Green Energy Revolution Megathread

[dps]

I guess people burn, too.  But I'd rather not go that route if it can be avoided.

Well, I've got a list, just in case.

[jimmy olsen]

Seems to be inefficent at this point. Solar has become so cheap that it's better to pour all our resources into utility level solar farms.

http://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/288340-obama-makes-new-push-on-solar-power

Obama makes new push on solar power
 

By Timothy Cama - 07/19/16 01:00 PM EDT

The Obama administration is making a new large-scale effort to encourage deployment and use of rooftop solar power on homes.

Numerous agencies announced new or strengthened coordinated efforts Tuesday aimed at increasing solar installations in houses owned by low- and moderate-income Americans, including a new goal for solar installations and a policy change to increase access to a key financing mechanism for solar power and energy efficiency.

"This is an approach that cuts across the government to try to take advantage of the fact that the cost of renewable technologies has come down dramatically during President Obama's tenure, and we want to advantage of that a try to encourage more homeowners to actually benefit directly from that dynamic," Brian Deese, a top adviser to Obama, told reporters.
The administration is dubbing the effort the "Clean Energy for All Americans Initiative."

The initiative marks another major push for solar power, which the administration has sought to highlight as a significant bright spot not only in the fight against climate change but also in economic and job development.

Generating capacity in the solar industry has skyrocketed under Obama, growing more than threefold from 2008 to 2015. Meanwhile, costs have fallen dramatically and job growth greatly outpaces that in the rest of the economy.

Still, solar power is a small sliver of the country's total electricity generation, representing only 0.6 percent last year, according to the Energy Information Administration.

The most significant piece of Tuesday's announcement is a policy change to expand access to the Property-Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) program, which allows homeowners to install renewable and energy efficiency projects at no upfront cost, paying the costs over time through taxes.

The Federal Housing Administration and the Department of Veterans Affairs will now allow some people using those agencies' financing mechanisms to buy houses with existing tax debts under PACE. The administration expects that will make it easier both to sell and buy homes with those improvements.

"That'll unlock a significant sum of money, and help tens of thousands of homeowners actually be part of putting renewable energy in some form in their homes," California Gov. Jerry Brown (D), a strong supporter of the program, told reporters about the announcement.

"At the local level, there will be more lending money available, and therefore, there will be more solar installations, more energy retrofits in buildings."

The administration is setting a new goal for low-income solar installations. It wants 1 gigawatt of solar capacity on low- and moderate-income homes by 2020, up from the 100 megawatt goal it previously set for low-income housing that receives federal support.

The Department of Energy is also putting new effort into its project to train solar workers by launching a new networking program. That department's also unveiling a competitive grant program for communities to develop innovating ways to expand solar access.

[citizen k]

Seems to be inefficent at this point. Solar has become so cheap that it's better to pour all our resources into utility level solar farms.

Yeah, let's trash a bunch of ecosystems.

[jimmy olsen]

Seems to be inefficent at this point. Solar has become so cheap that it's better to pour all our resources into utility level solar farms.

Yeah, let's trash a bunch of ecosystems.

Yes, that's exactly what I said. 

[Ed Anger]

My green energy revolution involves rounding up nerds, anime tards, Patriots fans and Yinzers and burn them in ovens.

[11B4V]

My green energy revolution involves rounding up nerds, anime tards, Patriots fans and Yinzers and burn them in ovens.

Add pokeman go nards to that list please.

[Valmy]

Seems to be inefficent at this point. Solar has become so cheap that it's better to pour all our resources into utility level solar farms.

Yeah, let's trash a bunch of ecosystems.

Oh fuck you nutjob.

Anyway Tim I think DG level community solar projects might be preferable. Wind energy might be better for large farms like that. But we will see. I do agree that rooftop solar is not really an efficient solution. Not everybody has a nice large south facing roof.

[Ed Anger]

My green energy revolution involves rounding up nerds, anime tards, Patriots fans and Yinzers and burn them in ovens.

Add pokeman go nards to that list please.

They get sent to the sugar caves.

[jimmy olsen]

Yeah!

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-solar-idUSKCN1020P7

China installed 20 gigawatts (GW) of solar power capacity in the first half of 2016, three times as much as during the same period a year ago, state news agency Xinhua reported late on Thursday citing the country's largest solar industry lobby.

