Wednesday, November 30, 2011
Saturday, November 26, 2011
Friday, November 25, 2011
Tuesday, November 22, 2011
Monday, November 21, 2011
Friday, November 18, 2011
Wednesday, November 16, 2011
New Jersey: The Little Solar Deutschland of America : Greentech Media
New Jersey: The Little Solar Deutschland of America : Greentech Media
First and foremost, the trend toward distributed generation has helped build a local PV industry. According to the National Solar Jobs Census for 2011, there are over 100,000 solar jobs in the U.S. -- and over 40 percent of those jobs are in installation. Create a locally driven, locally owned industry, and you create local jobs. Not only that, but you generate wealth for the local businesses who own solar installations. For instance, real estate owners that put solar on their buildings can help differentiate themselves in the market, offer tenants more stable and reduced electricity charges and create an additional revenue source. All of this increases local economic viability. It helps the bottom line of the local businesses that operate in New Jersey and increases the value of the real estate assets. This is a tangible but not often discussed virtue of PV.
A market driven by small distributed generation installations can reach a viable scale, and we believe that this approach is more sustainable in the long term. Other markets have succeeded at growing a scalable market in just this fashion. In 2009, the German Solar Energy Industry Association estimated that roughly 80 percent of the total installed capacity was roof-based. Furthermore, they estimated that two-thirds of all the volume installed in Germany consisted of installations under 100 kilowatts. As the solar market in Germany has shown us, commercial and residential PV can create a large market and contribute to a vibrant economy. We hope to encourage a similar market dynamic in New Jersey.
Distributed generation is a stronger option for local business growth and wealth generation than large, distantly owned utility-scale PV farms. Photovoltaic technology is uniquely suited to small- and medium-sized generation installations due to its small footprint and modular nature. We need to evolve the conversation from the cost of PV to the value of PV. New Jersey has the potential to demonstrate the true value of a local distributed PV industry. New Jersey should provide the template for the rest of the country to follow.
First and foremost, the trend toward distributed generation has helped build a local PV industry. According to the National Solar Jobs Census for 2011, there are over 100,000 solar jobs in the U.S. -- and over 40 percent of those jobs are in installation. Create a locally driven, locally owned industry, and you create local jobs. Not only that, but you generate wealth for the local businesses who own solar installations. For instance, real estate owners that put solar on their buildings can help differentiate themselves in the market, offer tenants more stable and reduced electricity charges and create an additional revenue source. All of this increases local economic viability. It helps the bottom line of the local businesses that operate in New Jersey and increases the value of the real estate assets. This is a tangible but not often discussed virtue of PV.
A market driven by small distributed generation installations can reach a viable scale, and we believe that this approach is more sustainable in the long term. Other markets have succeeded at growing a scalable market in just this fashion. In 2009, the German Solar Energy Industry Association estimated that roughly 80 percent of the total installed capacity was roof-based. Furthermore, they estimated that two-thirds of all the volume installed in Germany consisted of installations under 100 kilowatts. As the solar market in Germany has shown us, commercial and residential PV can create a large market and contribute to a vibrant economy. We hope to encourage a similar market dynamic in New Jersey.
Distributed generation is a stronger option for local business growth and wealth generation than large, distantly owned utility-scale PV farms. Photovoltaic technology is uniquely suited to small- and medium-sized generation installations due to its small footprint and modular nature. We need to evolve the conversation from the cost of PV to the value of PV. New Jersey has the potential to demonstrate the true value of a local distributed PV industry. New Jersey should provide the template for the rest of the country to follow.
Solar Centre: About Desert Knowledge Australia Solar Centre
Solar Centre: About Desert Knowledge Australia Solar Centre
The Desert Knowledge Australia Solar Centre (DKASC) is a demonstration facility for commercialised solar technologies operating in the arid solar conditions of Alice Springs, Central Australia.
The Desert Knowledge Australia Solar Centre (DKASC) is a demonstration facility for commercialised solar technologies operating in the arid solar conditions of Alice Springs, Central Australia.
Sunday, November 13, 2011
SolarThermalPowergeneration_Final.pdf (application/pdf Object)
SolarThermalPowergeneration_Final.pdf (application/pdf Object)
Making solar thermal power generation in India a reality – Overview of technologies, opportunities and challenges
Making solar thermal power generation in India a reality – Overview of technologies, opportunities and challenges
Discussion Paper 1st November, 2011 Gujarat Electricity Regulatory Commissigerc-final-discussion-paper-of-solar-2012-2015.pdf (application/pdf Object)
gerc-final-discussion-paper-of-solar-2012-2015.pdf (application/pdf Object)
Discussion Paper
1st November, 2011
Gujarat Electricity Regulatory Commission (GERC)
1st Floor, Neptune Tower
Ashram Road, Opp. Nehru Bridge
Ahmedabad, Gujarat – 380 009
INDIA
DISCUSSION PAPER ON DETERMINATION OF TARIFF FOR PROCUREMENT OF POWER BY DISTRIBUTION LICENSEES AND OTHERS FROM SOLAR ENERGY PROJECTS FOR THE STATE OF GUJARAT
Discussion Paper
1st November, 2011
Gujarat Electricity Regulatory Commission (GERC)
1st Floor, Neptune Tower
Ashram Road, Opp. Nehru Bridge
Ahmedabad, Gujarat – 380 009
INDIA
DISCUSSION PAPER ON DETERMINATION OF TARIFF FOR PROCUREMENT OF POWER BY DISTRIBUTION LICENSEES AND OTHERS FROM SOLAR ENERGY PROJECTS FOR THE STATE OF GUJARAT
Friday, November 11, 2011
Thursday, November 10, 2011
Solar cheaper than fossil fuels in a decade, says Steven Chu | Grist
Solar cheaper than fossil fuels in a decade, says Steven Chu | Grist
Economics is crap. It relentlessly sifts out the most trivial and inconsequential aspects of
society and the world, filters them through the most epistemologically naive, false
and ridiculous--that is, insane--beliefs of a few people systematically chosen
for their beholdennes to the process, and obsessively runs its hands through
that "data" over and over and over and over to come up with its
utterly absurd conclusions while it and the world around it are being burned
away by its ignor-ance of everything real. When are we going to stop paying
attention to this made-up game and start paying attention to reality?
Regardless of a few cents per kilowatt-hour paid by one person or another, renewables are
the only possible energy sources. The only viable energy sources, the only
rational, sustainable, currently sensible (literally and figuratively) energy
sources. Everyone who knows this steal a farmed salmon from Wal-Mart and beat
everyone over the head with it who's so completely dense they don't know or
fails to admit this.
Economics is crap. It relentlessly sifts out the most trivial and inconsequential aspects of
society and the world, filters them through the most epistemologically naive, false
and ridiculous--that is, insane--beliefs of a few people systematically chosen
for their beholdennes to the process, and obsessively runs its hands through
that "data" over and over and over and over to come up with its
utterly absurd conclusions while it and the world around it are being burned
away by its ignor-ance of everything real. When are we going to stop paying
attention to this made-up game and start paying attention to reality?
Regardless of a few cents per kilowatt-hour paid by one person or another, renewables are
the only possible energy sources. The only viable energy sources, the only
rational, sustainable, currently sensible (literally and figuratively) energy
sources. Everyone who knows this steal a farmed salmon from Wal-Mart and beat
everyone over the head with it who's so completely dense they don't know or
fails to admit this.
Smaller, cheaper, faster: Does Moore’s law apply to solar cells? | Guest Blog, Scientific American Blog Network
Smaller, cheaper, faster: Does Moore’s law apply to solar cells? | Guest Blog, Scientific American Blog Network
In 88 minutes, the sun provides 470 exajoules of energy, as much energy as humanity consumes in a year. In 112 hours – less than five days – it provides 36 zettajoules of energy – as much energy as is contained in all proven reserves of oil, coal, and natural gas on this planet.
If humanity could capture one tenth of one percent of the solar energy striking the earth – one part in one thousand – we would have access to six times as much energy as we consume in all forms today, with almost no greenhouse gas emissions. At the current rate of energy consumption increase – about 1 percent per year – we will not be using that much energy for another 180 years.
