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7日星期二
Highest Solar Panel Efficiency Achieved
The highest efficiency for a solar panel has been achieved by Alta Devices, the California-based solar company proudly announced on Monday.
The efficiency rating of 23.5 percent, meaning that the panels are able to convert 23.5 percent of energy captured from the sun into electrical output, was verified by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL).
“This is the highest solar panel efficiency yet achieved and demonstrates Alta’s progress toward its objective of developing solar photovoltaic (PV) solutions that are competitive, without subsidies, with fossil fuels,” the company wrote in a press release.
Toward that end, Alta Device’s highest-efficiency panel was created based on an innovative, even counter-intuitive idea about how to maximize energy conversion: The panels themselves emit fluorescent light, as TPM reported in November 2011, when the research was in its earlier stages.
The idea makes sense when one considers that conventional polysilicon solar panels and cells lose energy as heat, reducing their efficiency. But when Alta’s panels lose any energy, it’s in the form of external fluorescence, which is less detrimental to the conversion process.
Back in November 2011, Alta’s panels had managed to hit an astounding 28.4-percent efficiency, approaching the maximum 33.5 percent Shockley-Queisser efficiency limit, though that was just for an individual solar cell. The full panel itself contains several cells, decreasing its efficiency slightly.
The panels themselves are made of gallium arsenide (GaAs), a byproduct of aluminum smelting combined with arsenic, a combination that is ideal for solar cell production due to the fact that it can withstand high temperatures and yet be cut extremely flexible and extremely thin, one micron thick in the case of Alta’s panels. That’s about 1/40th the thickness of a human hair, according to the company, allowing it to be used for a variety of applications, where conventional polysilicon panels can’t go.
Alta Devices itself is the result of solar technology research breakthroughs achieved at the University of California Berkeley. The company was founded in 2007 and has received venture capital funding. It plans to produce its panels for commercial use later this year.
The efficiency rating of 23.5 percent, meaning that the panels are able to convert 23.5 percent of energy captured from the sun into electrical output, was verified by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL).
“This is the highest solar panel efficiency yet achieved and demonstrates Alta’s progress toward its objective of developing solar photovoltaic (PV) solutions that are competitive, without subsidies, with fossil fuels,” the company wrote in a press release.
Toward that end, Alta Device’s highest-efficiency panel was created based on an innovative, even counter-intuitive idea about how to maximize energy conversion: The panels themselves emit fluorescent light, as TPM reported in November 2011, when the research was in its earlier stages.
The idea makes sense when one considers that conventional polysilicon solar panels and cells lose energy as heat, reducing their efficiency. But when Alta’s panels lose any energy, it’s in the form of external fluorescence, which is less detrimental to the conversion process.
Back in November 2011, Alta’s panels had managed to hit an astounding 28.4-percent efficiency, approaching the maximum 33.5 percent Shockley-Queisser efficiency limit, though that was just for an individual solar cell. The full panel itself contains several cells, decreasing its efficiency slightly.
The panels themselves are made of gallium arsenide (GaAs), a byproduct of aluminum smelting combined with arsenic, a combination that is ideal for solar cell production due to the fact that it can withstand high temperatures and yet be cut extremely flexible and extremely thin, one micron thick in the case of Alta’s panels. That’s about 1/40th the thickness of a human hair, according to the company, allowing it to be used for a variety of applications, where conventional polysilicon panels can’t go.
Alta Devices itself is the result of solar technology research breakthroughs achieved at the University of California Berkeley. The company was founded in 2007 and has received venture capital funding. It plans to produce its panels for commercial use later this year.
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16日星期一
Solar power: making electricity at home
It may appear counter-intuitive, but getting millions of solar panels onto rooftops saves more money than it costs. Feed-in tariffs enacted by state governments have enabled ordinary Australians using their savings to build a solar power station at home benefiting the community.
When those solar households who had saved to get their panels installed under the solar feed-in tariff programs export their solar production to the grid, which occurs mostly during higher demand daytime periods, they are given a slightly higher than average retail rate for the electricity they are selling. The prices they have been paid are relatively meagre when compared with the ridiculously high rates paid to big coal or gas power plants.
At the same time that little solar households who have invested their money in a rooftop power station are being paid between 44 and 60 per kilowatt hour, the old power companies with their dirty belching coal and gas plants are receiving as much as $12.50.
In other words, the coal and gas guys are being paid as much as $11.90 more than a home solar generator for just one unit of electricity.
