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SolarReserves Bids 6.3 Cents Per KWH In Chile For Dispatchable 24-Hour Solar

by Guest Author
written by Guest Author

Originally published on CleanTechnica.
By Susan Kraemer

In Chile’s last auction for power, SolarReserve bid a world-record-breaking low price at just 6.3 cents per kWh ($63/MWh) for dispatchable 24-hour solar.

SolarReserve’s CSP technology with integrated thermal storage provides 24-hour solar power, and is ideally suited for Chile’s grid with round-the-clock power needs due to its huge mining industry. To bid 24-hour solar at 6.3 cents per kWh is a world record for CSP (Concentrated Solar Power), a form of solar utilizing heat from the sun that can be stored thermally. Chile has open auctions for both fossil energy and renewables, and no subsidies.

CleanTechnica spoke today with SolarReserve CEO Kevin Smith about the firm’s next Chilean bids:

SK: You bid Crescent Dunes in Nevada at 13.5 cents, then Redstone in South Africa at 12 cents. Your bid in Chile was 6.3 cents. How are you able to come down so low for solar that includes thermal storage so it can be dispatched any time — 24-hour solar for just 6.3 cents/kWh? 

KS: SolarReserve has made substantial advances in our technology that has increased efficiencies and brought down capital costs since our first project in Nevada.

But there are a number of other factors that influence power prices and the Chilean market appears to be ideally suited for solar thermal with storage. In addition to the best solar resource in the world, the country’s stable financial status along with US dollar denominated power contracts results in excellent financing and investment terms

Interestingly, our thermal solar bids were lower than all but one new-build natural gas project bid into the last tender. Chile has no indigenous fuels, so natural gas needs to be imported in the form of LNG, which is much more expensive than natural gas costs in the US, and is susceptible to spikes in supply pricing in the world markets.

SK: How do you ensure that you can deliver solar power around the clock? Does that require operating at something less than full capacity? [Background explainer: How CSP works: CSP with integrated thermal storage makes solar dispatchable at any hour 24 hours a day.]

KS: Our bulk storage capabilities utilizing molten salt give us tremendous flexibility, without having to consider the degradation issues associated with batteries or the replacement cost issues.

We’re designing the projects in Chile for full capacity 24 hours a day. To do that we put in about 14 hours of storage. That will give us the full capacity of the project essentially 24 hours a day.

We could design it for three times the power for 8 hours a day or twice the output for 12 hours a day, but since Chile’s load is really a 24-hour load we design the storage to handle that.

It really comes down to the design of the steam cycle and turbine capacity, the storage tank capacity, and the size of the heliostat field, which dictates how much additional power you can store when its sunny.

SK: You seem to do all the permitting before you bid, not just in South Africa which requires it, but even in the US and Chile that do not — why? [SolarReserve just received the environmental permitting for its 450 MW Tamarugal CSP; the second of three thermal solar projects it is developing in Chile. Copiapó was permitted in 2015. A new CSP project, Likana is in development.]

KS: I think we’re a bit out front in the way we operate. We like to move forward on permits and make sure we have a fully developed project that’s ready to go. That provides confidence to the offtaker, that the project will be built on the time frame expected in the bid.

For SolarReserve, obtaining the permits certainly minimizes the development risks of the project. So the fact that we’ve got two of our main projects fully permitted we think is an advantage to us, certainly for a risk standpoint for SolarReserve.

SK: Yes, I’d think that must also help the offtaker, by making it more likely that new generation it contracts for really will happen. 

KS: Right. I believe in the last round some of the winning bids didn’t have fully permitted sites and I think they’re still selecting sites. We actually think the Chilean government should take the development risks of the selected projects more into account — how developed a project is — because that will impact the ability of the developer to get the project done. We think it should come into play in their analysis.

