Shares of solar power company First Solar dropped in after-hours trading Tuesday following disappointing quarterly results.
The Arizona-based company, a leading maker of thin-film solar panels and a developer of solar power projects, posted net sales of $660 million and earnings per share of $1.26, excluding certain charges. Analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters expected the firm to post earnings of $1.54 per share on $782 million in revenue for the quarter ended in December.
When taking into account costs incurred during the quarter from factors including restructuring and loss of goodwill, First Solar sustained a net loss of $413 million.
"First Solar's performance in the quarter was impacted by an aggressive competitive environment, an uncertain regulatory environment, warranty-related charges, and restructuring costs incurred to help position our business for the future," Mike Ahearn, First Solar's chairman and interim CEO, said in a statement.
The company also lowered its sales guidance for 2012 from $3.7-$4.0 billion to $3.5-$3.8 billion. Following a brief halt to trading after the bell, shares dropped roughly 15% before rebounding to around 6% down late in the day.
First Solar shares are down 75% over the past year. Like all solar panel makers, the company's stock has been battered as a huge oversupply and slack demand have caused the price of silicon solar panels to plummet.
The industry has also been hurt by the loss of valuable subsidies from European governments, cut as the continent's sovereign debt crisis has gathered force. In addition, some manufacturers say Chinese companies are pushing them out of the market by selling solar panels below cost, benefiting from Chinese government support.
Despite these challenges, First Solar maintained its earnings guidance for 2012 at $3.75 to $4.25 per share in its statement Tuesday. Ahearn said that efforts to improve on module efficiency and manufacturing costs, combined with restructuring efforts, "enhance our competitive position in a very challenging environment."
2012年2月28日星期二
2012年2月21日星期二
Apple slaps mega-solar panel field on new ENORMO data centre
Apple has dropped a few more details about its huge new data centre in Maiden, North Carolina in an update to its environmental policy published yesterday.
A big feature of the new billion-dollar data centre – needed to keep Siri chatting back, and to let new OS Mountain Lion sync games in real time between iPhones and Macs – is a 100-acre solar panel field, which, along with a biofuel burner, Apple says will provide a "high percentage" of the data centre's energy needs.
But the energy from the solar field and from a bio-gas powered fuel cell could be as little as 9 per cent of the total that the data centre slurps - that is if Greenpeace's estimate of the energy needed is accurate. The whale-huggers predict that the massive data centre will require 100 megawatts to run at full capacity.
More conservative estimates would put the Maiden centre's power draw a little lower. A $210m Facebook data centre in Prineville, Oregon draws a reputed 28 megawatts off the local grid. But though Apple's Maiden data centre is 500,000ft2 and has a $1bn price tag, quadrupling the cost won't necessarily quadruple the power draw.
The Maiden centre is one of the biggest data centres ever built but is more likely to be in the range of existing big data centres than completely in a league of its own: the US government runs several of the world's biggest data centres and these typically draw about 60 megawatts of power. We'd estimate that the power consumption of Maiden will be around the 50 to 60 megawatt mark.
We've obviously asked Apple to tell us how much energy the centre will use in a year, but in the absence of their response, estimates are all we have to go on.
Apple states that the solar panel field will produce 42 million kWh of energy annually and that the biogas fuel cell plant will produce 40 million kWh annually. Together they will produce 82 million kWh a year or simply 9,360 kWh on average an hour - a rate of 9,360 kilowatts or 9.36 megawatts between the two of them, averaged out over the year.
If the whale-huggers are right and the data centre will draw up power at a rate of 100 megawatts, that means that renewables will provide only 9.36 per cent of the power needed and that over 90 per cent of the centre's power needs will have to be drawn from North Carolina's power grid.
If our more conservative guess is right and the centre is sucking up energy at a rate of 60 megawatts, that would mean that Apple's renewables installations would supply 15 per cent of the centre's power, with the rest coming from the grid. North Carolina is a popular location for data centres because grid electricity there is cheap: both Google and Facebook have sited big centres there.
Whether 9-15 per cent qualifies as a "high percentage" of renewable power is a matter of perspective.
The update of Apple's environmental policy also includes some other tidbits about Apple's right-on energy policy: for example applying reflective paint to the roofs and windows of their buildings, making disposable tableware in the cafeteria compostable and a shared bike programme for Cupertino employees. Oh yes, and they say their employees save energy - and presumably money - by using Apple computers.
Apple also says that its facilities - its offices, retail stores and data centres - only account for 2 per cent of its greenhouse gas emissions; the bulk - 60 per cent - comes from manufacturing its devices.