A home solar system installed in NSW sized at 10 kilowatts, which was the limit for feed-in-tariff eligibility under the now-defunct state scheme, would export roughly 9kWh and reduce line losses by more than 10 per cent during a very hot sunny day when everyone was running their airconditioners. That meant a coal or gas plant would not need to generate 10kWh for every 9kWh a solar household produces at home during that period. During these high-price events, which account for more than 30 per cent of the cost of electricity, we can buy our power from a gas or coal plant at the inflated price of $125 or we can buy it from a home solar generator for just $5.40.
To buy the full 10 kilowatt equivalent output from the home solar generator saves everyone $120 each hour in power costs alone.
This is not the full story. At other times when your home solar system is generating, the coal plant may receive 6, 8, $1, $3 or $5 but you're still getting a steady 44 to 60. The reason customers were getting an average price under the state programs is because it's too difficult for ordinary home owners to set up a trading desk and participate in the national electricity market. So the 44 to 60 range is much more reasonable when you take into account the wild fluctuations that occur daily as power generators use their market power to game the electricity market, which ultimately is costing consumers.
All that said, the most important contribution from rooftop solar is through the ''merit order effect'', explained in a recent paper by the University of Melbourne's energy research institute, which showed electricity production from rooftop solar is brilliantly timed for when we're inside and running our airconditioners and can substantially reduce the wealth transfer from ordinary electricity consumers to big power generators. Eighty-five per cent of the time, during peak demand periods when the highest prices occur in the electricity market, rooftop solar is there to dampen, reduce and keep a lid on extreme prices.
At just 3000 megawatts of solar, which is what Germany installed in December during the Christmas holiday break, we would be paying at least a billion dollars less for our electricity, amounting to a more significant saving on bills than if we choose not to encourage people to put more solar on their roofs.
Today, the government, through IPART , is performing a review into feed-in-tariffs to find a ''fair and reasonable'' price to pay enterprising householders for the solar electricity they produce. In the government's terms of reference they were asked to recommend a price with ''no resulting increase in electricity prices in NSW'' and to make the scheme so that ''the government would not pay''. They also asked for it to support a competitive electricity market. The University of Melbourne paper showed that a net feed-in-tariff price of 35 to 40 a kilowatt hour, handled by the distribution companies, would lower electricity prices by more than it would cost to fund it and that the government's existing low-income household rebate could be increased slightly to accommodate any shifting in network costs from solar to non-solar households.
The reward from the merit order effect should not be handed to dirty fossil fuel generators as they are able to withdraw their service, choosing whether to supply and game the electricity market, sending electricity prices spiralling, while on the whole solar households will reliably generate, day in, day out.
When those solar households who had saved to get their panels installed under the solar feed-in tariff programs export their solar production to the grid, which occurs mostly during higher demand daytime periods, they are given a slightly higher than average retail rate for the electricity they are selling. The prices they have been paid are relatively meagre when compared with the ridiculously high rates paid to big coal or gas power plants.
At the same time that little solar households who have invested their money in a rooftop power station are being paid between 44 and 60 per kilowatt hour, the old power companies with their dirty belching coal and gas plants are receiving as much as $12.50.
In other words, the coal and gas guys are being paid as much as $11.90 more than a home solar generator for just one unit of electricity.
A home solar system installed in NSW sized at 10 kilowatts, which was the limit for feed-in-tariff eligibility under the now-defunct state scheme, would export roughly 9kWh and reduce line losses by more than 10 per cent during a very hot sunny day when everyone was running their airconditioners. That meant a coal or gas plant would not need to generate 10kWh for every 9kWh a solar household produces at home during that period. During these high-price events, which account for more than 30 per cent of the cost of electricity, we can buy our power from a gas or coal plant at the inflated price of $125 or we can buy it from a home solar generator for just $5.40.
To buy the full 10 kilowatt equivalent output from the home solar generator saves everyone $120 each hour in power costs alone.
This is not the full story. At other times when your home solar system is generating, the coal plant may receive 6, 8, $1, $3 or $5 but you're still getting a steady 44 to 60. The reason customers were getting an average price under the state programs is because it's too difficult for ordinary home owners to set up a trading desk and participate in the national electricity market. So the 44 to 60 range is much more reasonable when you take into account the wild fluctuations that occur daily as power generators use their market power to game the electricity market, which ultimately is costing consumers.
