Most Americans think clean energy is futuristic — a good idea some day, but not practical now. But a new report from the Institute for Local Self Reliance suggests that within 10 years, 100 million Americans in the nation's largest cities could get cheaper electricity from rooftop solar — without subsidies — than that provided by their utility.
For example, one-quarter of San Diego residents could power their homes with cost-effective solar by next year. Even in Boston, solar could cost-effectively power one-third of homes by 2020.
The current electricity system is ill-equipped for this surge in local rooftop solar — or even for the 21st century. It's a relic of the last century, when utilities located dirty coal-powered plants far from population centers, connecting them via high-voltage transmission lines to customers hundreds or thousands of miles away.
An electricity system powered by local solar is fundamentally different. Wherever the sun shines, solar panels are right at the customer's location, on a rural farm or an urban rooftop. And because solar power is modular, it lends itself to construction at a local scale.
Solar also lends itself to local ownership instead of utility conglomerates. The National Renewable Energy Laboratory reports that locally owned renewable energy projects — like rooftop solar — can offer twice the jobs and more than three times the local economic impact of absentee-owned projects, because revenue from local projects stays in the local economy. Having an economic stake in energy ownership also gives citizens a sense of political ownership. Researchers in Germany found a 45 percentage-point increase in support for more local wind power when wind turbines were locally owned instead of absentee-owned.
The rooftop revolution doesn't need more subsidies, but it does need new rules.
Subsidies for solar must change before exponential growth creates exponential resistance to rising costs. This requires us to move away from fixed, one-size-fits-all incentives like the federal solar tax credit toward more flexible and transparent incentives that can phase out as solar becomes competitive in different regions.
The solar tax credit should also be replaced because it is inefficient. Indeed, as much as half of taxpayers' money goes not to solar power plants, but to the middle men who funnel it to large corporations and wealthy households.
The tax credit's inefficiency also undermines solar's greatest asset: local ownership of energy generation. Local ownership of solar could be best achieved through community institutions — cooperatives, schools or cities — but federal tax incentives are for taxable entities, not these organizations. Instead, community institutions must rely on complex partnerships with large corporations to use tax credits, with as much as half the credit used to reduce the tax liability of the private partner instead of the cost of local solar.
Policy makers could replace the inequities and inefficiencies of the tax credit with a feed-in tariff: an energy policy that allows anyone to get a long-term contract for generating electricity from solar, at a price sufficient to earn a modest return on investment (without using the tax code). Used by leading solar nations like Germany, the feed-in tariff can adjust to solar market conditions, as well as offering different contract prices in less sunny regions or places with lower grid electricity prices.
The new rules for the electricity system are needed now, because otherwise billions of dollars will be spent on the last century's power plants and power lines just as a local solar revolution supplants them.
2012年3月21日星期三
Solar panels help power revamped King's Cross station
An ambitious 1.3m project to fit a 240kW solar glazing system to the roof of King's Cross station is nearing completion, BusinessGreen has learned.
While the station's new roof captured imaginations when it opened last week, the process of installing solar cells along two new barrel-vaulted glass roofs soaring high above the platforms and concourses is in many ways just as impressive.
The solar PV cells are integrated into 1,392 glass laminate units that form part of the 2,300 square metre glass roofing structure.
Meanwhile, progress installing the system has had to be synchronised with a huge rolling scaffold that slowly moves along the concourse as commuters pass by.
A spokesman for Sundog Energy, which is providing the solar system, told BusinessGreen the installation was further slowed by stringent safety regulations designed to address the risks associated with working over a live line.
The safety rules are so tight that items such as pens have to go up in a dedicated lift connected to the installation area in order to prevent them falling from a height above the station. "If you forget something, it's an hour to go back and get it," the spokesman said.
However, despite the installation challenges, the system is due to be completed "by the summer", when it should start to produce around 175,000 kWh of electricity per year, saving over 100 tonnes of CO2 annually.
