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solar in new mexico via Electric Light & Power

Global Solar PV Capacity To Increase As Falling Costs See Market Value Decline

by Joshua S Hill February 12, 2017

Originally published on CleanTechnica
by Joshua S Hill

The global installed capacity of solar PV is expected to increase from 49.77 gigawatts per anum to 69.86 gigawatts by 2020, but declines in module prices will see the market value drop from $39.71 billion in 2016 to $33.43 billion in 2020.

These are the mixed findings from the latest report from research and consulting firm GlobalData, which released its new report this week analyzing the global solar market through 2020. With capacity increasing slowly over the next four years, the real story is the decline in solar PV module prices during the forecast period which will lead to an overall decrease in market value.

GlobalData points to “competitive market conditions” and the existing price sensitivity as key to the topsy-turvy conclusions from their new report.

“With the year-on-year reduction in global module prices, the projects have less capital investment and have driven the solar power system installations on the whole,” explained Praveen Kumar Ama, GlobalData’s Analyst covering Power.

“The crystalline silicon (c-Si) and thin-film modules have seen large price drops since 2010. The average price of a module was approximately $2.17 per watt and $1.99 per watt in 2010 for c-Si and thin-film modules, respectively. Module prices fell sharply in 2011 due to a production rush, leading to oversupply.

“Falling prices stabilized starting 2014 and reached $0.61 per watt and $0.60 per watt in 2015 for c-Si and thin-film module, respectively. This price is expected to fall further during the forecast period, reaching $0.48 per watt and $0.46 per watt for c-Si and thin-film module, respectively, by 2020.”

On top of the falling module prices, GlobalData points to the uncertainty in future energy policy as being a further driver of market decline over the next four years.

“Despite climate concerns, some countries have either rolled back incentive schemes or reduced the level of incentive, which has raised uncertainty over the profitability of solar projects,” Ama continued. “This may hamper the growth of solar installations worldwide. For instance, Feed-in Tariff (FiT) levels have been reduced in the UK and Japan. Japan has also proposed changes in its FiT structure, which will have a negative impact on the growth of the solar PV sector.”

February 12, 2017 0 comment

Solar Policy

India To Launch Global Solar Power Alliance At Paris Climate Change Summit

by Saurabh Mahapatra November 11, 2015

written by Saurabh Mahapatra

India has successfully hosted a worldwide platform for ‘sunshine countries’ ahead of the climate talks in Paris.

During the third India-Africa Forum, Indian prime minister Narendra Modi formally invited around 110 nations to join an international solar alliance, the International Agency for Solar Policy and Application (InSPA) which will be launched at the Paris Climate Conference COP 21 on November 30.

The alliance aims to promote solar power for meeting growing energy demand and to tackle climate change. India will lead the international solar alliance to host the ‘sunshine countries’ which represent all major developed and developing economies between the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn.

The agenda for InSPA was floated earlier this year by the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE) which received appreciation from various countries including China and Australia.

Speaking at the third India-Africa Forum, Modi said: “Our goal is to make solar energy an integral part of our life and reach it to the most unconnected villages and communities.”

InSPA will act as a platform to share knowledge and costly solar energy technologies with the developing nations, thereby reducing the technology gap between developed and developing nations.

All of the countries which are part of this alliance have high solar irradiation. A majority of them also face similar problems, such as lack of accessibility and energy poverty. This alliance will provide a common platform to learn from mutual experiences, research and development, and look for common financial solutions.

This alliance is part of a commitment made by India to the United Nations where India committed to have 40% of its installed capacity from renewable energy sources by 2030.

November 11, 2015 0 comment

Energy Storage PV Solar Research

Revenue For Global Solar PV & Energy Storage Nanogrid Expected To Reach $23.1 Billion

by Joshua S Hill October 14, 2015

written by Joshua S Hill

Navigant Research has concluded that revenue from the global market for solar PV combined with energy storage nanogrids is expected to reach $23.1 billion in 2024.

A new report published by market research and consulting firm Navigant Research has investigated the rapidly expanding market for solar PV systems combined with energy storage nanogrids, and determined that by 2024, revenue from this industry is likely to reach $23.1 billion, up from its current $1.2 billion in 2015.

“Nanogrids, small, modular distribution networks, are considered the antithesis of the bigger-is-better economies of scale thinking that has guided energy resource planning over much of the past century,” said Navigant Research analysts, who investigated the role of energy storage nanogrids with “distributed solar PV installations in behind-the-meter building-level applications for residential and commercial customers.”

