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  • LG Electronics to enter increasingly crowded solar market

     

    LG sees the solar business as a key area of growth, and claimed that it had been preparing to enter the market since 2004.

    The firm will manufacture large-area thin-film solar cells, as well as the more widespread crystalline solar cells.

    In July 2009, LG announced that the company had achieved the world’s most energy efficient large-area thin-film solar cells in a trial.

    LG’s solar operation will be administered by its air conditioning division, which it says has the necessary experience in managing energy resources and developing products efficiently.

    The solar market is estimated to be worth around $11bn in 2010, with crystalline solar cells expected to make up 80 per cent of the market, according to LG.

    The move will take the company into direct competiton with a raft of solar energy firms, as well as electronics rivals Sharp and Mitsubishi, both of which already operate large solar energy divisions.

  • Sun, wind and wave-powered: Europe unites to build renewable energy ‘supergrid’

  • Power to rich as poor pay for solar power in flawed plan

     

    Owners can now sell all the power they generate to their electricity retailer at 60c per kilowatt hour then buy it back at less than 20c/kwh. The scheme is twice as lucrative as those in South Australia and Queensland.

    The over-the-top payments do not come from the pockets of power companies – or the State Government. They are paid from a levy on all electricity users. In total the seven-year scheme could transfer up to $135 million from households without solar to 73,000 households with solar, a Government taskforce found.

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    Businesses will have to pay for the other 70 per cent of the scheme – $315 million.

    Electricity users are already facing power price rises of up to 60 per cent over the next three years – on top of a 20 per cent rise last July.

    The head of the nation’s biggest solar panel company told The Daily Telegraph the NSW scheme was unsustainable, creating a short-term boom before a bust that could put 1000 people out of work. “I know it’s not a sustainable policy,” Solar Shop managing director Adrian Ferraretto said. “It’s way too generous.”

    The scheme also covers households which already have panels, even though the Government task force advised that “including existing solar PV owners would increase the cost of the scheme, whilst not increasing the benefits of the scheme”.

    About $30 million is likely to be paid to these households. This will not create a single job or further reduce carbon emissions. The scheme is not means tested, either, so the wealthy are most likely to take advantage of it.

    The Government taskforce received many submissions about inequity. In its report it acknowledged the “policy is a cross subsidy that imposes costs on all consumers but does not provide access to all due to the high capital costs of installations”.

    A solar PV systems costs a minimum of $12,500. But the Federal Government subsidises this, too.

    Mr Ferraretto – whose company installs one in four systems in Australia – said consumers could now “double-dip” on the Federal and State schemes. He argued that the NSW Government should reduce the pay rate from 60c/kwh.

    “That rate is very generous given we have the (Federal Government’s) solar credits working in tandem with it.
    “Most countries have one or the other, not both,” he said.

    The consequence of the NSW policy would be to create up to 1000 jobs for installers in 2010, Mr Ferraretto said. But the scheme’s 50 megawatt-hour cap would probably be hit the following year.

    “In 12 or 18 months’ time there won’t be any business for those skilled workers,” Mr Ferraretto said.

    The scheme has also been criticised for the effect it will have on other eco-friendly power projects. It will significant increase the number of Renewable Energy Certificates on the market. This pushes REC prices down.

    A low REC price makes wind farms, for instance, less economically viable.

    A spokeswoman for Energy Minister John Robertson said the Government received feedback welcoming the changes. And it would only cost a household $7.50 a year, she said. It would be reviewed in 2011 or when the cap was reached — whichever occurred first.

    John and Madeline Forbes of Pymble had panels installed a month ago. Mr Forbes said he expected to sell about $2800 of solar power to his electricity provider and buy only $1100.

    “They should send us a cheque for $1700,” Mr Forbes said.

    Too much of a good thing? Blog with John Rolfe

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  • US Offshore Wind Project Updates

     

    Project Updates

    But just which project will get that first turbine in the water is still a matter of speculation. In total there are four companies with more than 10 projects in different states of development. Each company — Cape Wind, Bluewater Wind, Fisherman’s Energy and Deepwater Wind — is developing projects on the East Coast.