The surge in capacity extended China's lead over Germany as the top solar generator, said Wang Bohua, General Secretary of the China Photovoltaic Industry Association (CPIA), according to Xinhua.

Power developers were also pushed to complete installations ahead of a proposed reduction in the price paid for solar power by grid operators, said Wang.

China' government decreed in late 2015 that only projects that were operational by June 30, 2016, would be eligible for a 'feed-in tariff' of roughly 1.0 yuan (15 U.S. cents) per kilowatt hour (kwh), while projects completed after that date would be eligible for a lower tariff rate.

Production of solar photovoltaic (PV) modules also increased to 27 GW, up by 37.8 percent in the first half of the year, the CPIA said in a report on its website, adding that the profit margins of the major manufacturers improved to an average of 5 percent from 4.85 percent last year.

China surpassed Germany as the largest solar power generator worldwide last year, with installed PV capacity totaling 43 GW as of the end of 2015.

The government has set a national target for new commercial solar power capacity of 18.1 GW for this year, which is below initial market expectations and is a sign that the government is trying to slow capacity expansion in the power generation sector.

Including experimental roof-top projects and charitable installations in impoverished areas, total new solar capacity is expected to be 30 GW by year-end, CPIA said.

The CPIA data showed that the western provinces have the greatest surplus capacity, with the provinces of Xinjiang and Gansu wasting 52 percent and 39 percent of their respective generated solar power in the first quarter.

China's solar power output increased 31.3 percent from a year ago in June to 3,300 gigawatt hours, according to the National Statistics Bureau. That equated to 0.7 percent of total power generation, and was the first time the statistics bureau carried solar output data.


(Reporting By Kathy Chen; Editing by Christian Schmollinger)

[jimmy olsen]

That is a lot of jobs!

http://www.desertsun.com/story/tech/science/energy/2017/02/07/california-hits-100000-solar-jobs-industry-grows-record-pace/97448780/

The American solar industry now employs more than a quarter of a million people, after a breakneck year that saw employment grow by a record 25 percent — and that growth is expected to continue into 2017, as low-cost solar panels nudge coal and natural gas out of the electricity marketplace.

California led the country with 100,050 solar jobs in 2016, according to a report released Tuesday by the nonprofit Solar Foundation. That was up from about 75,600 solar jobs in 2015. Nationwide, the group found, the solar workforce grew from 209,000 in 2015 to more than 260,000 last year — the fastest growth the Solar Foundation has seen in the seven years it's been publishing this data.

"The solar industry currently has more (U.S.) workers than Apple, Google, Facebook and Amazon combined," said Andrea Luecke, the Solar Foundation's executive director.

The group's report includes plenty more statistics showing the industry's remarkable growth:

•Between November 2015 and November 2016, one in every 50 new jobs in the United States was created by the solar industry
•The solar industry added workers 17 times faster than the overall economy over that time frame
•There are now nearly three times as many people working in the solar industry as there were in 2010

Perhaps even more striking is a report released last month by the federal Department of Energy, comparing employment across different energy sectors. Using slightly different statistics than the Solar Foundation, the department found that the solar industry employs more people than coal, natural gas and wind. Among energy sectors, only oil and petroleum employs more people than solar.


"These are well-paying jobs, these are family-sustaining jobs. And many positions have a low barrier to entry — you don't have to have a bachelor's education," Luecke said. "It really does represent an opportunity for Americans in rural areas, and urban areas on the coast, and in the center of the country."

Read the article at the source to see a nice graph

Energy jobs by sector: Solar beating coal, gas

The solar industry ranks second in total employment among energy industries, according to a January 2017 report from the federal Department of Energy. (Note: For the purposes of its report, the Department of Energy defined workers in each of these industries as people who spend "some portion" of their time supporting that industry. That's why its employment figure for solar, 373,807, is higher than the Solar Foundation's jobs number of 260,077. The Solar Foundation only counts workers who spend at least 50 percent of their time on solar-related work.)

Here in the desert, sprawling fields of solar panels and smaller rooftop systems have both contributed to the industry's rapid growth.

Two large-scale solar farms opened in Riverside County in 2016: NextEra's Blythe and McCoy projects, near the Arizona border, which generate enough clean energy to power 181,000 homes and employed a combined 1,500 people at the height of construction. Several other big solar farms are being developed in the eastern part of the county, although they haven't yet reached construction.