All that said, the most important contribution from rooftop solar is through the ''merit order effect'', explained in a recent paper by the University of Melbourne's energy research institute, which showed electricity production from rooftop solar is brilliantly timed for when we're inside and running our airconditioners and can substantially reduce the wealth transfer from ordinary electricity consumers to big power generators. Eighty-five per cent of the time, during peak demand periods when the highest prices occur in the electricity market, rooftop solar is there to dampen, reduce and keep a lid on extreme prices.
At just 3000 megawatts of solar, which is what Germany installed in December during the Christmas holiday break, we would be paying at least a billion dollars less for our electricity, amounting to a more significant saving on bills than if we choose not to encourage people to put more solar on their roofs.
Today, the government, through IPART , is performing a review into feed-in-tariffs to find a ''fair and reasonable'' price to pay enterprising householders for the solar electricity they produce. In the government's terms of reference they were asked to recommend a price with ''no resulting increase in electricity prices in NSW'' and to make the scheme so that ''the government would not pay''. They also asked for it to support a competitive electricity market. The University of Melbourne paper showed that a net feed-in-tariff price of 35 to 40 a kilowatt hour, handled by the distribution companies, would lower electricity prices by more than it would cost to fund it and that the government's existing low-income household rebate could be increased slightly to accommodate any shifting in network costs from solar to non-solar households.
The reward from the merit order effect should not be handed to dirty fossil fuel generators as they are able to withdraw their service, choosing whether to supply and game the electricity market, sending electricity prices spiralling, while on the whole solar households will reliably generate, day in, day out.
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11月14日星期一
Construction at Lake County solar energy farm begins
A local company is building the largest solar panel farm in the state in Lake County.
Crews started putting the first solar panels in place after a groundbreaking ceremony Monday to celebrate the new Sorrento Solar Farm.
BlueChip Energy, a company based out of Seminole County, is installing solar panels that will eventually cover more than 200 acres of an open field off County Road 437.
"There is no other energy on the planet which can compete with solar in environmental friendliness," said BlueChip Energy CEO Demitri Nikitin.
Despite the benefits of going green, some people living nearby were against the solar farm at first.
Carol White and her husband live right next to the property.
They feared losing the rural landscape they enjoy gazing out on with their granddaughter.
"That's what upset us the most in the beginning," White said. "Why here in the middle of a little community, a small town?"
Nikitin said the property was a perfect fit because both Progress Energy and SECO have utility substations at the site that allow the power to go directly into the grid and to the utility companies' customers.
BlueChip Energy is also looking at installing solar panels on another 300 acres that the city of Eustis owns next to the current solar panel farm site.
The solar energy created from the entire project would eventually be enough to power over 20,000 homes.
Nikitin said solar energy allows them to harness the power of the sun without hurting the environment or permanently altering the land.
"With the same ease as we can put the solar farm in the ground, we can remove it," Nikitin said.
White said she still has some concerns, but has come to grips with the development because she thinks going green will be worth it in the long run.
"We have to do what's best for the future for little ones like this," White said looking at her granddaughter.
BlueChip Energy estimates the entire project could create as many as 500 jobs during construction over the next couple years.
That figure includes people the company hires to manufacture the solar panels at its headquarters in Lake Mary.
Crews started putting the first solar panels in place after a groundbreaking ceremony Monday to celebrate the new Sorrento Solar Farm.
BlueChip Energy, a company based out of Seminole County, is installing solar panels that will eventually cover more than 200 acres of an open field off County Road 437.
"There is no other energy on the planet which can compete with solar in environmental friendliness," said BlueChip Energy CEO Demitri Nikitin.
Despite the benefits of going green, some people living nearby were against the solar farm at first.
Carol White and her husband live right next to the property.
They feared losing the rural landscape they enjoy gazing out on with their granddaughter.
"That's what upset us the most in the beginning," White said. "Why here in the middle of a little community, a small town?"
Nikitin said the property was a perfect fit because both Progress Energy and SECO have utility substations at the site that allow the power to go directly into the grid and to the utility companies' customers.
BlueChip Energy is also looking at installing solar panels on another 300 acres that the city of Eustis owns next to the current solar panel farm site.
The solar energy created from the entire project would eventually be enough to power over 20,000 homes.
Nikitin said solar energy allows them to harness the power of the sun without hurting the environment or permanently altering the land.
"With the same ease as we can put the solar farm in the ground, we can remove it," Nikitin said.
White said she still has some concerns, but has come to grips with the development because she thinks going green will be worth it in the long run.
"We have to do what's best for the future for little ones like this," White said looking at her granddaughter.
