DropYourEnergyBill

Category: Solar

The tremendous growth in the U.S. solar industry is helping to pave the way to a cleaner, more sustainable energy future.

  • Illinois’ legislative lockdown will leave solar industry waiting until 2021

    Illinois’ legislative lockdown will leave solar industry waiting until 2021

    As surging coronavirus cases prompt leaders to cancel a November legislative session, solar developers and advocates fear irreparable harm to the industry.

    Hopes for new Illinois energy legislation this year have been dashed by the pandemic-related cancelation of the state’s annual November veto session. 

    Several new energy bills are pending in the state legislature, including the Clean Energy Jobs Act, backed by clean energy and community groups, and the Path to 100 bill, backed by renewable energy developers. With the veto session nixed, solar developers and advocates are looking to 2021 but say the nascent industry may suffer irreparable harm in the meantime. 

    The news comes as several solar projects are being unveiled, demonstrating the success of incentives created by the 2017 Future Energy Jobs Act — incentives that will no longer be available unless new legislation passes.

    The state’s largest solar installation on a school went online this month, part of 23 megawatts of solar developed and partially owned by ForeFront Power. The projects represent a $46.7 million investment in Illinois, aided by incentives under the Future Energy Jobs Act. And the company has more major projects slated to go online soon, according to Rachel McLaughlin, vice president of sales and marketing.

    Meanwhile, suburbs north of Chicago this month launched a program to offer residents guaranteed 20% savings if they subscribe to community solar projects that were also made possible by the 2017 law.

    When the Future Energy Jobs Act passed, “all of a sudden solar made sense for customers in Illinois,” said McLaughlin. “But now the incentives are gone. We have demand from customers every day, but we won’t be able to do [new installations] without something like Path to 100. … Without a long-term consistent program that provides certainty for the market, we’ll continue to see these boom and bust cycles.”

    School savings and union jobs 

    The ForeFront project with the Huntley school district involves three ground-mounted installations totaling 5.5 MW on farmland owned by the district northwest of Chicago. The district has a power purchase agreement with ForeFront, which owns the installation and sells solar renewable energy credits made available by the Future Energy Jobs Act as well as collecting federal tax incentives.

    Huntley CFO Mark Altmayer said that based on the low 20-year rate they’ve locked in with ForeFront, the school district expects to save at least $200,000 a year compared to what it would have paid utility ComEd otherwise. The money is crucial to a cash-strapped district in a state that ranks dead last for state contributions to education funding.

    “We’re going to spend money on learning versus burning” fossil fuels for energy, said Altmayer, who is also president of the Illinois Association of School Business Officials. “Every dollar we save is a dollar that can go into the classroom.” 

    Altmayer lamented that other schools won’t be able to do similar projects unless new energy legislation passes. “Solar will die if Illinois doesn’t do anything, that’s the unfortunate piece,” he said. “I’m at one of very few school districts in the state that did this. After we pulled the trigger, I talked about it at national conferences, and every school in the state wants to do this now.” 

    The solar renewable energy credits that ForeFront is able to sell, passing the savings on to the school district, are worth about $5 million a year, McLaughlin said. Combined with an inverter rebate and the federal tax credit, much of the cost of the array is covered. 

    The solar credits “are a huge win-win for us as well as ForeFront,” Altmayer said. He noted that the school district also benefits from sending energy back to the grid through net metering, though ironically that might put the district in a bind if schools continue to be online-only during the pandemic — using little electricity — and the panels generate more energy than net metering ComEd customers are supposed to send back to the grid. 

    ForeFront is providing kiosks for every school building showing real-time energy generation and analytics, and providing curriculum to help educate students and teachers about solar energy. Altmayer said it’s a key component of the district’s larger sustainability initiatives, which include LED lighting and replacing diesel buses with cleaner propane ones.

    ForeFront, a subsidiary of the global company Mitsui, also developed and owns a 2,900-panel array for the auto supplier Aisin located about 300 miles south of Chicago, another power purchase agreement arrangement involving incentives under the Future Energy Jobs Act.

    McLaughlin said 71 jobs were created by their Illinois projects, most of them being “high-quality union jobs.” A coalition of labor unions that this fall entered the legislative negotiations has expressed particular interest in installing solar on schools, and public sector projects like schools require a set prevailing wage and often union labor. 