In the Coachella Valley, rooftop solar installers keep adding employees.

Vincent Battaglia, chief executive of the Palm Desert-based Renova Solar, said his company added 23 employees last year, putting its workforce above 150. Nate Otto, president of Palm Springs-based Hot Purple Energy, said his company grew its workforce by 10 percent in 2016, and now employs about 35 people. Planet Solar, which is based in Santa Barbara and has an office in Palm Desert, grew its staff by 10 percent statewide, according to Jill Weiss, a regional sales consultant at the local office.

"Solar's been growing every year, and we expect that to continue as people realize the economic value of solar," Weiss said. "The first wave of solar installations was almost 10 years ago here in the Coachella Valley. We've got 10 years of data now, and people are really seeing the results of their neighbors and other people in their communities going solar. It's becoming mainstream."

Another nice graph

Solar jobs by state: California leads the way
California led the nation with 100,050 solar jobs in 2016 — more than the next nine states combined, according to the latest report from the nonprofit Solar Foundation.

The solar industry's rapid growth isn't limited to the Coachella Valley, or to California. While the Golden State — with its strong sunlight and policies encouraging clean energy development — leads the nation in solar employment, Massachusetts, Nevada and Vermont have more solar jobs per capita. And several other states saw faster job growth than California in 2016, with New Mexico, South Carolina, Utah, Virginia and others growing their solar workforce by at least 50 percent last year, according to the Solar Foundation's report.

That growth has been driven by the falling cost of solar panels. GTM Research, a clean-tech consulting firm, reported last month that some big solar farms are now being priced below $1 per Watt, down from $4 per Watt in 2011. The speed of those cost reductions has surprised analysts: As recently as last summer, GTM didn't think the industry would achieve $1 per Watt until 2020.

Across much of the country, in fact, solar and wind power are now cheaper than fossil fuels.

In December, researchers from the University of Texas at Austin published a color-coded map showing the lowest-cost source of new electricity generation for every county in the United States. Their findings were striking: Natural gas is the cheapest option across most of the South, with wind power dominating the Great Plains. The Northeast and Rust Belt are split between wind and gas. The West is mostly divided between solar and gas. Coal, which generates about twice as much climate pollution as natural gas when burned, is the cheapest option hardly anywhere.

The picture looks even better for solar power once the latest cost reductions are accounted for. If you adjust the interactive version of UT Austin's map to include a more up-to-date cost of solar panels, solar is suddenly the least expensive source of electricity across big new swaths of the West, Midwest and Northeast where wind or gas was previously cheaper.

Those findings are good news for efforts to slow human-caused climate change, which virtually all climate scientists agree is caused primarily by the burning of coal, oil and gas. It doesn't mean fossil fuels are suddenly going to disappear, but it does mean that as utilities phase out older coal and gas plants, they're more likely than ever to choose wind or solar as a replacement.

"I think entities are coming around to the knowledge that 99 percent of your cost of solar and wind is getting your concrete and steel and silicon in the ground, and then you can lock in a price for the next 25 years," said Joshua Rhodes, a postdoctoral research fellow at UT Austin's Energy Institute and lead author of the paper that produced the cost maps.

Rhodes pointed to Georgetown, Texas — a small city north of Austin that will soon get 100 percent of its energy from sunlight and wind — as a sign that clean energy is increasingly bipartisan.

"It's about as red as it gets. It's Republican, it's not a place you think would be friendly to renewable energy," Rhodes said. "They did it completely based on economics."

Solar analysts expect the industry to grow more slowly in 2017 than it did last year, largely because Congress has now renewed the 30 percent solar investment tax credit. The tax credit was originally scheduled to expire at the end of 2016, which led many developers to rush projects to construction so they would come online by the end of that year, and qualify for the tax credit.

The Solar Foundation still projects 10 percent employment growth this year, based on its survey of solar companies. And there's not a lot the Trump administration and Republicans leaders in Congress can do to stop that growth, short of repealing the solar investment tax credit, which enjoyed bipartisan supported when it was renewed in 2015. Even if the federal government takes a more active role in promoting coal, oil and gas, falling costs and state-level policies like California's 50 percent clean energy mandate will continue to propel solar and wind forward, analysts say.