BlueChip Energy estimates the entire project could create as many as 500 jobs during construction over the next couple years.
That figure includes people the company hires to manufacture the solar panels at its headquarters in Lake Mary.
2011年11月8日星期二
It's time for solar power
For decades the story of technology has been dominated, in the popular mind and to a large extent in reality, by computing and the things you can do with it. Moore's Law - in which the price of computing power falls roughly 50 percent every 18 months - has powered an ever-expanding range of applications, from faxes to Facebook.
Our mastery of the material world, on the other hand, has advanced much more slowly. The sources of energy, the way we move stuff around, are much the same as they were a generation ago.
But that may be about to change. We are, or at least we should be, on the cusp of an energy transformation, driven by the rapidly falling cost of solar power. That's right, solar power.
If that surprises you, if you still think of solar power as some kind of hippie fantasy, blame our fossilized political system, in which fossil fuel producers have both powerful political allies and a powerful propaganda machine that denigrates alternatives.
Speaking of propaganda: Before I get to solar, let's talk briefly about hydraulic fracturing, aka fracking.
Fracking - injecting high-pressure fluid into rocks deep underground, inducing the release of fossil fuels - is an impressive technology. But it's also a technology that imposes large costs on the public. We know that it produces toxic (and radioactive) wastewater that contaminates drinking water; there is reason to suspect, despite industry denials, that it also contaminates groundwater; and the heavy trucking required for fracking inflicts major damage on roads.
Economics 101 tells us that an industry imposing large costs on third parties should be required to "internalize" those costs - that is, to pay for the damage it inflicts, treating that damage as a cost of production. Fracking might still be worth doing given those costs. But no industry should be held harmless from its impacts on the environment and the nation's infrastructure.
So it's worth pointing out that special treatment for fracking makes a mockery of free-market principles. Pro-fracking politicians claim to be against subsidies, yet letting an industry impose costs without paying compensation is in effect a huge subsidy. They say they oppose having the government "pick winners," yet they demand special treatment for this industry precisely because they claim it will be a winner.
And now for something completely different: The success story you haven't heard about.
These days, mention solar power and you'll probably hear cries of "Solyndra!" Republicans have tried to make the failed solar panel company both a symbol of government waste - although claims of a major scandal are nonsense - and a stick with which to beat renewable energy.
But Solyndra's failure was actually caused by technological success: The price of solar panels is dropping fast, and Solyndra couldn't keep up with the competition. In fact, progress in solar panels has been so dramatic and sustained that, as a blog post at Scientific American put it, "there's now frequent talk of a 'Moore's law' in solar energy," with prices adjusted for inflation falling around 7 percent a year.
This has already led to rapid growth in solar installations, but even more change may be just around the corner. If the downward trend continues - and if anything it seems to be accelerating - we're just a few years from the point at which electricity from solar panels becomes cheaper than electricity generated by burning coal.
Our mastery of the material world, on the other hand, has advanced much more slowly. The sources of energy, the way we move stuff around, are much the same as they were a generation ago.
But that may be about to change. We are, or at least we should be, on the cusp of an energy transformation, driven by the rapidly falling cost of solar power. That's right, solar power.
If that surprises you, if you still think of solar power as some kind of hippie fantasy, blame our fossilized political system, in which fossil fuel producers have both powerful political allies and a powerful propaganda machine that denigrates alternatives.
Speaking of propaganda: Before I get to solar, let's talk briefly about hydraulic fracturing, aka fracking.
Fracking - injecting high-pressure fluid into rocks deep underground, inducing the release of fossil fuels - is an impressive technology. But it's also a technology that imposes large costs on the public. We know that it produces toxic (and radioactive) wastewater that contaminates drinking water; there is reason to suspect, despite industry denials, that it also contaminates groundwater; and the heavy trucking required for fracking inflicts major damage on roads.
Economics 101 tells us that an industry imposing large costs on third parties should be required to "internalize" those costs - that is, to pay for the damage it inflicts, treating that damage as a cost of production. Fracking might still be worth doing given those costs. But no industry should be held harmless from its impacts on the environment and the nation's infrastructure.
So it's worth pointing out that special treatment for fracking makes a mockery of free-market principles. Pro-fracking politicians claim to be against subsidies, yet letting an industry impose costs without paying compensation is in effect a huge subsidy. They say they oppose having the government "pick winners," yet they demand special treatment for this industry precisely because they claim it will be a winner.
And now for something completely different: The success story you haven't heard about.