    The most well-publicized and possibly controversial offshore wind project in the U.S. is Cape Wind. The project, which has spend eight years in development, would put turbines in Massachusetts’ Nantucket Sound. The project had a lot of opposition to overcome, first from residents in towns on the sound worried it would ruin their views and lead to higher electricity prices, and later from environmental groups concerned with the wildlife impact. These issues have since been addressed.

    More recently, a group of Native Americans have said the project would obscure the view from an ancient burial ground, this issue is working its way through the regulatory process and is expected to be resolved by the end of 2009.

    Not all of the news about Cape Wind has been negative however. The project was given a favorable Environmental Impact Statement from the U.S. Minerals Management Service, its grid connection in Barnstable, Massachusetts was approved by the Massachusetts Citing Board and National Grid has said that it will negotiate a power purchase agreement for the electricity the project might one day produce.

    Jim Gordon, president of Cape Wind said that he thinks the U.S. will see an offshore wind project realized sooner rather later and its one of the keys to fighting the effects of climate change, especially for East Coast cities like Boston where trillions of dollars worth of infrastructure could be damaged or destroyed by rising seas and stronger storms that would be a result of climate change and an economy that needs to put people back to work to grow.

    “Right now if Cape Wind was operating we would be producing 422 megawatts of clean renewable energy. That’s 422 megawatts of emissions free power that blows off our coast that will be harnessed by workers from this region,” Gordon said. “The Natural Resources Defense Council has said that Cape Wind represents one of the largest single greenhouse gas reduction initiatives in the United States. We’ve missed out these many years on mitigating many tons of greenhouse gases, but I believe and I hope that the American offshore wind industry is no going to emerge and reach its full potential.”

    While Massachusetts has been the first stand of sorts for offshore wind, Delaware might be the spot of the industry’s first major victory. Bluewater Wind, formerly owned by Babcock and Brown, and now a subsidiary of NRG Energy, has leases in place and is set to deploy a series of meteorological (met) towers to determine the best sites for turbines in 2010.

    The company also has one 200-MW PPA in place with Delmarva Power and has been selected to provide 55 MW of power to the state of Maryland under a PPA. Bluewater CEO Peter Mandelstam said that the company has interconnection agreements in place and also begun the federal permitting process.  He said the process is easier now as a result of the Obama Administration’s renewable energy goals.

    “The most important investor, the most important advocate and the most important public official for offshore wind is President Barack Obama. This industry was dead, but the restructuring of the tax credit, the loan guarantees, the various stimulus provisions and the new regulatory regime totally revived us. We can’t say enough good things about President Barack Obama. He mentioned our Delaware project on Earth Day and going into Copenhagen, he talked about offshore as one of his six pillars to mitigating climate change,” Mandelstam said.

    Two other development companies, Fishermen’s Energy and Deepwater Wind are taking different approaches to developing offshore wind projects.

    Fishermen’s Energy is taking what it calls a community-based approach to offshore wind. The company was founded by leading Northeast commercial fishing companies so that they could be part of and benefit from the emerging offshore renewable energy industry. The company’s CEO Dan Cohen said that commercial fishing executives knew there was a need for workers to do the construction, operations and maintenance for offshore wind projects, jobs uniquely suited to commercial fishermen who already work offshore and the know waters.

    Fisherman’s is involved in two projects: the first is a 350-MW project that the company plans to work on in conjunction with Bluewater Wind and Deepwater Wind. The second is demonstration project located in the waters just off the coast of Atlantic City, New Jersey. This 20-MW project is expected to be built by 2012 and rules for the build out of this project are currently drafted by the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities.

    Deepwater Wind plans to do exactly what’s implied by its name, namely build projects 15-20 miles offshore, minimizing the impact of not-in-my-backyard (NIMBY) protests and taking advantage of the stronger wind regimes in those waters. The company has been awarded met tower leases and plans to put them in the water in the next year.

    Deepwater, which is part of a consortium developing a project in the waters off Long Island, expects that its first project in the water will be the 30-MW Block Island project off the coast of Rhode Island, which is still pending federal approval. In conjunction with this project, the company is also working to develop Quonset Point, a former U.S. Navy base, into a dedicated offshore wind development hub for the Southern New England area.

