FROM: QUARTZ by Todd Woody 12.31.13 Back in 2009 when China announced it would build the world’s largest photovoltaic power plant in the Mongolian desert,
it choose a US company, First Solar, to construct the 2,000-megawatt
(MW) project. Yesterday, China unveiled plans for another huge solar
power plant, a 1,000 MW project in the remote Xinjiang Region. This
time, though, a homegrown company, Trina Solar, won the contract. That
marks a significant shift in the global solar market, one that will
accelerate in 2014. Over the past two years, China has emerged as one of
the biggest markets for photovoltaic panels in addition to being the
world’s solar manufacturing hub. In an effort to wean itself from
coal-fired power polluting its cities, the government this year announced ambitious renewable energy targets, including the construction of 10,000 MW of solar projects. The
new policy came as China’s photovoltaic panel makers faced falling
revenues and multibillion-dollar deficits after embarking on a
manufacturing boom that allowed them to corner the global solar market
but sent prices plummeting. Projects such as the power plant in Turpan
Prefecture announced yesterday help soak up China’s excess manufacturing
capacity while creating jobs for local workers. As part of the deal
with local government, Trina will build a factory in Turpan.
http://bloom.bg/1g3jWt4 By Mark Chediak, Christopher Martin and Ken Wells Bloomberg News If you wonder why America’s utilities are rattled by the explosive growth in rooftop solar — and are pushing back — William Walker has a story for you. A flip-flop wearing Walker stands in his driveway pointing to a ubiquitous neighborhood feature – solar panels on the roofs of five of six houses nearby. He lives in Ewa Beach, a development on the sultry leeward coast of the Hawaiian island of Oahu built on land cleared of sugar cane fields. Shade is scarce and residents here call their homes “hot boxes,” requiring almost round-the-clock air conditioning. Hawaii, which imports pricey oil to power its electricity grid, has the highest utility rates in the nation — at 37 cents a kilowatt-hour, they’re more than double California and triple the national average. With bills for 1,600 square foot houses like these running as high as $400 a month, solar is seen as less a green statement than an economic no-brainer given state and federal tax credits for as much as 65 percent of installation costs. Almost every day since Walker and his wife Mi Chong moved in last April, solar installers came rapping on the door, hawking a rooftop system. They finally bought one: an 18-panel, $35,000 installation producing 5.9 kilowatts of power financed for $305 a month. It would be connected to the grid under a system known as net metering that essentially lets residents deduct the value of their solar-produced electricity from their power bill and even be paid for electricity in excess of that.
WIRED Magazine. By Klint Finley Michael Chagala. Photo: Sullivan Solar. You might think of Google Glass as one of those tech creations that’s more intriguing than practical. You might see computerized eyewear as a Silicon Valley nerd fantasy that’s unlikely to change the way the rest of the world works. You would not be alone. But that’s not how Michael Chagala sees it. Chagala is the director of IT at Sullivan Solar Power, which is slipping Google Glass onto the heads of the field technicians who install its solar panels atop homes and businesses across Southern California. Because every building is unique, these field techs need ready access to all sorts of specs and plans describing the job at hand. In the past, they’ve carried three-ring binders onto the roof, but those are so hard to handle — particularly when the wind is blowing pages. They’ve lugged laptops up there too, but that comes with its own problems, including, well, the sun. So Chagala and company are switching to Glass, allowing their techs to browse documents simply by looking through the eyewear. For the most part, they can do this without using their hands — though you do have to tap the side of the glasses to move from doc to doc. “When you have someone on a roof, safety is your primary concern,” Chagala says. “Having both hands free is significant.” Though Google Glass has limitations — including an undeniable geekiness — it can be quite useful. Some are exploring how it can serve people with autism and other disabilities. Tech outfits such as Workday and Fiberlink are building Glass apps for corporate workers. Now Sullivan Solar is taking the digital eyewear into the world of blue collar work. Lead by Chagala, the company has built a custom Glass app that taps into a database housing its customer records, information about particular job sites, and its inventory of parts and equipment. But its technicians also will use other tools available with the eyewear. A field worker can, say, call headquarters with questions or transmit live video of a roof installation to get some feedback.
