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More Solar!
Western towns hard-hit by climate change unite, target coal for funds
By Bruce Finley
The Denver Post
POSTED: 05/03/2015 08:30:13 PM MDT
Telluride's Colorado Avenue. (Denver Post file)
Ten Western mountain towns feeling the effects of climate change are launching a campaign that targets the coal industry, seeking hundreds of millions of dollars a year from companies to help communities adapt.
The "Mountain Pact" towns in Colorado and neighboring states contend that, because coal is a major source of heat-trapping greenhouse gases linked to climate change, the industry should pay more to help deal with the impact.
In a letter being sent this week to federal officials, lawmakers and the White House, the towns demand changes in the federal government's system for collecting royalties from coal companies, half of which flow back to states for local distribution.
The federal program already is under internal review.
Colorado Mining Association president Stuart Sanderson bristled at the push, saying the industry pays "a very fair chunk" and also is facing increased regulatory burdens.
But the mountain town leaders are adamant. Rising temperatures, inconsistent river flows, shrinking snowpack, drought and catastrophic wildfires are among the worsening problems they must deal with at an increased expense.
"The squeaky wheel gets oiled. We have to start somewhere in taking on that challenge. Now's the time. We're seeing the impact from global warming," Leadville Mayor Jaime Stuever said.
"I'm not blaming it solely on coal. It's fossil fuels in general. But we need to create a diversification of jobs," Stuever said. "If there's no consistent snow, due to global warming, then we need to look at other forms of tourism."
Telluride Mayor Stu Fraser said residents and visitors increasingly feel the effects of climate change including blowing dust, which accelerates snowmelt, reduced snowfall and water supply strains. He said the town is motivated partly by politics and that any funds reaching Telluride would be used to install local solar and wind power systems.
"If they're going to continue to burn coal, it has to be cleaner. This needs to happen sooner rather than later," Fraser said. "It's very important that we have less pollution going into the environment."
Mountain Pact towns plan to send the letter Tuesday to Interior Secretary Sally Jewell, top federal land and budget managers, 11 lawmakers and two White House officials. A growing list of signatories includes mayors or town councils of Aspen, Leadville, Telluride, Ophir, Ridgway, Buena Vista, Carbondale, Dillon, Park City, Utah, and Taos, N.M.
The letter urges reforms to ensure that coal companies pay royalties based on the full market price of coal calculated when companies sell coal to power plants.
"I hope they will start listening to us. We are seeing the effects of climate change," Buena Vista town trustee Keith Baker said, citing reduced snow and altered water flows for agriculture and river rafting.
Aspen has appointed a city climate action manager, Ashley Perl.
"We have to band together to draw attention to the changes we are seeing," Perl said. "It is actually bad and needs to be addressed."
Currently, coal companies can pay royalties to Interior's Office of Natural Resources Revenue based on percentages of initial sales to subsidiaries or at reduced rates.
"By eliminating subsidies and requiring coal companies to pay royalties on the true market price of coal, rather than on the hidden price at which it is sold to a middleman or a subsidiary, the government will collect a fair return for U.S. taxpayers and Western states (an estimated $1 billion per year), and increase government transparency and efficiency," the letter says.
"The costs of adapting to a changing climate are rising, but at the same time coal companies are taking advantage of gaping loopholes that allow them to pay less, thus depriving many Western states and taxpayers across the country their fair share of the revenues from coal leased on federal land."
Sanderson rejected the notion of loopholes.
"It would be inappropriate to increase royalty rates for an industry already suffering from production losses and lost jobs due to flawed state and federal laws and regulations designed to drive coal out of the energy mix," he said. "The best way to increase royalties is to increase sales and production and remove disincentives to coal use engineered by government."
The eight coal mines in Colorado employ 1,767 people. The coal industry in Colorado employs 6,200 people if coal transport and support activities are included, according to industry data.
The Center for American Progress, a liberal research and advocacy group, has found that coal companies increasingly use subsidiaries in marketing coal after mining to pay lower royalties.
States receive a 50 percent share of coal royalties, portions of which are distributed to cities and towns. Federal data show royalties for states in 2014 totaled $36.7 million in Colorado, $555 million in Wyoming, $43.5 million in Utah and $48.9 million in Montana.
A revised federal rule requiring companies to pay full market price would have raised $600 million between 2008 and 2013, according to senior analyst Mark Haggerty at Headwaters Economics, a Montana-based think tank.
Across the West, state officials increasingly wrestle with projected climate change troubles.
Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper's office last week unveiled a Resiliency Framework designed to guide local adaptation to withstand flooding, wildfire and other climate-related calamities.
It's meant to encourage long-term planning for disasters and climate change, said Molly Urbina, the state's chief recovery officer.
"You look at housing. You look at the economy. You look at infrastructure. You look at just making your community have a sense of place," Urbina said. "If you do good planning, it does leverage other funding, federal or state, and also private funding."
Bruce Finley: 303-954-1700, bfinley@denverpost.com or twitter.com/finleybruce
Updated May 4 at 12:01 p.m.The following corrected information has been added to this article: Because of an error by a source, the number of people employed by the Colorado coal industry was inaccurate. It has been corrected.
One more selloff today. 30,000 at .0055
Then we can fly again....
OT but our friend CABN got cheap again at .0055
Like SLTD no news no excitement......
66% discount from a months ago...
‘The Texas of Canada’ Just Elected A Left-Wing Government
he environmental and energy policies Whittingham said he was hopeful for would not necessarily have to do with pipelines or tar sands, though.
If it were up to him, he said, he’d like to see stronger programs for energy efficiency, an acceleration of the phase-out of coal-fired electricity, and some sort of incentive program to replace those sources with renewables like wind and solar.
He emphasized again that he’s not sure it will happen, but he does know one thing from the unprecedented election results: Progress is happening.
SolarCity To Offer Off-Grid Solar Energy/Battery System To Eligible Customers In Hawaii In 2016
May 7th, 2015 by James Ayre
http://cleantechnica.com/2015/05/07/solarcity-offer-off-grid-solar-energybattery-system-eligible-customers-hawaii-2016/
Those living in Hawaii that are interested in going off-grid will soon have a new option for doing so available to them via SolarCity, based on a recent press release.
According to that release, the company will begin offering off-grid solar energy + battery systems to eligible customers in the Hawaiian Islands starting in 2016. The battery system in this bundle will of course be sister company Tesla’s new system.
This is despite the preference that SolarCity seems to have for grid-connected solar systems (over off-grid systems) — and is, reportedly, a response to the long delays currently reported to be associated with going solar (via the utility connected route) in Hawaii.
Which makes sense — not many people who want to go solar are going to wait over a year to do so simply because a utility company is dragging its feet on the matter and making them go through hoops — they’ll simply go off-grid, ensuring that their interactions with said utility companies are limited (which I’ve heard from many people is one of the main advantages of going off-grid).
As CleanTechnica reader and battery expert eveee noted earlier today, “The SolarCity statement on Hawaii is a clear shot across the bow to HECO that they are not going to lose any customers due to HECOs ban on new solar grid ties. SolarCity says, ‘Sure customers, we will give you off-grid power for the same price as grid.’ “
Basically, this statement seemed like a big warning call to utilities trying to add solar taxes or fees, or delay or block solar connections. If utilities are keen on making on-grid solar more expensive or not possible, they’re going to more quickly push people off the grid, and the products for that just got a lot more competitive.
So, anyways, those living in Hawaii next year who want to go off-grid will have access to a higher-end solar + battery system coming via SolarCity + Tesla — it’s hard to say whether the combo will be worth it for many people (with regard to costs), but it sure looks better than the competition.
SolarCity and Tesla seem to have carved out a fair amount of respectability and customer interest over the last few years — the brand names on their own seem to be able to garner notable interest at this point. So, I think the product will do very well.
A final note here: with expected declines in manufacturing costs, SolarCity has predicted that within 5–10 years, it’ll be economical for the company to simply deploy a battery system by default with every solar energy system that it installs. A fairly bold prediction, but also one that clarifies that, as of right now, Tesla’s new battery system isn’t for everyone. Something to take note of.
Shared Solar Could Open Path to 100 Percent PV Market Penetration
Andrew Burger, Correspondent
May 07, 2015
http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/article/2015/05/shared-solar-could-open-path-to-100-percent-pv-market-penetration
Shared solar, where multiple parties share the benefits of on- or off-site PV arrays, has the potential to dramatically expand solar energy access for residents and businesses across the U.S., as well as open avenues for utilities to play a greater role in the U.S. transition to a low-carbon economy. However, in order for shared solar to be fully realized, the U.S. needs new business models, regulatory reform and clarification, along with ongoing technological advances, according to recently released research from the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL).
“Options such as off-site shared solar and arrays on multi-unit buildings can enable rapid, widespread market growth by increasing access to renewables on readily available sites, potentially lowering costs via economies of scale, pooling customer demand, and fostering business model and technical innovations,” according to the report’s executive summary. “Fundamentally, these models remove the need for a spatial one-to-one mapping between distributed solar arrays and the energy consumers who receive their electricity or monetary benefits.”
Expanding Solar by Sharing PV System Benefits
Whether via third-party leasing, power purchase agreements or outright purchases, current means of deploying PV systems on a site-by-site, individual customer basis severely limit solar PV's market potential, according to the report, but “the technical, economic and market potential of traditional on-site PV are significantly larger than its current installed capacity.”
Community solar plays a small, though growing, part in the record amounts of solar that has come online in the U.S. in recent years. However that small part could expand dramatically. It has the potential to open up the market and make solar available to the remaining half of U.S. homes and businesses that cannot utilize on-site solar, according to NREL lead researcher and report author David Feldman.
Shared solar can reduce the financial and technical barriers that prevent Americans who live in multi-tenant housing and businesses and residents who rent or lease rather than own property to share electricity produced by PV arrays that they may own, lease or otherwise share, according to the report. This will enable project developers to realize economies of scale by aggregating demand.
Shared solar affords other substantial benefits that could spur wholesale adoption of solar PV across the U.S. Among these, the report authors point out that:
In the event a shared solar customer moves, his or her solar share can be transferred separately from his or her residence to a new home within the same utility service territory or sold to another entity;
Shared solar arrays allow for increased siting flexibility: strategic placement on sites such as commercial rooftops, brownfields, and municipal land can aid local economic development;
With utility input, strategic deployment can also aid grid integration. For utilities, shared solar arrays can function as a more streamlined and visible electricity-generating source than many smaller systems. By engaging community stakeholders, shared solar can help build community assets.
Realizing Shared Solar's Tremendous Market Expansion Potential
NREL researchers estimate that 49 percent of U.S. households and 48 percent of businesses are currently unable to “host a PV system of adequate size or virtually net meter an entire system themselves.” Updating regulations and streamling procedures and paperwork associated with installing shared solar energy systems would spur development of new business models and shared solar deployments, according to the report.
“Shared solar could represent 32-49 percent of the distributed PV market in 2020, growing cumulative PV deployment in 2015-2020 by 5.5-11.0 GW and representing $8.2 billion-$16.3 billion of cumulative
Shared solar could contribute even more to the U.S. economy and society than the report authors estimate if governments, utilities and solar industry were to resolve several key issues constraining growth. According to the report: “As these new business models and legal frameworks are established, continued attention to compliance with the federal securities laws and consultation with the SEC where necessary will create more confidence within the market, and it will reduce restrictions, delays, and costs.”
All images, graphics credit DOE-NREL, “Shared Solar: Current Landscape, Market Potential, and the Impact of Federal Securities Regulation”
Move Over, Mandates: Can a New ‘Personal Energy Independence’ Bill Entice Congress?