Total Solar PV plus Energy Storage Nanogrid Capacity and Revenue by Region, World Markets: 2015-2024

“This segment of the nanogrid market has shown incredible traction just within the last few years, due in large part to the decline in costs of both solar PV and advanced energy storage technologies such as lithium ion batteries,” said Peter Asmus, principal research analyst with Navigant Research. “Other factors have been creative business models, regulatory reforms, and an explosion of investment in creating a new distributed energy resource landscape.”

Even the looming expiration of the US federal Investment Tax Credit for solar PV, combined with the “growth in global utility opposition to traditional solar PV support mechanisms such as net metering and feed-in tariffs” are only serving to “build the business case for solar PV plus energy storage nanogrids.”

The solar PV plus energy storage nanogrid market is expected to be led by the three more developed world market regions — North America, Europe, and the Asia Pacific region. Europe currently stands as the world’s largest market for solar PV plus energy storage nanogrids, with an estimated 185.5 MW of new capacity additions in 2015 alone, which is expected to increase to 4,272.1 MW by 2024. The Asia Pacific region follows close behind Europe with an estimated 184.4 MW of new capacity additions in 2015, before overtaking Europe as the largest global market in 2016, and maintaining that lead over the forecast period, reaching 5,619.9 MW by 2024. North America will remain the third largest market over the forecast period, with 122.2 MW of new additions in 2015, growing to 3,918.2 MW by 2024. However, North America can rest solid in the knowledge that it is the clear leader for commercial PV plus energy storage nanogrids, accounting for around 80% of the global market over the 10 year period.

October 14, 2015 0 comment

Market Research Solar Records Solar Research

Solar Overtakes Wind As Australia’s Number One Renewable Energy

by Joshua S Hill October 12, 2015

written by Joshua S Hill

Solar PV became Australia’s number one source of renewable energy in 2014, passing 4 GW of installed capacity, overtaking wind’s 3.8 GW.

The new figures came by way of energy insight company, GlobalData, and its new report, Asia-Pacific Renewable Energy Policy Handbook 2015, which details renewable energy policy measures and incentives throughout the Asia-Pacific region.

According to GlobalData’s accompanying press release, the report “states that renewables have become an integral part of the energy policy in Australia” — which could be argued, depending on GlobalData’s meaning here. While renewable energy is indeed an integral part of energy policy here in Australia, this is only the case insomuch as you consider the amount of time spent arguing about renewable’s place in energy policy here in Australia. There are any number of examples across Australia that show renewable energy is not an integral part of existing energy policy.

Nevertheless, recent leadership changes in Australia have bolstered renewable energy’s role in the future of Australia’s energy policy and energy mix, which bodes well for the future of the industry.

“The government recently announced the revised Renewable Energy Target (RET) to support emission-intensive industries and slightly reduced the RET from 41 Terawatt hours (TWh) to 33 TWh,” explained Siddhartha Raina, GlobalData’s Senior Analyst covering Power. “Despite this, new renewable energy capacity of 6 GW still needs to be installed by 2020.”

Despite all of the flux around Australia’s renewable energy industry over the past few years, GlobalData points to the continued growth of Australia’s solar PV industry, which in 2014 reached 4 GW of installed capacity, overtaking wind power’s 3.8 GW.

GlobalData also believes that, while solar and wind will continue their role as the two main renewable energy technologies in Australia, bioenergy is next to make a move.

“While feed-in tariffs and renewable energy target schemes, along with other subsidies and support initiatives, have had a major impact on the solar PV and wind industries, the impact of such programs on biopower and small hydro has been minimal,” Siddhartha Raina explains.

“Despite this, strong government backing is expected to promote stable growth in the bioenergy sector. Bioenergy capacity amounted to 573.9 Megawatts in 2014 and is expected to more than treble to 1.8 GW by the end of 2025.”

October 12, 2015 1 comment

Consumer Electronics New Technology PV Rooftop Solar Science Solar PV Manufacturing Solar Research

Japanese Paper Art Inspired Design Can Increase Solar PV Output By 36%

by Anand Upadhyay September 12, 2015

written by Anand Upadhyay

It is common knowledge that if your solar panels can track the sun, their energy output can increase by as much as 30–40%. In spite of this, only a small number of solar PV installations use trackers.