These days, mention solar power and you'll probably hear cries of "Solyndra!" Republicans have tried to make the failed solar panel company both a symbol of government waste - although claims of a major scandal are nonsense - and a stick with which to beat renewable energy.
But Solyndra's failure was actually caused by technological success: The price of solar panels is dropping fast, and Solyndra couldn't keep up with the competition. In fact, progress in solar panels has been so dramatic and sustained that, as a blog post at Scientific American put it, "there's now frequent talk of a 'Moore's law' in solar energy," with prices adjusted for inflation falling around 7 percent a year.
This has already led to rapid growth in solar installations, but even more change may be just around the corner. If the downward trend continues - and if anything it seems to be accelerating - we're just a few years from the point at which electricity from solar panels becomes cheaper than electricity generated by burning coal.
2011年9月20日星期二
China dominates solar power
China's solar power firms are emerging as the industry's dominant force after the collapse of foreign competitors, but the new market leaders are already struggling with low prices and overcapacity.
As the workshop of the world, China has used cheap labour and state support to build a solar industry from scratch in just over a decade as part of a broader strategy to move up the manufacturing value chain from cheap toys and clothes.
China is the world's second biggest oil consumer, and polluting fossil fuels account for 90% of its total energy use, but the country is making large strides forward in clean energy.
Analysts say Chinese firms now have 70% of the growing global market in solar panels, thanks to aggressive pricing and the collapse of three US competitors in the last two months.
"The position of Chinese players has certainly been enhanced this year," said Tang Xiaodong, a Shanghai-based analyst at independent investment advisory firm CEBM.
"Lower costs are the direction of the industry and the advantages of Chinese firms on this front have been manifested more clearly."
China's solar panel prices have fallen to around $1.2 per watt of generation, down from about $1.7 in 2010 and much lower than the global average of about $2.0 last year.
But the downward price spiral has hurt revenues across the industry, and Chinese companies are themselves feeling the pain.
"Everyone is facing falling prices, increasing inventories and dire straits," said an official at Yingli Green Energy, one of China's biggest solar companies, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Critics argue that Chinese companies have unfair advantages in the form of access to cheap capital from China's state-run banks.
However, they are not alone in receiving government assistance - the latest US solar firm to file for bankruptcy was Solyndra, which had a $535m loan guarantee from US President Barack Obama's administration.
It joined Evergreen Solar, once listed on the Nasdaq exchange, and high-profile Intel spin-off SpectraWatt.
But even before the collapse of those three US companies, China was already home to the world's largest producer of solar panels, Suntech.
"There is a periodic murmur from industry, trade groups and elements in the US government that unfair subsidies in other countries put the US at a distinct disadvantage in the solar industry," said US-based analysis firm GTM Research in a recent report.
China's Suntech, which is listed on the New York Stock Exchange, counters such criticism by saying consolidation of the emerging industry was natural.
"The recent high-profile bankruptcies of innovative solar enterprises are unfortunate," Suntech said in a statement.
"However, competition among aggressive and innovative companies is critical to driving efficiency, productivity, and industry growth."
Chinese companies are almost solely focused on exports, with as much as 95% of production sold overseas according to some estimates, and they have responded to falling prices for solar panels by ramping up shipments.
But analysts expect domestic demand for solar products to rise with the introduction of a new national "feed-in" tariff - a price the government guarantees to pay to producers of solar power feeding into the grid.
"The days of China's PV production being purely for export are coming to an end," GTM Research said, referring to solar power technology.
As the workshop of the world, China has used cheap labour and state support to build a solar industry from scratch in just over a decade as part of a broader strategy to move up the manufacturing value chain from cheap toys and clothes.
China is the world's second biggest oil consumer, and polluting fossil fuels account for 90% of its total energy use, but the country is making large strides forward in clean energy.
Analysts say Chinese firms now have 70% of the growing global market in solar panels, thanks to aggressive pricing and the collapse of three US competitors in the last two months.
"The position of Chinese players has certainly been enhanced this year," said Tang Xiaodong, a Shanghai-based analyst at independent investment advisory firm CEBM.
"Lower costs are the direction of the industry and the advantages of Chinese firms on this front have been manifested more clearly."
China's solar panel prices have fallen to around $1.2 per watt of generation, down from about $1.7 in 2010 and much lower than the global average of about $2.0 last year.
But the downward price spiral has hurt revenues across the industry, and Chinese companies are themselves feeling the pain.
