The cheapest natural gas price for a decade is a boon for North American homeowners. At less than $2 per million British thermal units, though, it looks toxic for its already troubled rival, the solar energy sector. But gas isn’t close to choking the life out of it just yet.
There’s certainly enough bad news to go round. Energy bigwigs at a conference this week identified the rock-bottom gas price as the biggest short-term obstacle to developing greener fuel sources. As if to underline the point, the benchmark gas price dipped to its lowest level since January, 2002, as they were talking. Meanwhile, solar plant developer BrightSource Energy pulled its initial public offering on Wednesday, citing poor market conditions. On top of last year’s controversial bankruptcy of Solyndra and the 85-per-cent drop in industry leader First Solar’s share price over the past 12 months, the sector looks far from healthy.
Still, greens shouldn’t lose heart. The price of generating electricity from the sun’s rays has been falling almost in tandem with gas prices. The wholesale price of panels halved last year, as have solar generation prices: a typical long-term contract in California, a sweet spot for the industry, has plummeted from about 17 cents per kilowatt hour in 2010 to as low as 8 cents, according to Green Tech Media. That brings some solar capacity within striking distance of natural gas at around 6 cents.
And solar power has a distinct advantage: Its costs can be locked in 25 years in advance. Gas offers no such guarantee. For an electric utility this is equivalent to a cautious homeowner opting for a safer fixed rate mortgage over a risky floating rate loan.
Moreover, the current bargain U.S. gas price can’t be relied on to last forever, even with hydraulic fracturing uncovering vast troves of the resource. America is also likely to start exporting gas in the next few years, which could tug the nation’s gas price back toward the global average – currently roughly five times higher.
This will be cold comfort for many solar panel makers who won’t survive the industry shakeout that slumping prices are causing. But the rationalized sector that emerges should be well placed to take on all newcomers.
2012年4月12日星期四
2012年4月8日星期日
Solar dishes with rare technology to be auctioned
People searching for 60 massive satellite-looking solar dishes and willing to move the entire facility and reassemble it without instructions are in luck.
An April 17 online auction thought to be one of the first of its kind will offer the bankrupt Maricopa Solar power plant in Peoria, which uses a rare solar-thermal technology.
Solar equipment frequently is auctioned from bankruptcies, but not this type, said auctioneer David Barkoff of Heritage Global Partners, which is handling the sale for the bankruptcy trustee.
"Power plants or power-generation equipment, yes, (we auction) lots of it," he said. "But I don't think a solar-thermal power plant has come online for sale ever."
The company that was running the power plant with a license to the technology from Stirling Energy, Maricopa Solar LLC, also declared bankruptcy and now is liquidating the power plant. But not the intellectual property to build and run it.
Stirling used a complex technology with mirrors focusing the sun's heat on an engine in the middle of each dish. The engines converted the heat energy into motion, and the motion was used to make electricity.
Stirling built six of its so-called SunCatchers in New Mexico at Sandia National Laboratories, and then the larger demonstration plant in Peoria. Stirling's plans to build tens of thousands of SunCatchers in California and Texas never were fulfilled.
Other companies use similar "dish-Stirling" technology, but they are far less popular than flat, black solar panels now common on rooftops. And Stirling's competitors' dishes are not identical to those in Peoria.
Maricopa Solar's assets were listed at between $50,000 and $100,000 in its petition for bankruptcy. Barkoff said that the opening bid would not be disclosed until the auction, and he declined to estimate what a buyer might pay for the equipment.
Bidders must pay $25,000 just to register for the sale, but that's only the beginning of the complications they will face if they buy the power plant.
The plant took about four months to build, but the buyer must sign a contract agreeing to remove all of the equipment no later than April 26, within nine days of the auction, according to the bankruptcy court order authorizing the sale.
Each of the solar dishes stands nearly 40 feet tall, meaning potential bidders need lots of vacant land, a crane and plenty of transportation to move the dishes.
The dishes are connected to the power grid, so the buyer must also coordinate with Salt River Project to safely de-energize the facility and take the equipment, separating it from SRP's transformers and other equipment.
The power plant also is connected to a small pipeline of flammable hydrogen gas compressed to 3,000 pounds per square inch, and the gas lines must be purged with nitrogen before removal, according to the 42-page decommissioning plan buyers will be required to follow.
And there's another catch: The plant's instruction manual will be sold separately.
On March 15, the bankruptcy trustee for Stirling Energy Systems filed an objection to the sale of any "confidential information" in the upcoming auction, stating that those assets belonged to Stirling, not the Maricopa Solar affiliate auctioning the power plant.
The bankruptcy judge approved the objection, apparently preventing the sale of any documents that would explain how the complex machines work, including operation and maintenance manuals, specifications for the power plant's weather stations, hydrogen stations, communications, computer hard drives and even the SunCatcher product descriptions.
Angela Abreu, a lawyer in New Jersey representing the Stirling trustee, confirmed that Stirling considers the intellectual property from the company to be assets owned by Stirling.
She said the company is working on a plan to sell those assets, but she would not say how or to whom.
Lothar Goernitz, the trustee for Maricopa Solar, said he would prefer that Stirling offer the intellectual property along with the solar equipment, which he is responsible for liquidating. But he said Stirling's bankruptcy trustee did not want to sell the information along with the equipment.
"If (a buyer) wants to use the intellectual property and copyrights and whatnot, yes, they are going to have to deal with Stirling Energy Systems," he said. "But I have not come to the conclusion that there is no way that someone will come and buy this, disassemble it and use it."
He said he has been contacted by a variety of interested buyers, including some from overseas that could use the power system in remote areas. He also said that because other companies use similar dish-Stirling technology, that a buyer might not need the manuals to use the plant or parts of it.
"If you had 20 of these dishes in Sudan ... this would be a much more proficient way of generating electricity," he said. "There are places in the world where this technology makes some sense. The obvious economic concern is how to disassemble it, relocate it and set it up that is cost productive."
Barkoff said 16 parties have signed non-disclosure agreements, which allows them to see details of the equipment.
Barkoff would not say how many have paid the $25,000 to become registered bidders, but he said he has had interest from educational institutions, technical colleges, utilities and scrap-metal dealers.
An April 17 online auction thought to be one of the first of its kind will offer the bankrupt Maricopa Solar power plant in Peoria, which uses a rare solar-thermal technology.
Solar equipment frequently is auctioned from bankruptcies, but not this type, said auctioneer David Barkoff of Heritage Global Partners, which is handling the sale for the bankruptcy trustee.
"Power plants or power-generation equipment, yes, (we auction) lots of it," he said. "But I don't think a solar-thermal power plant has come online for sale ever."
The company that was running the power plant with a license to the technology from Stirling Energy, Maricopa Solar LLC, also declared bankruptcy and now is liquidating the power plant. But not the intellectual property to build and run it.
Stirling used a complex technology with mirrors focusing the sun's heat on an engine in the middle of each dish. The engines converted the heat energy into motion, and the motion was used to make electricity.
Stirling built six of its so-called SunCatchers in New Mexico at Sandia National Laboratories, and then the larger demonstration plant in Peoria. Stirling's plans to build tens of thousands of SunCatchers in California and Texas never were fulfilled.
Other companies use similar "dish-Stirling" technology, but they are far less popular than flat, black solar panels now common on rooftops. And Stirling's competitors' dishes are not identical to those in Peoria.
Maricopa Solar's assets were listed at between $50,000 and $100,000 in its petition for bankruptcy. Barkoff said that the opening bid would not be disclosed until the auction, and he declined to estimate what a buyer might pay for the equipment.
Bidders must pay $25,000 just to register for the sale, but that's only the beginning of the complications they will face if they buy the power plant.
The plant took about four months to build, but the buyer must sign a contract agreeing to remove all of the equipment no later than April 26, within nine days of the auction, according to the bankruptcy court order authorizing the sale.
Each of the solar dishes stands nearly 40 feet tall, meaning potential bidders need lots of vacant land, a crane and plenty of transportation to move the dishes.
The dishes are connected to the power grid, so the buyer must also coordinate with Salt River Project to safely de-energize the facility and take the equipment, separating it from SRP's transformers and other equipment.
The power plant also is connected to a small pipeline of flammable hydrogen gas compressed to 3,000 pounds per square inch, and the gas lines must be purged with nitrogen before removal, according to the 42-page decommissioning plan buyers will be required to follow.
And there's another catch: The plant's instruction manual will be sold separately.
On March 15, the bankruptcy trustee for Stirling Energy Systems filed an objection to the sale of any "confidential information" in the upcoming auction, stating that those assets belonged to Stirling, not the Maricopa Solar affiliate auctioning the power plant.