    Community solar 

    Residents of seven communities on the North Shore north of Chicago can subscribe to community solar projects and get guaranteed 20% savings under agreements brokered by the communities and multiple developers under the wildly popular community solar incentive program created by the Future Energy Jobs Act.

    The communities also secured promises that there would be no credit checks or termination or enrollment fees, and all billing is handled through one provider, simplifying the process.

    “We’re showing people there are options today to go solar that are very easy and that save the environment and actually save you money,” said Art Wilde, co-founder of the group GoGreen Deerfield, which is helping promote the solar program. “This is what people have been asking for, for many years, and it’s here now — so let’s do this.”

    Wilde signed up for a similar community solar program earlier this fall and wants to help educate residents about the ease and potential. 

    “People who have been pondering private solar panels — those people will definitely find this appealing. It’s so much easier, you don’t have to make all these assessments and calls,” he said. “And from there the next level of interest comes from people who’ve wanted to go solar, but really haven’t had the time to look into it, and, wow, here’s something our village is supporting and all you have to do is click this link and get on the waiting list.”

    The towns since last fall have been getting energy for municipal operations through the first community solar project to go online in Illinois, also sparked by the Future Energy Jobs Act — a 3,700-panel array in one of the communities, Elgin.

    Glen Cole, assistant to the village administrator in Lake Bluff, said the new community solar program for residents grew out of the Elgin project’s success — Lake Bluff estimates it will save $12,300 over its 20-year term.

    Cole said town leaders were motivated to make sure residents could access solar under beneficial conditions negotiated by the governments, especially since some alternative retail electric suppliers have peddled deceptive or problematic renewable energy deals in the state.

    “We’re playing the middle-man, [matching residents with projects under] one set of business terms,” Cole said. “It’s kind of odd for us to be playing energy brokers and it’s kind of odd for us to be playing consumer protection agency, but we felt it was important for us to have a program that is municipally sponsored.”

    In early November, just a week after the program was announced, 90 residents were already on the waitlist. Thus far developers have committed a total of 10 MW available for community solar subscribers in the seven municipalities, and Cole said he expects the scale to grow.

    Cole said the program appears to be unique, especially given the fact that the municipalities sought commitments from developers rather than running a typical competitive request for proposals.

    “Our residents are not seeing the movement they want on climate and energy issues nationally, so we’re being asked to do what we can,” Cole said. “We’re not energy brokers by trade, but we found an innovative solution that contributes to making those changes in our state and our nation. It’s a cool program.”

    The large community solar and ForeFront projects will help Illinois make progress toward its renewable portfolio standard of 25% renewable energy by 2025, though the state is still far from meeting that target, and delay in passing energy legislation will only exacerbate the problem.

    GoGreen Deerfield co-founder George McClintick is planning to volunteer to help build momentum for the Clean Energy Jobs Act.

    “The more solar they build — it of course replaces other forms of power, namely coal here in Illinois,” he said. “We reduce our carbon footprint, and if people save some money that’s good too.”

    Correction: This article has been updated to correct the amount that Lake Bluff expects to save and to clarify the details of ForeFront Power’s solar investment in Illinois.

    Written by KARI LYDERSEN

  • Building Of A Fusion Power Plant

    Building Of A Fusion Power Plant

    US Physicists Urge The Building Of A Fusion Power Plant

    Written by Adrian Cho

    U.S. fusion scientists, notorious for squabbling over which projects to fund with their field’s limited budget, have coalesced around an audacious goal. A 10-year plan presented last week to the federal Fusion Energy Sciences Advisory Committee is the first since the community tried to formulate such a road map in 2014 and failed spectacularly.

    It calls for the Department of Energy (DOE), the main sponsor of U.S. fusion research, to prepare to build a prototype power plant in the 2040s that would produce carbon-free electricity by harnessing the nuclear process that powers the Sun.

    The plan formalizes a goal set out 2 years ago by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine and embraced in a March report from a 15-month-long fusion community planning process. It also represents a subtle but crucial shift from the basic research that officials in DOE’s Office of Science have favored. “The community urgently wants to move forward with fusion on a time scale that can impact climate change,” says Troy Carter, a fusion physicist at the University of California, Los Angeles, who chaired the planning committee. “We have to get started.”

