The incredible shrinking solar plant

By Jeff Postelwait
Online Editor

In the U.S. solar power market, developers are looking for access to the cash they need to build large, utility-scale solar projects, but that money is proving hard to find. If this keeps up, makers of solar farms in excess of 20 MW could be eclipsed by firms who put solar panels on rooftops.

In the first quarter of 2012, there were 506 MW of new solar projects that went online — accounting for some $1.9 billion in spending. This is a drop from the last quarter of 2011, which saw $3.1 billion worth of investment.

One factor? Shrinking and disappearing subsidies. Government funding is fading fast, and it's hard to say when Washington might feel like investing in solar power again — particularly with elections looming. It goes without saying that any whiff of uncertainty isn't good for upstart solar companies and their projects.

However, where the industry has recently favored big solar projects like the 290 MW Agua Caliente Solar Project being built by First Solar and NRG Solar in Yuma County, Arizona, we could soon see an uptick in small and medium solar power projects.

A huge undertaking like Agua Caliente was once thought to represent an industry sea change toward big solar power, but even proponents of solar power as a generation source can't deny that Agua Caliente would still be a patch of bare sand out in the desert without the Department of Energy loan guarantee that made it possible.

It's much easier at this point for solar developers to pursue smaller projects, like say teaming up with a big-box electronics store and installing some solar panels on the rooftops of a few stores. The chain gets good press, the solar manufacturers sell equipment, the projects are easier to approve, nobody has to worry about harming the desert tortoise's habitat, and generally everyone goes home happy.

But is this the way for the solar industry to finally get off what I've heard energy analysts describe as "the crack cocaine of public subsidies" once and for all and stand by themselves as their own industry? It's hard to say yet because there are still too many factors to consider.

Cheap natural gas is still a fierce competitor to just about any other generation technology, whether it's coal-fired plants or a solar farm. On the other hand, many state governments still have renewable portfolio standards to think about. On the other, other hand, there's the problem of incorporating too much solar energy onto the grid too soon without infrastructure upgrades. On the other-other-other hand, solar still has the advantage of being "sexy," meaning companies who want to look hip or forward thinking are still going to want to invest a little in solar — like Google, Inc. for one example.

Whether solar as an industry is ready to take off the training wheels and pedal without extensive tax breaks and subsidies is too large a question for me to answer. But from the way things are looking now, I expect to see fewer mega-sized solar projects going up in the U.S.

Talking Congress, security and generation at EEI

By Jennifer Van Burkleo,
Associate Editor

At the EEI Annual Convention this week, I caught up with former EEI Chairman Tom Farrell and Lew Hay, the new EEI chairman and CEO of NextEra Energy, to talk about what conventioneers were talking about in Orlando this year. I was glad to be inside, given how hot and rainy it was most of the time.

At the convention, held at the Marriott, my editor in chief Teresa Hansen and I were able to meet with both the incoming and outgoing chairmen. Hay said that although he is the incoming chairman, he will work closely with Farrell on industry priorities like cyber security, distributed generation, workforce issues and the direction of EEI.

Utilities compete in many ways, but they also pull together and work together for mutual advantage, Hay said. He also credited Farrell for helping build a consensus among EEI's member utilities.

As we sat down, the two men tackled the topic of cyber security. Hay and Farrell agreed that EEI would support a legislative solution in Congress to help private industry and the government share information on cyber threats. Such a bill is making its way through Congress, having earned approval in the House of Representatives in April and now awaiting a vote in the Senate.

The bill was introduced by Rep. Mike Rogers, a Michigan Republican, who heads the House Intelligence Committee. The Obama administration threatened to veto the bill, claiming that the country's critical infrastructure would not be adequately protected by the legislation. The administration also expressed doubts about the level of protection the bill offered for consumer privacy.

"I think my company's system gets attacked more than a million times a day, but most aren't robust and we detect them," said Hay as he ate a giant cookie, provided at the meeting.

Hay and Farrell agreed that the government and Congress should let utilities share information to better protect their customers.

"The government clearly has information (about threats) that they aren't sharing with us," Hay said. "It will take an act of Congress to work these issues out."

When we asked about the future of distributed generation, Farrell stated that it will grow in a variety of forms, many that are still unknown. Utilities should be sure that they have in place a fair way to distribute the cost of upgrading the distribution grid to accommodate distributed generation now rather than when it might be too late in the future, Farrell said.

EEI's outgoing president Thomas Kuhn, who stepped into our meeting later on, used Germany's current cost problem as an example of why the U.S. should prepare for the future now. Because Germany waited too long to deal with the issue of electric costs, utility prices are now double those seen in the U.S.

