing of solar cells in Europe or the USA. However, most panels are now produced in China, where the electric grid is about twice as carbon-intensive and about 50% less energy efficient. [ 1 ] Likewise, most LCAs investigate solar PV systems in regions with a solar insolation typical of the Mediterranean region, while the majority of solar panels have been installed in places with only half […]

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Tesla’s New Battery Doesn’t Work That Well With Solar

Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk  introduced a new family of batteries designed to stretch the solar-power revolution into its next phase. There’s just one problem: Tesla’s new battery doesn’t work well with rooftop solar—at least not yet. Even Solar City, the supplier led by Musk, isn’t ready to offer Tesla’s battery for daily use. The new Tesla Powerwall home batteries come in two sizes—seven and 10 kilowatt hours (kWh)—but the differences extend beyond capacity to the chemistry of the batteries. The 7kWh version is made for daily use, while its larger counterpart is only intended to be used as occasional backup when the electricity goes out. The bigger Tesla battery isn’t designed to go through more than about 50 charging cycles a year, according to SolarCity spokesman Jonathan Bass. Telsa CEO Elon Musk points at the sun. Here’s where things get interesting. SolarCity, with Musk as its chairman, has decided not to install the 7kWh Powerwall that’s optimized […]

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Musk’s Cousins Battle Utilities to Make Solar Rooftops Cheap

In September 2013, Hawaiian Electric Co. told thousands of customers they couldn’t connect their new solar panels to its distribution grid. In some neighborhoods, HECO said, its system couldn’t absorb any more unused energy from home solar arrays. The moratorium, which lasted 13 months, made Hawaii a central battleground in the effort by utilities to control the rapid growth of independent solar companies across the U.S. And it was a big deal to people such as Robert Gould, a retired Northwest Airlines pilot living near Honolulu. He’d just paid $53,000 to have solar panels installed. Gould and other customers protested loudly to state officials. They finally got help from Lyndon Rive, the CEO of SolarCity . The San Mateo, California, company is the biggest installer of rooftop solar panels in the U.S. and has 10,000 Hawaiian customers, Bloomberg Markets magazine reports in its May issue. Rive studied the situation […]

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Texas City Pulls Plug on Fossil Fuels With Shift to Solar

(Bloomberg) — A city in the heart of the oil state of Texas is set to become one of the first communities in the U.S. to wean its residents off fossil fuels. The municipal utility in Georgetown, with about 50,000 residents, will get all of its power from renewable resources when SunEdison Inc. completes 150 megawatts of solar farms in West Texas next year. The change was announced Wednesday. It will be the first city to completely embrace clean power in the state, which is the biggest U.S. producer and user of natural gas. More will follow as municipalities seek to insulate themselves from unpredictable prices for fossil fuels, said Paul Gaynor, SunEdison’s executive vice president of North America. Burlington, Vermont, made a similar move with its purchase of a hydroelectric plant last year. “This will be the first of many,” Gaynor said in a telephone interview. “The city […]

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California Just Had a Stunning Increase in Solar

California is now the first U.S. state to get 5 percent of its annual utility-scale electricity from the sun. But that’s really understating what just happened.  The chart above, released this week by the U.S. Energy Information Administration, shows that in just one year, big solar jumped from 1.9 percent to 5 percent of the state’s total power generation. California isn’t just producing the most utility-scale solar electricity of any state; it’s producing more than all the other states combined .  And that’s only what the major electricity producers are generating—it doesn’t include rooftop solar, in which California is also leading the nation. In small-scale solar, capacity for another 2.3 gigawatts has been installed, according to the California Public Utilities Commission.  Renewable energy, including hydro power and rooftop solar, now constitutes about a third of California’s electricity, a remarkable feat accomplished through renewable requirements for utilities and incentives for homeowners.  But even that understates California’s […]

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California first state to generate more than 5% of electricity from utility-scale solar

Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration, Electric Power Monthly Note: Data include generation from plants greater than 1 megawatt. California has become the first state with more than 5% of its annual utility-scale electricity generation from utility-scale solar power, according to EIA’s Electric Power Monthly . California’s utility-scale (1 megawatt (MW) or larger) solar plants generated a record 9.9 million megawatthours (MWh) of electricity in 2014, an increase of 6.1 million MWh from 2013. California’s utility-scale solar production in 2014 was more than three times the output of the next-highest state, Arizona, and more than all other states combined. Several large plants were phased into operation in California during 2014, including two 550 MW solar photovoltaic plants, Topaz and Desert Sunlight (Phases 1 and 2 ), as well as the 377 MW Ivanpah (Phases 1 , 2 , and 3 ) and the 250 MW Genesis solar thermal plants. In […]

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Eclipse Tests European Power Grid Flooded by Solar Farms

Eclipse watching tourists ride dog sleds outside of Longyearbyen, Svalbard, an archipeligo administered by Norway on March 19, 2015 ahead of the March 20 solar eclipse. Photographer: Stan Honda/AFP/Getty Images (Bloomberg) — The first major eclipse of the solar age is placing unprecedented strain on Europe’s electricity grids this morning as power panels switch off and then on again. The moon will block about 80 percent of the sun’s light across Europe from about 8 a.m. to 11 a.m. London time. In Germany, the eclipse will briefly halt output from thousands of panels, which provide about 40 percent of the nation’s power on the most sunny days. Grid operators are working to switch to usually idle natural gas and coal plants to make up for the lost solar power. Success will inform nations from the U.S. to China about how to integrate the variable supplies from renewables generators into […]

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Green energy auction sets stage for cheaper solar and wind power

Close to 30 UK green energy schemes have been awarded a subsidy pot worth nearly £4bn in a government auction that has set the stage for a big fall in solar electricity prices and much cheaper wind power. Two small winning solar panel projects have said they can produce electricity for nearly 60 per cent less than the maximum price the government had agreed to pay for that type of electricity and almost the same as current wholesale power prices. More On this topic IN UK Politics & Policy Prices for two large offshore wind farms off the coast of East Anglia and the Scottish Borders have come in as much as 18 per cent cheaper, though each scheme is still likely to receive nearly double the prevailing wholesale price. The auction, which is likely to set new ground rules for the way renewable energy is funded across Europe, […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple