Tag: "solar energy"

SOTU: President Obama’s Reckless Energy Policy

Last night, President Obama gave his final State of the Union (SOTU) address to the nation. He briefly discussed energy policy:

Seven years ago, we made the single biggest investment in clean energy in our history.  Here are the results.  In fields from Iowa to Texas, wind power is now cheaper than dirtier, conventional power.  On rooftops from Arizona to New York, solar is saving Americans tens of millions of dollars a year on their energy bills, and employs more Americans than coal – in jobs that pay better than average.  We’re taking steps to give homeowners the freedom to generate and store their own energy – something environmentalists and Tea Partiers have teamed up to support.  Meanwhile, we’ve cut our imports of foreign oil by nearly sixty percent, and cut carbon pollution more than any other country on Earth.

Gas under two bucks a gallon ain’t bad, either.

Now we’ve got to accelerate the transition away from dirty energy.  Rather than subsidize the past, we should invest in the future – especially in communities that rely on fossil fuels.  That’s why I’m going to push to change the way we manage our oil and coal resources, so that they better reflect the costs they impose on taxpayers and our planet.  That way, we put money back into those communities and put tens of thousands of Americans to work building a 21st century transportation system.

Seven years ago, President Obama said he would bankrupt the coal industry, he has come pretty close to doing just that. The American coal industry is on the verge of collapse, with around 50 companies out of business and stock prices of the big four companies have fallen as much as 99 percent! Most recently, the second largest coal company has filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

In addition to all the regulations placed on the coal industry by the Obama administration, natural gas has experienced a boom due to new discoveries and the advanced technologies of hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling. Natural gas recently passed coal as America’s top source of energy power.

Despite the President’s efforts and the natural gas boom, coal is still a major source of American energy power. While, renewable energy is only supplying 6 percent of our electric power.

Wind power and solar power are also not cheap, compared to energy options such as natural gas and coal. The savings that the President is referring to are the very high subsidies that both the federal government and some states have been giving to individuals for buying wind or solar. Also, I am sure he is adding in the possible savings over something like 20 or 50 years. Yet leaving out the very high initial installation and maintenance costs.

The President’s SOTU last night coverage a variety of topics, including the reckless energy policy over the past seven years. An energy policy that has unnecessarily put our coal industry on life support, at a high cost to taxpayers and energy consumers.

Jan 13, 2016 | Leave a Comment | by

Let Wind and Solar Energy Subsides Expire

Wind energy is doing very well…even though renewable sources of energy are still just a fraction of energy output in the United States with significant federal and state subsides. The success that some states have had with wind energy production is encouraging other states to expand their wind energy production offshore. However, offshore wind facilities will be very expensive to build and maintain.

According to the Energy Information Administration (EIA):

  • Offshore wind is 2.6 times more expensive as onshore wind power and is 3.4 times more expensive than power produced by a natural gas combined cycle plant.
  • On a kilowatt hour basis, offshore wind power is estimated to cost 22.15 cents per kilowatt hour, while onshore wind is estimated to cost 8.66 cents per kilowatt hour and natural gas combined cycle is estimated to cost 6.56 per kilowatt hour.
  • Overnight capital costs (excludes financing charges) are 2.8 times higher for offshore wind than onshore wind power.
  • An offshore wind farm is estimated to cost $6,230 per kilowatt, while those costs for an onshore wind farm are estimated to be $2,213 per kilowatt.

Apparently, solar energy is now more affordable. If solar energy is now affordable, then the federal subsidies are no longer needed. These federal subsidies have provided wind and solar developers with as much as $24 billion from 2008 to 2014.

The biggest wind and solar tax credits have expired or will expire by 2016. Let the renewable energy sources compete in the market by letting their subsidies expire.

Nov 11, 2015 | 3 comments | by

Federal Solar Energy Subsidy Expires 2016

The Solar Investment Tax Credit (ITC) is expected to expire in 2016. The solar energy industry is trying to get another extension to last until the year 2022. They believe that without this critical subsidy, then they will lose 80,000 jobs in just 2017 alone.

  • The ITC is a 30 percent tax credit for solar systems on residential (under Section 25D) and commercial (under Section 48) properties.
  • The multiple-year extension of the residential and commercial solar ITC has helped annual solar installation grow by over 1,600 percent since the ITC was implemented in 2006 — a compound annual growth rate of 76 percent.

CEO of solar developer Greenwood Energy calls for reducing the ITC to 10 in 2017 and letting it expire in 2018.

As of December 2013, the United States Treasury Department had awarded more than $4.4 billion to solar projects.

Once the ITC expires, the solar energy market will level out, losing the inflated strength it has been receiving from the ITC and become more competitive within the energy market.