[South Africa’s success in speeding renewables growth was because the REIPPPP limited bidders to those with fully permitted projects and likely financing. By contrast, the US allowed a disorganized rush to simultaneous permitting, financing and contract negotiation, so that many of the big California solar projects listed by the Department of the Interior failed to materialize, while “using up” places in the interconnection queue.]

SK: Chile has open auctions with competing bidding from both renewable and legacy generation. So why is coal not winning any bids?

KS: There are two blocks of power that the government was asking for: the majority was for 24-hours per day supply, and then there was a block that was allocated for daytime only supply only, which is more geared towards PV.

New coal just isn’t competitive with renewable energy any more in addition to the pollution issues related to coal. Some of the utilities do have existing generation from coal that isn’t fully contracted and we expect some of those projects will continue to be bid into the tenders.

It’s highly unlikely that new coal projects will be built in Chile. New coal projects have been turned down for permitting, so to bid a coal project that isn’t permitted yet and assume that “well I’ll get it permitted” would be a high-risk strategy.

Our view is that our advanced storage technology is suited for 24-hours a day generation as opposed to wind and PV which aren’t. PV with battery storage can supply short term storage or ramping capabilities, but isn’t a good fit for true bulk energy storage, due to the degradation and replacement cost issues associated with batteries. We think Chile’s 24-hour block a good fit for us, so we’re going to bid what we believe is the right way for the system to operate – which is adding true capacity into the market.

SK: Did any other renewables bid into the 24-hours block?

KS: It was interesting and surprising that one of the winning bids in the last round for the 24-hour block was a wind project developer that bid wind plus “spot” electricity supply. Their strategy is to operate their wind project for its expected capacity, say a 30 capacity factor when the wind blows, and then when they can’t supply from their wind facility, they would purchase excess power from the grid in order to meet their contract obligations.

Our view is that that is very difficult to manage and finance, and for the most part, that doesn’t really help the Chilean power system. Chile needs real 24-hour a day power, and are not looking for companies that are in some sense just putting together a financial bid that really takes flexibility out of the grid.

While this might be a reasonable short term strategy since there is modest additional capacity in the system, on a medium or long term basis it could result in substantial power price spikes during low supply periods. It’s interesting that the bid requirements, as structured, didn’t actual have real capacity requirements in order to bid 24-hour blocks of energy.

Take that strategy to the next step: if everybody did that, there would be limited new power projects built in the near term. Spot prices rices would quickly rise and they would have shortages on the market.

SK: Might you bid a Hybrid PV/CSP like Copiapó in Chile’s Next Round?

KS: We permitted Copiapó for PV as well as CSP, but actually in the current situation, we’re not sure of the value of adding PV into the mix, because daytime power prices are low. We can take the PV out as we’re not required to include it. We could always come in later and add the PV in the future if it makes economic sense, but we think it has limited value in the Chilean sector right now: there has been an oversupply during the day because of all the PV.

The spot prices when PV is available are coming down and so it’s less valuable, and some of the merchant projects that were built are not performing very well because of these lower power prices.

So in the last round we bid Copiapó purely as CSP with SolarReserve’s tower and molten salt storage technology. We had already made that decision that the PV wasn’t adding any value to the bid, so we did not include the PV, and we bid that at $63/MWh. [Ed: 6.3 cents per kWh]

Images: SolarReserve and Wikimedia

Reprinted with permission.

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Concentrated Solar Power in Negev
CSP

Israel Building Concentrated Solar Power Facility In Negev Desert

by Steve Hanley
written by Steve Hanley

Israel trails almost every developed nation in the percentage of electricity it derives from renewables. It’s goal is to get only 10% of its power from renewables by 2020. That compares with only 2.5% today. Israel has a large supply of natural gas in offshore fields which it relies on for 70% of its electricity. It also has little available land for solar panel installations. But in the Negev Desert region, a large concentrated solar power project is currently under construction.