    Fusion scientists and DOE officials strived to avoid the sort of meltdown they suffered during their last planning exercise. Six years ago, the fractious community was already reeling from budget cuts that forced DOE’s Fusion Energy Sciences (FES) program to shutter one of three major experiments. Then, the associate director for FES decided to write the plan himself, with limited input. Many researchers rejected the road map.

    This time, DOE wants no infighting. “We’ve been told in no uncertain terms that either you guys get in line, or you’re going to get nothing,” says Nathan Howard, a fusion physicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. For the first time, FES leaders let researchers hash out consensus in a series of workshops and meetings. Howard and other leaders of that process used anonymous polling and even hired a facilitator to ensure the “loudest voices in the room” couldn’t dominate deliberations.

    The process was also comprehensive, says Carolyn Kuranz, a plasma physicist at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. FES mainly funds research on magnetically confined fusion, in which an ionized gas or plasma is squeezed and heated until atomic nuclei fuse and release energy. But it also supports smaller efforts in plasma physics, such as using high-power lasers to re-create plasmas like those in stars. The consensus building did not neglect them. “This was the first time we included the whole portfolio and the entire community,” Kuranz says.

    The plan that emerged does not call for a crash effort to build the prototype power plant. During the next decade, fusion researchers around the world will likely have their hands full completing and running ITER, the international fusion reactor under construction in southern France. ITER, a huge doughnut-shaped device called a tokamak, aims to show in the late 2030s that fusion can produce more energy than goes into heating and squeezing the plasma.

    ITER will teach valuable lessons about a “burning plasma,” researchers say. But they add that its cost of more than $20 billion is far too steep for an actual power plant. So, after ITER, U.S. fusion researchers want to build a much smaller, cheaper power plant, leveraging recent advances such as supercomputer simulations of entire tokamaks, 3D printing, and magnet coils made of high-temperature superconductors.

    The new fusion road map identifies technological gaps and nearer-term facilities to fill them (see partial list, below). “By identifying [a power plant] as a goal, that can trigger more research in those areas that support that mission,” says Stephanie Diem, a fusion physicist at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. For example, in a fusion power plant a barrage of energetic neutrons would degrade materials, so the report calls for developing a particle-accelerator–based neutron source to test new ones.

    Fusion Wish List

    U.S. researchers have agreed on the need for projects that would aid a future power plant (first three rows) and advance basic plasma science. However, funding limits could curtail plans.

    Project Flat budgets 2% increases Unconstrained
    Neutron source to test materials for fusion power plant Yes, but highly delayed Yes, but delayed Yes
    Tokamak to test integrated systems for fusion power plant No Yes, but highly delayed Yes
    Facility to test “blanket” that would surround reactor and absorb neutrons No No Yes
    Matter in Extreme Conditions Upgrade No, but develop further No, but develop further Yes
    Solar wind facility No No Yes
    Multipetawatt laser No No Yes

    POWERING THE FUTURE FUSION AND PLASMAS, FUSION ENERGY SCIENCES ADVISORY COMMITTEE (2020). 

    uch technology development pushes a sensitive boundary for the fusion program. Fusion investigators have long complained that DOE’s Office of Science has limited them to basic research. Now, DOE leaders are more receptive to a practical approach, says James Van Dam, DOE’s associate director for FES. “There’s been much more openness and interest in fusion moving ahead.”

    To realize their ambitions, fusion scientists will need more funding from Congress. The planning committee considered three scenarios: flat budgets, increases of 2% per year, and unconstrained budgets. Only the most generous scenario would allow DOE to build new facilities, the report says. FES’s annual budget is now $671 million, including $247 million for ITER.

    Tighter budgets might strain the newfound consensus. Plasma physicists want several new facilities, such as one to simulate the solar wind. But without a funding boost, they won’t even be able to build a project DOE has already said it wants: the Matter in Extreme Conditions Upgrade, which would improve a petawatt laser at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory to create energetic plasmas so they can be probed with the lab’s x-ray laser.

    No matter how things play out, the fusion plan expresses the will of younger scientists who led the community exercise, says Scott Baalrud, a plasma theorist at the University of Iowa. “People don’t get into this career just to study the science that may one day, long after they’re dead, lead to a fusion reactor,” he says. “They want to get going and change the world.”