This is a $80 company now with divisions. Time to stop acting like a little company and do a quarterly like the big boys do.
More regular time. Don't wait until last minute. Pre announce then it's going to be done...
Record solar output pushes average German peak price below baseload
By Craig Morris on 7 May 2015
Renewables International
In April, power prices on the EEX electricity exchange continued to drop. Both baseload and peak prices fell below three cents, partly because last month was also a near record for solar power production.
Thanks to relatively good weather, power production from PV grew by more than 50 percent in April relative to March. The all-time record level was 5.1 TWh in July 2013, followed by 4.8 TWh in June 2014. Last month, 4.4 TWh was generated, putting April 2015 in third place historically.
In addition, a new record peak for PV production was posted between the 1 PM and 2 PM on April 21, when the old record of 24.2 GW from 6 June 2014 was topped considerably, with the new peak now at 25.8 GW.
April also came in third for combined wind and solar power at 9.8 TWh, just behind March 2015 (so the previous month) at 10.27 TWh and January 2015 at 10.02 TWh.
The effect on prices was also noticeable. Because solar power is mainly generated around noon time, demand for peak power is offset at that time (there is a second remaining peak in the evening, which PV will never be able to offset directly). For the first time ever, baseload power was more expensive than peak power on average last month and day ahead trading at 2.97 cents per kilowatt-hour (baseload), compared to 2.94 cents (peak load).
Year over year, peak prices are down by 10.9 percent in Germany, which continues to have lower prices than neighboring countries on spot markets. Nonetheless, the other countries also posted falling prices last month, with baseload in France costing 3.95 cents, compared to 3.83 cents in Switzerland. Prices in those countries are otherwise relatively stable, however. The European average (ELIX) was 3.164 for baseload.
The news is potentially good for consumers, as the falling prices will eventual reach them. The prices are not, however, good news for power producers themselves, who increasingly struggle to break even. But a respite may be in sight: the nuclear phaseout will remove a huge chunk of baseload capacity by 2022, and the German government is also clamping down on coal power production, which may lead to the removal of numerous older coal plants.
Source: Renewables International. Reproduced with permission.
Elon Musk: Demand for Tesla's home battery is 'crazy off the hook'
by Kirsten Korosec @kirstenkorosec MAY 6, 2015, 8:54 PM EDT
Demand for Tesla’s energy storage batteries are so high that the company’s Nevada gigafactory could dedicate all of its production to the home and utility products, CEO Elon Musk says.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk was his usual effusive self in describing demand for his company’s new Powerwall home batteries for storing home solar energy, unveiled last week at a splashy event outside Los Angeles. He called the 38,000 pre-orders “crazy off the hook” while acknowledging that his company’s production can’t keep up.
“There’s like no way we could possibly satisfy demand this year,” Musk told analysts Wednesday during its first-quarter earnings call. “We’re basically sold out through the middle of next year.”
Musk is making good on his promise to revolutionize the auto industry with his electric carmaking upstart. Now he has set his sights on another target: energy.
Musk’s long-term vision for Tesla Energy is bold—he expects global sales and to “fundamentally change the way the world uses energy.” But even he seemed surprised by interest in the energy storage products. The level of demand has been so large the executive team is investigating whether it should boost capacity for stationary storage battery packs at its so-called “gigafactory” currently under construction near Reno, Nev.
In addition to home batteries, Tesla has come up with a bigger battery for commercial use and utilities, called Powerpack. Customers have pre-ordered 2,500 of those. Musk cast the demand as a bit deceiving. He described the reservations as the equivalent of 25,000 packs because a typical utility or heavy industrial customer would require at least 10 of the packs.
Using a somewhat similar calculation, Tesla expects the average home customer to order 1.5 to 2 of its smaller Powerwall units. If that prediction is correct, that would mean orders for as many as 60,000 Powerwall home battery packs.
About one-third of the battery pack production capacity at the gigafactory has been reserved for energy storage. However, Musk said the company could increase that capacity by as much as 50% because of unexpectedly high demand.
“The sheer volume of demand is just staggering,” he said. “We could easily have the entire gigafactory just do storage.”
Even if Tesla does boost capacity, battery packs for the Model S and the highly anticipated Model X SUV are still the priority, Musk added.
Powerwall, a sleek suitcase-sized lithium-ion battery designed for homeowners to store energy, comes in 7 kilowatt-hour and 10 kWh sizes. Both units are meant to be combined with solar panels. The 10 kWh home unit is designed as a source of backup power, while 7 kWh-unit can be used daily to extend the environmental and cost benefits of solar after the sun has gone down.
The home energy battery, which comes with a 10-year warranty, is designed to be mounted on a wall. Tesla’s selling price to installers is $3,500 for 10 kWh and $3,000 for 7 kWh. The costs don’t include installation or the inverter that converts direct current power to alternating current for use in the home. Deliveries will begin this summer.
The Powerpack will be sold in 100 kWh units and can be scaled up into multi gigawatt-hour class. The Powerpacks are priced a $250 a kilowatt-hour.
Demand for Powerpack is high, despite the poor economics of its 7 kWh daily cycling unit. Tesla did not break out reservations for the 10 kWh and 7 kWh units.
“The economics in the U.S,. with rare exception, are more expensive than utilities,” Musk admitted. “If someone wants to do daily cycling off-grid, it’s going to be more expensive than being on-grid. That doesn’t mean people won’t buy it. There are people who want to go off-grid on principle, or they just want to be independent.”
However, the 7 kWh battery does make economic sense in certain markets overseas, particularly in Germany and Australia because of tariffs and the electricity-rate structures in those countries, said Tesla co-founder and Chief Technology Officer JB Straubel.