Concentrated Solar Power in Negev

Concentrated solar power uses the rays of the sun to heat water and turn it into steam. The steam is then used to turn a conventional turbine to generate electricity. When stored in insulated containers, the heated water can continue to produce steam — and therefore electricity — long after the sun sets.  That allows for what is known in the world of renewable energy as time shifting.

Energy produced at one time of day can be stored until it is needed later in the day. Since the highest demand for electricity usually occurs at the end of the workday when the sun is setting, traditional solar panel farms see a reduction in output just when the grid needs electricity the most.

Israel trails almost every developed nation in the percentage of electricity it derives from renewables. It’s goal is to get only 10% of its power from renewables by 2020. That compares with just 2.5% today. Israel has a large supply of natural gas in offshore fields which it relies on for 70% of its electricity. It also has little available land for solar panel installations. But in the Negev Desert region, a series of concentrated solar projects are currently under construction.

Concentrated solar technology, or CSP, has been developed by BrightSource Energy, the American company responsible for the largest thermal plant in the world. Located in the desert in California, it has 170,000 mirrors that focus the rays of the sun on a tower 140 meters high.

The Ashalim project, deep in the Negev desert, is made up of three plots, with a fourth planned in the future. Each uses a different solar technology. One project is a concentrated solar installation with a tower 250 meters tall. Because of the lack of available land, the heliostats — the mirrors that focus the sun’s rays on the tower — must be pushed closer together. Another is a grid scale storage facility and a third is a conventional solar panel farm.

Together, the installations will be Israel’s largest renewable energy project when completed in 2018. They are expected to generate 310 megawatts of power, or about 1.6% of the Israel’s energy needs. That translates into enough electricity to power about 130,000 households, roughly 5% of Israel’s population according to Israel’s Electricity Authority.

“It’s the most significant single building block in Israel’s commitment to CO2 reduction and renewable energy,” said Eran Gartner, chief executive of Megalim Solar Power Ltd., which is building one part of the project. Yaron Szilas, CEO of Shikun & Binui Renewable Energy, the lead developer of the second solar-thermal plot, said combining the three technologies was a wise move because each has its own advantage.

Israel has developed some of the world’s most advanced solar energy equipment and enjoys a nearly endless supply of sunshine. But Israeli solar companies, frustrated by government bureaucracy, have mostly taken their expertise abroad. Countries with cooler climates have outpaced Israel. Germany, for example, gets nearly 30% of its energy from renewable sources.

“Israel has the potential to be a sunshine superpower,” says Leehee Goldenberg, director of the department of economy and environment at the Israel Union for Environmental Defense, a non-governmental organization. Despite some steps in the right direction, “Israel’s government hasn’t really been pushing to reach its small goals regarding solar energy.”

Israel has often been reluctant to hand out huge parcels of land, a necessity for large scale solar power production, Gartner said. Large projects also demand access to state owned infrastructure like gas, water, and electricity. Making connections to those utilities in remote areas like the Negev desert is expensive and time consuming.

But the price of electricity from the sun  is falling dramatically the world over, making solar power the first option for utility scale power even if government incentives are lacking.

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Saudi Arabia Focusing on CSP, Adding 41 GW Solar by 2032
CSP

World’s Largest Solar Power Plant Proposed For Nevada

by Steve Hanley
written by Steve Hanley

SolarReserve, based in Santa Monica, California, wants to convert 25 square miles of arid land 225 miles northwest of Las Vegas into the largest solar power plant in the world. If the proposed plant gets built, it could produce between 1,500 and 2,000 megawatts of electricity — enough to power 1,000,000 homes. That’s equivalent to the power of a nuclear power plant or Hoover Dam. The project would cost about $5 billion.

concentrated solar power

Last week, SolarReserve chief executive Kevin Smith outlined a plan Tuesday to create a 10 tower concentrated solar array dubbed Sandstone Energy X near the city of Tonopah in Nevada’s Nye County. SolarReserve already operates a single tower project on 1,600 acres of federal land outside Tonopah called the Crescent Dunes Solar Energy Plant. It can produce up to 110 megawatts of electricity by focusing a 1-mile circle of mirrors called heliostats on a 640 foot tall central tower to heat molten salt to more than 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit. The superheated salt is used to boil water to drive power turbines.