"Everyone is facing falling prices, increasing inventories and dire straits," said an official at Yingli Green Energy, one of China's biggest solar companies, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Critics argue that Chinese companies have unfair advantages in the form of access to cheap capital from China's state-run banks.
However, they are not alone in receiving government assistance - the latest US solar firm to file for bankruptcy was Solyndra, which had a $535m loan guarantee from US President Barack Obama's administration.
It joined Evergreen Solar, once listed on the Nasdaq exchange, and high-profile Intel spin-off SpectraWatt.
But even before the collapse of those three US companies, China was already home to the world's largest producer of solar panels, Suntech.
"There is a periodic murmur from industry, trade groups and elements in the US government that unfair subsidies in other countries put the US at a distinct disadvantage in the solar industry," said US-based analysis firm GTM Research in a recent report.
China's Suntech, which is listed on the New York Stock Exchange, counters such criticism by saying consolidation of the emerging industry was natural.
"The recent high-profile bankruptcies of innovative solar enterprises are unfortunate," Suntech said in a statement.
"However, competition among aggressive and innovative companies is critical to driving efficiency, productivity, and industry growth."
Chinese companies are almost solely focused on exports, with as much as 95% of production sold overseas according to some estimates, and they have responded to falling prices for solar panels by ramping up shipments.
But analysts expect domestic demand for solar products to rise with the introduction of a new national "feed-in" tariff - a price the government guarantees to pay to producers of solar power feeding into the grid.
"The days of China's PV production being purely for export are coming to an end," GTM Research said, referring to solar power technology.
2011年9月15日星期四
Solar-power boost for 45 more Punggol blocks
MORE Housing Board blocks in Punggol are going green with solar power by the middle of next year.
Seven HDB blocks have already been fitted with rooftop solar panels to generate electricity, and 45 more blocks will be similarly fitted.
This test-bed project, announced by HDB yesterday, is in line with the Government's plan to make living in Singapore more environmentally friendly and sustainable.
The solar-panel systems used by these estates will - for the first time in Singapore and South-east Asia - be on a lease basis from their developer.
This means that HDB and the Pasir Ris-Punggol Town Council will lease the systems and not have to pay the high cost upfront of installing them, which is estimated to be $11 million for this project.
The town council will not have to worry about system maintenance, too. Home-grown solar manufacturer Sunseap Enterprises will take on those responsibilities.
The firm has been awarded the tender for the project for 20 years and the town council will pay Sunseap monthly power - generation fees.
The electricity generated will be used to power electrical services in common areas, such as lift operations, corridor and staircase lighting, and water pumps.
HDB said that Punggol residents do not have to worry that the higher cost of solar power - about 30 per cent more than prevailing electricity rates - will be passed on to them.
This is because the town council has signed an agreement with Sunseap to enjoy a discount on the costs of electricity generated by solar power, which makes them similar to prevailing electricity rates.
For this project, HDB will cover 30 per cent of the initial start-up costs, which amounts to about $3.28 million.
Mrs Cheong Koon Hean, chief executive of HDB, said the project will help Singapore reduce carbon emissions in the long term and contribute to the country's research on solar-power generation.
She added that HDB is looking into expanding the project to another 70 blocks in Punggol.
Seven HDB blocks have already been fitted with rooftop solar panels to generate electricity, and 45 more blocks will be similarly fitted.
This test-bed project, announced by HDB yesterday, is in line with the Government's plan to make living in Singapore more environmentally friendly and sustainable.
The solar-panel systems used by these estates will - for the first time in Singapore and South-east Asia - be on a lease basis from their developer.
This means that HDB and the Pasir Ris-Punggol Town Council will lease the systems and not have to pay the high cost upfront of installing them, which is estimated to be $11 million for this project.
The town council will not have to worry about system maintenance, too. Home-grown solar manufacturer Sunseap Enterprises will take on those responsibilities.
The firm has been awarded the tender for the project for 20 years and the town council will pay Sunseap monthly power - generation fees.
The electricity generated will be used to power electrical services in common areas, such as lift operations, corridor and staircase lighting, and water pumps.
HDB said that Punggol residents do not have to worry that the higher cost of solar power - about 30 per cent more than prevailing electricity rates - will be passed on to them.
This is because the town council has signed an agreement with Sunseap to enjoy a discount on the costs of electricity generated by solar power, which makes them similar to prevailing electricity rates.
For this project, HDB will cover 30 per cent of the initial start-up costs, which amounts to about $3.28 million.