A big feature of the new billion-dollar data centre – needed to keep Siri chatting back, and to let new OS Mountain Lion sync games in real time between iPhones and Macs – is a 100-acre solar panel field, which, along with a biofuel burner, Apple says will provide a "high percentage" of the data centre's energy needs.
But the energy from the solar field and from a bio-gas powered fuel cell could be as little as 9 per cent of the total that the data centre slurps - that is if Greenpeace's estimate of the energy needed is accurate. The whale-huggers predict that the massive data centre will require 100 megawatts to run at full capacity.
More conservative estimates would put the Maiden centre's power draw a little lower. A $210m Facebook data centre in Prineville, Oregon draws a reputed 28 megawatts off the local grid. But though Apple's Maiden data centre is 500,000ft2 and has a $1bn price tag, quadrupling the cost won't necessarily quadruple the power draw.
The Maiden centre is one of the biggest data centres ever built but is more likely to be in the range of existing big data centres than completely in a league of its own: the US government runs several of the world's biggest data centres and these typically draw about 60 megawatts of power. We'd estimate that the power consumption of Maiden will be around the 50 to 60 megawatt mark.
We've obviously asked Apple to tell us how much energy the centre will use in a year, but in the absence of their response, estimates are all we have to go on.
Apple states that the solar panel field will produce 42 million kWh of energy annually and that the biogas fuel cell plant will produce 40 million kWh annually. Together they will produce 82 million kWh a year or simply 9,360 kWh on average an hour - a rate of 9,360 kilowatts or 9.36 megawatts between the two of them, averaged out over the year.
If the whale-huggers are right and the data centre will draw up power at a rate of 100 megawatts, that means that renewables will provide only 9.36 per cent of the power needed and that over 90 per cent of the centre's power needs will have to be drawn from North Carolina's power grid.
If our more conservative guess is right and the centre is sucking up energy at a rate of 60 megawatts, that would mean that Apple's renewables installations would supply 15 per cent of the centre's power, with the rest coming from the grid. North Carolina is a popular location for data centres because grid electricity there is cheap: both Google and Facebook have sited big centres there.
Whether 9-15 per cent qualifies as a "high percentage" of renewable power is a matter of perspective.
The update of Apple's environmental policy also includes some other tidbits about Apple's right-on energy policy: for example applying reflective paint to the roofs and windows of their buildings, making disposable tableware in the cafeteria compostable and a shared bike programme for Cupertino employees. Oh yes, and they say their employees save energy - and presumably money - by using Apple computers.
Apple also says that its facilities - its offices, retail stores and data centres - only account for 2 per cent of its greenhouse gas emissions; the bulk - 60 per cent - comes from manufacturing its devices.
2012年2月19日星期日
Solar enthusiasm exceeds practicality
Germany once prided itself on being the "photovoltaic world champion", doling out generous subsidies totalling more than $US130 billion to citizens to invest in solar energy, according to Germany's Ruhr University.
But now the German government is vowing to cut the subsidies sooner than planned and to phase out support over the next five years. What went wrong?
There is a fundamental problem with subsidising inefficient green technology: it is affordable only if it is done in tiny, tokenistic amounts. Using their government's generous subsidies, Germans installed 7.5 gigawatts of photovoltaic capacity last year, more than double what the government deemed "acceptable". It is estimated this will lead to a $US260 ($243) hike in the average consumer's annual power bill.
According to Der Spiegel, even members of Chancellor Angela Merkel's staff are now describing the policy as a massive money pit. Philipp Rosler, Germany's Minister of Economics and Technology, has called the spiralling solar subsidies a "threat to the economy".
Germany's enthusiasm for solar power is understandable. We could satisfy all of the world's energy needs for an entire year if we could capture just one hour of the sun's energy. Even with the inefficiency of current PV technology, we could meet the entire globe's energy demand with solar panels by covering 250,000sq km, about 2.6 per cent of the Sahara Desert.
Unfortunately, Germany, like most of the world, is not as sunny as the Sahara. And while sunlight is free, panels and installation are not. Solar power is at least four times more costly than energy produced by fossil fuels. It also has the distinct disadvantage of not working at night, when much electricity is consumed.
In the words of the German Association of Physicists, "solar energy cannot replace any additional power plants". On short, overcast winter days, Germany's 1.1 million solar-power systems generate no electricity. The country is then forced to import considerable amounts of electricity from nuclear power plants in France and the Czech Republic. When the sun failed to shine last winter, one emergency back-up plan powered up an Austrian oil-fired plant to fill the supply gap.