"The majority of what is supporting or constraining demand for solar is happening at the state or utility level," said Cory Honeyman, a solar analyst for GTM Research.

[jimmy olsen]

Also, take that Mono!

https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/us-solar-market-grows-95-in-2016-smashes-records

US Solar Market Grows 95% in 2016, Smashes Records

GTM Research and SEIA present data from the upcoming U.S. Solar Market Insight report.
by Mike Munsell 
February 15, 2017

In its biggest year to date, the United States solar market nearly doubled its annual record, topping out at 14,626 megawatts of solar PV installed in 2016.

This represents a 95 percent increase over the previous record of 7,493 megawatts installed in 2015. GTM Research and the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) previewed this data in advance of their upcoming U.S. Solar Market Insight report, set to be released on March 9.

For the first time ever, U.S. solar ranked as the No. 1 source of new electric generating capacity additions on an annual basis. In total, solar accounted for 39 percent of new capacity additions across all fuel types in 2016.

"What these numbers tell you is that the solar industry is a force to be reckoned with," said Abigail Ross Hopper, SEIA's president and CEO. "Solar's economically winning hand is generating strong growth across all market segments nationwide, leading to more than 260,000 Americans now employed in solar."

Success this year was driven largely by the utility-scale segment, which was bolstered by a pipeline of projects initially hedging against the extension of the federal Investment Tax Credit. Not only did it represent the most megawatts installed, but the utility-scale segment also featured the highest growth rate of any segment, growing 145 percent from 2015.

"In a banner year for U.S. solar, a record 22 states each added more than 100 megawatts," said Cory Honeyman, GTM Research's associate director of U.S. solar. "While U.S. solar grew across all segments, what stands out is the double-digit-gigawatt boom in utility-scale solar, primarily due to solar's cost-competitiveness with natural-gas alternatives."

The non-residential market also exceeded expectations, with two major growth drivers in the segment. The first is community solar, adding a record total of more than 200 megawatts, led by Minnesota and Massachusetts. Second, rate design and net energy metering fueled a rush in project development and installation growth across a number of major state markets, most notably in California. 

For the first time since 2011, non-residential installation growth surpassed residential solar growth, which posted a still-impressive 2,583 megawatts. While growth in California's residential market has begun to level out, strong growth in markets like Maryland, New Jersey and a handful of emerging states where solar has achieved grid parity, helped the residential segment to grow 19 percent year-over-year.

As a result of a remarkable 2016, the U.S. is now home to more than 1.3 million solar PV installations, with a cumulative capacity of over 40 gigawatts.

[Valmy]

That is a lot of jobs!

I sure hope Spicey is enjoying all those green jobs.

[Ed Anger]

I still favor burning nerds and assburgers in ovens.

[jimmy olsen]

Tesla is on the march

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-01-30/tesla-s-battery-revolution-just-reached-critical-mass

Tesla's Battery Revolution Just Reached Critical Mass

Three new plants in California show how lithium-ion storage is ready to power the grid.

by Tom Randall

‎January‎ ‎30‎, ‎2017‎ ‎8‎:‎45‎ ‎PM 

Tesla Motors Inc. is making a huge bet that millions of small batteries can be strung together to help kick fossil fuels off the grid. The idea is a powerful one—one that's been used to help justify the company's $5 billion factory near Reno, Nev.—but batteries have so far only appeared in a handful of true, grid-scale pilot projects.

That changes this week.   

Three massive battery storage plants—built by Tesla, AES Corp., and Altagas Ltd.—are all officially going live in southern California at about the same time. Any one of these projects would have been the largest battery storage facility ever built. Combined, they amount to 15 percent of the battery storage installed planet-wide last year.

Ribbons will be cut and executives will take their bows. But this is a revolution that's just getting started, Tesla Chief Technology Officer J.B. Straubel said in an interview on Friday. "It's sort of hard to comprehend sometimes the speed all this is going at," he said. "Our storage is growing as fast as we can humanly scale it."

A Fossil-Fuel Disaster

The new battery projects were commissioned in response to a fossil-fuel disaster—the natural gas leak at Aliso Canyon, near the Los Angeles neighborhood of Porter Ranch. It released thousands of tons of methane into the air before it was sealed last February.