Mostly, the problem is that sun trackers are bulky and can also be costly when it comes to residential rooftop installations. Moreover, they work by tilting the whole panel – which is difficult to do on pitched roofs.

According to an NREL report (Estimating Rooftop Suitability for PV), pitched roofs are in a majority when it comes to residential solar rooftops. And would require significant reinforcing to support the weight of conventional sun-tracking systems.

Researchers from the University of Michigan have shown a new way to help solar cells track the sun by fusing art with science. They have demonstrated that kirigami structures combined with thin-film active materials can be used as a simple, low-cost, lightweight, and low-profile method to track the sun’s position, thereby maximizing the generated energy.

The work was published in the journal Nature Communications.

To the uninitiated, Kirigami is a variation of origami that includes cutting of the paper (from Japanese “kiru” = to cut, “kami” = paper), rather than solely folding the paper as is the case with origami.

Researchers have shown that by cutting solar cells into specific designs (inspired from kirigami), they can allow the cells to track the sun’s angle without having to tilt the whole panel.

Applying a specific kirigami cut (like rows of dashes) creates strips in a solar cell. Pulling the two ends in opposite directions causes the cell to be pulled apart into a basic mesh, and the strips tilt to assume the desired angle to an accuracy of about one degree.

When the cell with cut strips is stretched, the surface can twist over an angle of 120 degrees so that it can face towards the sun. According to the research team’s simulations of solar power generation during the summer solstice in Arizona, the kirigami cell is “as good as a conventional single-axis tracker,” offering a 36% improvement over a stationary panel.

The research team tried several complex designs, and the simplest pattern was reported to perform the best.

September 12, 2015 0 comment

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China’s Mega Solar Dreams For Its 13th Five Year Plan

by Anand Upadhyay July 25, 2015

written by Anand Upadhyay

While I’m sure it does not match up to the glory of 8 on the luckiness index, the number 13 is considered quite lucky in China. In Mandarin, “13” is pronounced as “shisan,” which can mean “definitely vibrant” or “assured growth.”

And vibrant is exactly how one would describe China’s solar market. But does the sector has “assured growth?” You bet.

Image Credit: China Solar Cells via Wikimedia Commons

PV Magazine recently reported that China, as part of its 13th five-year plan, is considering a solar target of 200 GW by 2020. If you have been following recent reports, that’s the milestone globally installed solar PV capacity is expected to cross in the (very) near future.

In 2009, while drafting its 12th five-year plan, China had envisioned a solar goal of 5 GW. That too by 2015. And we all know how that went!

Following several rounds of revisions, the target for the 12th plan was finally hiked to 35 GW. However, by the end of Q1’15, China’s total cumulative solar power capacity had already reached 33.12 GW.

With the annual target for 2015 set at 17.8 GW, the question to ask is not whether China will meet its current five-year goal, but by how much it will exceed it.

China is expected to cross 45 GW — 20% higher than its national target — and overtake Germany (in terms of installed capacity) in the process by this year’s end.

Coming back to the 13th five-year plan, China’s National Energy Administration (NEA), which is the nodal government agency in the matters of energy policy, has chalked out a 100 GW target for solar PV by 2020.

However, it is widely speculated that when the plan is actually announced, this would be raised to an optimistic 200 GW.

A recent study published by Energy Research Institute and the State Grid Energy Research Institute expects that, under a high-penetration scenario, renewables will meet 57% of its power needs in 2030, growing to 86% renewables by 2050, all at the same time as China’s economy grows sevenfold.

The report forecasts that solar power in China will reach a capacity of 157 GW by 2020, and cross 1000 GW by 2030.

Let’s say China reaches 45 GW by the end of 2015. The country would still need to install more than 30 GW of PV capacity each year. Apart from the investment of $30–35 billion per year, this would require vast tracts of suitable land and rooftops and sorting out its grid infrastructure woes.

NEA is expected to submit its revised plan to the state council next month. We will keep you posted.

July 25, 2015 1 comment

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Bosch DC Microgrid Slated for Honda Plant in California

by Aisha Abdelhamid March 27, 2015

written by Aisha Abdelhamid

(Originally published on Planetsave.com)

With a proposed award from the California Energy Commission, Robert Bosch LLC plans to demonstrate the effectiveness of its renewable-based microgrid platform. The project aims to highlight the benefits and viability of a commercial-scale direct-current (DC) building grid, in comparison with conventional alternating-current (AC) grids. The DC building grid will consist of rooftop solar PV arrays connected to energy-efficient DC lighting, ventilation, and energy storage systems on a 380-volt DC bus.