The secret to such concentrated solar power facilities is that the stored heat from the molten salt can continue to generate steam to keep the turbines running for up to 10 hours after the sun sets. SolarReserve says storing energy in molten salt is far less expensive than lithium ion batteries of similar capacity. Tesla is one of the leading providers of batteries for grid storage but there are many other companies competing in the battery storage business, including the Accumotive division of Daimler, the parent of Mercedes Benz.

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CSP

Spanish Researchers Explore Molten Silicon As Storage Medium

by Steve Hanley
written by Steve Hanley

Solar power is critical to meeting the world’s need for zero emissions electricity. But solar alone cannot meet the requirements of a 24 hour energy grid. There needs to be some way to store it so it can be put to use after the sun goes down. Researchers in Spain are exploring the possibility of using molten silicon as a storage medium in what is known as a concentrated solar power system or CSP.

Over the years, many systems have been tried for storing electrical power. In Wales, National Grid operates Electric Mountain. It has a lake at the top and another at the bottom. Inside the mountain are enormous conduits that pump water uphill when electrical power is abundant. When a need for extra electricity arises, the water flows back downhill, spinning turbines as it falls.

In the deserts of Nevada, a start-up company wants to build a railway to nowhere. Freight cars loaded with hundreds of tons of concrete blocks would be dragged uphill during the day, only to roll back down again at night, generating electricity as they descend. Also in Nevada, with its open land and abundant sunshine, the Crescent Dunes CSP facility is now online and generating electricity sufficient for about 75,000 homes.

Instead of using solar panels, Crescent Dunes concentrates the sun’s rays to melt salt. The molten salt is than stored in tanks until there is a need for electrical power. It is then used to heat water to make steam to turn conventional turbines. The facility can continue to make electricity for up to 10 hours after the sun sets.

Researchers at the Solar Energy Institute of the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid are working on technology they say that molten silicone is far more efficient than molten salt. It is able to store 1 MWh of energy per cubic meter — 10 times the capacity of molten salt. The researchers say molten silicon is more abundant and less expensive than molten salt. Silicon is the most abundant element in the earth’s crust and melts at about 1,400° C. Salt melts at 801° C and is stored at about 566° C.

Silicone has another important advantage. “At such high temperatures, silicon intensely shines in the same way that the sun does, thus photovoltaic cells, thermophotovoltaic cells in this case, can be used to convert this incandescent radiation into electricity,” Alejandro Datas, a researcher on the project told Science Daily.

Thermophotovoltaic cells can produce 100 times more electric power per unit area than conventional solar cells and have higher conversion efficiencies, even over 50%. The researchers say that can result in a compact system with no moving parts that can operate silently and uses inexpensive materials.

There is one more thing to consider. Today, there is a movement toward using lithium ion batteries for grid storage. Lithium is rare and hard to get. Its cost is going up as more batteries are produced. Silicone is plentiful and cheap. Are we seeing the beginning of a system for creating and storing electrical power that will be even less expensive than the amazing low prices set recently on world markets? Perhaps the advent of cheap, abundant, zero emission electrical power is close at hand.

Source: Utility Dive

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Saudi Arabia Focusing on CSP, Adding 41 GW Solar by 2032
CSP

Crescent Dunes Concentrated Solar Power Facility Completed

by Steve Hanley
written by Steve Hanley

For those of you who went to camp in the summer, you may remember burning your initials on a piece of wood by focusing the sun’s rays with a magnifying glass. That’s pretty much the idea behind the Crescent Dunes concentrated solar power project in Nevada. It is now online and generating enough electricity to power 75,000 homes.