Also on Wednesday, Tesla Motors TSLA 1.18% reported that its first-quarter revenue grew nearly 52% to $939.9 million, over the same period last year. The company also reported that its losses tripled to $154 million in the quarter, or $1.22 per share.
http://for.tn/1PpxBdA
Are Apple and Google Disrupting America's Century-Old Energy Market?
By GAVIN PURCHAS | BIO | Published: MAY 6, 2015
Apple made news earlier this year when it signed an $848-million “direct access” deal to bypass Pacific Gas & Electric Co. and buy clean energy directly from a third-party solar provider. For Apple, the big win was a contract that locked in affordable energy for the next 25 years.
But the deal also set a historical precedent for corporate renewable energy purchases that may, over time, have huge financial implications for traditional utilities.
Energy deals break new ground
With its solar contracts, the iPhone maker is insulating itself from the price volatility that accompanies fossil fuels, in addition to getting power for less than half the cost. Going forward, it can count electricity as a fixed, predictable cost – an attractive proposition that is sure to spark interest among other large buyers of electricity.
Apple’s investment in First Solar’s PV Flats, a 2,900-acre solar array in Monterey, California, also suggests that corporations are ready to take procurement of energy to a new level.
On the heels of Apple’s deal came news that Google signed a 20-year purchase agreement to buy half of the energy produced at the soon-to-be refurbished Altamont Pass wind energy facility. The wind turbines there will power the company’s sprawling Googleplex headquarters in nearby Mountain View, California – again, effectively bypassing the local utility.
Wind is already competitive with coal in many markets and just like Apple, Google will enjoy stable prices for the next two decades.
Companies think beyond cheap energy credits
Corporate procurement of renewables is nothing new, of course. For years already, companies such as Intel and IKEA have purchased renewable energy credits, or RECs, to meet their sustainability goals.
Over time, however, these credits became so popular that we now have a glut of nearly worthless RECS with some going for as little as 75 cents per kilowatt-hour. As a corporate procurement activity, they now amount to little more than “greenwashing” because the low prices undermine the REC market as a force for new investments.
This criticism has prompted some investors such as Whole Foods and PepsiCo to scale back and instead focus on more tangible, onsite renewable projects at their own facilities.
Or, as in the case of Apple and Google, to think outside the box. Large power purchase agreements, like the ones the companies just announced, may prove to be a game changer.
Such deals give renewable energy providers the collateral they need to approach a bank or other investor about financing the construction of their plants. And it helps them get a cheaper line of credit which, in turn, will bolster additional investments in renewables.
Energy providers respond
Historically, power purchase agreements have been long-term commitments of up to 30 years.
But now that model is changing, too, further broadening participation in new and innovative clean energy programs.
MP2 Energy, a retail electric supplier in Texas, for example, recognized the limitations of the longer contracts. The company developed a landmark, two-year solar energy procurement proposal that attracted Rice University, and the parties announced a contract in February 2015.
Today, corporate buyers of energy are trying new ways and they’re finding energy providers willing to experiment. From Apple to Rice University, a growing cadre of large buyers are making smart business deals that also help pave the way for renewable energy development.
As more buyers of energy move in this direction, pressure will build on utilities to find new business models – and new revenue streams that are not based on volume sales or on the construction of new, fossil-fired plants.
Or they may soon be looking at a major corporate exodus to their competitors in the clean energy business – and at a major disruption of the market they’ve owned for more than a century.
Distributed Energy Wins Major Political Champion, A King
ENERGY 5/06/2015 @ 12:17PM
http://www.forbes.com/sites/williampentland/2015/05/06/distributed-energy-wins-major-political-champion-a-king/
U.S. Senator Angus King, an independent from Maine, may just have changed the game in energy innovation.
Senator King is reportedly planning to introduce legislation today called the Free Market Energy Act of 2015. A fact sheet outlining the major provisions of the legislation was provided to UtilityDive.
The fact sheet explains the rationale behind the legislation, stating:
OK what happened to this puppy. We bought more at .0081 didn't help
Time for Jim-Bob come out of the shadows......
We're bleeding to death again....
MIT says solar power fields with trillions of watts of capacity are on the way
http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/news/green-computing/3610819/mit-says-solar-power-fields-with-trillions-of-watts-of-capacity-are-on-the-way/
The MIT Energy Initiative wants changes in U.S. policies to better support a much-needed "massive deployment" of solar in the decades ahead.
By Lucas Mearian | Computerworld US | 06 May 15
A massive study on solar power by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) came to two main conclusions: Solar energy holds the best potential for meeting the planet's long-term energy needs while reducing greenhouse gasses and federal and state governments must do more to promote its development.
The main goal of U.S. solar policy should be to build the foundation for a massive scale-up of solar generation over the next few decades, the study said.
"What the study shows is that our focus needs to shift toward new technologies and policies that have the potential to make solar a compelling economic option," said Richard Schmalensee, a Professor Emeritus of Economics and Management at the MIT Sloan School of Management.
Federal and state subsidy programs designed to encourage investment in solar systems should be reviewed with an eye on increasing their cost-effectiveness and with a greater emphasis on rewarding production of solar energy, the study said.
For example, the federal government's solar investment tax credit (ITC), passed in 2008, is set to expire next year. It offered a 30% tax credit for residential and business installations for solar energy. When it expires in 2016, the tax credit will drop to a more permanent 10%.
The MIT Energy Initiative (MITEI) released results of the study in a 356-page report, TheFuture of Solar Energy, on Monday. The study found that even with today's crystalline silicon photovoltaic (PV) technologies, the industry could achieve terawatt-scale deployment of solar power by 2050 without major technological advances.
A terawatt is a trillion watts of electricity.
The study focused on three challenges to achieving that goal: developing new solar technologies, integrating solar generation at large scale into existing electric systems, and designing efficient policies to support solar tech deployment.