Sep 28, 2015 | Leave a Comment | by

The Global Solar Flight that Will Take Over a Year

Apparently, the Solar Impulse 2 has been grounded till next year due to battery problems. The plane’s batteries, which provide power for night flying, overheated during its recent five-day flight from Japan to Hawaii. The Solar Impulse 2 flight started in March of this year plans to resume by April of 2016. The Solar Impulse 2 has also made numerous stops on its global flight.

Solar Impulse 2:

  • Made of carbon fiber.
  • Has 17,248 solar cells with four motors.
  • Flies between 30 and 40 mph.
  • Seats one person as pilot.

Solar Impulse Chairman Bertrand Piccard sees the high-tech plane as proving the potential of renewable energy and clean technology, he also believes that the solar plane could spark increased interest in technologies such as LED lights and electric cars, as well as lightweight vehicles.

This was my vision when I created that project — it was to have an airplane that can fly with no fuel. This is fantastic, to prove that clean technology can achieve [the] impossible.

However, since WWII, planes have been making non-stop global flights in under 4 days, compared to this current flight that has numerous stops and will take over a year to complete.

Jul 20, 2015 | 1 comment | by

A Bumpy Ride for Germany’s Green Energy

The aim of the German Energiewende (also known as Germany’s Energy Transition) is to decarbonize the energy supply by increasing access to renewable energy and improving energy efficiency. A key part of the Energiewende is the outright rejection of nuclear power as an alternative to fossil fuels and the complete shutdown of nuclear facilities by 2022. The German government has also taken a stand against carbon capture and storage, calling it expensive and unsafe. The strategy focuses instead on wind, biomass (using landfill gas and agricultural waste products), hydropower, solar power, geothermal and ocean power.

So, how does Germany expect to transition to renewable energy so quickly?

  • Germany has been focusing on increasing wind power generation since the early 1990s. In 2014, onshore wind power provided 8.6 percent of the country’s power supply.
  • By 2020, Germany plans to triple the amount of energy produced by wind (both onshore and offshore).
  • Germany is aiming to have 6.5 gigawatts of installed offshore wind power by 2020.
  • Germany expects to increase citizen ownership of renewable sources, limiting the influence of large corporations, through the use of feed-in tariffs.
  • Increase “energy cooperatives” ― community-owned renewable projects, which have already garnered more than 1.2 billion euros in investment from more than 130,000 private citizens.

One of the most key impacts of Germany’s energy transition has been the democratization of energy resources. Turning traditional consumers into additional producers of energy has meant enacting generous support subsidies for renewables. This method seemed effective and by 2012 citizens and co-ops owned 47 percent of renewables, while energy suppliers controlled 12 percent and institutional and strategic investors owned 41 percent. In Freiburg, Germany, for example, citizens of the town of about 220,000 people funded a third of the investment cost for four turbines, with the rest coming from banks loans.

In 2014, the plan seemed to be on the right track and electricity from fossil fuels (including natural gas) hit a 35-year low. However, the German energy transition has hit a few bumpy spots along the way. Offshore wind has not taken off as it was supposed to and most Germans see it as a big business scheme. At the end of 2014, only 1 gigawatt of the total 6.5 gigawatts desired had been installed, with only 923 additional megawatts under construction.

The rush into renewables was also poorly timed and coincided with increased investments into traditional energy production by utility companies. The increased generation from both renewables and fossil-fuel power plants has overwhelmed demand causing prices to fall and hurt profits. Additionally, Germany had guaranteed above-market prices for newly installed renewable energy, to incentivize investment. The surge of renewables on the market are subsidized directly by a surcharge on customers, which increases in parallel with the addition of more renewable kilowatt hours. In the end, utilities have been forced to return to coal-powered plants due to the squeeze on profits.

Lauren Aragon is a research associate at the National Center for Policy Analysis

Jun 03, 2015 | Leave a Comment | by

Tesla Becomes The Harbinger Of Doom For Utilities

It’s rare to see a new product which could fundamentally change the way average Americans live, today is certainly not that day. However, upon announcing the Powerwall  and Powerback, Tesla innovators shined the media’s light on the 800 pound gorilla which has been staring American utility companies squarely in the face: batteries. Tesla is by no means alone or a first-mover in the battery market, with the construction of similar manufacturing facilities underway by mega-giants such as BMW, Ford, Chrysler, Nissan, BYD in China and Bosch in Germany.