The sun strikes every square meter of our planet with more than 1,360 watts of power. Half of that energy is absorbed by the atmosphere or reflected back into space. 700 watts of power, on average, reaches Earth’s surface. Summed across the half of the Earth that the sun is shining on, that is 89 petawatts of power. By comparison, all of human civilization uses around 15 terrawatts of power, or one six-thousandth as much. In 14 and a half seconds, the sun provides as much energy to Earth as humanity uses in a day.
The numbers are staggering and surprising. In 88 minutes, the sun provides 470 exajoules of energy, as much energy as humanity consumes in a year. In 112 hours – less than five days – it provides 36 zettajoules of energy – as much energy as is contained in all proven reserves of oil, coal, and natural gas on this planet.
If humanity could capture one tenth of one percent of the solar energy striking the earth – one part in one thousand – we would have access to six times as much energy as we consume in all forms today, with almost no greenhouse gas emissions. At the current rate of energy consumption increase – about 1 percent per year – we will not be using that much energy for another 180 years.
It’s small wonder, then, that scientists and entrepreneurs alike are investing in solar energy technologies to capture some of the abundant power around us. Yet solar power is still a miniscule fraction of all power generation capacity on the planet. There is at most 30 gigawatts of solar generating capacity deployed today, or about 0.2 percent of all energy production. Up until now, while solar energy has been abundant, the systems to capture it have been expensive and inefficient.
That is changing. Over the last 30 years, researchers have watched as the price of capturing solar energy has dropped exponentially. There’s now frequent talk of a "Moore’s law" in solar energy. In computing, Moore’s law dictates that the number of components that can be placed on a chip doubles every 18 months. More practically speaking, the amount of computing power you can buy for a dollar has roughly doubled every 18 months, for decades. That’s the reason that the phone in your pocket has thousands of times as much memory and ten times as much processing power as a famed Cray 1 supercomputer, while weighing ounces compared to the Cray’s 10,000 lb bulk, fitting in your pocket rather than a large room, and costing tens or hundreds of dollars rather than tens of millions.
If similar dynamics worked in solar power technology, then we would eventually have the solar equivalent of an iPhone – incredibly cheap, mass distributed energy technology that was many times more effective than the giant and centralized technologies it was born from.
So is there such a phenomenon? The National Renewable Energy Laboratory of the U.S. Department of Energy has watched solar photovoltaic price trends since 1980. They’ve seen the price per Watt of solar modules (not counting installation) drop from $22 dollars in 1980 down to under $3 today.
Is this really an exponential curve? And is it continuing to drop at the same rate, or is it leveling off in recent years? To know if a process is exponential, we plot it on a log scale.
And indeed, it follows a nearly straight line on a log scale. Some years the price changes more than others. Averaged over 30 years, the trend is for an annual 7 percent reduction in the dollars per watt of solar photovoltaic cells. While in the earlier part of this decade prices flattened for a few years, the sharp decline in 2009 made up for that and put the price reduction back on track. Data from 2010 (not included above) shows at least a 30 percent further price reduction, putting solar prices ahead of this trend.
If we look at this another way, in terms of the amount of power we can get for $100, we see a continual rise on a log scale.
What’s driving these changes? There are two factors. First, solar cell manufacturers are learning – much as computer chip manufacturers keep learning – how to reduce the cost to fabricate solar.
Second, the efficiency of solar cells – the fraction of the sun’s energy that strikes them that they capture – is continually improving. In the lab, researchers have achieved solar efficiencies of as high as 41 percent, an unheard of efficiency 30 years ago. Inexpensive thin-film methods have achieved laboratory efficiencies as high as 20 percent, still twice as high as most of the solar systems in deployment today.
What do these trends mean for the future? If the 7 percent decline in costs continues (and 2010 and 2011 both look likely to beat that number), then in 20 years the cost per watt of PV cells will be just over 50 cents.
Indications are that the projections above are actually too conservative. First Solar corporation has announced internal production costs (though not consumer prices) of 75 cents per watt, and expects to hit 50 cents per watt in production cost in 2016. If they hit their estimates, they’ll be beating the trend above by a considerable margin.