In its wake, Southern California Edison (SCE) rushed to deploy energy storage deals to alleviate the risk of winter blackouts. There wasn't any time to waste: All of the projects rolling out this week were completed within 6 months, an unprecedented feat. Tesla moved particularly nimbly, completing in just three months a project that in the past would have taken years.

"There were teams working out there 24 hours a day, living in construction trailers and doing the commissioning work at two in the morning," Straubel said. "It feels like the kind of pace that we need to change the world."

A Question of Price

The battery storage industry—a key part of the plan if wind and solar power are to ever dominate the grid—is less than a decade old and still relatively small. Until recently, batteries were many times more expensive than natural gas "peaker" plants that fire up to meet surging demand in the evening and morning hours.

But prices for lithium-ion batteries have fallen fast—by almost half just since 2014. Electric cars are largely responsible, increasing demand and requiring a new scale of manufacturing for the same battery cells used in grid storage. California is mandating that its utilities begin testing batteries by adding more than 1.32 gigawatts by 2020. For context, consider this: In 2016, the global market for storage was less than a gigawatt.

California's goal is considerable, but it's dwarfed by Tesla's ambition to single-handedly deliver 15 gigawatt hours 1  of battery storage a year by the 2020s—enough to provide several nuclear power plants–worth of electricity to the grid during peak hours of demand. Not everyone, however, is that optimistic.

"I'm not convinced," said Yayoi Sekine, a Bloomberg New Energy Finance analyst who covers battery technology.  The market is "moving faster than ever, but it's not on the gigawatt scale yet."

Battery costs and profitability for utilities are difficult to evaluate. Companies are reluctant to give up their pricing data, and the expense is highly variable. Nevertheless, battery plants take up a much smaller footprint than gas-powered plants, they don't pollute, and their instant response can provide valuable services better than any other technology. In a small but increasing number of scenarios, batteries are already the most economical option.

But for the most part, according to a BNEF analysis, the costs of new projects would need to drop by half in order to be profitable on a wider scale in California, and that's not likely to happen for another decade. The total installed cost of a battery plant would need to fall to about $275 per kilowatt hour. While Tesla declined to provide its pricing data, the similarly sized Altagas project was expected to cost at least $40 million, or $500 per kilowatt hour. It's possible that with the remarkable scope of Tesla's Reno operations, the company will be able to establish new floors for pricing, forcing the industry to follow, BNEF's Sekine said.

It's still early days, even with this week's announcements. It will probably be a few years before Tesla's battery-storage sales are material enough to break out separately from automotive sales on quarterly filings, Straubel said.

The End of the Gas Peaker

But the battery's day is coming, while those of natural gas peaker plants are numbered. That's the prediction of John Zahurancik, AES's president of battery storage. Zahurancik is one of the pioneers of energy storage, having cobbled together profitable edge-case storage projects since 2008, when battery prices were 10 times higher than they are today.

AES has completed installation and is doing final testing of a 30 megawatt/120 megawatt hour plant that's even bigger than Tesla's 20 MW/80 MWh. AES is also working on a longer-term project that will be five times the size of Tesla's project when complete by 2021. 2

  That's a scale that would have been unimaginable a decade ago.

"This is my fifth time doing the largest project in the world for energy storage, and each time people tell me, 'well this is the test, this is really the test'" Zahurancik said in an interview Friday. "The next big test is how do we scale this up broadly."

The biggest thing that sets Tesla and AES apart is that Tesla is building the components of its storage units itself at the company's Gigafactory in Reno, including battery cells with partner Panasonic, modules, and inverters. Tesla says this vertical integration will help reduce costs and make a seamless system. AES says that dealing with a diverse supply chain allows it to seek the cheapest price and the best technology on the market. It's the same debate going on in the electric-car business, where Tesla is manufacturing an unprecedented percentage of its own parts in-house.

For now, gas peaker plants still win out on price for projects that aren't constrained by space, emissions, or urgency, said Ron Nichols, President of SCE, the California utility responsible for most of the biggest battery storage contracts. 3    But that may change in the next five years, he said.

"Long term, will large amounts of batteries be able to take over?" Nichols asked. "We'll need to get some hours under our belts to know for sure."

—With assistance from Dana Hull

[derspiess]

Shut up, Meg.