The bankruptcy judge approved the objection, apparently preventing the sale of any documents that would explain how the complex machines work, including operation and maintenance manuals, specifications for the power plant's weather stations, hydrogen stations, communications, computer hard drives and even the SunCatcher product descriptions.
Angela Abreu, a lawyer in New Jersey representing the Stirling trustee, confirmed that Stirling considers the intellectual property from the company to be assets owned by Stirling.
She said the company is working on a plan to sell those assets, but she would not say how or to whom.
Lothar Goernitz, the trustee for Maricopa Solar, said he would prefer that Stirling offer the intellectual property along with the solar equipment, which he is responsible for liquidating. But he said Stirling's bankruptcy trustee did not want to sell the information along with the equipment.
"If (a buyer) wants to use the intellectual property and copyrights and whatnot, yes, they are going to have to deal with Stirling Energy Systems," he said. "But I have not come to the conclusion that there is no way that someone will come and buy this, disassemble it and use it."
He said he has been contacted by a variety of interested buyers, including some from overseas that could use the power system in remote areas. He also said that because other companies use similar dish-Stirling technology, that a buyer might not need the manuals to use the plant or parts of it.
"If you had 20 of these dishes in Sudan ... this would be a much more proficient way of generating electricity," he said. "There are places in the world where this technology makes some sense. The obvious economic concern is how to disassemble it, relocate it and set it up that is cost productive."
Barkoff said 16 parties have signed non-disclosure agreements, which allows them to see details of the equipment.
Barkoff would not say how many have paid the $25,000 to become registered bidders, but he said he has had interest from educational institutions, technical colleges, utilities and scrap-metal dealers.
2012年3月15日星期四
Twin Creeks Aims To Cut Solar Panel Cost In Half
Twin Creeks, a start-up company headquartered in San Jose, CA, aims to revolutionize the solar industry by combining old Soviet technology and newfangled American innovation to enable the production of flexible, ultra-thin solar cells at half the cost of the current industry standard.
Twin Creeks is doing this by selling copies of its first, and to date, only, product: Hyperion, a room-sized particle accelerator that slices off wafers of silicon, the most common ingredient in solar cells, at the molecular level.
To that end, Twin Creeks aims to offer manufacturers a way to bring down the cost of solar cells — those are the constituent parts that make up a solar panel — from about 80 cents per watt to 40 cents per watt.
The process is called “proton-induced exfoliation,” and Twin Creeks compares it to a “proton knife,” albeit an extremely fine and precise one, capable of slicing sheets of materials ranging from silicon to diamond into 20 micron-thick segments, about half the thickness of a human hair.
“Proton exfoliation was a phenomena first discovered by the Soviet Union in the 1980s,” Twin Creeks spokesman Michael Kanellos, in an interview with TPM. “They found that in their nuclear reactors, the steel walls around the reactor cores were deteriorating because hydrogen ions from the reactors were getting under steel.”
The technology eventually made its way into scientific literature and was used to create semiconductors that are found in most modern electronics.
Flash forward to 2008, when Siva Sivaram, a former executive manager at SanDisk and Intel, now Twin Creeks’ CEO, began reading papers on the subject. He and his friend, physicist and venture capitalist Alain Harrus, began to think about the various novel ways that the technology could be used.
“Nobody had ever thought of it to make really thin solar panels,” Kanellos told TPM. “But they did.”
The duo quickly recruited an army of experts on the technology, many of whom had retired decades earlier.
“There’s more people in the company with PhDs than not,” said Kanellos, of the 75-person strong staff. “The joke within the company is the age spread goes from 23 to 82.”
On Wednesday, after four years of secertive internal testing on two different and armed with 20 patents or patent applications, Twin Creeks announced it was offering the first copies of Hyperion for for sale on the commercial market beginning immediately, for a price somewhere between $1 million and $10 million (the company declined to specify). The company is demonstrating the process to interested parties at its plant in Senatobia, Mississippi.
To be clear, Twin Creeks’ prospective customers aren’t individuals, but other existing solar manufacturers, who have been hit hard lately by a sudden drop in the price of polysilicon, a type of silicon that’s used in the majority of the solar panels around the world.
Twin Creeks’ Hyperion proton accomplishes this by drastically improving the efficiency when it comes to converting polysilicon or other types of materials from thick, crytalline ingots, which is how they are first synthesized, into the thin wafers necessary to make solar cells.
Currently, the industry goes about the process in a blunt force sort-of way, physically sawing wafers off of the ingots with blades, which produces lots of wasted materials.
But Hyperion “saws” wafers off ingots on the molecular level, shooting hydrogen ions (aka protons) deep into whatever material the solar manufacturer is using to make their cells, forming microscopic bubbles. Heating the material then causes the bubbles to expand to a precise amount, lifting an ultra-thin, ultra-flexible layer right off the original ingot. In this way, the original ingot can actually be re-used over and over again to produce solar wafers at the precise thickness of 20 microns, up to 10 times, according to the company’s tests.
The process also allows companies to use far less material to begin with, thanks to the precision of the proton gun’s “cutting” abilities.
And with Hyperion able to accomodate a number of different types of materials, from polysilicon to gallium arsenide, its not hard to see why the company is already been talking about providing the technology to “a large number of the top 10 solar manufacturers in the world,” along with dozens of up-and-coming companies, according to Kanellos.
“We expect that there will be 6 to 10 of these in the field a year from now,” Kanellos told TPM. By 2014, the company expects to have over 100 in the field.
But that’s just the beginning of what Twin Creeks wants to do with Hyperion. Eventually, the company wants to use the same technology to make cheaper LEDs and image sensors in the cameras increasingly found in mobile digital devices.
And as for the question of just how green a high-powered particle accelerator can really be, Kanellos said that Twin Creeks spent many of its early years dialing down the power consumption to its current level: 1.2 megavolts, close to the level of a power transformer.
“The gun takes a lot of juice,” Kanellos confirmed to TPM, “But you’re also using one-tenth the amount of silicon to make the wafers as conventional processes.”
Kanellos said that the savings in materials more than made up for the power consumption. It normally takes 2 years worth of operation for a solar cell to work off its carbon footprint, but Twin Creek’s process takes only 25 days.
Twin Creeks is doing this by selling copies of its first, and to date, only, product: Hyperion, a room-sized particle accelerator that slices off wafers of silicon, the most common ingredient in solar cells, at the molecular level.
To that end, Twin Creeks aims to offer manufacturers a way to bring down the cost of solar cells — those are the constituent parts that make up a solar panel — from about 80 cents per watt to 40 cents per watt.
The process is called “proton-induced exfoliation,” and Twin Creeks compares it to a “proton knife,” albeit an extremely fine and precise one, capable of slicing sheets of materials ranging from silicon to diamond into 20 micron-thick segments, about half the thickness of a human hair.
“Proton exfoliation was a phenomena first discovered by the Soviet Union in the 1980s,” Twin Creeks spokesman Michael Kanellos, in an interview with TPM. “They found that in their nuclear reactors, the steel walls around the reactor cores were deteriorating because hydrogen ions from the reactors were getting under steel.”
The technology eventually made its way into scientific literature and was used to create semiconductors that are found in most modern electronics.
Flash forward to 2008, when Siva Sivaram, a former executive manager at SanDisk and Intel, now Twin Creeks’ CEO, began reading papers on the subject. He and his friend, physicist and venture capitalist Alain Harrus, began to think about the various novel ways that the technology could be used.
“Nobody had ever thought of it to make really thin solar panels,” Kanellos told TPM. “But they did.”
The duo quickly recruited an army of experts on the technology, many of whom had retired decades earlier.
“There’s more people in the company with PhDs than not,” said Kanellos, of the 75-person strong staff. “The joke within the company is the age spread goes from 23 to 82.”
On Wednesday, after four years of secertive internal testing on two different and armed with 20 patents or patent applications, Twin Creeks announced it was offering the first copies of Hyperion for for sale on the commercial market beginning immediately, for a price somewhere between $1 million and $10 million (the company declined to specify). The company is demonstrating the process to interested parties at its plant in Senatobia, Mississippi.
To be clear, Twin Creeks’ prospective customers aren’t individuals, but other existing solar manufacturers, who have been hit hard lately by a sudden drop in the price of polysilicon, a type of silicon that’s used in the majority of the solar panels around the world.
Twin Creeks’ Hyperion proton accomplishes this by drastically improving the efficiency when it comes to converting polysilicon or other types of materials from thick, crytalline ingots, which is how they are first synthesized, into the thin wafers necessary to make solar cells.
Currently, the industry goes about the process in a blunt force sort-of way, physically sawing wafers off of the ingots with blades, which produces lots of wasted materials.