    Hurdles Still to Overcome

    Some challenges remain however. First and foremost is the lack of the vessels needed to install these projects. There are currently no vessels in the U.S. equipped to install these turbines, and while a number of them exist in Europe they cannot simply be brought across the Atlantic Ocean and put to work.

    The Jones Act precludes any European based specialty vessel from taking part in commerce in U.S. waters, including the installation of offshore energy projects. While many have suggested that ships used by the oil industry could simply be converted, the cost would likely be prohibitive and U.S. ship builders will have to build wind specific vessels, which Mandelstam said will create thousands of jobs for ports and ship builders that take advantage of the need.

    “Seven thousand seven hundred green jobs would be created by building three turbine installation vessels,” he said. “As chairman of the offshore group in the U.S., I participated during the Bush Administration to analyze how we’d get to 20% wind, including 54,000 MW of offshore wind. The choke point is vessels. The Obama Administration has put up a TIGER Grant and the Philadelphia Regional Port Authority has applied and we may gain access to those vessels if there’s an announcement in February 2010.”

    Like any other renewable energy or conventional generating assets, in order for offshore wind projects to be built they will need transmission lines and utilities willing to buy the electricity they carry. In some ways this is where the U.S. industry is putting the cart before the horse.

    Transmission plans are already underway within the ISO New England region to bring tens of gigawatts of wind power online and the ISO has produced a report for New England’s Governors Association presenting them with a number of scenarios that would bring offshore wind energy to residents of New England.

    Even though this transmission capacity is still in the planning stage, utilities are lining up to buy the power once its online. Delmarva Power, National Grid, the state of Maryland and the Long Island Power Authority have already signed power purchase agreements (PPAs) with developers. The biggest advantage that utilities and ISO New England are looking at is the location of offshore wind resources. Who pays for it however remains the big question.

    Gordon van Welie, president of ISO New England said that while his company has made a number of transmission investments onshore, they need to wait for a national renewable energy and transmission plan to be in place before a scenario from their report to governors, most likely costing around $6 billion, is chosen and invested in.

    “The rhinoceros in the room is the transmission cost allocation,” Welie said, referring to the fact that who pays for the $6 billion in transmission will depend on who is thought to be getting the most benefit from its installation and costs are likely to be split between project developers, grid operators and utilities.

    Possibly the largest challenge facing U.S. offshore wind energy developers however is the lack of a stable policy and incentive regime that would bring more players into the industry, from all sides. No matter the policy, be it feed-in tariff, production tax credit, cash grants or renewable energy credits, developers, financiers, utilities and grid operators are calling for more stable incentives and policies.

    Long term policy surety would give banks more confidence investing in infrastructure, transmission, construction operations and maintenance vessels as well as generating equipment. Rhode Island Governor Donand Carcieri, who serves as vice chairman of the Governors’ Wind Energy Coalition said that while the states are leading the way, a federal standard is needed to move forward.

    “Offshore wind power is one of the most reliable and sustainable sources of energy in the United States, and we are on the path to develop this nation’s first deep water, offshore wind project,” Governor Carcieri said. “The impact of offshore wind is tremendous, from spurring economic development and new jobs to providing stable energy costs, and will move our country towards energy independence.”

  • New Labs to Concentrate on Solar Thermal Energy

     

    NREL is studying new thermal storage materials and technologies that will allow CSP plants to work at higher temperatures and greater efficiencies, while lowering the cost of energy produced by these systems.

    DOE’s goal is to make CSP cost-competitive by 2015 and provide a sizeable amount of clean energy to the grid by 2020.

    Rapid Growth Expected

    Enlarge image

    Mark Mehos, manager of the concentrating solar power program, says much of the ARRA funding for the CPS program will be spent on new facilities to improve thermal storage and other CSP technologies.
    Credit: Pat Corkery

    CSP plants are generating about 600 megawatts of electricity today, mostly in the United States and Spain. An additional 1,000 megawatts are under construction by utilities in sunny regions such as the desert Southwest.

    In the U.S., an additional 8 gigawatts of CSP are being planned. Internationally, a similar level of CPS development is underway.

    NREL maintains an online database of CSP projects and technologies with SolarPACES, an international cooperative organization, to track CPS development worldwide.

    NREL and Sandia National Laboratories are funded by DOE to develop CSP technologies.