The system forms part of a major overhaul of King's Cross station, including the restoration of the original 1851 facade of the building, the renovation of the ticket hall and the main train shed roof, and the creation of a new public square in front of the station.
However, King's Cross is still lagging behind Blackfriars when it comes to solar power. Blackfriars, which reopened earlier this year after extensive modernisation, boasts a 4,400-panel array running along the roof of a railway bridge spanning the Thames. The Blackfriars array is expected to generate around 900,000kWh of electricity a year, about half of the station's demand, as well as reduce annual CO2 emissions by over 500 tonnes a year.
Both projects are part of Network Rail's wide-ranging green building programme, which aims to support the company's goal of reducing carbon emissions 25 per cent per passenger kilometre by the end of the decade.
While the station's new roof captured imaginations when it opened last week, the process of installing solar cells along two new barrel-vaulted glass roofs soaring high above the platforms and concourses is in many ways just as impressive.
The solar PV cells are integrated into 1,392 glass laminate units that form part of the 2,300 square metre glass roofing structure.
Meanwhile, progress installing the system has had to be synchronised with a huge rolling scaffold that slowly moves along the concourse as commuters pass by.
A spokesman for Sundog Energy, which is providing the solar system, told BusinessGreen the installation was further slowed by stringent safety regulations designed to address the risks associated with working over a live line.
The safety rules are so tight that items such as pens have to go up in a dedicated lift connected to the installation area in order to prevent them falling from a height above the station. "If you forget something, it's an hour to go back and get it," the spokesman said.
However, despite the installation challenges, the system is due to be completed "by the summer", when it should start to produce around 175,000 kWh of electricity per year, saving over 100 tonnes of CO2 annually.
The system forms part of a major overhaul of King's Cross station, including the restoration of the original 1851 facade of the building, the renovation of the ticket hall and the main train shed roof, and the creation of a new public square in front of the station.
However, King's Cross is still lagging behind Blackfriars when it comes to solar power. Blackfriars, which reopened earlier this year after extensive modernisation, boasts a 4,400-panel array running along the roof of a railway bridge spanning the Thames. The Blackfriars array is expected to generate around 900,000kWh of electricity a year, about half of the station's demand, as well as reduce annual CO2 emissions by over 500 tonnes a year.
Both projects are part of Network Rail's wide-ranging green building programme, which aims to support the company's goal of reducing carbon emissions 25 per cent per passenger kilometre by the end of the decade.
2011年8月7日星期日
Solar wind alternative power functioning in historic Bishop Hill
Green Winds, a local company offering SWAP (solar wind alternative power) has a functioning solar-power system in place at a business in this historic Henry County community. Gary Lay of Galesburg, owner of Green Winds, has plans to also install a wind turbine at The Summer Cottage, the business owned by his mother, Arlene Rigg.
The Summer Cottage sells hand-blown glass items for indoor and outdoor use. Rigg also shows off the SWAP system and lets customers look at brochures telling about the alternative energy project.
Rigg, who has a fused spine, does not divulge her age, even to her children, but the senior citizen may have more energy than even her son’s SWAP system produces. A couple of years ago, she lost a freezer full of handpicked fruit when the power went out.
“I didn’t know it,” she said of the power outage.
Lay has the solar portion of the system up and running. There is a battery back-up and a wind turbine is in the works.
He opened a door similar to those housing circuit breakers and showed the brains of the computer system that keeps the solar power running correctly.
“This is the electricity for the system,” he said. “It actually has a computer chip in it that controls the system.”
The system is fully automated, with the exception of a dimmer switch that Rigg can use to turn on and off a waterfall in back, as well as regulate the water flow.
“This thing never allows it to go over 14 volts for charging,” Lay said. “It never allows it to go below 11.5 volts.”
The digital read-out was 13.7 as Lay was displaying the brains of the system.