The researchers undertook the study and published their findings because of the "enormous potential of solar energy as a tool to reduce global CO2 emissions and the great importance of effecting those reductions."
Solar electricity generation is one of "very few low-carbon energy technologies" with the potential to grow to very large scale, the study said. "As a consequence, massive expansion of global solar-generating capacity to multi-terawatt scale is a very likely and essential component of a workable strategy to mitigate climate change risk."
The research strongly recommends that a large fraction of federal resources available for solar R&D focus on environmentally benign, emerging thin-film technologies that are based on Earth-abundant materials.
"The recent shift of federal dollars for solar R&D away from fundamental research of this sort to focus on near-term cost reductions in c-Si technology should be reversed," the researchers said.
Crystalline silicon dominates today's PV landscape and will continue to be the leading deployed PV technology for at least the next decade, according to MIT. Crystalline silicon (c-Si) solar cells are divided into two categories: single-crystalline (sc-Si) and ulticrystalline (mc-Si). The higher crystal quality in sc-Si cells improves charge extraction and power conversion, but requires wafers that are 20% to 30% more expensive.
Some new thin-film technologies, made by depositing one or more thin layers, or thin films of photovoltaic material on a substrate, such as glass, plastic or metal, could save money on installation and PV module costs.
"Massive expansion of solar generation worldwide by mid-century is likely a necessary component of any serious strategy to mitigate climate change," the study concluded. "Fortunately, the solar resource dwarfs current and projected future electricity demand. In recent years, solar costs have fallen substantially and installed capacity has grown very rapidly."
- See more at: http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/news/green-computing/3610819/mit-says-solar-power-fields-with-trillions-of-watts-of-capacity-are-on-the-way/#sthash.h35IZHvy.dpuf
The talk is all over the place!
http://www.msnbc.com/all-in/watch/tesla-accelerating-the-solar-revolution-440374339880
Tesla accelerating the solar revolution
ALL IN WITH CHRIS HAYES 5/5/15
Tesla CEO Elon Musk unveiled a new battery that stores electricity generated from solar panels, making solar power a more viable alternative to fossil fuels. Duration: 7:31
Forbes:Why Tesla Batteries Are Cheap Enough To Prevent New Power Plants
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffmcmahon/2015/05/05/why-tesla-batteries-are-cheap-enough-to-prevent-new-power-plants/?ss=energy
Last year, analysts hired by Oncor Electric Delivery Company were toiling away on a study of the costs and benefits of installing enormous batteries on Oncor’s grid in Texas. The benefits would surpass the costs, they calculated, if Oncor could buy batteries for $350 per kilowatt hour of capacity—or less. That was the break-even point.
At the time, the cheapest utility-scale batteries cost twice that much, the analysts noted, and some cost nearly ten times that much. But prices were falling, and the analysts predicted batteries might reach the $350 point in 2020.
They didn’t have to wait nearly so long.
Tesla’s Powerwall home battery, unveiled late Thursday night, dominated energy news all weekend, but the real news was the price tag on its utility-scale big sister, the Powerpack: $250/kWh.
“There’s nothing remotely at these price points,” said Tesla product architect Elon Musk.
Earlier Thursday night, I was covering a Northwestern University debate on the future of nuclear energy, in which the nuclear critic Arnie Gundersen predicted Tesla’s new utility-scale battery would render new-build nuclear plants obsolete. The battery would be cheap enough to solve the reliability problem of intermittent solar and wind, he predicted, providing a cheaper alternative to nuclear power’s 24-hour output.
Gundersen predicted the cost of the utility-scale battery would fall to 2 cents per kWh of the electricity that passes through it, which in coming years would render renewable energy with reliable storage cheaper than a new nuclear plant. Gundersen focused on the utility-scale battery, which we would soon learn to call the Tesla Powerpack, but most of the chatter in the wake of Musk’s announcement focused on the home battery, the Tesla Powerwall, which is both more expensive per kWh and less poised to reap benefits.
Some writers noticed both batteries.
“The Tesla battery is better than I thought for homes,” wrote the author Ramez Naam in a review of Tesla’s new battery line. “And at utility scale, it’s deeply disruptive.”
At Tesla’s price, utility-scale batteries have the potential to perform better than 2 cents per kilowatt hour where it counts the most: on the customer’s electric bill. The capital cost of utility-scale batteries may be more than offset by their benefits, according to the Texas study, and if deployed at the grid level, they could actually lower electric bills .
Even modeling batteries $100 more than the Tesla, the Texas analysts concluded that storage arrayed across the grid should cause a typical consumer’s electric bill to fall slightly—from $180 per month to $179.66. That’s not a remarkable number if one is looking for savings, but it’s a remarkable number if one expects new capital expenditures on batteries to increase electricity bills.
“Considering both the impact on electricity bills and improved reliability of grid-integrated storage, total customer benefits would significantly exceed costs ,” the analysts, from The Brattle Group, found.
Here’s why, according to their study:
1. Power Purchase Cost Savings. Utilities without sufficient storage often have to purchase power during system peaks, and those purchases are billed directly to customers. Batteries eliminate those charges.
2. Customer Bill Offsets from Storage Merchant Value. Utilities would make batteries available to independent companies participating in regional wholesale energy markets, auctioning off battery capacity and returning most of the proceeds to customers by reducing their bills.
3. Avoided Distribution Outages. By preventing blackouts, batteries would save residential customers about $10 a year and commercial customers an average of $700 a year. (An example: SoCore, a Southern California Edison subsidiary, is installing Tesla batteries at two Cinemark Theaters to keep them in business when the power goes out.)
4. Deferred Investments. Typically, utilities need enough power plants to serve their customers at peak hours, not at average hours. By using batteries to serve peak loads, they can invest in fewer power plants. They can especially avoid firing up expensive “peaker plants,” which are usually fast-starting but inefficient natural-gas plants. They can also build fewer peaker plants in the future. By deploying batteries along the grid where peak loads are greatest, they can also defer investments in transmission and distribution infrastructure designed to serve peak loads. (An example: Southern California Edison installed a battery in Orange, Cal., and found that it both improved reliability of the grid and allowed the utility to defer replacement of a circuit for 5 to 7 years).