But Hyperion “saws” wafers off ingots on the molecular level, shooting hydrogen ions (aka protons) deep into whatever material the solar manufacturer is using to make their cells, forming microscopic bubbles. Heating the material then causes the bubbles to expand to a precise amount, lifting an ultra-thin, ultra-flexible layer right off the original ingot. In this way, the original ingot can actually be re-used over and over again to produce solar wafers at the precise thickness of 20 microns, up to 10 times, according to the company’s tests.
The process also allows companies to use far less material to begin with, thanks to the precision of the proton gun’s “cutting” abilities.
And with Hyperion able to accomodate a number of different types of materials, from polysilicon to gallium arsenide, its not hard to see why the company is already been talking about providing the technology to “a large number of the top 10 solar manufacturers in the world,” along with dozens of up-and-coming companies, according to Kanellos.
“We expect that there will be 6 to 10 of these in the field a year from now,” Kanellos told TPM. By 2014, the company expects to have over 100 in the field.
But that’s just the beginning of what Twin Creeks wants to do with Hyperion. Eventually, the company wants to use the same technology to make cheaper LEDs and image sensors in the cameras increasingly found in mobile digital devices.
And as for the question of just how green a high-powered particle accelerator can really be, Kanellos said that Twin Creeks spent many of its early years dialing down the power consumption to its current level: 1.2 megavolts, close to the level of a power transformer.
“The gun takes a lot of juice,” Kanellos confirmed to TPM, “But you’re also using one-tenth the amount of silicon to make the wafers as conventional processes.”
Kanellos said that the savings in materials more than made up for the power consumption. It normally takes 2 years worth of operation for a solar cell to work off its carbon footprint, but Twin Creek’s process takes only 25 days.
2012年2月5日星期日
Solar company Natcore setting up shop in Rochester
The concept of solar power is nearly irresistible: an endless cascade of sunlight — the ultimate renewable resource — churning out cheap electricity.
The reality of solar power, though, is more problematic as it remains far from cheap. And the U.S. Energy Department projects that electricity from a hypothetical solar energy project going online in 2016 would be about twice as expensive as juice from a new coal plant and more than three times costlier than a natural gas-fed power plant.
But New Jersey-based Natcore Technologies Inc. sees the green of cash in the golden sunshine. The solar energy technology firm is in the midst of setting up a research and development facility at Eastman Business Park that CEO Chuck Provini said should be operational within a couple weeks.
Once it is set up, the company plans to hire 10 to 15 people to staff it as it works on three separate, parallel technology tracks: “black silicon” solar cells that use silicon wafers etched with tiny pores that reflect back less light; stacks of tandem solar cells, each working on different wavelengths of light; and flexible, thin-film solar cells.
Each technology has the possibility of making solar more commercially viable by either cutting the cost of manufacture or upping the efficiency, Provini said last week as he was in town to visit Natcore’s facilities in Eastman Kodak Co.’s Building 308.
Later this month, Natcore plans to bring in prospective customers/investors such as representatives from an Italian solar panel maker, a Chinese solar cell maker and an Indian energy company. Part of Natcore’s sales pitch, Provini said, will be trying to convince those firms to set up manufacturing operations in the United States in exchange for access to Natcore technology — though ultimately, he added, investors will be in the driver’s seat of that decision.
Natcore’s efforts come as the solar photovoltaic market is in the midst of serious challenges, from numerous European nations cutting solar energy subsidies and an oversupply of solar components globally sending prices nosediving to the political issues surrounding the bankruptcy and liquidation of California thin-film solar cell maker Solyndra.
But the oversupply issue is due largely to China subsidizing manufacturers there, and technology under development will make the glut of industry-standard solar cell components on the market now obsolete, Provini said. “You make dramatic changes, you own the industry,” he said.
Natcore also is counting on the cost of oil rising, particularly as a cash-strapped U.S. government cuts oil subsidies, to make solar more financially competitive, Provini said.
The company’s key assets are a group of patents it has licensed or owns outright. And it expects to start earning income from licensing that technology to others later this year. Other revenue streams, such as manufacturing solar cell coating equipment or the reselling of chemicals needed in the manufacturing process, would follow.
Natcore announced in December that it had signed a patent license agreement with the U.S. Energy Department’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory giving it access to NREL patents to develop and commercialize black silicon solar cells. And it hopes to have prototype black silicon solar cells within a couple of months, with greater efficiency than what is on the market today.
Tandem solar cell prototypes could be ready within six to 12 months, Provini said. And a workable prototype of flexible, thin-film solar cells — made with Kodak’s thin-film manufacturing capabilities and costing far less to install than traditional solar cells — would take the same amount of time if the company can find investors in the technology, Provini said.
The company signed a lease in July with Kodak. The Building 308 lab will consolidate lab space the company currently has at Ohio State and Rice universities. Being near Kodak and its thin-film capabilities were one key reason why the company opted to put its R&D operations there.
Aside from that, said Thomas J. Scarpa, corporate development officer, “The intellectual pool we can draw on, this is an excellent place. University of Rochester. Rochester Institute of Technology. Ex-Kodakers.”
Natcore is emblematic of what Kodak has been trying to do with its sprawling Eastman Business Park manufacturing campus — make it over into an industrial park. More than two dozen firms, including spinoffs from and former suppliers of Kodak, operate there today.
Kodak is currently in the midst of a Chapter 11 bankruptcy and is in talks about potential sales of some or all of the campus. However, Provini said, “I don’t think (the bankruptcy) is going to affect us.”
And, Provini added with a smile, if Kodak wanted to take some of the hundreds of millions of dollars Citigroup has loaned it during bankruptcy and invest it in Natcore technology, “That’d be a great way to reinvent themselves.”
The reality of solar power, though, is more problematic as it remains far from cheap. And the U.S. Energy Department projects that electricity from a hypothetical solar energy project going online in 2016 would be about twice as expensive as juice from a new coal plant and more than three times costlier than a natural gas-fed power plant.
But New Jersey-based Natcore Technologies Inc. sees the green of cash in the golden sunshine. The solar energy technology firm is in the midst of setting up a research and development facility at Eastman Business Park that CEO Chuck Provini said should be operational within a couple weeks.
Once it is set up, the company plans to hire 10 to 15 people to staff it as it works on three separate, parallel technology tracks: “black silicon” solar cells that use silicon wafers etched with tiny pores that reflect back less light; stacks of tandem solar cells, each working on different wavelengths of light; and flexible, thin-film solar cells.
Each technology has the possibility of making solar more commercially viable by either cutting the cost of manufacture or upping the efficiency, Provini said last week as he was in town to visit Natcore’s facilities in Eastman Kodak Co.’s Building 308.
Later this month, Natcore plans to bring in prospective customers/investors such as representatives from an Italian solar panel maker, a Chinese solar cell maker and an Indian energy company. Part of Natcore’s sales pitch, Provini said, will be trying to convince those firms to set up manufacturing operations in the United States in exchange for access to Natcore technology — though ultimately, he added, investors will be in the driver’s seat of that decision.
Natcore’s efforts come as the solar photovoltaic market is in the midst of serious challenges, from numerous European nations cutting solar energy subsidies and an oversupply of solar components globally sending prices nosediving to the political issues surrounding the bankruptcy and liquidation of California thin-film solar cell maker Solyndra.
But the oversupply issue is due largely to China subsidizing manufacturers there, and technology under development will make the glut of industry-standard solar cell components on the market now obsolete, Provini said. “You make dramatic changes, you own the industry,” he said.
Natcore also is counting on the cost of oil rising, particularly as a cash-strapped U.S. government cuts oil subsidies, to make solar more financially competitive, Provini said.
The company’s key assets are a group of patents it has licensed or owns outright. And it expects to start earning income from licensing that technology to others later this year. Other revenue streams, such as manufacturing solar cell coating equipment or the reselling of chemicals needed in the manufacturing process, would follow.
Natcore announced in December that it had signed a patent license agreement with the U.S. Energy Department’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory giving it access to NREL patents to develop and commercialize black silicon solar cells. And it hopes to have prototype black silicon solar cells within a couple of months, with greater efficiency than what is on the market today.
Tandem solar cell prototypes could be ready within six to 12 months, Provini said. And a workable prototype of flexible, thin-film solar cells — made with Kodak’s thin-film manufacturing capabilities and costing far less to install than traditional solar cells — would take the same amount of time if the company can find investors in the technology, Provini said.
The company signed a lease in July with Kodak. The Building 308 lab will consolidate lab space the company currently has at Ohio State and Rice universities. Being near Kodak and its thin-film capabilities were one key reason why the company opted to put its R&D operations there.