Mrs Cheong Koon Hean, chief executive of HDB, said the project will help Singapore reduce carbon emissions in the long term and contribute to the country's research on solar-power generation.
She added that HDB is looking into expanding the project to another 70 blocks in Punggol.
2011年8月14日星期日
Manipulation & heating specialists for ultra high vaccum applications
These days, black panels can be seen on many building roofs, particularly in Southern Germany. Many of these solar collectors are used to heat water, but increasingly there are also photovoltaic systems that directly convert the light of the sun into electrical current. To date, however, only some 2% of electrical current in Germany comes from solar energy, because solar cells are costly and complicated, particularly in production. Researchers from the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft are developing innovative production methods to change this. Lasers in particular create whole new potentials for production. Dr. Malte Schulz-Ruhtenberg of the Fraunhofer Institute for Laser Technology ILT explains the main advantage: "Laser technology permits contact-free, precise and quick processing." As a result, better solar cells can be produced at lower cost.
One example is high-rate laser drilling, which creates tiny holes in solar cells very precisely and quickly. Why? A classic solar cell generates current through the photoelectric effect. It consists of several conducting and semiconducting layers. When light falls onto the cell, negative charge carriers are released from their bonds, and electrical current flows as a result. To date, the contacts for drawing away the electric current generated have been positioned at the front and rear of the cell. Moving all of the contacts to the rear, where they do not cast a shadow, increases the level of energy generated. The holes pave the way for this approach, which is known as "emitter wrap-through", or EWT for short.
Special polygon scanners can be utilized to provide for even higher speeds and higher throughput rates. With these laser scanners, rotating polygonal mirrors precisely deflect millions of laser pulses per second. This allows them to process large areas very quickly. "This is a promising technology that can be used for many laser processes," Dr. Schulz-Ruhtenberg points out.
Precise and gentle on the Material
Aside from speed, the possibility to control all properties of the laser light also plays a major role in solar technology; after all, the cells and wafers – the basic elements of a solar cell – are sensitive. Laser beams can be so finely dosed and controlled that they place nearly no strain on the cells. This is why the Fraunhofer-researchers use them for nearly everything: to drill, melt, cut or solder.
Ultra-short-pulse lasers are used, for instance, to insulate a solar cell‘s front and back sides from one another. These lasers are gentler than other methods, and that is important, since a large portion of the costs involved owes to damage and breakage during production.
Testing automation systems
Oftentimes, damage is caused by the different kinds of handling devices that manufacturers use in their production environments. They are designed to be as quick and accurate as possible but without damaging the sensitive parts. This reduces the costs involved. At the Fraunhofer Institute for Manufacturing Engineering and Automation IPA, researchers are working to improve the automated handling of wafers and solar cells. "In our test and demonstration center, we are trying to physically simulate handling and automation in photovoltaics and based on this optimizing it," explains Roland Wertz, the project manager responsible at IPA.
This facility provides an interface between industrial production and research service in the area of automation. All of the factors and parameters are recorded under highly-realistic conditions, including factors that influence the precision and speed of various gripper systems. They are assisted in this by the robot ABB IRB 360, also known as FlexPicker, which can also be seen at the Fraunhofer stand. To conduct experiments it is used as a manipulator which can be equipped with various gripping devices that are based on different functional principles. This enables the scientists to analyze and assess products made by various manufacturers and in a standardized way. After all, each specific application has its own requirements and calls for optimized handling.
Less Is More
Savings and improvements are not limited to the production process; they are also directed at the materials used. No more than absolutely necessary - that is the principle behind thin-film solar cells. These usually consist of an inexpensive substrate to which the electrically active material is applied in the form of an ultra-thin film. To be able to produce thin-layer solar cells that are of high quality and economically to make, the Fraunhofer Institute for Surface Engineering and Thin Films IST has developed various processes that improve each and every step of production.
For instance, the semi-conductor layers, the heart of the solar cell, are produced using the hot wire CVD process. "One benefit over conventional methods is the gentle form of coating production," explains Dr. Volker Sittinger of IST. In conventional, plasma-activated CVD, during the coating process the material is bombarded with high-energy particles. The hot wire CVD approach is different: there, the gases that create the film are not activated in plasma but on hot wires. The result is a gentle approach to creating films of high quality. Better use can also be made of the silane gas required in production. "With the hot wire CVD method, we convert up to 90% of the gas used to film material", Sittinger adds.