Tesla’s electrical storage system falls short of being accessible to middle-class Americans, with the standalone cost of a single 10kWh Powerwall being quoted by the company as being $3,500 while SolarCity — Tesla’s manufacturing partner — declared the amount to be the wholesale cost, giving revised estimates of up to $7,000 per system. SolarCity also estimates that two systems will be necessary to disconnect completely from the electrical grid, raising the sticker price to $14,000 for complete energy independence — solar panels not included! The Powerwall may be scalable to the point where it becomes more economic than using the electrical grid, but the vast majority of consumers will never be able to shell out that kind of money for it.

So why was this announcement important for utilities?

Customers. First and most apparent, utilities are losing customers. Tesla Energy already has over 38,000 pre-ordered Powerwall systems, and has said itself that it has an inability to satiate market demand even given its pending factory. With the fixed costs of acquiring renewable energy instruments still high, it is likely that all sources of energy generation, renewables included, will see their long-term profitability fall as customers hoard their energy and use it more efficiently.

Arbitrage. The most ethereal yet costly threat utility companies may face is that of increasingly user-friendly and transmissible energy storage devices. Creating energy storage devices for entire homes which are as easily tradable and mobile as the average alkaline battery is not the technology of today, but the very real possibility of tomorrow. The ability for consumers to buy and completely cut-out utility companies by selling or trading energy locally is becoming more material with each improvement in these storage systems.

Speculators. The Energy Information Administration (EIA) sites that natural gas prices can fluctuate over the course of a day, with normal price volatility that can range from just a few cents to over twenty cents per million British Thermal Units (Btu) over 24 hours. Prices are typically highest at peak hours of the night, when most people are still awake. Suddenly, with the arrival of innovations such as the Powerwall, significant amounts of energy can be gathered from the grid during low-cost periods and sold back during peak hours. Every single system suddenly becomes an investment vehicle for minimizing household costs or even making money off of electricity producers. Excellent news for Americans with expensive Powerwall systems, and yet, damning to the many poor and middle-class consumers who will likely see gas prices rise because of it.

To survive, electrical production companies need a way to outcompete battery manufacturers while updating much of America’s aged and unreliable transmission infrastructure… without this, or a significant decrease in the cost of batteries, the grid may become an expensive necessity only the poor and middle-income are relegated to.

May 13, 2015 | 4 comments | by

Powerwall or Powerdream?

Elon Musk recently introduced Tesla Motor’s new battery power product for the home. The Powerwall is a lithium-ion battery that is four feet tall, three feet wide and seven inches deep. The goal of the new battery is to offer superior solar powered energy independence. Musk even said that he had Africa in mind when he developed this new home energy source.

  • One lithium-ion battery Powerwall costs $3,000.
  • The 220 pound Powerwall uses solar energy or builds up reserve energy for later consumption.
  • Daily-cycling Powerwall provides 7 kilowatt-hour capacity, 70 times to 100 times the power of a typical laptop battery.
  • Up to nine Powerwalls can be used in one home at one time to combine the power capacity, up to 63 kilowatt-hour.

While the new battery could prove to be a superior to alternative solar power batteries that are currently in use, it still is a product that is priced out of the market. The average energy consumption in the United States is about 30 kilowatt-hour. One Powerwall would provide less than a third of that energy demand, where the remaining demand must come from another energy source or sources. The average energy utility bill in the U.S. is $107 a month. If a third of that bill is about $36 and is covered by the Powerwall, it would take over 7 years before the savings would cover the cost of the Powerwall. With so many factors up in the air (the $5 billion Gigafactory and expansion, future home energy prices, solar cost and energy demand, other energy sources), the Powerwall looks more like a dream of Elon Musk.

May 11, 2015 | 1 comment | by

The Expensive Solar Power Death Trap

The $2.2 billion Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System is a concentrated solar thermal plant in the California Mojave Desert. The Ivanpah solar facility generates 377-392 megawatts (enough to power 140,000 homes) and spreads across 3,600 acres killed over 3,500 birds in its first year, according to a new report.

From 29 October 2013 to 20 October 2014 at the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System facility:

  • Avian detections at the site included 83 different bird species with 64 having fewer than 10 detections.
  • Of the remaining 19 species, all have populations that are great enough locally (either as breeders, wintering birds, or migrants), regionally, and nationally that the magnitude of mortality detected and/or estimated at Ivanpah during the first four seasons of monitoring would have a minimal impact on populations at any of these geographic scales.
  • The cause of death for 42.2 percent of the detections of species with 10 or more detections was unknown and thus cannot be determined with certainty to have been “facility-caused”, the standard cited in Section 5.3 of the Plan.

The report‘s recommendations concerning monitoring and/or adaptive management at Ivanpah include:

  • Continuation of Plan implementation as it was performed during year 1 monitoring.
  • Continue with and increase the number of searcher efficiency and carcass persistence trials to enable more refined estimates by season and/or within project elements.
  • Continuation of the adaptive management process to investigate means of reducing avian mortality.
  • Full implementation of bat deterrence at all three solar units.