“The combined value of these benefits exceeds the costs of storage by a substantial margin across a range of deployment levels,” the Texas study concludes. And remember, that’s with hypothetical batteries up to $100 more expensive per kilowatt hour than Tesla’s.
“In this analysis, we assume that customers would pay for the storage investments just as they pay for transmission and distribution investments. Customers would then receive offsetting reductions in retail electricity costs from the storage in the form of deferred investments, refunds from the wholesale market auction proceeds, and reduced power purchase costs. Customers would additionally benefit through increased system reliability from avoided distribution outages. Other customer benefits that we have not analyzed include improved power quality and support for customer-side renewable energy usage.”
Tesla’s Powerwall and other batteries for the home should produce similar benefits, but not as powerfully: ”while individual customers would be able to capture backup-power benefits of storage, they are not likely to directly monetize the larger grid-wide and wholesale power market benefits.”
Tesla is offering the utility-scale batteries in 100kWh battery blocks that are grouped in packs from 500kWh to 10MWh+. The Texas analysts recommended up to 15MWh for Oncore’s grid. Installation costs are uncertain, but installations are likely to be performed by utilities in-house and therefore seem unlikely to approach the dimension of home installations, which will reportedly increase the capital cost of the Powerwall 17-29 percent for one utility’s customers.
The Texas study could be unique to Texas, but the results are consistent with other findings. Ramez Naam’s review also led me to a study by the Electric Power Research Institute, which found the benefits of grid-level storage exceeded costs in nearly all examined scenarios.
Utilities expect similar results.
Green Mountain Power, among the first utilities offering the Tesla Powerwall for homes, is also purchasing Tesla’s grid-level batteries.
“We will also be using the Tesla grid scale system, which we know will also offer cost savings to our customers,” Dorothy Schnure, GMP’s corporate spokesperson, told me in an email. Schnure couldn’t say how big or small those promised savings will be: “We know there will be savings and are still evaluating what that might be, so I don’t have a number for you yet.”
In its press release last week, Tesla named Southern California Edison as a partner for grid-level storage.
“There are a few opportunities which we believe are economical today,” a Southern California Edison spokesman told me via email, “but as prices decline for energy storage, we expect a substantial broadening of the economically viable projects.”
Opportunities should blossom as prices fall and also as batteries improve. Gundersen based his 2¢ estimate in part on improvements in cycling—the number of times a battery can be drained and recharged—that Tesla is known to be working on, and that have already begun to appear in other batteries.
Analysts often assume batteries will cycle once per day, 1,000 times. The Michigan company Xalt Energy markets a lithium-ion battery that it says can cycle 4,000 to 8,000 times. Some lithium-ion batteries used to back up data servers are designed to cycle up to 10,000 times. These achievements are likely to be exceeded soon by the next generation of batteries coming down the pipe.
More cycles mean longer battery life and lower cost per kWh.
“Both solar and batteries are not ‘fuels’ but rather technologies,” Gundersen said. “The extraction cost of fuels continues to rise, while technology costs continue to fall. My Doctoral contacts at battery companies are confident that 2 cents is indeed here in the lab and on the horizon commercially. It is all about the number of cycles that can be pulled from a battery.”
We still don’t know what cycling improvements Tesla has bundled into the Powerpack, if any, and Tesla has not responded to a request for comment.
Ramez Naam thinks that both Gundersen’s optimistic 2¢ (for the Powerpack) and my Forbes colleague Chris Helman’s pessimistic 50¢ (for the Powerwall) are outliers in the range of possibilities for the cost of electricity flowing through Tesla batteries. If utilities get the same 10-year warranty Tesla offers to home customers, Naam estimates the Powerpack’s cost per kWh will be 7¢, he told me via Twitter. Even at twice that price, he said, grid-level batteries offer utilities a return on investment now:
“That batteries bring positive ROI at such a price surprises lots of people.”
And it means windmills + batteries may be cheaper than nuclear plants right now, with windmills + solar panels likely to follow.
Understanding Chiink's and Simca's concerns.
Remember Elon Musk and Tesla are EXPERTS to delivering power.
It comes from his electric cars.
Electric cars need options to run continuously. No question when the battery is fully charged.
But when you are driving at 200 miles on a 250 mile battery, you can't say that the car can only drive 40 MPH because the battery is losing charge. Headlights are not an option at night. At night at 230 miles on a 250 mile battery headlights are not an option. You can't drive 40MPH on a 70MPH highway at night without headlight.
This is why Elon is an expert at delivering POWER.
This is also why alternative batteries have FAILED.
Why you have to take what political writers have to say with a grain of salt....
So the same will apply to having your appliances running off battery.
eBike Solar-Charges Itself Directly Through Its Wheels
http://solar-bike.weebly.com
http://www.psfk.com/2015/05/the-lane-splitter-concept-car-creative-director-for-a-day-argo-design.html
Solar Bike is even more environmentally friendly than other electric bikes as it doesn't require energy from power grid
JASON BRICK
4 MAY 2015TRAVEL
Solar Bike was designed to be similar to any bicycle, with no special features that shift it from the basic bike design. The only change is the solar panels in the spoke areas of the wheels. The panels absorb solar energy and charge the battery whether the bike is in motion or at rest.
The motor can push the bike at 25 kph to 50 kph, a little faster than most ebikes on the market. Its battery will hold up to 70km worth of charge, though both speed and range will vary considerably based on terrain and speed, and how much pedal assist you’re offering during the ride.