  • Ohio wants to ban Solar & Wind

    Ohio wants to ban Solar & Wind

    The bill’s sponsors voted last year to gut state clean energy standards while subsidizing nuclear and coal bailouts.

    An Ohio bill introduced last month would halt most large solar or wind energy development for up to three years — an echo of previous policies that stunted the state’s renewable growth for much of the last decade.

    The legislation does not appear to have broad support, but it is concerning to critics nonetheless because it reflects some lawmakers’ ongoing hostility to renewable energy, despite its growing economic importance.

    “It’s a relentless attack on the inevitability of where the energy market is today and where it’s going,” said Rep. Casey Weinstein, D-Hudson, who opposes the bill. “It’s a bury-our-heads-in-the-sand mentality that is just so, so locked in with the status quo, while the rest of the world and country are moving on.”

    House Bill 786 would prevent regulators from certifying any new solar or wind facility designed to produce more than 50 megawatts of electricity, as well as smaller “economically significant” wind farms with a capacity of 5 MW or more.  The ban would end after three years or further legislation from the General Assembly, whichever comes first.

    In a memo seeking co-sponsors for the bill, primary sponsor Rep. Todd Smith, R-Farmersville, referred to complaints about “unregulated solar and wind farms” and claimed the bill’s goal was “merely to press the pause button.” He did not respond to the Energy News Network’s request for comment.

    “The impetus for this legislation is completely without merit,” said Dan Sawmiller, director of Ohio energy policy for the Natural Resources Defense Council, noting that the bill is also “inconsistent with what is happening on the ground.”

     “Despite the fact that large-scale renewables have been a reality for years, now without any justification they’re saying we shouldn’t do this anymore,” said Neil Waggoner, Ohio campaign leader for the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal program. “It’s not just a bad policy. It’s terrible policy.”

    “The sponsors of HB 786 are apparently unfamiliar with the rigorous certification process of the Ohio Power Siting Board and the mechanisms through which local residents can provide input,” said Jane Harf, executive director of Green Energy Ohio. “There has been considerable testimony to the benefits that have come to many rural communities in Ohio from the presence of large-scale projects that support local infrastructure, school systems, and businesses. This bill has no merit and once again puts Ohio on a clear path backward while neighboring states are embracing the future.”

    The bill also has drawn ire from the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, whose members work on many energy construction projects.

    “IBEW is emphatically opposed to this misguided legislation,” said IBEW Fourth District Representative Steve Crum. “The solar industry is bringing thousands upon thousands of jobs to Ohio and our members see this [as] a tremendous opportunity to get work in the more rural parts of our state, where many of them are living. Bad ideas like this need to be soundly rejected by our state leaders.”

    An ongoing fight

    Efforts by utilities and some Ohio lawmakers to slow or stop renewable energy development go back to 2012. Indeed, the “pause button”phrase in Smith’s co-sponsor request echoes rhetoric from 2014. At that time, lawmakers froze further requirements under Ohio’s renewable energy and energy efficiency standards for two years. Weaker versions of the standards resumed in 2017 and were then gutted by HB 6.

    HB 786 co-sponsor Dick Stein, R-Norwalk, chaired the subcommittee that shepherded that bill through the House. Smith and co-sponsor Don Jones both voted for HB 6, which also provides huge subsidies for two 1950s-era coal plants and two nuclear plants owned by Energy Harbor (formerly FirstEnergy Solutions). The law is at the center of an alleged $60 million conspiracy case involving dark money and former Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder. The complaint’s references to Company A suggest that most of the money came from FirstEnergy and its current and former subsidiaries.

    Current House Speaker Bob Cupp has said he wants to make the repeal of HB 6 a priority. However, Waggoner said, “it’s been over four months since Householder was arrested. The legislature has had a third of the year to repeal HB 6, and they still have not made this a priority.”

    Bills to repeal HB 6 were first introduced in late July. Despite a majority of House members being willing to vote for a complete repeal in August, repeal bills have been held up in committee since then.

    In contrast, five days after HB 786 was introduced, House leadership referred it to the Commerce and Labor Committee. That Nov. 17 assignment is unusual. Normally House bills dealing with energy would be considered either by the Energy and Natural Resources Committee or the Public Utilities Committee.

    Weinstein is doubtful about whether the bill will progress. “But it perfectly exemplifies how much they want to keep us in the past and prevent us from embracing the environmental benefits and the massive economic benefits of an energy transformation in Ohio,” he said.