Indeed, despite the massive investment, solar power accounts for only about 0.3 per cent of Germany's total energy. This is one of the key reasons why Germans now pay the second-highest price for electricity in the developed world . Germans pay three times more than their American counterparts.
Moreover, this sizeable investment does remarkably little to counter global warming. Even with unrealistically generous assumptions, the unimpressive net effect is that solar power reduces Germany's CO2 emissions by roughly eight million tonnes, or about 1 per cent, for the next 20 years.
When the effects are calculated in a standard climate model, the result is a reduction in average temperature of one twenty-thousandth of a degree celsius. By the end of the century, Germany's $US130bn solar panel subsidies will have postponed temperature increases by 23 hours.
Using solar, Germany is paying about $US1000 per tonne of CO2 reduced. The current CO2 price in Europe is $US8. Germany could have cut 131 times as much CO2 for the same price. Instead, the Germans are wasting more than 99c of every euro that they plough into solar panels.
It gets worse: because Germany is part of the EU emissions trading system, the actual effect of extra solar panels in Germany leads to no CO2 reductions, because total emissions are already capped.
Instead, the Germans simply allow other parts of the EU to emit more CO2. Germany's solar panels have only made it cheaper for Portugal or Greece to use coal. Defenders of Germany's solar subsidies also claim that they have helped to create "green jobs" but each job created by green-energy policies costs an average of $US175,000, considerably more than job creation elsewhere in the economy. And many "green jobs" are being exported to China, meaning that Europeans subsidise Chinese jobs, with no CO2 reductions.
Germany's experiment with subsidising inefficient solar technology has failed. What governments should do instead is to focus first on increasing research and development to make green-energy technology cheaper and more competitive. Production should be ramped up later.
But now the German government is vowing to cut the subsidies sooner than planned and to phase out support over the next five years. What went wrong?
There is a fundamental problem with subsidising inefficient green technology: it is affordable only if it is done in tiny, tokenistic amounts. Using their government's generous subsidies, Germans installed 7.5 gigawatts of photovoltaic capacity last year, more than double what the government deemed "acceptable". It is estimated this will lead to a $US260 ($243) hike in the average consumer's annual power bill.
According to Der Spiegel, even members of Chancellor Angela Merkel's staff are now describing the policy as a massive money pit. Philipp Rosler, Germany's Minister of Economics and Technology, has called the spiralling solar subsidies a "threat to the economy".
Germany's enthusiasm for solar power is understandable. We could satisfy all of the world's energy needs for an entire year if we could capture just one hour of the sun's energy. Even with the inefficiency of current PV technology, we could meet the entire globe's energy demand with solar panels by covering 250,000sq km, about 2.6 per cent of the Sahara Desert.
Unfortunately, Germany, like most of the world, is not as sunny as the Sahara. And while sunlight is free, panels and installation are not. Solar power is at least four times more costly than energy produced by fossil fuels. It also has the distinct disadvantage of not working at night, when much electricity is consumed.
In the words of the German Association of Physicists, "solar energy cannot replace any additional power plants". On short, overcast winter days, Germany's 1.1 million solar-power systems generate no electricity. The country is then forced to import considerable amounts of electricity from nuclear power plants in France and the Czech Republic. When the sun failed to shine last winter, one emergency back-up plan powered up an Austrian oil-fired plant to fill the supply gap.
Indeed, despite the massive investment, solar power accounts for only about 0.3 per cent of Germany's total energy. This is one of the key reasons why Germans now pay the second-highest price for electricity in the developed world . Germans pay three times more than their American counterparts.
Moreover, this sizeable investment does remarkably little to counter global warming. Even with unrealistically generous assumptions, the unimpressive net effect is that solar power reduces Germany's CO2 emissions by roughly eight million tonnes, or about 1 per cent, for the next 20 years.
When the effects are calculated in a standard climate model, the result is a reduction in average temperature of one twenty-thousandth of a degree celsius. By the end of the century, Germany's $US130bn solar panel subsidies will have postponed temperature increases by 23 hours.
Using solar, Germany is paying about $US1000 per tonne of CO2 reduced. The current CO2 price in Europe is $US8. Germany could have cut 131 times as much CO2 for the same price. Instead, the Germans are wasting more than 99c of every euro that they plough into solar panels.
It gets worse: because Germany is part of the EU emissions trading system, the actual effect of extra solar panels in Germany leads to no CO2 reductions, because total emissions are already capped.