Aside from that, said Thomas J. Scarpa, corporate development officer, “The intellectual pool we can draw on, this is an excellent place. University of Rochester. Rochester Institute of Technology. Ex-Kodakers.”
Natcore is emblematic of what Kodak has been trying to do with its sprawling Eastman Business Park manufacturing campus — make it over into an industrial park. More than two dozen firms, including spinoffs from and former suppliers of Kodak, operate there today.
Kodak is currently in the midst of a Chapter 11 bankruptcy and is in talks about potential sales of some or all of the campus. However, Provini said, “I don’t think (the bankruptcy) is going to affect us.”
And, Provini added with a smile, if Kodak wanted to take some of the hundreds of millions of dollars Citigroup has loaned it during bankruptcy and invest it in Natcore technology, “That’d be a great way to reinvent themselves.”
2012年1月29日星期日
HRI Properties installs solar panels at its properties
To cut down on the high upfront price that some say have kept solar panels out of reach for many households, local developer HRI Properties has installed the equipment at six of its developments in the New Orleans area as part of a $10 million project, taking advantage of federal and state tax credits and covering the initial investment to lease the equipment and help tenants spread the costs out over a decade. The equipment, which went into operation at several of the properties at the beginning of the year, is expected to generate 1.05 megawatts of solar energy, which is enough to power about 250 apartments, said Hal Fairbanks, vice president of acquisitions for HRI Properties.
Residents at those properties, including River Garden, which replaced the St. Thomas public housing complex, the American Can Company apartment complex in Mid-City and soon the loft-style apartments at the Blue Plate Foods building, will lease the equipment with a monthly fee, paid for from money saved on electricity bills, Fairbanks said.
He expects units to save about $50 a month on average in utility costs. The leasing fee is generally about 75 percent of the savings realized through net metering, which lets customers generate their own electricity and then send extra electricity back to the utility for a savings.
"What we try to do is use existing incentives to make it economically feasible to lease at an attractive rate to an end user at no upfront costs," Fairbanks said.
Under the arrangement, HRI purchases the equipment and takes advantage of the available tax incentives, which cover up to 80 percent of the cost of the panels. The company has also received a $2.1 million grant from EmPower Louisiana, a program administered by the Department of Natural Resources that was funded with federal stimulus money.
The installations are complete at all of the units except American Can and the Blue Plate building, which Fairbanks said will be finished soon. Other properties include a new apartment complex in Houma and a renovated historic building in Shreveport.
"We're trying to be as sustainable as possible," he said, adding that the buildings are designed to be energy-efficient, from the insulation to the appliances. The energy generated from the panels will reduce utility costs for residents and lower the operating costs of the buildings by offsetting individual units and common electrical loads, he said, like hallways and community rooms, and in large part, the air conditioning.
So far, residents have reacted favorably. "I think they're interested, and they're excited about it not only for the savings but just knowing that they're contributing to some of the energy being sustainable and using resources wisely," he said.
In some ways, the effort is similar to one undertaken in recent years by Make It Right, the Brad Pitt-led push to rebuild the storm-ravaged Lower 9th Ward with affordable, energy-efficient housing.
The nonprofit has established a separate entity that worked with local housing development agencies to lease out the equipment over a 10-year span.
Pierre Moses, a project manager with Make It Right, said Thursday that the solar program recently worked with Volunteers of America on a multiunit, multifamily development in Covington, which is different from the single-family units that the initiative has become known for.
Make It Right has set out to build 150 homes in the Lower 9th Ward loaded with green features like solar panels and rainwater collectors, with half completed so far.
Moses called this latest project "a natural progression for us" to start looking at other opportunities and expanding the effort.
"We're sort of exploring options on how to expand our program," he said. "I think that there's certainly just a vast amount of demand for a solar solution that doesn't require an upfront capital outlay. We understood that a while ago, but we were still focusing on organizations that had synergies with Make It Right."
Residents at those properties, including River Garden, which replaced the St. Thomas public housing complex, the American Can Company apartment complex in Mid-City and soon the loft-style apartments at the Blue Plate Foods building, will lease the equipment with a monthly fee, paid for from money saved on electricity bills, Fairbanks said.
He expects units to save about $50 a month on average in utility costs. The leasing fee is generally about 75 percent of the savings realized through net metering, which lets customers generate their own electricity and then send extra electricity back to the utility for a savings.
"What we try to do is use existing incentives to make it economically feasible to lease at an attractive rate to an end user at no upfront costs," Fairbanks said.
Under the arrangement, HRI purchases the equipment and takes advantage of the available tax incentives, which cover up to 80 percent of the cost of the panels. The company has also received a $2.1 million grant from EmPower Louisiana, a program administered by the Department of Natural Resources that was funded with federal stimulus money.
The installations are complete at all of the units except American Can and the Blue Plate building, which Fairbanks said will be finished soon. Other properties include a new apartment complex in Houma and a renovated historic building in Shreveport.
"We're trying to be as sustainable as possible," he said, adding that the buildings are designed to be energy-efficient, from the insulation to the appliances. The energy generated from the panels will reduce utility costs for residents and lower the operating costs of the buildings by offsetting individual units and common electrical loads, he said, like hallways and community rooms, and in large part, the air conditioning.
So far, residents have reacted favorably. "I think they're interested, and they're excited about it not only for the savings but just knowing that they're contributing to some of the energy being sustainable and using resources wisely," he said.
In some ways, the effort is similar to one undertaken in recent years by Make It Right, the Brad Pitt-led push to rebuild the storm-ravaged Lower 9th Ward with affordable, energy-efficient housing.
The nonprofit has established a separate entity that worked with local housing development agencies to lease out the equipment over a 10-year span.
Pierre Moses, a project manager with Make It Right, said Thursday that the solar program recently worked with Volunteers of America on a multiunit, multifamily development in Covington, which is different from the single-family units that the initiative has become known for.
Make It Right has set out to build 150 homes in the Lower 9th Ward loaded with green features like solar panels and rainwater collectors, with half completed so far.
Moses called this latest project "a natural progression for us" to start looking at other opportunities and expanding the effort.
"We're sort of exploring options on how to expand our program," he said. "I think that there's certainly just a vast amount of demand for a solar solution that doesn't require an upfront capital outlay. We understood that a while ago, but we were still focusing on organizations that had synergies with Make It Right."
2012年1月17日星期二
Homeowners furious over solar panels rip-off after company goes out of business
Furious homeowners fear they have lost hundreds of pounds to a solar energy company that has gone out of business.
Money Mail has received dozens of emails and letters from angry readers who paid 500 each to Energy Saving Group to have solar panels fitted. All complain they have received neither panels nor cash refunds.
Customers say ESG had promised to slash their fuel bills if they had the solar panels installed.
They were told their homes would benefit from the solar energy generated, while the firm would pocket a government subsidy, called the feed-in tariff, which is paid for extra energy generated and sold back to the grid. This promised payments of 43.3p per kWh of energy generated and sold back. Last month, the tariff was slashed to 21p.
This type of offer is not unusual — and is commonly known as a ‘rent-a-roof’ scheme.
But fears are growing that thousands of homeowners across Britain may have lost hundreds of pounds after being enticed by solar panel salesmen.
Money Mail has come across dozens of cases where ESG customers have had to wait for months for panels to be fitted after making payments. In a letter sent in August, many who had requested refunds were told ESG was unable to pay back money to its thousands of customers all at once, but that they would be contacted when it was their turn.
However, customers say emails and telephone calls to the address ESG uses in Redditch, Worcs, have gone unanswered. Some who contacted ESG in December have received letters telling them the firm has now gone out of business.
And Money Mail can reveal two of the directors of Energy Saving Improvements Limited, which trades as Energy Saving Group, are running another energy sales company called Energy Reduction Surveying Limited.
They are Steven Dickson, 33, who gives his address for both companies as Bromsgrove, Worcs; and James Manley, 34, from Hockley, Solihull. According to files lodged at Companies House, Energy Reduction Surveying Limited is registered at the Business Centre in Edward Street, Redditch.
The company trades under the name Energy Reduction UK. ESG is registered in Billesley, Birmingham.
When Money Mail called Energy Reduction UK, it said it was taking orders for solar panels, which it would install free or for 199.
Many of the people who have lost money with ESG are pensioners on limited incomes who were persuaded to order the panels by door-to-door salesmen. Others followed up adverts in local newspapers. The customers left out of pocket include 74-year-old Peter Conyers and his wife Shirley, 65, from Norwich, who ordered their panels just under a year ago.
The couple, who rely on just one state pension between them as their only income, paid 500 for panels after seeing a newspaper advert.