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FROM National Journal. By Clare Foran. December 23, 2013. Solar energy has become increasingly powerful. Its rise to the top, however, hasn't been without a few bumps along the way. Regulatory battles over solar power payment models played out in several states this year. And as the dust settles, solar providers are claiming victory. Utilities, on the other hand, are trying to reframe the conversation entirely by insisting they aren't an enemy of solar. Much of the debate so far has centered around a policy on the books in 43 states called net-metering. Net-metering allows rooftop solar owners to sell excess electricity back to the grid, with utilities issuing full retail credit to the customer based on the amount of power they provide. Utilities have started pushing to scale back or get rid of net-metering, calling it a subsidy that solar has outgrown. Solar-industry groups, on the other hand, have resisted the fight to dismantle net-metering and say it's an equitable way of paying for power generation. In a series of high-profile cases this year in Arizona, California, Idaho, and Louisiana, state lawmakers and regulatory commissioners sided with industry and moved to either uphold or strengthen net-metering. "The national story right now is quite clear," said Bryan Miller, the president of the Alliance for Solar Choice, a solar-advocacy organization. "There have now been four major verdicts on net-metering, and in every case proposed regulatory changes to the policy have been rejected." A second point of contention has been whether utilities should charge solar customers extra. Utilities say additional fees are needed to defray the cost of grid upkeep. Opponents say they're unfair.
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By Tom Konrad, Contributor. FORBES. 12/20/2013. With the average solar stock having doubled in 2013, it’s much harder to find bargains in the solar industry than it was a year ago. But two of the professional green money managers think there is still value to be found. When I asked them for their top three green stock picks for 2014, they came back with two solar picks each. You can also read about my panel’s green income stock picks and green information technology picks the earlier articles in this series. Shawn Kravetz is the solar expert on my panel. He is President of Esplanade Capital LLC, a Boston based investment management company one of whose funds is focused on solar and companies impacted by the emergence of solar. Last year, he had the top pick of all my panelists, Amtech Systems (NASD:ASYS), which was up 160%. This year, Kravetz says “Finding extreme values is challenging” but he still was able to find two that he considers “quite compelling.” Shawn Kravetz His first pick is Meyer Burger (Swiss:MBTN), a “Leading solar equipment manufacturer whose business has finally troughed.” Kravetz thinks the company’s business is about to make a “substantial turn” for the better, but the stock has hardly advanced despite the large increase in price for other solar stocks. Even after a strong 2013, Kravetz says “Global solar installations will likely grow 20% in 2014. With demand finally nearing an equilibrium with cost efficient supply, this will drive leading players to modernize and expand. The hangover of the solar nuclear winter and a poorly timed acquisition of competitor Roth & Rau is ending, leaving Meyer Burger extremely well positioned for 2014.”
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By William Pentland, Contributor. 12/3/13. Utility-scale solar power is poised to become cost competitive with natural gas by 2025, according to a new report by Lux Research. The report, “Cheap Natural Gas: Fracturing Dreams of a Solar Future,” evaluated the levelized cost of energy (LCOE) for unsubsidized solar, natural gas, and hybrid solar/gas technologies through 2030 under a range of future natural gas price scenarios and across 10 different parts of the world. The bottom-up cost model assumed a 39% decrease in utility-scale system costs by 2030 and a delay in shale gas production due to anti-fracking policies in Europe and high capital costs in South America. The key take-away: the LCOE for unsubsidized utility-scale solar globally will be only about $0.02/kWh above the price of power produced by combined cycle gas turbines by 2025. “On the macroeconomic level, a ‘golden age of gas’ can be a bridge to a renewable future as gas will replace coal until solar becomes cost competitive without subsidies,” said Ed Cahill, an associate at New York City-based Lux Research and the lead author of the report. “On the micro-economic level, solar integrated with natural gas can lower costs and provide stable output.”
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Posted on 12/18/2013 by Karen Uhlenhuth Workers install solar panels on a hog farm near Grinnell, Iowa earlier this year. (Photo by Moxie Solar) Iowa is well established as a national leader in wind energy and biofuels. And now the state is poised for serious growth in solar as well. “The market is exploding in Iowa,” says Tim Dwight, a former Iowa Hawkeye and NFL star who has become one of his home state’s most visible solar energy advocates. Homeowners, farmers, businesses and at least one school district in Iowa are going solar. Also, over the past year, several municipal utilities and rural electric co-ops have put up solar arrays, inviting customers to buy a share of the power generated. “Solar growth in Iowa is where wind was in the first decade of the 2000s,” says Bill Haman of the Iowa Energy Center. “We saw an explosion in wind.” In Frytown, just outside Iowa City, the Farmers Electric Cooperative has been steadily adding on to a community solar project established on its property in 2011. And a few weeks ago, the co-op announced plans to put together a 750-kilowatt solar farm, which would be the largest solar-energy project in the state. It’s projected to meet about 15 percent of the co-op’s demand for power. In September, the Iowa Association of Municipal Utilities put an 18-kilowatt array on the roofs of several buildings at its headquarters in Ankeny. And in November, several organizations snagged a $1 million grant from the Department of Energy to streamline local permitting and zoning codes, and improve standards for connecting solar generation to the grid. The aim: to cut the time and costs of adding solar generation. State lawmakers who attended a recent solar tour have pledged to help.
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