In comparison, a new coal-fired power plant that generates enough electricity to power as many homes as Ivanpah, costs $1.1 billion. At double the cost, solar power is still too expensive.

Apr 27, 2015 | 4 comments | by

Apple Ventures into Solar Power

Apple’s CEO Tim Cook threw his weight behind solar energy with an $850 million deal to buy power from First Solar, the biggest developer of solar farms in the U.S. This new pledge puts Apple on the same page as other big businesses, including Google, Microsoft and Amazon, who have also bought into solar power in a big way.

With this new purchase, Apple will get 130 megawatts of solar power, enough to power “60,000 California homes.” This new purchase isn’t Apple’s first foray into solar energy; Apple already has two 20 Mw plants in North Carolina, two more in development, and currently powers all of its data centers on renewable energy.

Though Cook stresses his belief in climate change, he emphasizes that Apple’s investment in solar is a good business deal.

Apple isn’t investing in solar as a gift to humanity. It’s doing it because it’s a good business deal, “We expect to have very significant savings,” Cook stressed at the Goldman Sachs conference. The $850 million agreement is expect to supply enough electricity to power “all of Apple’s California stores, offices, headquarters and a data center.”

With the price of solar dropping quicker than that of wind, Apple’s big deal could be “a milestone on the road to cheap, unsubsidized power from the sun.”

Feb 25, 2015 | 1 comment | by

Evolving Energy Infrastructure — Energy Battles Looming at Home

The electrical utilities industry is one that has always been regarded by economists as unique, with its most defining aspect being competition. There is little to none. However, economists have always argued that this is only a rational byproduct of the infrastructure associated with transporting energy. A perfectly competitive market is saturated with companies, and with hundreds or even thousands of different energy companies, the power lines and facilities required to generate electricity would be astronomically inefficient. For this reason, infrastructure in this field has been widely shielded from the pressures brought by rival businesses and increasingly demanding customers.

The free market could be on the verge of changing these norms. It all begins with introducing an adversarial element to the electrical utilities sector.

Vivek Wadhwa, a fellow at the Rock Center for Corporate Governance at Stanford University and the director of research at Duke’s Center for Entrepreneurship and Research Commercialization begins the topic of evolving energy at its root: Many forms of energy are outdated or considered too dangerous. President Obama’s recent energy accords in India is an example of this, with Wadhwa stating,

This is hardly a victory for the United States or for India. It no longer makes sense for any country to install a technology that can create a catastrophe such as Chernobyl or Fukushima — especially when far better alternatives are available.

Furthermore, Wadhwa points out that nuclear facilities and growth in the nuclear energy sector has been stagnant compared to coal, natural gas and renewables, a claim largely supported by the Energy Information Administration’s statistics on U.S. energy consumption.

The president should not be prescribing medicine [to electrical consumption] that he would not take himself.

Historical Electricity Generation

In a 2014 report, “Energy 2020: The Revolution Will Not Be Televised as Disruptors Multiply,” Citigroup claims that coal has suffered a serious double threat with the resurgence of natural gas during America’s shale revolution, and most surprisingly the projected ― not current ― falling costs of solar energy.

Indeed, natural gas and renewables such as solar are also the only two major methods of energy production which have consistently expanded at a positive rate for many years. Oil has historically been rarely used by electrical utility companies, and hydroelectric energy ― which does account for significant amounts of energy in the U.S. ― has largely been stagnant in meeting our rising demand for energy.

Historical Electricity Generation by Source

The growing popularity of renewables such as solar and wind has been a phenomenon that has been observed mainly in Europe. In a separate article, “The Coming Era of Unlimited ― and Free ― Clean Energy,” Wadhwa explains many countries in Europe have reached grid parity, a state in which installing electrical grids powered by wind and photovoltaics have matched energy prices from conventional electrical power plants. Were such a phenomenon to begin in the United States, it would be horrible news for coal, which is already hobbling along, largely due to the higher costs imposed by environmental regulations.

Solar and wind’s capacity for powering microgrids — grids which operate in the local vicinity in which their consumers reside — could also put pressure on the entire infrastructure that American energy needs have relied on for years. America’s energy infrastructure is also vastly outdated — with the best example of such being the Northeast’s chronically faltering electrical grid. The lack of innovation and improvement is mainly due to the lack of competition in the sector. Though solar and wind energy is still years away from being able to match domestic prices, advances in microgrid popularity which would be enabled by Citi’s projected foreign investment in the two energies could introduce choice to the energy sector, effectively lowering prices and helping America in its quest to be energy independent.

 

 

Feb 04, 2015 | 2 comments | by
Next Page »