What does the continual reduction in solar price per watt mean for electricity prices and carbon emissions? Historically, the cost of PV modules (what we’ve been using above) is about half the total installed cost of systems. The rest of the cost is installation. Fortunately, installation costs have also dropped at a similar pace to module costs. If we look at the price of electricity from solar systems in the U.S. and scale it for reductions in module cost, we get this:
The cost of solar, in the average location in the U.S., will cross the current average retail electricity price of 12 cents per kilowatt hour in around 2020, or 9 years from now. In fact, given that retail electricity prices are currently rising by a few percent per year, prices will probably cross earlier, around 2018 for the country as a whole, and as early as 2015 for the sunniest parts of America.
10 years later, in 2030, solar electricity is likely to cost half what coal electricity does today. Solar capacity is being built out at an exponential pace already. When the prices become so much more favorable than those of alternate energy sources, that pace will only accelerate.
We should always be careful of extrapolating trends out, of course. Natural processes have limits. Phenomena that look exponential eventually level off or become linear at a certain point. Yet physicists and engineers in the solar world are optimistic about their roadmaps for the coming decade. The cheapest solar modules, not yet on the market, have manufacturing costs under $1 per watt, making them contenders – when they reach the market – for breaking the 12 cents per Kwh mark.
The exponential trend in solar watts per dollar has been going on for at least 31 years now. If it continues for another 8-10, which looks extremely likely, we’ll have a power source which is as cheap as coal for electricity, with virtually no carbon emissions. If it continues for 20 years, which is also well within the realm of scientific and technical possibility, then we’ll have a green power source which is half the price of coal for electricity.
That’s good news for the world.
Sources and Further Reading:
Key World Energy Statistics 2010, International Energy Agency,
Tracking the Sun III: The Installed Cost of Photovoltaics in the U.S. from 1998-2009, Barbose, G., N. Darghouth, R. Wiser., LBNL-4121E, December 2010,
2008 Solar Technologies Market Report: January 2010, (2010). 131 pp. NREL Report TP-6A2-46025; DOE/GO-102010-2867,
In 88 minutes, the sun provides 470 exajoules of energy, as much energy as humanity consumes in a year. In 112 hours – less than five days – it provides 36 zettajoules of energy – as much energy as is contained in all proven reserves of oil, coal, and natural gas on this planet.
If humanity could capture one tenth of one percent of the solar energy striking the earth – one part in one thousand – we would have access to six times as much energy as we consume in all forms today, with almost no greenhouse gas emissions. At the current rate of energy consumption increase – about 1 percent per year – we will not be using that much energy for another 180 years.
The sun strikes every square meter of our planet with more than 1,360 watts of power. Half of that energy is absorbed by the atmosphere or reflected back into space. 700 watts of power, on average, reaches Earth’s surface. Summed across the half of the Earth that the sun is shining on, that is 89 petawatts of power. By comparison, all of human civilization uses around 15 terrawatts of power, or one six-thousandth as much. In 14 and a half seconds, the sun provides as much energy to Earth as humanity uses in a day.
The numbers are staggering and surprising. In 88 minutes, the sun provides 470 exajoules of energy, as much energy as humanity consumes in a year. In 112 hours – less than five days – it provides 36 zettajoules of energy – as much energy as is contained in all proven reserves of oil, coal, and natural gas on this planet.
If humanity could capture one tenth of one percent of the solar energy striking the earth – one part in one thousand – we would have access to six times as much energy as we consume in all forms today, with almost no greenhouse gas emissions. At the current rate of energy consumption increase – about 1 percent per year – we will not be using that much energy for another 180 years.
It’s small wonder, then, that scientists and entrepreneurs alike are investing in solar energy technologies to capture some of the abundant power around us. Yet solar power is still a miniscule fraction of all power generation capacity on the planet. There is at most 30 gigawatts of solar generating capacity deployed today, or about 0.2 percent of all energy production. Up until now, while solar energy has been abundant, the systems to capture it have been expensive and inefficient.
That is changing. Over the last 30 years, researchers have watched as the price of capturing solar energy has dropped exponentially. There’s now frequent talk of a "Moore’s law" in solar energy. In computing, Moore’s law dictates that the number of components that can be placed on a chip doubles every 18 months. More practically speaking, the amount of computing power you can buy for a dollar has roughly doubled every 18 months, for decades. That’s the reason that the phone in your pocket has thousands of times as much memory and ten times as much processing power as a famed Cray 1 supercomputer, while weighing ounces compared to the Cray’s 10,000 lb bulk, fitting in your pocket rather than a large room, and costing tens or hundreds of dollars rather than tens of millions.