Mr Conyers, a former sheet metal worker, says: ‘We waited four weeks and then six weeks, but there was always another excuse from ESG about why the panels couldn’t be fitted. We really can’t afford to lose this money. We only paid it because we thought there would be a saving in the long term.’
Consumer groups have warned of vulnerable people being scammed by promises that solar energy could save them hundreds of pounds. Campaign group Consumer Focus warns that people who want to fit solar panels should order them only from companies registered under the REAL Assurance Scheme.
They should also only sign a contract certified under the Microgeneration Certification Scheme .
Always make sure you get at least three quotes from different companies before signing a contract.
You also have the right to change your mind within seven days, but make sure you don’t lose this option by signing a waiver. Liz Laine, energy expert at Consumer Focus, says:
‘Solar panels can save consumers money, but unfortunately there is bad practice in this industry, as in any other, and we know consumers have lost out through the actions of this company.
‘Our advice is that if it feels like pressure selling, it is.’
Trading Standards, which is investigating ESG, says customers must wait until the company is dissolved before they can make a claim for their cash.
Money Mail received separate statements from Mr Manley and Mr Dickson.
Mr Manley says he set up Energy Reduction UK alone — although Mr Dickson is listed as a director — because he did not agree with the way that ESG’s customers were being treated by third-party installers.
‘He says he cannot comment on any issues relating to ESG.
Mr Dickson says ESG stopped trading in December. However, records at Companies House show its status as ‘still active’.
He says its liquidators will do everything possible to recover this debt in order to repay Energy Saving Group’s creditors, which includes customers who are owed refunds.
Money Mail has received dozens of emails and letters from angry readers who paid 500 each to Energy Saving Group to have solar panels fitted. All complain they have received neither panels nor cash refunds.
Customers say ESG had promised to slash their fuel bills if they had the solar panels installed.
They were told their homes would benefit from the solar energy generated, while the firm would pocket a government subsidy, called the feed-in tariff, which is paid for extra energy generated and sold back to the grid. This promised payments of 43.3p per kWh of energy generated and sold back. Last month, the tariff was slashed to 21p.
This type of offer is not unusual — and is commonly known as a ‘rent-a-roof’ scheme.
But fears are growing that thousands of homeowners across Britain may have lost hundreds of pounds after being enticed by solar panel salesmen.
Money Mail has come across dozens of cases where ESG customers have had to wait for months for panels to be fitted after making payments. In a letter sent in August, many who had requested refunds were told ESG was unable to pay back money to its thousands of customers all at once, but that they would be contacted when it was their turn.
However, customers say emails and telephone calls to the address ESG uses in Redditch, Worcs, have gone unanswered. Some who contacted ESG in December have received letters telling them the firm has now gone out of business.
And Money Mail can reveal two of the directors of Energy Saving Improvements Limited, which trades as Energy Saving Group, are running another energy sales company called Energy Reduction Surveying Limited.
They are Steven Dickson, 33, who gives his address for both companies as Bromsgrove, Worcs; and James Manley, 34, from Hockley, Solihull. According to files lodged at Companies House, Energy Reduction Surveying Limited is registered at the Business Centre in Edward Street, Redditch.
The company trades under the name Energy Reduction UK. ESG is registered in Billesley, Birmingham.
When Money Mail called Energy Reduction UK, it said it was taking orders for solar panels, which it would install free or for 199.
Many of the people who have lost money with ESG are pensioners on limited incomes who were persuaded to order the panels by door-to-door salesmen. Others followed up adverts in local newspapers. The customers left out of pocket include 74-year-old Peter Conyers and his wife Shirley, 65, from Norwich, who ordered their panels just under a year ago.
The couple, who rely on just one state pension between them as their only income, paid 500 for panels after seeing a newspaper advert.
Mr Conyers, a former sheet metal worker, says: ‘We waited four weeks and then six weeks, but there was always another excuse from ESG about why the panels couldn’t be fitted. We really can’t afford to lose this money. We only paid it because we thought there would be a saving in the long term.’
Consumer groups have warned of vulnerable people being scammed by promises that solar energy could save them hundreds of pounds. Campaign group Consumer Focus warns that people who want to fit solar panels should order them only from companies registered under the REAL Assurance Scheme.
They should also only sign a contract certified under the Microgeneration Certification Scheme .
Always make sure you get at least three quotes from different companies before signing a contract.
You also have the right to change your mind within seven days, but make sure you don’t lose this option by signing a waiver. Liz Laine, energy expert at Consumer Focus, says:
‘Solar panels can save consumers money, but unfortunately there is bad practice in this industry, as in any other, and we know consumers have lost out through the actions of this company.
‘Our advice is that if it feels like pressure selling, it is.’
Trading Standards, which is investigating ESG, says customers must wait until the company is dissolved before they can make a claim for their cash.
Money Mail received separate statements from Mr Manley and Mr Dickson.
Mr Manley says he set up Energy Reduction UK alone — although Mr Dickson is listed as a director — because he did not agree with the way that ESG’s customers were being treated by third-party installers.
‘He says he cannot comment on any issues relating to ESG.
Mr Dickson says ESG stopped trading in December. However, records at Companies House show its status as ‘still active’.
He says its liquidators will do everything possible to recover this debt in order to repay Energy Saving Group’s creditors, which includes customers who are owed refunds.
2012年1月8日星期日
Solar power on the rise as technology gets cheaper
Even if it is cloudy today the thin solar panels on Hubbard Foods' Auckland factory are helping put the morning cereal on the table.
In the United States, a solar station built by Meridian Energy is generating power for the Californian state grid, and the state-owned enterprise is also building a solar station in Tonga.
And throughout New Zealand homeowners are signing up in growing numbers to generate their own power from the sun.
As the price of the technology falls - it has halved in the past two years - it's becoming more popular.
It is estimated solar units in New Zealand generate up to 4MW to 5MW, a tiny fraction of total generation over summer of about 4500MW a day, but it is growing in small steps.
One domestic installer said some of the growing number of householders opting to complement or in a few cases replace grid-sourced power had cited concerns about rising power prices following the part-sale of SOEs.
In June 2010 Hubbard and lines company Vector teamed up to create the largest thin-film solar photovoltaic (PV) installation on a commercial business in New Zealand.
A total of 160 PV panels covering 227sq m on the roof of the Hubbard building in Mangere produce power for warehouse lighting.
It was hoped the panels would generate 29,000kW/h of electricity a year - the equivalent of the power used to produce 169,000 packets of cereal, or the amount of electricity consumed by 3.5 homes over the same time.
The results of the trial have been encouraging. Because of the thin-film technology in these solar PV panels, electricity is generated even in low light conditions on cloudy days.
Although the actual amount of electricity generated has been slightly lower than projected, Vector says it has been an opportunity to refine system tools and project estimates for use on future installations.
During the past 18 months it has generated more than $8000 of power.
In certain applications, like Department of Conservation diesel conversion projects on Great Barrier Island and Raoul Island, solar PV is considered mainstream and economic, compared with the price and transport of diesel fuel.
However, on a purely substitutable, economic basis, mainstream solar could be a number of years off.
A key point to remember is that the reports of high levels of solar solutions adopted internationally are driven by massive subsidies and feed-in tariffs, which are not available in New Zealand.
It was subsidies and guaranteed off-take of power that attracted Meridian to Mendota in California's Central Valley.
In 2009 it bought a local company, Cleantech America, and built a 5MW solar plant that has a 20-year deal with Pacific Gas & Electric to buy power.
The US$25 million cost of the plant, the first solar station to be connected to the grid in California, got a 30 per cent federal government subsidy as part of the Obama Administration's renewable energy push.
Since commissioning about 18 months ago, it has run at capacity for 24 per cent of the time. In comparison, New Zealand windfarms can run at capacity for 40 per cent of the time.
"The great thing about solar is that it's quite predictable ... We're getting pretty much what we expected to see," said Meridian's corporate ventures manager, Peter Apperley.
The company monitors the California plant from its Wellington headquarters.
"We've got a screen where we can see it. On a summer's day it gets a little bit boring."
Meridian is also building and will initially run a 1MW solar station in Tonga that will provide about 4 per cent of the kingdom's annual load, and between 10 per cent and 25 per cent of daily peak demand.
Apperley said utility-scale solar generation in New Zealand was some way off, and more likely to be located in remote northern communities.
"We think solar will have a part to play. In the near term it will be [small-scale] rooftop PV because the cost of land is too high," he said.
"In 10 years there could be smaller-scale solar farms built, especially where there are supply constraints."
On the outskirts of Warkworth, Chip Babbott has spent about $60,000 installing 27 panels on an outbuilding that, during summer, provides 75 per cent of power for his large family home. It drops to about 50 per cent in winter.