The battery could be damaged if it is charged too much, the energy consultant explained. Eventually the plan is to use gel cells, but Lay currently uses a lead acid truck battery. The battery is in a compartment outside the store. He said the battery gives off hydrogen as it charges, which is why it can’t be inside. He plans to one day use solar and wind power for his mother’s house and store, through the use of 16 gel cells.
There is a wooden structure that holds two solar cells, one a commercial product, one that Lay made from scratch using glass from Knox Glass in Galesburg. The individual cells come from Germany. The 13 acres Rigg’s house and store sit on are a peaceful combination of prairie grasses, gardens, large shade trees, pine trees just beginning to grow, as well as a large open area. The waterfall is surrounded by a large stone structure made out of fossilized stones.
Lay had a brother who passed away at a young age due to MS.
“So all of this is a monument to him,” he said. “It’s kind of a sanctuary for people and animals.”
The soothing sound of the waterfall amidst all the nature makes for a peaceful place.
Plans are to extend one leg of the small pond and build a stream. Powering the waterfall with alternative energy was Rigg’s idea. Lay said his mother called one day and talked about building the waterfall.
“She said ‘why don’t you power the waterfall with your system?’ So it doesn’t cost as much for electricity,” he said. “It’s just the start of the system. I’m going to increase the solar and put up the wind system.”
Lay needs to find a spot for the 30-foot-tall wind turbine. He said the turbine has to stand at least that tall to be above the tree line.
“Where would that be, Mom?” he asked.
“On the hill, out on the prairie,” she answered without hesitating.
The Summer Cottage sells hand-blown glass items for indoor and outdoor use. Rigg also shows off the SWAP system and lets customers look at brochures telling about the alternative energy project.
Rigg, who has a fused spine, does not divulge her age, even to her children, but the senior citizen may have more energy than even her son’s SWAP system produces. A couple of years ago, she lost a freezer full of handpicked fruit when the power went out.
“I didn’t know it,” she said of the power outage.
Lay has the solar portion of the system up and running. There is a battery back-up and a wind turbine is in the works.
He opened a door similar to those housing circuit breakers and showed the brains of the computer system that keeps the solar power running correctly.
“This is the electricity for the system,” he said. “It actually has a computer chip in it that controls the system.”
The system is fully automated, with the exception of a dimmer switch that Rigg can use to turn on and off a waterfall in back, as well as regulate the water flow.
“This thing never allows it to go over 14 volts for charging,” Lay said. “It never allows it to go below 11.5 volts.”
The digital read-out was 13.7 as Lay was displaying the brains of the system.
The battery could be damaged if it is charged too much, the energy consultant explained. Eventually the plan is to use gel cells, but Lay currently uses a lead acid truck battery. The battery is in a compartment outside the store. He said the battery gives off hydrogen as it charges, which is why it can’t be inside. He plans to one day use solar and wind power for his mother’s house and store, through the use of 16 gel cells.
There is a wooden structure that holds two solar cells, one a commercial product, one that Lay made from scratch using glass from Knox Glass in Galesburg. The individual cells come from Germany. The 13 acres Rigg’s house and store sit on are a peaceful combination of prairie grasses, gardens, large shade trees, pine trees just beginning to grow, as well as a large open area. The waterfall is surrounded by a large stone structure made out of fossilized stones.
Lay had a brother who passed away at a young age due to MS.
“So all of this is a monument to him,” he said. “It’s kind of a sanctuary for people and animals.”
The soothing sound of the waterfall amidst all the nature makes for a peaceful place.
Plans are to extend one leg of the small pond and build a stream. Powering the waterfall with alternative energy was Rigg’s idea. Lay said his mother called one day and talked about building the waterfall.
“She said ‘why don’t you power the waterfall with your system?’ So it doesn’t cost as much for electricity,” he said. “It’s just the start of the system. I’m going to increase the solar and put up the wind system.”
Lay needs to find a spot for the 30-foot-tall wind turbine. He said the turbine has to stand at least that tall to be above the tree line.
“Where would that be, Mom?” he asked.
“On the hill, out on the prairie,” she answered without hesitating.
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