On the down side, Solar Bike’s battery takes longer than most cycles to charge. Despite state-of-the-art and shadow-optimized cells, it can only charge up to 25km per day worth of energy under optimal sunlight conditions.
On the plus side, this energy is 100 percent clean and renewable, without even the small CO2 signature of ebikes you charge by plugging in to the power grid.
Solar Bike’s frame is built for both smooth urban commuting and more rugged mountain biking—you only have to change out the tires for the right traction-to-friction profile. Solar Bikes include LED lights for safe visibility.
This is not the first solar electric bike to hit the market, but it is the first we’re aware of without a plug-in option. It allows those really dedicated to reducing their carbon footprint to choose a bike the fully supports—even forces—them to live according to that dedication.
Solar Bike’s website has some specifications and details on the design, but as of May of this year no information on where to buy one or even their production status. Interested readers can consult it for updates.
Again, cover this again.
Yes, you can get off the grid with batteries and appliances......
Elon will jump on whatever battery tech comes onboard. He has heard of and tested MANY
revolutionary batteries the last few years and so far they all have FAILED in some way.
Battery "breakthroughs" need to state power *and* energy density (not the same thing), plus how long they last. They usually fail on energy.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 6, 2015
Throughout the world, they will be able to sell as many powewalls/powerpacks as they can make. Especially where they are getting raped for utilities....
I'm liking the 100KWH PowerPack for small business for the home. Right now, from what I heard that it's $25,000 for the 100KWH. As it gets closer to $100 per KWH once they open the factory, it could get closer to $10,000 for 100KWH...
Like for my camera I'm getting a 128GB chip for less than $55... Amazing!
In discussion we DID find a BIG problem with the PowerWall.
2KW output with a 3KW peak. Too low for off the grid. Works for lights, but heating/water heating requires much more power.
This one puts out more power and can be doubled....... Or more....
http://www.solarhome.org/schneiderelectricconextsw4024invertercharger120240vac.aspx?gclid=CjwKEAjwsZyqBRCT1aq6qcD53DQSJACcen4CSVeJGTu48D_q5m8CFFNAQZSeNWnbpTw1eIqwLGNIyxoCgKnw_wcB
Tesla Battery Economics: On The Path To Disruption
RAMEZ NAAM TODAY 9:00 AM
http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2015/05/tesla-battery-economics-on-the-path-to-disruption/
GADGETS
Tesla Battery Economics: On The Path To Disruption
RAMEZ NAAM TODAY 9:00 AM Share 8 Discuss 2 Bookmark
Tesla Battery Economics: On the Path to Disruption
Elon Musk announced Tesla’s home / business battery last week. tl;dr: It will get enthusiastic early adopters to buy. The economics are almostthere to make it cost effective for a wide market. And within just a few years, it almost certainly will be cheap enough to be cost effective for a broad market. Not a complete game changer today, but a shot fired in an incredible energy storage disruption.
[If you want to understand the overall energy storage technology race and market, read this: Why Energy Storage is About to Get Big, and Cheap.]
Here are the specs, from Tesla’s Powerwall site.
$3500 is, as some people online have noted, less than a fully decked out Mac. There will be some set of early adopters who buy this because they love the idea, because they dislike utility companies, because they’re committed to solar, or because they love Elon Musk. Indeed, across my feed, I’ve seen quite a large number of people already announce that, at $3000 or $3500, they’re just going to buy it, and ROI be damned.
There’s also an economic case for anyone to whom outages are extremely expensive and cutting off even one or two outages in the lifetime of the battery is worth the purchase price. (Movie theatres are one set of customers I’ve heard are looking closely at this.) As competition against a backup generator, the battery has huge advantages. [Seamless, no fuelling, less maintenance, can save money on day-to-day operations, etc…] That alone may power early sales.
Beyond that, is the battery cheap enough to make storing your self-generated solar power worthwhile for hundreds of thousands or millions of homes across the US and overseas? If not, how close is it?
As I’ve written before, the number that really matters is the round-trip cost of electricity over the lifetime of the battery. How much do you pay for every kilowatt-hour put into the battery and then retrieved later? We can talk about this as LCOE (levelized cost of electricity).
Here are two ways we can calculate the LCOE of the Tesla Powerwall.
1. Rule of Thumb: 1000 Full Charge Cycles. This gives an LCOE of $0.35 / kwh. That compares to average grid electricity prices in the US of 12 cents / kwh, and peak California prices on a time-of-use plan of around 28 cents / kwh.
2. 10 Year Warranty + Daily Shallow Cycles.Tesla is offering a ten-year warranty on these batteries, which is bold. Yet evidence shows that Tesla automotive batteries are doing quite well, not losing capacity fast. Why? It’s because they’re rarely fully discharged. Most people drive well under half of the range of the battery per day. So let’s assume 10 years of daily use (3650 days, if we ignore leap days) and 50% depth of discharge on each day. Using the 7kwh battery, that gives us a price of around 23-24 cents / kwh.
Both of those prices are the price to installers. It’s not counting the installer’s profit margin or their cost of labour or any equipment needed to connect it to the house. So realistically the costs will be higher.
Tentative Conclusion:The battery isn’t quite cheap enough for most in the US to buy on a purely cost-benefit basis, yet. Unless outages are extremely expensive.
In Sunny Countries: Bigger Impact, Drives Solar
Outside the continental US, the batteries economics look far better, though. 43 US states have Net Metering laws that compensate solar homes for excess power created during the day.
In some of the sunniest places in the world, though, retail electricity prices from the grid are substantially higher than the US, plenty of sunlight is available, and Net Metering either doesn’t exist or is being severely curtailed.
Here’s a map from BNEF of sunshine vs grid electricity rates. Countries above the 2015 line have cheaper solar electricity than grid electricity today. But a number of those countries, including Australia, Spain, Italy, Turkey, and Brazil have no or severely limited ability for solar home owners to sell extra power back to the grid. In those sunny, policy-light countries, Tesla’s batteries make more economic sense today, and will help drive rooftop solar.