Saudi Arabia Focusing on CSP, Adding 41 GW Solar by 2032

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energy storage for concentrating solar
CSPEnergy Storage

Next-Gen Energy Storage Aims At Concentrating Solar Power Plants

by Tina Casey
written by Tina Casey

Energy storage is the key to making concentrating solar power plants an economical, reliable alternative to coal for electricity generation, and the US is determined to lead the field into new levels of efficiency. In the latest development, the Energy Department’s SunShot initiative is behind a new energy storage system based on chemical bonds that transfer heat as they store and release energy.

If R&D on the new system progresses, the result will be an energy storage system with greater density, translating into lower costs for electricity generated by concentrating solar power plants. In the context of US President Barack Obama’s new Clean Power Plan, that help sun-rich US states meet their carbon goals through solar-sourced electricity that is competitive with cheap natural gas as well as coal, this is very good news indeed.

energy storage for concentrating solar

New Materials For Thermochemical Energy Storage

The new energy storage research comes from Oregon State University in collaboration with the University of Florida. The system is based on thermochemical storage, which is different from conventional batteries because it deploys chemical bonds to deploy heat, not electricity. It is also different from thermal energy storage, such as the molten salt energy storage system that represents the leading edge of energy storage for the next-generation concentrating solar power (CSP) plants of today.

The key advantage of the new system is that it can potentially accommodate greater heat, up to 1,200 degrees centigrade, compared to the 600 or so degrees centigrade typical of molten salt energy storage.

Here’s the rundown on the University of Florida’s contribution, from the Energy Department:

The University of Florida (UF), through the Concentrating Solar Power: Efficiently Leveraging Equilibrium Mechanisms for Engineering New Thermochemical Storage (CSP: ELEMENTS) funding program, is working on making concentrated solar power economically competitive with traditional forms of energy generation by driving the cost towards $0.06/kWh through the use of thermochemical energy storage (TCES).

The project uses inexpensive, safe, and non-corrosive strontium-based carbonates* and high temperatures from concentrated sunlight to break chemical bonds and store energy during the day time. During off-sun periods, the reaction is reversed to remake the chemical bonds previously broken, releasing the stored heat, and doing so at temperatures previously unachievable in other carbonate-based TCES processes.

(*Note to Star Wars fans — that’s carbonate, not carbonite).

The research team at UF has been using an alarmingly named screening method called Sacrificial Pore Formation to screen strontium-based carbonates for capacity and durability. That researched is aimed at modelling the economics of the new system, with the goal of demonstrating a capital investment of less than $10/kWhth (kilowatt hours – thermal).

The end goal is to drum up interest in the investor community to team up with the Energy Department and its academic partners, with the overall goal of generating solar-sourced electricity at less than $0.06 cents per kilowatt hour.

Harnessing Thermochemistry For Energy Storage

The new energy storage study is available at ChemSusChem, the Chemistry and Sustainability/Energy and Materials journal under the title “Solar Thermochemical Energy Storage Through Carbonation Cycles of SrCO3/SrO Supported on SrZrO3.”

The system works by using the reversible nature of strontium carbonate, which decomposes into strontium oxide and carbon dioxide. The decomposition process consumes thermal energy, which is released when the two substances recombine.

The research team points out several factors working in favor of the new system. It is based on cheap, non-toxic materials, and the high temperature of the operation could be deployed directly in a hot air turbine system, as well as generating steam for a steam-driven turbine. Overall, the low cost and high output could result in a tenfold increase in energy density, according to the research team.

So far the system has been tested on a small, pre-prototype scale. The researchers have already noted a decline in energy storage capacity after 45 heating and cooling cycles, expressed as “slowing carbonation kinetics.” Before the system gets to the prototype level, the next steps include drawing out the carbonation steps and addressing the issue of thermal shocks.

So, What About The Clean Power Plan

Speaking of innovative new energy storage systems, we got a preview copy of the Energy on the Edge episode of the new National Geographic Channel Series, Breakthrough. Check it out and you’ll get an idea of the gut-churning drama involved when your reputation and your research dollars are riding on the progress of your lab-work.