According to Hay, utilities need to communicate the value of electricity to their customers. They need to find a way to communicate what is driving utility bills.

As technology changes, so do employees and their skills. Companies need to update their training materials by including more detail to what the position is, Hay said. Utilities shouldn't assume that potential employees know what the position description is.

Hay also suggested that companies look toward military personnel and veterans to fill their open positions, adding that troops are much better trained than they were 20 years ago.

Farrell has been chairman, president and CEO of Dominion since 2007. Hay is CEO and chairman of NextEra Energy. Hay's last day as CEO will be July 1, 2012, where he will then take over as executive chairman of NextEra through 2013.

10 energy game changers for the Third World

By Jeff Postelwait
Online Editor

It's a safe bet that most people who are reading this are used to living no fewer than a few footsteps away from a lightswitch or electric socket. For almost all of us, the most frequent blackout we have to deal with is a when our smart phones go dark after a long session of Angry Birds. In fact, there are some people who dream of living off the grid — whether that means camping out in a national park or investing in distributed generation equipment for the home.

But as many as a quarter of the world's population live without easy access to grid-connected electricity, according to Scientific American. To address problems such as unemployment, poverty, education and malnutrition, that remaining 25 percent of humanity without power needs innovative solutions that address off-grid life.

I spoke recently with Dr. Al Malouf of NineSigma, which styles itself as an "open innovation services provider." The organization works with companies like Kraft Foods, Unilever, Philips, L'Oreal and others to develop these innovations.

One such partnership is the LAUNCH program, a consortium that includes the U.S. State Department, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), NASA, Nike and others. The LAUNCH effort aims to develop ten "game-changing" solutions for those who live without adequate access to electricity, heating and cooling, water and other basic needs.

LAUNCH recently identified ten entrepreneurs with ten good ideas in the hopes that their technologies could be developed and deployed to those who need them.

"There was a focus on third world or developing world, as well as the developed world. A lot of our partners had techs that would benefit places in rural Africa that might not even be connected to the grid," Malouf said. "About 80 percent of the people in Africa own cell phones, but fewer than that are connected to the grid. So a big challenge for them is where to charge their cell phone that doesn't involve walking ten miles."

When choosing which energy entrepreneurs to approach for submissions, Malouf said his organization had to stick with technologies that work on the distributed energy level or smaller, as utility-scale, grid-connected technologies.

One example of a highly distributed power source now approved by LAUNCH is the Hydrovolts hydrokinetic mini-turbine. The unit is small enough to take advantage of the potential energy of flowing water just about anywhere it can be found.



"You can just throw these things into the canals. They can work in shallow water, they right themselves automatically and they can power pumps and drive gates within the canal system," he said. "It's a nice way of capturing the kinetic energy of the water to do work in the area."

The technology is scalable too, in that you can fasten three or four of the units together to produce a greater amount of power, if needed.

The Solanterns Initiative aims to replace a million dirty, inefficient kerosene lanterns in Kenya with solar powered LED lights.



"Using kerosene lamps, the problem is the quality of light is poor and they generate indoor pollution, which can lead to lung diseases — especially in young children," he said. "With better quality light, businesses can stay open longer after dark and students can learn better in school."

The devices, when charged up by the sun, can also provide enough juice to charge up a cell phone — eliminating the need to travel to a town center for a working electricity source.

NanoTune Technologies, also chosen by LAUNCH, developed a new ultracapacitor that they claim offers five to seven times greater energy storage technology than conventional capacitors.

"They can't divulge exactly what the technology is, but they think the tech might be able to replace conventional batteries," he said, adding that the ultracapacitors charge quickly, and might one day become a good storage device for wind or solar power — eliminating the need for a bulkier battery bank.

Gram Power's innovation is a microgrid technology that offers pre-paid, intelligently metered power with both AC and DC voltage outputs as well as battery backup at the household level.

"This is a smart DC grid — a way to power a house with a very small power supply," he said, adding that the innovation includes a business model for delivering this pre-paid power source to rural people and their dwellings.

"They will plug these battery packs into this smart grid system that is installed in the house. It works on a prepaid, weekly basis. An affordable and realistic way for rural people to have high quality lighting and places to charge their cell phones," he said.

Point Source Power came up with a fuel cell technology that could allow people living off the grid to charge a cell phone as they cook their dinner — with the same heat they use to cook that dinner.

"This uses biomass to create electricity. It's a small fuel cell, driven by heat. Most of these villagers use a fire pit to cook their food, so they developed a fuel cell that is totally sealed. The heat from the cookstove will generate a small amount of electricity when the cell is thrown into the burning fuel — enough power to charge a cell phone," he said.

You can read more about these and other technologies backed by LAUNCH at their website.