The mechanical engineer chose solar because he was worried about the threat to supply and the rising cost of power. He has calculated it will take about 18 years to recover the initial outlay.
"Some people laugh and say I've blown $60,000, but that's what you can spend on a car. I've got secure power."
Babbott is able to sell excess power back into the grid.
He is now building an electric car by dropping an electric motor into an old Toyota, which he hopes can be fuelled from excess power he generates during the day.
His solar setup comes from What Power Crisis, a South Auckland company that says it is experiencing growing demand for its solar PV modules on rooftops and, in some instances, on ground-mounted frames.
Business development manager Henry Cassin said the company had installed close to 200 systems during the past two years. It had hit its 12-month sales target within the past six months.
Many domestic installations, usually used with a wetback hot-water-heating system, could be done for less than $10,000, excluding GST. Most customers were worried about rising power prices.
"It's very much flavour of the month," Cassin said, with the planned partial sell-off of state power companies one reason for demand.
Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority chief executive Mike Underhill said the cost of solar PV panels had been decreasing worldwide for many years, thanks to economies of scale and improved manufacturing processes.
"Currently, because of a situation of oversupply of PV panels, prices are reduced even further than would otherwise be the case."
This is because of growth in PV manufacturing increasing faster than demand, and depressed demand for PV in markets such as Australia because of the recession.
Suppliers are looking to new markets, and are offering low PV prices in New Zealand.
At an equivalent unit cost for PVof about 26c/kWh, solar is approaching the retail electricity tariff.
Underhill said homeowners considering installing a PV system in order to feed electricity back into the grid for ongoing income should bear in mind that opinions varied on what the tariff should be, and that tariffs on offer now might change in the future.
"Some electricity retailers pay PV owners more than the nominal 8c/kWh, even as much as the full retail tariff, but this may not continue as more and more hobbyists install PV on their homes. It is possible that the price paid for home-generated electricity may fall to about 8c/kWh."
In this eventuality, an investment in PV would make financial sense mainly for those who would use the electricity themselves rather than feeding it back into the grid for payment.
In the United States, a solar station built by Meridian Energy is generating power for the Californian state grid, and the state-owned enterprise is also building a solar station in Tonga.
And throughout New Zealand homeowners are signing up in growing numbers to generate their own power from the sun.
As the price of the technology falls - it has halved in the past two years - it's becoming more popular.
It is estimated solar units in New Zealand generate up to 4MW to 5MW, a tiny fraction of total generation over summer of about 4500MW a day, but it is growing in small steps.
One domestic installer said some of the growing number of householders opting to complement or in a few cases replace grid-sourced power had cited concerns about rising power prices following the part-sale of SOEs.
In June 2010 Hubbard and lines company Vector teamed up to create the largest thin-film solar photovoltaic (PV) installation on a commercial business in New Zealand.
A total of 160 PV panels covering 227sq m on the roof of the Hubbard building in Mangere produce power for warehouse lighting.
It was hoped the panels would generate 29,000kW/h of electricity a year - the equivalent of the power used to produce 169,000 packets of cereal, or the amount of electricity consumed by 3.5 homes over the same time.
The results of the trial have been encouraging. Because of the thin-film technology in these solar PV panels, electricity is generated even in low light conditions on cloudy days.
Although the actual amount of electricity generated has been slightly lower than projected, Vector says it has been an opportunity to refine system tools and project estimates for use on future installations.
During the past 18 months it has generated more than $8000 of power.
In certain applications, like Department of Conservation diesel conversion projects on Great Barrier Island and Raoul Island, solar PV is considered mainstream and economic, compared with the price and transport of diesel fuel.
However, on a purely substitutable, economic basis, mainstream solar could be a number of years off.
A key point to remember is that the reports of high levels of solar solutions adopted internationally are driven by massive subsidies and feed-in tariffs, which are not available in New Zealand.
It was subsidies and guaranteed off-take of power that attracted Meridian to Mendota in California's Central Valley.
In 2009 it bought a local company, Cleantech America, and built a 5MW solar plant that has a 20-year deal with Pacific Gas & Electric to buy power.
The US$25 million cost of the plant, the first solar station to be connected to the grid in California, got a 30 per cent federal government subsidy as part of the Obama Administration's renewable energy push.
Since commissioning about 18 months ago, it has run at capacity for 24 per cent of the time. In comparison, New Zealand windfarms can run at capacity for 40 per cent of the time.
"The great thing about solar is that it's quite predictable ... We're getting pretty much what we expected to see," said Meridian's corporate ventures manager, Peter Apperley.
The company monitors the California plant from its Wellington headquarters.
"We've got a screen where we can see it. On a summer's day it gets a little bit boring."
Meridian is also building and will initially run a 1MW solar station in Tonga that will provide about 4 per cent of the kingdom's annual load, and between 10 per cent and 25 per cent of daily peak demand.
Apperley said utility-scale solar generation in New Zealand was some way off, and more likely to be located in remote northern communities.
"We think solar will have a part to play. In the near term it will be [small-scale] rooftop PV because the cost of land is too high," he said.
"In 10 years there could be smaller-scale solar farms built, especially where there are supply constraints."
On the outskirts of Warkworth, Chip Babbott has spent about $60,000 installing 27 panels on an outbuilding that, during summer, provides 75 per cent of power for his large family home. It drops to about 50 per cent in winter.
The mechanical engineer chose solar because he was worried about the threat to supply and the rising cost of power. He has calculated it will take about 18 years to recover the initial outlay.
"Some people laugh and say I've blown $60,000, but that's what you can spend on a car. I've got secure power."
Babbott is able to sell excess power back into the grid.
He is now building an electric car by dropping an electric motor into an old Toyota, which he hopes can be fuelled from excess power he generates during the day.
His solar setup comes from What Power Crisis, a South Auckland company that says it is experiencing growing demand for its solar PV modules on rooftops and, in some instances, on ground-mounted frames.
Business development manager Henry Cassin said the company had installed close to 200 systems during the past two years. It had hit its 12-month sales target within the past six months.
Many domestic installations, usually used with a wetback hot-water-heating system, could be done for less than $10,000, excluding GST. Most customers were worried about rising power prices.
"It's very much flavour of the month," Cassin said, with the planned partial sell-off of state power companies one reason for demand.
Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority chief executive Mike Underhill said the cost of solar PV panels had been decreasing worldwide for many years, thanks to economies of scale and improved manufacturing processes.
"Currently, because of a situation of oversupply of PV panels, prices are reduced even further than would otherwise be the case."
This is because of growth in PV manufacturing increasing faster than demand, and depressed demand for PV in markets such as Australia because of the recession.
Suppliers are looking to new markets, and are offering low PV prices in New Zealand.
At an equivalent unit cost for PVof about 26c/kWh, solar is approaching the retail electricity tariff.
Underhill said homeowners considering installing a PV system in order to feed electricity back into the grid for ongoing income should bear in mind that opinions varied on what the tariff should be, and that tariffs on offer now might change in the future.
"Some electricity retailers pay PV owners more than the nominal 8c/kWh, even as much as the full retail tariff, but this may not continue as more and more hobbyists install PV on their homes. It is possible that the price paid for home-generated electricity may fall to about 8c/kWh."
In this eventuality, an investment in PV would make financial sense mainly for those who would use the electricity themselves rather than feeding it back into the grid for payment.
2011年12月19日星期一
Mount View solar energy project first of its kind
Students at Mount View High School will be beginning a renewable energy project today aimed at learning more about solar energy and incorporating it into their local community, one of the first of its kind in the nation.
Edward Evans, athletic director for the school, said the school will be mounting 22 250-watt solar panels on top of the school for students to use for research purposes. The program may also allow the school to become a demonstration site for future solar energy projects.
“What the kids will do is become solar energy experts,” Evans said. “We like that Mount View can become a demonstration site. Schools, businesses and other organizations can come in to see what solar energy is all about and to see solar demonstrations. We will be able to walk people out onto the roof to see the panels themselves. Solar energy isn’t new and is used all over the place, but it is not used like we will use it. This is an opportunity for the average citizen to see if solar energy is something economical to do in their home. People can tour it and see if it is something they want to be involved with. The kids involved will be the ones giving the presentations to these people coming in to see the site. This will make people aware of all that can be done with solar energy. It is a huge project. This is a big deal. No school has what we will have.”
Evans said the project will be conducted by students with Mount View’s Health Sciences and Technology Academy (HSTA), a West Virginia math and science educational enrichment program aimed ninth through twelfth grade students. The HSTA program also provides college scholarship opportunities for students as well as resources for getting in and through college.