The episode also includes some great footage of the massive Crescent Dunes CSP plant as it commences a step in its startup run, including an insidery view of the actual molten salt.

The basic point that Energy on the Edge hammers home (thanks to some great storytelling by sci-fi veteran Akiva Goldsman), is that energy risk-takers are putting it all on the line to propel the human community into a sustainable model for energy generation.

Keep that all in mind when you hear about opposition to the Clean Power Plan.

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Image: by Kelvin Randhir, courtesy of the University of Florida.

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One Million Homes Could Be Powered By Moroccan Solar Project
CSP

One Million Homes Could Be Powered By Moroccan Solar Project

by Jake Richardson
written by Jake Richardson

The Noor Solar Project is expected to be completed in 2020 and have a capacity of 580 MW, which may be enough to power one million homes in Morocco. Eventually, wind and hydro power is scheduled to be added, raising the electricity output for the entire plant to the level that it might power about half of the whole country.

Salé,_Morocco

The first phase of the solar project will be launched in November and produce up to 160 MW. The technology utilized by the solar part of the project is concentrating solar: a material is heated that can store heat for several hours when there is no sunlight. Steam can be generated to turn turbines which produce electricity without the presence of the sun.

“We are not an oil producer. We import 94 percent of our energy as fossil fuels from abroad and that has big consequences for our state budget. We also used to subsidise fossil fuels which have a heavy cost, so when we heard about the potential of solar energy, we thought; why not?” explained Dr. Hakima el-Haite, Minister Delegate in Charge of Environment of the Minister of Energy, Mining, Water and Environment of Morocco.

The 160 MW phase, Noor 1, covers 6,178 acres of land, with 500,000 solar mirrors. That’s a lot of desert, and the remaining phases will require even more, but it is arid, mostly barren land. As long as environmental assessments have correctly determined which desert species are not to be disturbed, and planning has taken them into consideration, there shouldn’t be any problems.

The total project cost is about $9 billion, which may sound like a huge price tag. At the same time, when it is completed — which is supposed to be by 2020 — millions of Moroccans will most likely have electricity from clean, renewable sources. These CSP plants can produce electricity for decades – one plant in America has been operating for 30 years, and it might be able to keep going for another 30.

So, how much would Morocco spend on imported fuels in 30 years? When the full capacity of the Noor solar project is online and it has provided electricity to about half of a whole country, how much will Morocco not have to spend on imported fossil fuels?

Another aspect of the news is that building such a huge plant at home is obviously going to provide jobs to people within Morocco, so the project will be supportive of the domestic economy.

Image Credit: Bernard Gagnon, Wiki Commons

 

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12 Solar Facts You Should Know
CSPHow Solar PV WorksMarket ResearchPVRooftop SolarScienceSolar $Solar IncentivesSolar PolicySolar ProjectsSolar RecordsSolar ResearchSolar Thermal

12 Solar Facts You Should Know

by Glenn Meyers
written by Glenn Meyers

Lists are always fun, so here are 12 solar facts to put in your notebook so you can share the important stuff with anyone who’s interested.

Solar collage_shutterstock_158308727

I have divided this list of facts into four categories that might help you to better keep track of things.

  1. Understanding Our Sun
  2. Solar History
  3. Solar Technology
  4. Solar Metrics

But before you start this list of 12 solar facts, how about a quick trip to the classroom that might help bring all readers up to speed? Here’s a short book list:

Understanding Our Sun

Age: Estimates calculate our sun is 4.6 billion years old, ands will continue burning its hydrogen fuel for another 5 billion years. Will it eventually burn out? Yes, of course — we all learned that in elementary school, right? For those fretting about the lifespan of their PV system’s power source, don’t worry.