Instead, the Germans simply allow other parts of the EU to emit more CO2. Germany's solar panels have only made it cheaper for Portugal or Greece to use coal. Defenders of Germany's solar subsidies also claim that they have helped to create "green jobs" but each job created by green-energy policies costs an average of $US175,000, considerably more than job creation elsewhere in the economy. And many "green jobs" are being exported to China, meaning that Europeans subsidise Chinese jobs, with no CO2 reductions.
Germany's experiment with subsidising inefficient solar technology has failed. What governments should do instead is to focus first on increasing research and development to make green-energy technology cheaper and more competitive. Production should be ramped up later.
2011年6月14日星期二
Sustainability Board Holds Energy Forum
Members of the public were invited to learn about alternative energy at a forum hosted Monday night by the New Castle Sustainability Advisory Board.
The forum, held at the Chappaqua Library, was called “Save Money and The Environment," and hosted by board member Steven Wolk. It featured a panel of energy experts from Blueprint Energy Group, Earth to Air Systems and Mercury Solar Systems.
The focus of the meeting was to introduce and answer the public’s questions about three types of alternative energy being made available to homeowners. In presentations, the audience was given information about Geothermal Systems, Solar PV (photovoltaic) technology and micro CHP (Combined Heat and Power) systems.
“By being here tonight, you are saying you are interested in saving the environments for future generations,” said Wolk. “There is no such thing as clean coal.” He argued that fossil fuels cost taxpayers financially, in the way of health care
John Kulacz from Earth To Air Systems talked about geothemermal power.
In a geothermal system, the Earth’s crust is used as a heat transfer. During the summer, your house would be cooled by sending heat down into the ground, while in the winter, heat would be brought up in a closed loop system that requires no water, anti-freeze or water pumps. It can be hooked up to your current heating system.
“Al Gore chose Geothermal over any other system in the world," Kulacz said. “It’s the least understood technology.”
It was explained that a geothermal system can reduce heating and cooling costs by 80 percent and can last 25 or more years. In addition, this system can raise your home’s value and comes with a 30-percent tax credit from the Federal government. However, a geothermal system is not cheap to install. It is estimated that a newly installed system with all new duct work would cost around $60,000. However, according to Kulacz, the system will pay itself back with energy savings in three to five years.
According to Ben Waller from Mercury Solar Systems, the Solar PV system, out of the three presented had the biggest tax incentive with a 30-percent tax credit from the Federal government and a 25-percent tax credit from the state. Solar energy is so popular that there is a push to get The New York Solar Jobs Act of 2011 finalized before the end of the legislative session.
In a Solar PV system, solar panels take light from the sun and convert it to energy. However, the energy from the sun converts into direct current (DC) energy so it is sent down to a converter to change it into alternating aurrent (AC) that is used in the house. In the solar PV system, you would still be connected the power grid for times when there is no sunlight.
The weakness, however, of a Solar PV system in the Westchester area is the multitude of trees and shade.
One audience member was concerned about a strong storm blowing the solar panels off the roof.
“The house will blow away before the panels will,” responded Waller. The panels are rated for 120mph strong winds, those equal of a category 4 hurricane.
The last presentation came from Matthew Fairy of Blue Project Energy Group about micro CHP or Co-Gen systems. In a CHP system, heat and energy are generated in one process, by using the heat generated by making the energy, rather then letting it go to waste. In essence, a CHP system is like a personal power plant. It was stated that these systems have an 85-percent efficiency rate.
“Transmission wastes about 50-70 percent of the energy produced at the power plant.” Fairy said. “Grand Central Station has been using a Co-Gen [CHP] system for years now.”
The meeting was very informative and members of the community like Rick Waller enjoyed it.
“I will be honest, I was expected to be bored and I wasn’t," said Rick Waller, who is Ben Waller's father. "It was really interesting stuff."
He added, “If I was a young home owner and I had a payback period, I would go for it.”
The forum, held at the Chappaqua Library, was called “Save Money and The Environment," and hosted by board member Steven Wolk. It featured a panel of energy experts from Blueprint Energy Group, Earth to Air Systems and Mercury Solar Systems.
The focus of the meeting was to introduce and answer the public’s questions about three types of alternative energy being made available to homeowners. In presentations, the audience was given information about Geothermal Systems, Solar PV (photovoltaic) technology and micro CHP (Combined Heat and Power) systems.
“By being here tonight, you are saying you are interested in saving the environments for future generations,” said Wolk. “There is no such thing as clean coal.” He argued that fossil fuels cost taxpayers financially, in the way of health care
John Kulacz from Earth To Air Systems talked about geothemermal power.