    “The CSP industry is growing rapidly and needs DOE’s help to evaluate technologies that will make projects more financeable,” said CSP program manager Mark Mehos.

    “The industry needs performance and durability data in everything from materials to systems,” he said. “And on the R&D side, these new facilities will help us develop the next generation of materials and systems.”

    Two of the NREL facilities — the Advanced Thermal Storage Process and Components Integration Laboratory and the Optical Components Characterization Laboratory — will be located in NREL’s new Energy Systems Integration Facility (ESIF), which is scheduled to be completed in late 2011.

    Department of Energy funding will be used in four important areas:

    1. Advanced Thermal Storage Process and Components Integration Laboratory, $660,000.

    Economically storing thermal energy for generating electricity during peak utility load periods is vital if CSP is going to help meet clean energy demand. Mehos said this new facility would include two test units — one 15 kilowatt and the other 100 kilowatt — to evaluate advanced CSP heat transfer fluids and thermal energy storage methods. The lab will test concepts being developed through grants awarded to industry and universities for developing advanced fluids and storage concepts.

    2. Advanced Optical Materials and Optical Components Characterization and Integration Laboratories, $1.36 million.

    Enlarge image

    Florian Sutter, a visiting German researcher, uses a specular refractometer in the Advanced Optical Materials Laboratory that will be improved with new federal funding.
    Credit: Pat Corkery

    NREL’s existing advanced optical materials laboratories develop and test new lower-cost, durable optics and coatings for mirrors and receivers. Weatherization chambers currently expose a large number of advanced reflector materials under accelerated conditions of ultraviolet light, temperature and humidity. An advanced deposition chamber is being used to develop advanced reflector and absorber coatings. A diverse set of optical characterization equipment is used to evaluate the optical properties of advanced materials. Currently NREL has three laboratories located in the Field Test Laboratory Building doing versions of this work. A portion of the funding will be used to expand the capabilities within each of these laboratories.

    NREL researchers already have worked with one CSP company, Sky Fuel of Albuquerque, N.M., to develop a film-based optical coating on an aluminum parabolic shaped substrate to replace heavier, breakable glass mirrors. That development won a 2009 R&D 100 award. “Sky Fuel’s material is the furthest along,” Mehos said. “But other companies — 3M, Alcoa, Abengoa — also are looking at new materials.”

    Some equipment for the ARRA-funded improvements is being installed now at NREL’s Advanced Optical Materials Laboratory, including four new WeatherOmeters to test mirrors and other CSP components. At $120,000 to $160,000 apiece, these advanced chambers use xenon arc lamps and other systems to concentrate sunlight at about seven times typical outdoor exposure. They also simulate the freeze-thaw cycle and other conditions.

    “We can’t wait 30 years to find out if the new mirrors for CSP systems will actually last for 30 years,” said NREL senior scientist Cheryl Kennedy who leads the advanced materials team developing and testing reflector and absorber materials. “We do acceleration tests in these chambers that will be working 24 hours a day, seven days a week.”

    NREL also supports optical characterization of industry-furnished collectors and mirror facets at an indoor laboratory located at NREL’s Joyce Street facility. Currently, the only practical orientation for indoor and field testing of complete parabolic trough modules has been an arrangement in which the collector axis points to the horizon.

    However, rarely – if ever – does the CSP collector point toward the horizon during normal operation. Mehos said it is important to test these collectors under standard operating conditions where effects like gravity can impact optical performance. With this in mind, the funding will allow researchers to develop an overhead test configuration that will accommodate full parabolic trough module testing in the vertical position to more closely simulate real-world operations.

    3. Nanomaterials for Thermal Energy Storage in CSP Plants, $1 million.

    This project will develop new nanomaterials and encapsulation strategies that could lead to significant improvements in the thermal energy storage density for CSP systems. The nanostructure research leverages NREL’s existing fundamental materials research program.