“To be in HSTA group, you have to participate in a HSTA major research project,” Evans said. “Over the years, our groups have done many projections. They have studied bats in West Virginia or ozone layers in West Virginia. This year, the grant will help us incorporate solar energy into the class room and the panels help to produce solar energy during the day.”
According to Evans, the around 50 students in the program will initially harness solar energy to power laptops as well as collect information for research projects.
“Right now the project is powering the laptops,” he said. “We could plug other things into the solar energy since it is a regular outlet. We are starting with the laptops and as the project goes along, we will see what else we can do. This is really three different projects. The HSTA kids will be working on these projects. One will be studying the optimum time of day to collect solar energy. They will also study ozone level through the weather station. We will be able to correlate humidity and how much solar energy is collected depending on the humidity, how much light is reflected back based on the amount of precipitation is air. We will also be seeing the amount of brown level ozone in the air in our area and what conditions produce the best ozone. Nobody is collecting this kind of data. We aren’t sure what we will do with this data, though we do know there are several universities interested in what data we find. These kids are going to be doing real-world research.”
The project was funded through a $45,000 grant Evans said would not have been possible without the aid of the several people and entities dedicated to bringing the project to Mount View.
“We were able to secure $45,000 through the U.S. Department of Energy through the West Virginia Department of Energy, Marshall University and several other entities,” Evans said. “We were approached by the Department of Energy and Rachel Lester, the former economic development director for McDowell County, helped us get the grant money. In fact, Rachel was really the initiator of the project. The grant money has to be used on a reclaimed mine site, which Mount View is, so we qualified for that. I immediately thought this would be a great project for the HSTA project. George Carico, an environmental manager with Marshall University, was able to put the grant together with us and we were funded for the project. The McDowell County Board of education was kind enough to support us for this and provide money up front, which was be reimbursed by Marshall. They were great in taking a leap of faith in us.”
Edward Evans, athletic director for the school, said the school will be mounting 22 250-watt solar panels on top of the school for students to use for research purposes. The program may also allow the school to become a demonstration site for future solar energy projects.
“What the kids will do is become solar energy experts,” Evans said. “We like that Mount View can become a demonstration site. Schools, businesses and other organizations can come in to see what solar energy is all about and to see solar demonstrations. We will be able to walk people out onto the roof to see the panels themselves. Solar energy isn’t new and is used all over the place, but it is not used like we will use it. This is an opportunity for the average citizen to see if solar energy is something economical to do in their home. People can tour it and see if it is something they want to be involved with. The kids involved will be the ones giving the presentations to these people coming in to see the site. This will make people aware of all that can be done with solar energy. It is a huge project. This is a big deal. No school has what we will have.”
Evans said the project will be conducted by students with Mount View’s Health Sciences and Technology Academy (HSTA), a West Virginia math and science educational enrichment program aimed ninth through twelfth grade students. The HSTA program also provides college scholarship opportunities for students as well as resources for getting in and through college.
“To be in HSTA group, you have to participate in a HSTA major research project,” Evans said. “Over the years, our groups have done many projections. They have studied bats in West Virginia or ozone layers in West Virginia. This year, the grant will help us incorporate solar energy into the class room and the panels help to produce solar energy during the day.”
According to Evans, the around 50 students in the program will initially harness solar energy to power laptops as well as collect information for research projects.
“Right now the project is powering the laptops,” he said. “We could plug other things into the solar energy since it is a regular outlet. We are starting with the laptops and as the project goes along, we will see what else we can do. This is really three different projects. The HSTA kids will be working on these projects. One will be studying the optimum time of day to collect solar energy. They will also study ozone level through the weather station. We will be able to correlate humidity and how much solar energy is collected depending on the humidity, how much light is reflected back based on the amount of precipitation is air. We will also be seeing the amount of brown level ozone in the air in our area and what conditions produce the best ozone. Nobody is collecting this kind of data. We aren’t sure what we will do with this data, though we do know there are several universities interested in what data we find. These kids are going to be doing real-world research.”
The project was funded through a $45,000 grant Evans said would not have been possible without the aid of the several people and entities dedicated to bringing the project to Mount View.
“We were able to secure $45,000 through the U.S. Department of Energy through the West Virginia Department of Energy, Marshall University and several other entities,” Evans said. “We were approached by the Department of Energy and Rachel Lester, the former economic development director for McDowell County, helped us get the grant money. In fact, Rachel was really the initiator of the project. The grant money has to be used on a reclaimed mine site, which Mount View is, so we qualified for that. I immediately thought this would be a great project for the HSTA project. George Carico, an environmental manager with Marshall University, was able to put the grant together with us and we were funded for the project. The McDowell County Board of education was kind enough to support us for this and provide money up front, which was be reimbursed by Marshall. They were great in taking a leap of faith in us.”
2011年12月6日星期二
Solar panels will rise on 50 acres in Raritan Township
With a use variance and preliminary and final site plan approval granted, Millennium Development Limited LLC will place as many as 41,816 solar panels on roughly 50 acres of a 72.4-acre parcel adjacent to Copper Hill Elementary School.
The state considers solar projects “inherently beneficial,” a land use designation that makes it easier for solar developments to earn approvals from zoning and planning boards.
“If the negative outweighs the inherently beneficial, the board votes no,” board attorney Jonathan Drill said at an earlier hearing. “If the inherently beneficial is more than the negative, they vote yes, but what they’re supposed to do when they do that balancing is consider whether or not they can impose conditions.”
Taking residents’ concerns into consideration, the board imposed a list of conditions Millennium will have to abide by.
“This is a good example of making sure we get it right and there was a lot of give and take,” board member Jack Glessner said, noting that the board and neighbors pored over the details. “There’s an awful lot of people that … assisted in the application’s modifications to make this kind of a best possible solution.”
Board chairman Bernard Salmon said Millennium made a significant number of concessions.
Those included installing a triple row of 6- to 14-foot evergreens along the perimeter, relocating the site access and switchgear panels from Everitts Road, preserving five specimen trees, expanding conservation easements, and agreeing to test all metal components for toxicity.
Driven piles, helical screws and concrete footings will be used to anchor the posts into the ground, project engineer Evan Hill testified. The board imposed a 10% cap on the amount of concrete, which will only be used if crews encounter a problem with either of the first two methods.
The applicant agreed to use vibrating pile drivers instead of hammers to address concerns over noise.
The installation of posts will take between two and two-and-a-half months of the nine-month project, Hill said.
Landscaping will be planted during the first available planting season, but if construction begins before the trees are in place, a 14-foot windscreen will be installed to screen nearby residences and highway travelers from the panels and any potential glare, Hill said.
Planting season is between Sept. 1 and Nov. 1 and between March 1 and June 1, said John Thomas, the township’s landscape architect.
Several 55-foot utility poles will be installed in place of the existing 35-foot poles at the point of interconnection and along Everitts Road toward Route 202-31 to run the 345-kV transmission lines.
Hill said he would ask Jersey Central Power & Light if it would consider allowing Millennium to tie into the grid through an existing utility pole closer to the intersection at Route 202-31, per the request of the Moreira family, who said the taller utility poles would be in their line of sight.
The project is in the AR-2 zone and as such, a residential development with as many as 40 homes could have also been proposed for the land, said planner Tiffany Cuviello, who testified for the applicant.
“I consider it a long-term temporary development with a very limited impact to the property in terms of disturbance,” she said of the solar field, noting that a residential developer would have to grade the site and install streets, sewer and water infrastructure. “Yet the proposed development as a solar facility allows … for the property to be farmed again in the future.”
Glessner, Salmon and fellow board members Wayne Ingram, Paul Higgins and Jayne Gilbert voted in favor of the application. Aaron Easley, who was also present at the meeting, was ineligible to vote.
Earlier in the week, hearings continued for a pair of pending solar projects.
Garden Solar is proposing a 2-megawatt field in the northern end of the township. As many as 7,940 crystalline panels would occupy about 5 acres of a 78-acre tract between Old Clinton and River roads north of Desmares Elementary School.
Meanwhile, EffiSolar Energy Corp. is proposing a larger, 18-megawatt field in the southern end of the township. Roughly 65,000 panels would occupy about 65 acres of a 155-acre tract between Everitts Road and Toad Lane west of the Cornet Way jughandle. The Black River and Western Railroad runs through the property.
Expert testimony and public comment will continue Dec. 15 for Garden Solar and Jan. 5 for EffiSolar, but the hearings may be switched due to an attendance conflict among board members.
The state considers solar projects “inherently beneficial,” a land use designation that makes it easier for solar developments to earn approvals from zoning and planning boards.
