Tag: "solar power"

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

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

Energy Security Must Include Reliable Power

A similar version of this blog post appeared in Newsmax:

Unlike populations in most other parts of the world we Americans take vital benefits of dependable electricity for granted. We simply plug into an outlet or flip on a switch and fully expect that our lights will go on, our computers will charge, our coffee will heat up, our air conditioners will function, and yes, our generous taxpayer subsidized plug-in vehicles will run again until tomorrow.

This wonderful, finely balanced round-the-clock empowerment required planning and development which didn’t occur overnight. The same will be true of future efforts to restore adequate capabilities after the Obama EPA’s Clean Power Plan takes an estimated one-third of all U.S. coal-fired plants off the grid over the next five years. This amounts to a loss of generating capacity sufficient to supply residential electricity for about 57 million people.

The North American Electric Reliability Corp, a nonprofit oversight group, emphasizes that the plan constitutes “a significant reliability challenge, given the time required for implementation.” The timeline to convert or replace a coal-fired power plant with natural gas requires years, whereby siting, permitting and development to meet EPA’s interim target would need to be completed by 2017.

Even if a state were able to submit a compliance plan by 2017 or 2018, EPA has admitted that it may take up to another year to approve it. New and upgraded natural gas plants will require additional pipeline infrastructure which may take five years or longer. More expansive transmission lines will also be required to connect that capacity to the grid, with full implementation potentially taking up to 15 years.

EPA’s latest climate alarm-premised war on coal assault calls for states to cut CO2 emissions by 30 percent from 2005 levels by 2030 despite satellite-recorded flat mean global temperatures over the past 18 years and counting. This federal usurpation of state responsibility dating back to the invention of the modern steam engine in the 1880s is unprecedented.

A “finishing rule” expected to be issued in June or July will require states to meet agency carbon-reduction targets by reorganizing their “production, distribution, and use of electricity.” In complying, 39 states must achieve more than 50 percent of EPA’s reduction targets by 2020.

Not only are EPA’s mandates unfeasible, they also demand that states operate “outside the fence line” to force shut-downs of coal (and eventually natural gas), establish minimum quotas for renewables (wind and solar), and impose energy conservation mandates. Never mind here that last year the D.C. Court of Appeals ruled against the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s claim of authority over “demand response” of the national energy grid.

Even liberal Harvard constitutional authority Larry Tribe has observed being stunned at this effort to nationalize U.S. electricity generation by coercing states to pass new laws or rush through new compliance rules that exceed EPA’s legal jurisdiction. President Obama is clearly eager for such policy changes to be quickly put into effect which a future Republican president can’t reverse. This will also provide bragging rights for a climate initiative he can announce at the Paris climate conference later this year.

Fortunately, while states are invited to draw up implementation plans for EPA approval, they really have no legal obligation to do so. And while EPA can attempt to commandeer a federal plan if states resist, there are good incentives for them to band together in calling EPA’s bluff — reasons which can otherwise bear dangerous and costly consequences.

An April 7 Washington, D.C., power outage caused by a mechanical failure and fire at a transfer station temporarily disrupted electricity to the White house, Capitol, government agencies (yes, including the Energy Department), businesses/residents, and street lights. While relatively minor, it most likely could have been avoided if a 60-year-old coal-fired plant called the Potomac River Generating Station in Alexandria, Va., which provided backup capacity to balance the grid, hadn’t been shuttered.

It was one of 188 plant closures credited to former New York City Mayor Bloomberg’s activist “Beyond Coal” campaign which he has supported with $80 million in donations to the anti-fossil Sierra Club.

A far more damaging 2003 Northeast blackout resulted in costs of about $13 billion. Referring to the Clean Power Plan, the New York Independent Systems Operator (NYISO) now reports that EPA’s “inherently unreasonable” reductions “cannot be sustained while maintaining reliable electric service to New York City.” NYISO further projects unacceptable plan consequences which “no amount of flexibility can fix.”

States should collectively heed this reality. Rather than accept EPA’s dirty work, it’s imperative that federal hijacking of state sovereignty be resoundingly rejected.

Apr 29, 2015 | 2 comments | 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

Volatility Myth of Energy

Brookings Institution’s article claiming that falling oil prices will not hurt renewable “clean” energy wrongfully tries to make a comparison. Oil prices do fluctuate a good amount, and are part of a really good openly traded market. Renewable energy sources such as solar and wind, are not openly traded in a market and are heavily subsidized. This makes these two renewable energy sources over-priced and not yet ready for consumers. All energy sources are benefiting from improved technologies and domestic reserves and production forecasting are both increasing each year, doubling by 2021.

Increased oil production domestically and around the globe means lower oil prices and are good for the American consumer. It is still too early for renewable “clean” energy to be a viable option for Americans. Once energy sources like solar and wind are no longer supported by government and openly traded, then we will be able to compare them to other energy sources.

Jan 26, 2015 | 1 comment | by
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