  • Green Prince of Darkness

    Green Prince of Darkness

    Green Prince Of Darkness….

    Exposed

    Today’s Guest, November 28, 2020

    About the author: Joseph A Olson, PE: Co-founder of Principia Scientific Intl. and co-author of the ‘Slaying the Sky Dragon – Death of the Greenhouse Gas Theory’ the world’s first full-volume debunk of the greenhouse gas theory. Retired Texan engineer and impassioned science writer, Joe Olson PE is a respected innovative thinker with over 100 major civil engineering and climate-related articles to his name. Olson is famed as a staunch advocate of the traditional English scientific method and combines a wealth of hard-edged industry experience with an insightful and deft writer’s touch to convey complex scientific concepts in a unique literary style.

    There were a myriad of factors that contributed to the demise of the British Motor Industry in the mid seventies.  The storied brands of Jaguar, Bentley, Aston Martin and MG of the automotive and Triumph, BSA and Norton of motorcycle industry all suffered under onerous labor union contracts and government ownership and controls.  All of these brands also suffered with defective electrical components produced by the Joseph Lucas Company.

    Quality control issues were so bad that a popular bumper sticker for those marquees read “All of the parts that fall off of this car are of the highest quality British craftsmanship”.

    While purist can indulge a certain level of hardship with mechanical devices, they have little patience for the electrical gremlins that did not affect other manufacturers.  For this reason, Joseph Lucas was nicknamed “The Prince of Darkness”.

    Today we have a new Green Prince poised to plunge the western world into a self imposed darkness.  This Prince first creates the fiction that Carbon causes climate change, then adds the fable that green energy exists which can dispel this nonexistent problem.  The entire range of ‘green solutions’ are all nonsensical.  We’ll limit this discussion to just solar cells and batteries, saving bio-fuels and windmills for another time.

    The Sun Gives Us Nothing for Free

    As alluring as the premise may be, the promise of solar energy is not free.  The first solar cell was created in 1883 by Charles Fritts using a sheet of Selenium with thin Gold facings.  The Sun radiates approximately 1000 watts per square meter at maximum.  The Fritts cell produced 10 watts per square meter or 1% efficiency. The Russell Ohl patent of 1946 is considered the first modern solar cell.  Today’s solar panels are high purity Silicon with a light doping of Phosphorus and Boron to provide breaks in the Silicone for electron movement.

    The Universe is a radiation chamber with EMR and particle emissions from all concentrated mass, and decay particles from individual atoms.  Solar radiation strips protons from Nitrogen atoms, creating Carbon-14.  Stripping exposed electrons is even easier.  Silicon has four rather stable outer shell electrons in an orbit that can hold eight electrons.  Boron has five outer-shell electrons, and Phosphorus has only three.  Silicon forms a cubic crystal grid, and slightly impure Silicone matrix sheets can then be embedded with Boron and Phosphorus atoms.

    When exposed to sunlight, the Boron atom losses it’s easily excited fifth electron, which travels the Silicon matrix using the Phosphorus “hole” to the conducting collection grids on both sides of the photovoltaic cell and permanently exits the cell.

    Only segments of the solar spectrum activate this flow and it must be captured on both sides of the panel to create a circuit.  The required capture grid blocks some of the incoming energy and the net result is 10% efficiency, or approximately 100 watts per square meter, and only within limited ambient temperature ranges which prohibit lenses or mirrors for simple amplification.

    Efficiencies as high as 40% are available with exotic materials, but then one must address the ‘high cost of free’, which applies to every ‘green’ technology.  Silicon, Phosphorus and Boron are common elements, but to mine, refine and bring on line has a cost.  That cost is reflected in ‘cost payback’ of 5 to 7 years depending on the system and level of government forced subsidy.  But these costs are based on low cost carbon based energy systems providing these materials.   Regardless, this is a ONE-TIME, ONE-WAY EROSION PROCESS with a total system life of less than 20 years.

    Solar cells produce only Direct Current, which is electric power by the migration of electrons, and in typical PV cells is only 1.5 volts.  Alternating Current creates a voltage, but transfers power as a wave, rapidly cycled between positive and negative, with little actual electron migration.  The first municipal Edison power systems were DC, but transmission loss and multiple voltage issues prevented success, and the Tesla-Westinghouse developed three-phase AC system became the driving force for modernization.