If similar dynamics worked in solar power technology, then we would eventually have the solar equivalent of an iPhone – incredibly cheap, mass distributed energy technology that was many times more effective than the giant and centralized technologies it was born from.
So is there such a phenomenon? The National Renewable Energy Laboratory of the U.S. Department of Energy has watched solar photovoltaic price trends since 1980. They’ve seen the price per Watt of solar modules (not counting installation) drop from $22 dollars in 1980 down to under $3 today.
Is this really an exponential curve? And is it continuing to drop at the same rate, or is it leveling off in recent years? To know if a process is exponential, we plot it on a log scale.
And indeed, it follows a nearly straight line on a log scale. Some years the price changes more than others. Averaged over 30 years, the trend is for an annual 7 percent reduction in the dollars per watt of solar photovoltaic cells. While in the earlier part of this decade prices flattened for a few years, the sharp decline in 2009 made up for that and put the price reduction back on track. Data from 2010 (not included above) shows at least a 30 percent further price reduction, putting solar prices ahead of this trend.
If we look at this another way, in terms of the amount of power we can get for $100, we see a continual rise on a log scale.
What’s driving these changes? There are two factors. First, solar cell manufacturers are learning – much as computer chip manufacturers keep learning – how to reduce the cost to fabricate solar.
Second, the efficiency of solar cells – the fraction of the sun’s energy that strikes them that they capture – is continually improving. In the lab, researchers have achieved solar efficiencies of as high as 41 percent, an unheard of efficiency 30 years ago. Inexpensive thin-film methods have achieved laboratory efficiencies as high as 20 percent, still twice as high as most of the solar systems in deployment today.
What do these trends mean for the future? If the 7 percent decline in costs continues (and 2010 and 2011 both look likely to beat that number), then in 20 years the cost per watt of PV cells will be just over 50 cents.
Indications are that the projections above are actually too conservative. First Solar corporation has announced internal production costs (though not consumer prices) of 75 cents per watt, and expects to hit 50 cents per watt in production cost in 2016. If they hit their estimates, they’ll be beating the trend above by a considerable margin.
What does the continual reduction in solar price per watt mean for electricity prices and carbon emissions? Historically, the cost of PV modules (what we’ve been using above) is about half the total installed cost of systems. The rest of the cost is installation. Fortunately, installation costs have also dropped at a similar pace to module costs. If we look at the price of electricity from solar systems in the U.S. and scale it for reductions in module cost, we get this:
The cost of solar, in the average location in the U.S., will cross the current average retail electricity price of 12 cents per kilowatt hour in around 2020, or 9 years from now. In fact, given that retail electricity prices are currently rising by a few percent per year, prices will probably cross earlier, around 2018 for the country as a whole, and as early as 2015 for the sunniest parts of America.
10 years later, in 2030, solar electricity is likely to cost half what coal electricity does today. Solar capacity is being built out at an exponential pace already. When the prices become so much more favorable than those of alternate energy sources, that pace will only accelerate.
We should always be careful of extrapolating trends out, of course. Natural processes have limits. Phenomena that look exponential eventually level off or become linear at a certain point. Yet physicists and engineers in the solar world are optimistic about their roadmaps for the coming decade. The cheapest solar modules, not yet on the market, have manufacturing costs under $1 per watt, making them contenders – when they reach the market – for breaking the 12 cents per Kwh mark.
The exponential trend in solar watts per dollar has been going on for at least 31 years now. If it continues for another 8-10, which looks extremely likely, we’ll have a power source which is as cheap as coal for electricity, with virtually no carbon emissions. If it continues for 20 years, which is also well within the realm of scientific and technical possibility, then we’ll have a green power source which is half the price of coal for electricity.
That’s good news for the world.
Sources and Further Reading:
Key World Energy Statistics 2010, International Energy Agency,
Tracking the Sun III: The Installed Cost of Photovoltaics in the U.S. from 1998-2009, Barbose, G., N. Darghouth, R. Wiser., LBNL-4121E, December 2010,
2008 Solar Technologies Market Report: January 2010, (2010). 131 pp. NREL Report TP-6A2-46025; DOE/GO-102010-2867,
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