Even Germany, I’d note, gets enough sun that the price of rooftop solar is below that of grid electricity. And in Germany, feed-in-tarrifs to homes that put solar on the grid are plunging.
The real prize, though, would be India. Northern India is sunny. The power grid struggles to provide enough electricity to meet the daytime and early evening peak. India is now rolling out Time-of-Day pricing to residential customers and reports indicate that retail peak power prices are edging towards 20 cents / kwh in some cities. (Most commercial customers in India are already on Time-of-Day pricing.) For now, the solar + battery economics aren’t quite there for Indians that have access to the grid, though with outages there so frequent, high-income urbanites and commercial power users may find that the reliability value puts it over the top.
Back to the US
For most of the US, this battery isn’t quite cheap enough.But it’s in the right ballpark. And that means a lot. Net Metering plans in the US are filling up. California’s may be full by the end of 2016 or 2017, modulo additional legal changes. That would severely impact the economics of solar. But another factor of 2 price reduction in storage would make it cheap enough that, as Net Metering plans fill up or are reduced around the country, the battery would allow solar owners to save power for the evening or night-time hours in a cost effective way.
That is also a policy tool in debates with utilities. If they see Net Metering reductions as a tool to slow rooftop solar, they will be forced to confront the fact that solar owners with cheap batteries are less dependent on Net Metering.
That same factor of 2 price reduction would also make batteries effective for day-night electricity cost arbitrage, wherein customers fill up the battery with cheap grid power at night, and use stored battery power instead of the grid during the day. In California, where there’s a 19 cent gap between middle of the night power and peak-of-day power, those economics look very attractive.
And the cost of batteries is plunging fast. Tesla will get that 2x price reduction within 3-5 years, if not faster. See below for a Nature Climate Change view of the pace of battery price declines.
Net, I think this battery will sell quite a lot of units to early adopters and those with a low tolerance for outages. As a substitute for a backup generator, it has huge advantages. And those early adopters will fund the price continuing to decline. Tesla’s strong brand, and the compact, convenient nature of lithium-ion will help sell this into enthusiastically pro-solar homes.
That said, for large scale grid deployment (outside of the home), it still looks like flow batteries and advanced compressed air are likely to be far cheaper in the long run.
– -
There’s more about the exponential pace of innovation in both storage and renewables in my book on innovating to beat climate change and resource scarcity and continue economic growth:The Infinite Resource: The Power of Ideas on a Finite Planet
This article was first published on April 30th on Ramez Naam’s website.
Well, it's the best out there. Until somebody comes out with something better it is the best. Scaleable, and relatively maintenance free.
It is really having the world shaken up.
Last week the predictions for the price for the 10KWH was $13,000. And he comes out at $3,500 ($5,000) with installation. That's $350 per KWH.....
And the one for business is $250 per kWh. $25,000 for 100KWH. Scaleable to unlimited power.
It's time for other to put up or shut up...
It really has many of them crying.... And I LOVE IT!
Power4Patriots Agrees Solar Panels Generate Electricity Even on Cloudy Days
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/power4patriots-agrees-solar-panels-generate-043100742.html
Even For People Who Live In Areas That Do Not Receive As Much Sunlight As Others, Solar Panels Can Help Them Generate Electricity: Power4Patriots Encourages Homeowners To Start Getting Off The Grid With Solar Panels And Wind Turbines
NASHVILLE, TN / ACCESSWIRE / May 3, 2015 / Solar energy is the wave of the future, but some U.S. city officials and individual homeowners in areas that don’t receive as much sunlight as others may wonder if an investment in solar panels makes sense for them.
https://www.accesswire.com/uploads/SolarPanelSystem.jpg">https://www.accesswire.com/uploads/SolarPanelSystem.jpg" />
According to a recent article in the (Rochester, N.Y.) Democrat & Chronicle, the answer can be found in Germany. The European country has the largest installed base of solar generation in the world, despite having fewer hours of sunlight than many areas around the world.
Berlin receives an average of 1,625 hours of sunlight per year, while Rochester, N.Y., receives an average of 2,300 hours. Phoenix, Ariz., checks in with 3,870 hours of sunlight per year on average. While cloud-free environments are best for solar generation, any amount of sunlight, even if filtered by clouds, includes photons that can generate some amount of electricity.
Power4Patriots officials say the best way to keep electricity flowing during blackouts and to reduce monthly power costs is to become independent of the vulnerable U.S. power grid. They recommend that people learn how to generate their own electricity through the installation of solar panels and wind turbines.
Power4Patriots was created as a way to allow anyone to become independent of high power bills and outages. Cost-effective and uncomplicated, Power4Patriots teaches people how to build their own, environmentally friendly sources of energy.
Power4Patriots is a recently updated series of videos and manuals describing how to build solar panels, wind turbines, water heaters and solar heaters. The system includes six videos demonstrating how to build a solar panel, including choosing the right materials, finding the right site for the system and avoiding costly mistakes, as well as two instruction manuals with step-by-step, illustrated directions. It also includes four videos and two instruction manuals detailing how to build a wind turbine.
"On average, the costs are under $200 to build a solar panel and under $200 to build a wind turbine," said 4Patriots Partner Allen Baler said. "The time commitment to build a solar panel ranges from two to four hours, with the first one requiring more time than subsequent panels. A wind turbine requires a handful of hours to build."
Consumers who purchase already-made solar panels and wind turbines spend three to four times that amount. Installing solar panels and a wind turbine at one’s home will cut energy costs by as much as 75 percent.
Patriot Headquarters publishes articles, videos and news to help patriots become more self-reliant and independent from government and big business.
For more information about us, please visit http://www.power4patriots.com
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Tim Boyle
timm.boyle@4patriots.com
4Patriots LLC
Source: 4Patriots LLC