Size: The sun is an average-sized star, we find at Cornell’s “Ask An Astronomer.” Here, Christopher Springob tells us, “The biggest stars are more than 100 times as massive as the Sun, and the smallest stars are less than 1/10th as massive as the Sun.”

Closeup Inspection: The NASA video below is worth seeing. In it, we learn that hydrogen is fused into helium in the core of the sun.

Solar History

Solar Ignitors: Historian John Perlin provides this information gem: During the sixth century BCE, Confucius wrote about the common use of curved mirrors shaped from shiny metal to concentrate the rays of the sun for making fire. These became known as yang­­-suis ­­– translating to solar ignitors or burning mirrors. According to the great philosopher, upon waking up, the eldest son would attach a solar ignitor to his belt as he dressed for the day. It was his duty to focus the solar rays onto kindling to start the family’s cooking fire.

Photovoltaics’ Discovery: Willoughby Smith’s 1872 experiments that proved the photosensitivity of selenium stirred keen interest in two British scientists, William Grylls Adams and Richard Evans Day, to discover something previously unknown to science – that a current could be started by the action of “light alone” in a solid-state material. The two scientists called the flow of electricity caused by light, “photoelectric.” Today, we say, “photovoltaic.” So began in 1875 the first stirrings of today’s solar revolution. 

Effort To Commercialize PV: Charles Fritts, an American inventor, built the first solar panels in 1881. They produced a current, Fritts reported, “that is continuous, constant and of considerable force not only by exposure to sunlight but also to dim, diffused daylight.”

Solar Technology

Photovoltaics: Historian John Perlin said this about the public reaction to Einstein’s photoelectric discovery: “Even after proving the validity of Einstein’s light quanta equation in explaining the photoelectric effect, Milliken dismissed the physicality of the photon as ‘untenable.’ In 1923, 18 years after Einstein published his light quanta piece, American physicist Arthur Hailey Compton created a collision between a stationary electron and a short wave of light. Just as in billiards, when the cue ball strikes its target, the light wave transferred some of its energy and momentum to the electron… After the Compton Experiment, the reality of Einstein’s photon and the photovoltaic effect gained universal acceptance in the scientific community.”

Concentrated Solar Power: Concentrated solar power (also called concentrating solar power, concentrated solar thermal, and CSP) systems generate solar power by using mirrors or lenses to concentrate a large area of sunlight, or solar thermal energy, onto a small area. The heat is what is used to eventually spin a turbine and generate electricity (very different from how solar PV generates electricity).

Solar Net Metering: The world’s first net-metered solar system was connected to the grid in 1979, when 28-year old architect Steven Strong put solar PV panels on two buildings making up a 270-unit apartment complex and connected them to a utility meter that tracked how much solar electricity was sent back into the grid. “A small meter mounted on the wall of the dining room told the story in kilowatts. When the utility power was drawn it ran forward. But when the PV was pumping out excess power, it ran backward.”

Solar Metrics

Solar Power In The US: Solar power in the United States surpassed 20 gigawatts (GW) of installed capacity in 2015. “The report also highlights the fact that 40% of all new electric generating capacity brought online in the first half of 2015 in the US came from solar. 21 states throughout the country now have more than 100 MW of solar PV capacity, though the top five states in terms of solar capacity account for nearly ¾ of the total US cumulative PV capacity.”

Solar US Growth Spurt: From 2006 to 2013, the number of homes with solar power grew by more than 1,000 percent in the US, from 30,000 home to 400,000 homes.

Cost Of Solar: The lowest electricity price ever bid by a solar developer was 0.1875 Riyals ($0.049) per kilowatt-hour (kWh) by the Saudi Electric Company in Saudi Arabia in August 2015. That’s far less than the average price of electricity from natural gas or any other electricity source in the region.

There is plenty more that can be added to this list, but I hope this is a great starting place for understanding this stunning renewable energy source.