    Converting DC to AC involves a conversion loss in an inverter, boosting to higher voltage and converting to more efficient three phase causes additional losses due to the Carnot Cycle. If you connect a hydro-turbine to a pump, you can only pump a portion of the water flowing from a dam into water pumped back to the dam.  If you use the hydro-turbine to generate electricity, then use an electric pump to pump water back ablve the dam, then the losses are even greater.  The combined losses converting 1.5 volt DC to usable 50 kV, three phase transmissible AC power is forever technically impossible.

    Ignoring just these physical limitations, supposed science leading publications like Popular Science, Popular Mechanics and Discover, regularly show fanciful space based systems where vast arrays of solar panels, positioned around the planet, beam “sustainable” microwave energy back to Earth based antennas to provide 24 hour service.  Never mind all the limitations above, now add the Carnot loss converting to microwaves on both ends of this system.  Limitations to the field density of this transmission would require massive antennas, or large, “no fly zones” for humans, and instant on the fly cook zones for any stray birds.

    To overcome solar wind and lunar gravity changes, these microwave transmitters would require constant realignment, or the transmissions would wander off the receiving antenna.  The fact that this science fiction is presented as anything other than TOTAL FICTION, is proof that these publications are all “pop” and no science.

    Much like paying your Visa bill with your Master Card, this parasitic ‘clean’ energy cannot provide the ‘spare’ energy to avoid ‘dirty’ energy.  There is a constant loss of electrons in this system and power production erodes over time until, at twenty years, they are useless.  The Silicon sheets are protected with glass covers which require periodic cleaning and are subject to damage from hail and wind debris.

    Solar cells efficiency is also a function of azimuth angle and reduces with higher latitudes, and seasonal tilt angle.  Systems with tracking ability have higher efficiency, but not recoverable installation costs.  You get progressively less energy at the poles, precisely at the time when you need the MOST energy.  To have usable power over extended periods requires a storage system. The most common of these is the battery, which is the heart of that ‘other’ planet saver.

    Dream Green Machine

    Soon Electric Vehicles, aka EVs, will replace the nasty internal combustion engine and humanity will be in harmony with the Universe.  The transition technology in this race is the hybrid auto and the front runner is the Toyota Prius.  This undeniable marvel has a 120 pound Nichol-Metal Hydride battery that costs $3500 to replace or approximately $20 per pound.  There again, a cost based on carbon energy providing the material production.

    The ‘Metal Hydride’ portion of these batteries includes the rare Earth elements of Lanthanum, Cerium and Neodymium.  These required green components do not willingly join the green cult movement.  To have your treasured EV, this planet must be mined and those elements must be extracted and refined.

    Due to chemical erosion thru use, these batteries have an eight year or 100,000 mile warranty period.  You can save $450 per year on gasoline if you spend $450 per year on a battery.  You can walk forever up the down escalator and still get nowhere.  There is no way to improve or even ‘sustain’ our carbon-based life forms without expending some geologically stored carbon energy.

    To the blue-green Hollywood Eco-Smurfs and Na’vi wannabe’s, we are NOT living on a green Pandora that needs rescue from the evil RDA mining company.  Humanity will not be saved by mythical noble savages or a forced return to a primitive life style.  It took most of the nineteenth century to formulate the Laws of Thermodynamics.  It took most of the twentieth century to apply those laws to the benefit of society.  There will be no solutions to problems in the twenty first century that do not comply with these laws.

    Curiously missing from the Climatology degree plan is any mention of Thermodynamics.  Avoidance of these Laws must give license to break these Laws.  Thus clouds can have a negative factor during the day, with their pesky ‘albedo’ effect reflecting sunlight back into space and then just hours later have a positive effect by blanketing the warmth at night….a reflector or greenhouse at the whim of a Climatologist.

    Climatologist can ignore the specific heat and thermal mass of the entire planet and provide a computer model PROVING that the trace human portion, of a trace gas, in the trace portion of the Earth mass that is the atmosphere, is the single greatest climate forcing factor.  They can then empower this three atom molecule the unique ability to radiate in a reverse flow in opposition to all proven Thermodynamic Laws.  This is lawless behavior, which is by definition, criminal behavior.