Recently developed for the contact layers on the front and rear of the cell is the C² coating technology (cylindrical magnetron co-sputtering). With this technology, the material composition can be varied during the coating process. And there are plans to thin things down even further. Coatings only a few nanometers thick are expected with a new type of 3-dimensional solar cell design. The only way to achieve this is with a precision-contour precipitation of the layers, but there is a method to accomplish this: ALD, which stands for atomic layer deposition, stems from the field of nanotechnology.There is thus no need for solar cells to remain unaffordable expensive. New technologies could propel solar energy a major step forward.
One example is high-rate laser drilling, which creates tiny holes in solar cells very precisely and quickly. Why? A classic solar cell generates current through the photoelectric effect. It consists of several conducting and semiconducting layers. When light falls onto the cell, negative charge carriers are released from their bonds, and electrical current flows as a result. To date, the contacts for drawing away the electric current generated have been positioned at the front and rear of the cell. Moving all of the contacts to the rear, where they do not cast a shadow, increases the level of energy generated. The holes pave the way for this approach, which is known as "emitter wrap-through", or EWT for short.
Special polygon scanners can be utilized to provide for even higher speeds and higher throughput rates. With these laser scanners, rotating polygonal mirrors precisely deflect millions of laser pulses per second. This allows them to process large areas very quickly. "This is a promising technology that can be used for many laser processes," Dr. Schulz-Ruhtenberg points out.
Precise and gentle on the Material
Aside from speed, the possibility to control all properties of the laser light also plays a major role in solar technology; after all, the cells and wafers – the basic elements of a solar cell – are sensitive. Laser beams can be so finely dosed and controlled that they place nearly no strain on the cells. This is why the Fraunhofer-researchers use them for nearly everything: to drill, melt, cut or solder.
Ultra-short-pulse lasers are used, for instance, to insulate a solar cell‘s front and back sides from one another. These lasers are gentler than other methods, and that is important, since a large portion of the costs involved owes to damage and breakage during production.
Testing automation systems
Oftentimes, damage is caused by the different kinds of handling devices that manufacturers use in their production environments. They are designed to be as quick and accurate as possible but without damaging the sensitive parts. This reduces the costs involved. At the Fraunhofer Institute for Manufacturing Engineering and Automation IPA, researchers are working to improve the automated handling of wafers and solar cells. "In our test and demonstration center, we are trying to physically simulate handling and automation in photovoltaics and based on this optimizing it," explains Roland Wertz, the project manager responsible at IPA.
This facility provides an interface between industrial production and research service in the area of automation. All of the factors and parameters are recorded under highly-realistic conditions, including factors that influence the precision and speed of various gripper systems. They are assisted in this by the robot ABB IRB 360, also known as FlexPicker, which can also be seen at the Fraunhofer stand. To conduct experiments it is used as a manipulator which can be equipped with various gripping devices that are based on different functional principles. This enables the scientists to analyze and assess products made by various manufacturers and in a standardized way. After all, each specific application has its own requirements and calls for optimized handling.
Less Is More
Savings and improvements are not limited to the production process; they are also directed at the materials used. No more than absolutely necessary - that is the principle behind thin-film solar cells. These usually consist of an inexpensive substrate to which the electrically active material is applied in the form of an ultra-thin film. To be able to produce thin-layer solar cells that are of high quality and economically to make, the Fraunhofer Institute for Surface Engineering and Thin Films IST has developed various processes that improve each and every step of production.
For instance, the semi-conductor layers, the heart of the solar cell, are produced using the hot wire CVD process. "One benefit over conventional methods is the gentle form of coating production," explains Dr. Volker Sittinger of IST. In conventional, plasma-activated CVD, during the coating process the material is bombarded with high-energy particles. The hot wire CVD approach is different: there, the gases that create the film are not activated in plasma but on hot wires. The result is a gentle approach to creating films of high quality. Better use can also be made of the silane gas required in production. "With the hot wire CVD method, we convert up to 90% of the gas used to film material", Sittinger adds.
Recently developed for the contact layers on the front and rear of the cell is the C² coating technology (cylindrical magnetron co-sputtering). With this technology, the material composition can be varied during the coating process. And there are plans to thin things down even further. Coatings only a few nanometers thick are expected with a new type of 3-dimensional solar cell design. The only way to achieve this is with a precision-contour precipitation of the layers, but there is a method to accomplish this: ALD, which stands for atomic layer deposition, stems from the field of nanotechnology.There is thus no need for solar cells to remain unaffordable expensive. New technologies could propel solar energy a major step forward.
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