Transforming a Honda America Parts Plant to Zero-Net-Energy

The California Energy Commission funds will provide an opportunity for Bosch to demonstrate a low-cost, highly energy-efficient microgrid solution. Designed to demonstrate a cost-effective approach to transforming commercial buildings to zero-net-energy users, this innovative Bosch DC microgrid will be installed at an American Honda Motor Co., Inc., (NYSE: HMC) parts distribution plant in California.

The Honda parts distribution center helps support more than 16 major North American Honda manufacturing facilities. Producing automobiles in America for more than 30 years, in 2014, 98 percent of all Honda brand vehicles sold in the U.S. were made in North America.

The Bosch Group: A Leading Global Supplier

The Bosch Group includes Robert Bosch GmbH (RBOS) and over 360 subsidiaries and regional companies in nearly 50 countries. A leading global supplier of technology and services, the Bosch Group operations supply four business sectors: Consumer Goods, Mobility Solutions, Industrial Technology, and Energy and Building Technology. According to preliminary 2014 numbers, nearly 290,000 associates brought in sales of 48.9 billion euros, or 65 billion USD.

Establishing a North American presence in 1906, the Bosch Group now employs around 25,000 associates in more than 100 locations. According to preliminary 2014 figures, Bosch’s consolidated sales in the US, Canada, and Mexico reached $11.3 billion. All together, including sales and service partners, Bosch is represented in roughly 150 countries. With a worldwide development, manufacturing, and sales network, the foundation is set for further growth. And growth is well underway. In 2014 alone, Bosch applied for around 4,600 patents worldwide.

Contributing to California’s Carbon Reduction Goals

Oliver Steinig, vice president of business development for Robert Bosch LLC, said in a recent statement, “We are confident the Bosch DC microgrid system will contribute to California’s carbon reduction and energy efficiency goals by increasing the reliability and utilization of distributed renewable energy.” Steinig continued, noting that the grid will improve “the energy efficiency of state-of-the-art technologies – such as LED lighting paired with advanced lighting controls, motors with variable frequency drives and energy storage systems – by operating them on DC power.”

The Bosch DC building grid integrates multiple advanced technologies to provide a stable source of electricity to the loads on the grid. Resilience during grid outages will also be built-in, as well as increased renewable energy usage. Performance data will be collected and analyzed once the project is installed and launched. Cost savings, energy efficiency increases, and the technological capabilities of the advanced microgrid energy management system will be monitored and validated.

A Complete Supply Chain Under Development

The project is expected to greatly enhance the technical knowledge required to refine and integrate distributed renewable energy generation into California’s distribution infrastructure. Also, anticipating broad-scale adoption of Bosch’s cost-effective and energy-efficient DC grid architecture, a complete supply chain for system integration is already in development through various partnerships.

Technical experts with established track records of success in developing and delivering relevant technologies will be participating as partners in the project. that can be incorporated into advanced microgrids will participate in the project. To ensure optimal design, engineering, and performance validation expertise for the Bosch DC microgrid, partnerships have been formed with Navigant Consulting and the California Lighting Technology Center (CLTC), Maxwell Technologies, and Imergy Power Systems for the complete technology supply chain.

An international professional services firm, Navigant Consulting (NYSE: NCI) specializes in “assisting clients in creating and protecting value in the face of critical business risks and opportunities.” The CLTC, a part of the University of California, Davis, is a not-for-profit research, development, and demonstration facility dedicated to accelerating the development and commercialization of next-generation, energy-efficient lighting and daylighting technologies.”

Maxwell is a global leader in the “development and manufacture of innovative, cost-effective energy storage and power delivery solutions.” Headquartered in Fremont, California, Imergy Power Systems is a leader in “stationary energy storage solutions using innovative flow battery technology. Its proven Energy Storage Platform (ESP) provides a total solution to reduce energy cost and optimize renewable power generation while improving overall power reliability.”

A Three-Year Project Set To Start Immediately

The California Energy Commission award is in the amount of $2,817,566. Additionally, Bosch and its partners have jointly provided $1,790,095 in in-kind and matching funds to assist in project development, planning, and execution. Once the contract with the California Energy Commission is signed, the Bosch renewable-based DC microgrid project is scheduled to begin immediately, and to conclude by February, 2018.

March 27, 2015 0 comment