In a geothermal system, the Earth’s crust is used as a heat transfer. During the summer, your house would be cooled by sending heat down into the ground, while in the winter, heat would be brought up in a closed loop system that requires no water, anti-freeze or water pumps. It can be hooked up to your current heating system.
“Al Gore chose Geothermal over any other system in the world," Kulacz said. “It’s the least understood technology.”
It was explained that a geothermal system can reduce heating and cooling costs by 80 percent and can last 25 or more years. In addition, this system can raise your home’s value and comes with a 30-percent tax credit from the Federal government. However, a geothermal system is not cheap to install. It is estimated that a newly installed system with all new duct work would cost around $60,000. However, according to Kulacz, the system will pay itself back with energy savings in three to five years.
According to Ben Waller from Mercury Solar Systems, the Solar PV system, out of the three presented had the biggest tax incentive with a 30-percent tax credit from the Federal government and a 25-percent tax credit from the state. Solar energy is so popular that there is a push to get The New York Solar Jobs Act of 2011 finalized before the end of the legislative session.
In a Solar PV system, solar panels take light from the sun and convert it to energy. However, the energy from the sun converts into direct current (DC) energy so it is sent down to a converter to change it into alternating aurrent (AC) that is used in the house. In the solar PV system, you would still be connected the power grid for times when there is no sunlight.
The weakness, however, of a Solar PV system in the Westchester area is the multitude of trees and shade.
One audience member was concerned about a strong storm blowing the solar panels off the roof.
“The house will blow away before the panels will,” responded Waller. The panels are rated for 120mph strong winds, those equal of a category 4 hurricane.
The last presentation came from Matthew Fairy of Blue Project Energy Group about micro CHP or Co-Gen systems. In a CHP system, heat and energy are generated in one process, by using the heat generated by making the energy, rather then letting it go to waste. In essence, a CHP system is like a personal power plant. It was stated that these systems have an 85-percent efficiency rate.
“Transmission wastes about 50-70 percent of the energy produced at the power plant.” Fairy said. “Grand Central Station has been using a Co-Gen [CHP] system for years now.”
The meeting was very informative and members of the community like Rick Waller enjoyed it.
“I will be honest, I was expected to be bored and I wasn’t," said Rick Waller, who is Ben Waller's father. "It was really interesting stuff."
He added, “If I was a young home owner and I had a payback period, I would go for it.”
2011年4月26日星期二
MIT Professors Use Virus to Boost Solar Cell Efficiency
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is famed around the world for developing some of the biggest innovations in science and technology over the past century. This week, researchers at the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based university announced they are working with viruses to help boost the efficiency of solar panel systems.
According to MIT researchers, viruses help ensure that nanoscale components in solar modules work properly; using the tiny microbes, the scientists discovered they could boost solar module efficiency by over 30 percent - a vast improvement.
Scientists had previously worked with carbon nanotubes to increase solar panel efficiency, but the tools had their own drawbacks. However, the MIT researchers discovered that M13, a bacteria-eating virus, has the ability to bind to carbon nanotubes and make the process of increasing the effectiveness of the cells go much more smoothly than it would otherwise.
The viruses help keep the carbon nanotubes in place and are also genetically engineered to generate a layer of titanium dioxide, a key component in certain solar cells. In total, the virus helped researchers to increase the solar cell's power conversion by 10.6 percent from 8 percent, representing an improvement of about 30 percent.
MIT professor Angela Belcher, who heads the research, said the experiment illustrated the interplay of different scientific disciplines - in this case, physics and biology. "A little biology goes a long way," Belcher affirmed.
According to MIT researchers, viruses help ensure that nanoscale components in solar modules work properly; using the tiny microbes, the scientists discovered they could boost solar module efficiency by over 30 percent - a vast improvement.
Scientists had previously worked with carbon nanotubes to increase solar panel efficiency, but the tools had their own drawbacks. However, the MIT researchers discovered that M13, a bacteria-eating virus, has the ability to bind to carbon nanotubes and make the process of increasing the effectiveness of the cells go much more smoothly than it would otherwise.
The viruses help keep the carbon nanotubes in place and are also genetically engineered to generate a layer of titanium dioxide, a key component in certain solar cells. In total, the virus helped researchers to increase the solar cell's power conversion by 10.6 percent from 8 percent, representing an improvement of about 30 percent.
MIT professor Angela Belcher, who heads the research, said the experiment illustrated the interplay of different scientific disciplines - in this case, physics and biology. "A little biology goes a long way," Belcher affirmed.
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