    4. Advanced Thermal Energy Storage Test and Evaluation Facility, $2.4 million.

    Enlarge image

    SolarTAC, as it appears in this artist’s illustration, will be a unique test site for photovoltaic and concentrating solar power technologies. Ultilities and roadways are being installed now at the 80-acre site near Denver International Airport.
    Courtesy of SolarTAC

    This pilot-scale facility will be built 30 miles east of the Laboratory in Aurora, Colo., at the new SolarTAC. The SolarTAC site near Denver International Airport is being privately developed as a test site for industry with NREL’s participation, both for large-scale photovoltaic and CSP trials. Being able to test advanced thermal energy storage systems for CSP at scale is essential to developing and deploying these new concepts commercially. The proposed pilot-scale storage facility will provide a general-purpose test bed available specifically to support DOE laboratory, industry, and university test and evaluation activities.

    NREL’s plans were endorsed in letters to DOE by more than two dozen corporate and university leaders in solar research.

    “One of the key advantages is that it will be possible to get direct comparisons of competing thermal energy storage concepts,” said Henry Price, vice president of technology development at Abengoa Solar Inc. “More cost-effective forms of thermal energy storage need to be developed.”

    Joseph B. Verrengia writes for the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in Golden, Colorado.

    This article originally appeared as a National Renewable Energy Laboratory feature article and was reprinted with permission.

  • Sydney, Melbourne can’t handle growth targets

     

    “If we don’t, not only will we have pretty awful cities in the future, but I believe we will never get the large cities that are being discussed, because they will be too dysfunctional and people will move away,” said Professor Newman from Curtin University’s Sustainability Policy Institute. “It’s a scenario not that far off now.”

     
     

      

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    Since Wayne Swan’s speech in October that confirmed the soon-to-be-published third Intergenerational Report projects Australia’s population to reach 35 million by 2049 from its current 22 million, the shape of the nation’s big cities has been much discussed.

    Treasury secretary Ken Henry told a business leader’s forum in Queensland in March the anticipated population expansion had “a host of implications for the Australian economy and society, and it raises a number of profound issues for economic policy”.

    “Where will these 13 million people live? In our current major cities and regional centres or in cities we haven’t yet even started to build?” Mr Henry asked.

    “How will Sydney cope with a 54 per cent increase in population, Melbourne a 74 per cent increase and Brisbane a 106 per cent increase? Surely not by continuing to expand their geographic footprints at the same rate as in the past several decades. Surely not by loading more cars and trucks on to road networks that can’t cope with today’s traffic.”

    The issue has engaged Kevin Rudd, who has not only met at least twice with capital-city lord mayors, but also demanded states and territories develop capital city strategic plans by 2012 that adhere to national criteria for transport, urban development and sustainability or risk future commonwealth infrastructure funding.

    Professor Newman, who is a board member of Infrastructure Australia, said the lack of public transport in new suburbs on the outskirts of major cities was “rapidly becoming a major social justice issue”.

    “The outer suburbs are less and less rail based and more and more car based, and as petrol goes up this hurts less well-off people most,” he said. “We’ve been building our cities around the car and it’s now catching up with us.”

    Professor Newman said, despite the continuing expansion of the big cities, “a lot of people’s preference would be to live in smaller houses more centrally located”.

    “But the options that are rolled out by developers continue to assume the market is for bigger and bigger houses on suburban blocks,” Professor Newman said.

    However, Bob Stimson, professor of geographical sciences and planning at the University of Queensland, says we “shouldn’t be scared of sprawl”.

    “There’s no shortage of land. Fringe housing developments create more affordable housing particularly for first-home buyers, and it creates the sort of housing that is still the preference for families,” Professor Stimson says.

    “One of the consequences of restricting sprawl and pushing more medium-density housing closer to the city centre is that it is socially discriminating. It pushes up the per-unit cost of housing and makes it less affordable for lower-income households.”

    While Professor Stimsonagrees with Professor Newman that urban rail transport is important, he says it shouldn’t be the sole focus. “So can a good freeway system. It’s not a matter of either/or, but both,” he said.

    Jane-Frances Kelly, program director for cities at the Grattan Institute, warned families buying into car-dependent outer suburbs might be basing their purchase on incorrect financial assumptions.

    “In these suburbs people have made the trade-off of affordability in terms of space, size of backyards etc against the lack of public transport, but that equation will change completely as the price of oil rises,” Ms Kelly says.

    Professor Newman said finding a solution was not a lost cause, with Perth’s public transport system a template for how things could work. “From 1992 until now, Perth has gone from seven million passengers a year to 115 million a year on rail. With the right processes you can generate change.”