Image: Solar collage via Shuttersock

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50,000 Battery Packs To Help Power Israeli Thermal Solar Plant
CSPEnergy Storage

50,000 Battery Packs To Help Power Israeli Thermal Solar Plant

by Jake Richardson
written by Jake Richardson

50,000 lithium-ion rechargeable battery packs will be supplied by Tadiran Batteries to BrightSource’s 121 MW Shalim Thermal Solar Power Station in Israel. These batteries have been designed to last 25 years, even in harsh environments. Tadiran is a subsidiary of the better-known Saft Group.

Israel-2013-Ein_Avdat_02

BrightSource Energy, Alstom, and NOY Infrastructure & Energy Investment Fund are partners in the thermal solar station project. Oakland, CA–based BrightSource will be the provider of the concentrating solar power technology that some call a “solar power tower.”

Over 50,000 computer-controlled heliostats — which function like mirrors — will be combined with the tower that is over 200 meters tall to generate electricity. The Tadiran battery packs will be used to help manage these controllable mirrors, which track the sun on two axes. Using batteries instead of expensive cabling reduces the overall project cost.

This CSP plant will generate copious amounts of steam to turn turbines that generate electricity. It has been estimated that when the thermal solar plant is operational, it will generate enough electricity to power about 120,000 homes in the area. The construction site is the Negev desert, and up to 1,000 jobs will be created by the project.

Igal Carmi, President and CEO at Tadiran Batteries, explained, “We are proud to have been selected by BrightSource Energy to supply our state-of-the-art range of rechargeable lithium-ion battery systems for this innovative project. Awarded by a new client in a new sub-segment of energy harvesting, this order represents a significant commercial breakthrough for Tadiran and highlights the recognition by the industry for the excellence of its batteries.”

This project is exciting for a number of reasons. You can imagine how much sunlight is available in an Israeli desert, so it makes no sense not to utilize some of it. Secondly, battery technology is being used and this type of technology is beginning to emerge as a clean energy solution in a number of settings. Thirdly, the potential to provide electricity to well over 100,000 homes from one clean energy source is remarkable. Israel is also considered to be a technology leader, so it “makes sense” that clean energy technology would take root there.

Image Credit: Ein Avdat, Wiki Commons

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California Sets Another Solar Power Record
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California Sets Another Solar Power Record

by James Ayre
written by James Ayre

The state of California has achieved a new electricity generation peak record for utility-scale solar energy, according to recent reports. The new record of 6.391 gigawatts (alternating current, not direct current) was achieved on August 20, 2015, according to California’s grid operator. This figure refers to both utility-scale solar photovoltaic (PV) projects and concentrating solar power (CSP) projects.

While the 6.391 GW figure includes both utility-scale solar PV and CSP projects, it doesn’t include the output of distributed solar energy system output (so-called “behind-the-meter” electricity generation). GTM Research has previously estimated a figure of 3.2 GW of total distributed solar system capacity in California for Quarter 1, 2015 — so, assuming that’s correct, and that peak generation sometimes approaches peak capacity for distributed, then the total peak figure could actually be as much as 50% higher.

Image Credit: California Flag via Flickr CC

The recent peak figure follows earlier records of 6.299 GW and 6.16 GW; set on July 13 and June 7, respectively, as well as numerous new records set over the last month and a half. These new records follow a fairly rapid solar energy buildout in recent days, as part of the state’s renewable energy growth goals.

Note that these records just keep being set, and we reported on the August 2014 4.813 GW and October 2014 4.903 GW solar records. You can see how fast solar is growing in California!

As the goals of the incumbent governor (Governor Jerry Brown) call for the Pacific state to receive at least 50% of its electricity via renewable energy resources by the year 2030, the constant flow of new records are encouraging.

With regard to the recent record on August 20, the state’s grid operator noted that, while solar and wind energy generation shifted the peak in the net load by a few hours, this rise was relatively smooth, with wind energy output rising as solar energy generation faded.

Image Credit: California Flag via Flickr CC

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