“If the negative outweighs the inherently beneficial, the board votes no,” board attorney Jonathan Drill said at an earlier hearing. “If the inherently beneficial is more than the negative, they vote yes, but what they’re supposed to do when they do that balancing is consider whether or not they can impose conditions.”
Taking residents’ concerns into consideration, the board imposed a list of conditions Millennium will have to abide by.
“This is a good example of making sure we get it right and there was a lot of give and take,” board member Jack Glessner said, noting that the board and neighbors pored over the details. “There’s an awful lot of people that … assisted in the application’s modifications to make this kind of a best possible solution.”
Board chairman Bernard Salmon said Millennium made a significant number of concessions.
Those included installing a triple row of 6- to 14-foot evergreens along the perimeter, relocating the site access and switchgear panels from Everitts Road, preserving five specimen trees, expanding conservation easements, and agreeing to test all metal components for toxicity.
Driven piles, helical screws and concrete footings will be used to anchor the posts into the ground, project engineer Evan Hill testified. The board imposed a 10% cap on the amount of concrete, which will only be used if crews encounter a problem with either of the first two methods.
The applicant agreed to use vibrating pile drivers instead of hammers to address concerns over noise.
The installation of posts will take between two and two-and-a-half months of the nine-month project, Hill said.
Landscaping will be planted during the first available planting season, but if construction begins before the trees are in place, a 14-foot windscreen will be installed to screen nearby residences and highway travelers from the panels and any potential glare, Hill said.
Planting season is between Sept. 1 and Nov. 1 and between March 1 and June 1, said John Thomas, the township’s landscape architect.
Several 55-foot utility poles will be installed in place of the existing 35-foot poles at the point of interconnection and along Everitts Road toward Route 202-31 to run the 345-kV transmission lines.
Hill said he would ask Jersey Central Power & Light if it would consider allowing Millennium to tie into the grid through an existing utility pole closer to the intersection at Route 202-31, per the request of the Moreira family, who said the taller utility poles would be in their line of sight.
The project is in the AR-2 zone and as such, a residential development with as many as 40 homes could have also been proposed for the land, said planner Tiffany Cuviello, who testified for the applicant.
“I consider it a long-term temporary development with a very limited impact to the property in terms of disturbance,” she said of the solar field, noting that a residential developer would have to grade the site and install streets, sewer and water infrastructure. “Yet the proposed development as a solar facility allows … for the property to be farmed again in the future.”
Glessner, Salmon and fellow board members Wayne Ingram, Paul Higgins and Jayne Gilbert voted in favor of the application. Aaron Easley, who was also present at the meeting, was ineligible to vote.
Earlier in the week, hearings continued for a pair of pending solar projects.
Garden Solar is proposing a 2-megawatt field in the northern end of the township. As many as 7,940 crystalline panels would occupy about 5 acres of a 78-acre tract between Old Clinton and River roads north of Desmares Elementary School.
Meanwhile, EffiSolar Energy Corp. is proposing a larger, 18-megawatt field in the southern end of the township. Roughly 65,000 panels would occupy about 65 acres of a 155-acre tract between Everitts Road and Toad Lane west of the Cornet Way jughandle. The Black River and Western Railroad runs through the property.
Expert testimony and public comment will continue Dec. 15 for Garden Solar and Jan. 5 for EffiSolar, but the hearings may be switched due to an attendance conflict among board members.
2011年4月17日星期日
Facebook Turns to A Little Solar For Its Data Center
Turns out social network giant Facebook has been eying clean power after all for its new data center in Oregon. Well, a very small amount of solar compared to the sizable power needs of its data center. According to Data Center Knowledge, Facebook has built a 100 kW solar panel array, which will produce 204,000 kilowatt hours of solar power per year, next to its data center. The solar system will provide power for some of the facility’s office rooms, but not power for the rooms that house the servers themselves.
What you need to know is that a 100 kW system, generating 204,000 kWh per year, is a fraction of the amount of power that a 300,000 square foot data center facility would commonly use. For comparison’s sake (these aren’t apples to apples, but just to give you an indicator) according to a 2009 MIT study, 16,000 servers used by eBay are thought to use 60,000 MWh per year. Forty thousand servers used by Akamai are thought to use 170,000 MWh per year. For those that forget physics class, 1 megawatt (MW) is 1,000 kilowatts (kW).
But small as it is, Facebook’s move suggests a couple things to me. First off, Facebook is ready to take baby steps into clean power and explore the types of deals and contracts needed to add in renewable energy outside of a utility. Facebook built its data center in Oregon in the footprint of utility Pacific Power that largely derives its electricity from coal, which is why Facebook is now the focus of Greenpeace’s media campaign, “Facebook Unfriend Coal.” That campaign looks like it generated a Guinness World Record for how many comments a single Facebook post has received in a 24-hour period.
Facebook could add in much more solar capacity to this facility or others, and now has learned a little something about sourcing these clean power deals. For any future data center projects, Facebook could also use this knowledge to work with clean power developers in advance of construction on much larger projects, as the anchor tenant, in the way that Google or Sprint has done.
Beyond education, part of what Greenpeace was asking for in its campaign, is leadership and some sort of commitment to move toward clean energy. In a blog post on Friday Greenpeace said: “Through some combination of direct on-site installation and investment in clean energy development (a la Google), Facebook should set a target to use more renewable energy to power its data center, and use its bulk purchasing power to work with Pacific Power on getting more renewable energy onto the grid.” Well, one (albeit small) part of that challenge has been met.
I reached out to Greenpeace and will update this post, with their thoughts. My guess is this move will be no where close enough to what Greenpeace wants. Another lesson: these types of media campaigns can be particularly effective and seems to have worked in some small way with Facebook.
Greenpeace plans to launch a report at our Green:Net event this Thursday called “How Dirty Is Your Data?” which it explains as examining the “energy choices of Facebook and its IT peers.” At Green:Net Google and Yahoo will discuss their green data center plans. Register for our awesome event here.
The solar panels for Facebook’s solar project were reportedly produced by Oregon’s own SolarWorld, the project was developed by Sunlight Solar Energy, and the trackers for the panels (which move the panels throughout the day to follow the movement of the sun) were made local manufacturer PV Trackers. Data Center Knowledge’s Rich Miller took this fine photo of the array.
What you need to know is that a 100 kW system, generating 204,000 kWh per year, is a fraction of the amount of power that a 300,000 square foot data center facility would commonly use. For comparison’s sake (these aren’t apples to apples, but just to give you an indicator) according to a 2009 MIT study, 16,000 servers used by eBay are thought to use 60,000 MWh per year. Forty thousand servers used by Akamai are thought to use 170,000 MWh per year. For those that forget physics class, 1 megawatt (MW) is 1,000 kilowatts (kW).
But small as it is, Facebook’s move suggests a couple things to me. First off, Facebook is ready to take baby steps into clean power and explore the types of deals and contracts needed to add in renewable energy outside of a utility. Facebook built its data center in Oregon in the footprint of utility Pacific Power that largely derives its electricity from coal, which is why Facebook is now the focus of Greenpeace’s media campaign, “Facebook Unfriend Coal.” That campaign looks like it generated a Guinness World Record for how many comments a single Facebook post has received in a 24-hour period.
Facebook could add in much more solar capacity to this facility or others, and now has learned a little something about sourcing these clean power deals. For any future data center projects, Facebook could also use this knowledge to work with clean power developers in advance of construction on much larger projects, as the anchor tenant, in the way that Google or Sprint has done.
Beyond education, part of what Greenpeace was asking for in its campaign, is leadership and some sort of commitment to move toward clean energy. In a blog post on Friday Greenpeace said: “Through some combination of direct on-site installation and investment in clean energy development (a la Google), Facebook should set a target to use more renewable energy to power its data center, and use its bulk purchasing power to work with Pacific Power on getting more renewable energy onto the grid.” Well, one (albeit small) part of that challenge has been met.
I reached out to Greenpeace and will update this post, with their thoughts. My guess is this move will be no where close enough to what Greenpeace wants. Another lesson: these types of media campaigns can be particularly effective and seems to have worked in some small way with Facebook.
Greenpeace plans to launch a report at our Green:Net event this Thursday called “How Dirty Is Your Data?” which it explains as examining the “energy choices of Facebook and its IT peers.” At Green:Net Google and Yahoo will discuss their green data center plans. Register for our awesome event here.
The solar panels for Facebook’s solar project were reportedly produced by Oregon’s own SolarWorld, the project was developed by Sunlight Solar Energy, and the trackers for the panels (which move the panels throughout the day to follow the movement of the sun) were made local manufacturer PV Trackers. Data Center Knowledge’s Rich Miller took this fine photo of the array.
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