    Lady Gaga’s Underwear

    If you don’t know what color underwear this pop icon is displaying for us today, it is only due to your willful avoidance of the main stream media message.  If you recognize the need to open our ‘Pandora’ and mine some ‘Unobtainium’ to improve life for all humanity, then we need your support.  Awaken your friends and family to the futility of the Green Utopia.

    This manufactured crisis and faux consensus has been brought to you with your tax dollars by your government officials.  This has been a bi-partisan effort.  Think of the RNC-DNC Crime Syndicate as the ultimate Costa Nostra upgrade.  The IPCC, EPA, DOE, NSF and NAS are all guilt of lying, suborning scientific perjury and attempted tax collection fraud.

    There have been five high profile whitewash attempts since Climate-Gate, the blessed Hadley hacking event of Nov 19, 2009 by Penn State University and the British government.  But now the cherry picked science and the cherry picked whitewash inquires face a serious challenge.

    If the ‘Hockey Stick Maker Mann’ did indeed knowingly delete conflicting data to force a curve match of proxy CO2 to match his proxy temperature, then he has no protection under academic freedom.  Virginia Attorney General, Ken Cuccinelli, filed a Civil Investigation Demand and was rejected by Mann’s former employer, the University of Virginia.  In a hearing, July 13, 2010 the judge ruled that UVA must provide this material within one week and prepare for oral arguments in a month.

    Now a jury of peers, who are NOT government paid academics, will hear evidence denied to skeptics by countless Freedom of Information Act requests.  A legitimate inquiry will for the first time review the ‘science’ of this faux hypothesis.  The evidence that will pour forth in this court will be the final death knell for the warmists and their elite handlers.  Humanity does not need to be plunged back into the darkness of their green hell.

    As America struggled to avoid the world conflict of the 1940’s, then Prime Minister Winston Churchill made this observation, “You can always count on Americans to do the right thing – after they’ve tried everything else.”  We do not need try everything else.  We know science, we know what works and we know when our leaders are systematically lying to us.  If you reject the green group think and feel true science, true debate and true democracy are humanity’s best hope, then come join us.  We are the anti-barbarians.

    Environmental Side Note

    “The way to crush the bourgeoisie is to grind them between the twin millstones of taxation and inflation”  ~ Vladimir Lenin

    Every ton of pure Polycrystalline Silicon, refined for photovoltaic use, produces EIGHT tons of Silicon Tetrachloride and Ammonium Chloridadized Silicon TOXIC waste.  Similar levels of toxic waste are produced in the mining, refining and production of all batteries and the rare Earth elements needed for DC motors in Electric Vehicles and windmill DC generators.

    Western monarch-monopolists have no use for meritocracy and have been at war with freedom and property rights for eternity.  When the Chinese democracy movement threatened Universal Democracy at Tiananmen Square, it was feudal elites who rushed to prop up the Chinese dictators with western capital and western technology.  The trade off was Chinese slave labor and environmental degradation to destroy competitiveness.

    The reason that China is the main producer of all of these ‘green products’ is that China has a vast slave labor population, no property rights, no land use restriction and NO environmental restrictions.  Just more proof of the blindness induced by wearing green goggles.  We are borrowing money to subsidize non functional green energy to supplant functional energy….taxing, regulating and inflating our way to extinction….the ultimate darkness.

    BOOTNOTES

    Since This article was published, so much of the Green Energy lie has emerged that even the far left activists, Michael Moore felt compelled to expose the fraud.  His movie “Planet of the Humans” was available on FewTube briefly, removed for copyright strikes. This Sky News Australia newscast has a good summary.

    See: “Exposing Green Energy Fraud” > https://youtu.be/c4NvDaMQs6g

    You can also find Joe Olson at PRINCIPIA SCIENTIFIC INTERNATIONAL, legally registered in the UK as a company incorporated for charitable purposes. Head Office: 27 Old Gloucester Street, London WC1N 3AX. 

  • Mystery Flaw Of Solar Panels

    Mystery Flaw Of Solar Panels

    ‘Real Engineering’ video describes the inherent but unreported flaw of solar panels – they degrade in efficiency as soon as the leave the factory. At the outset, a typical solar panel has 20 percent efficiency.

    In other words, it is capable of translating 20 percent of the energy it receives from the sun to convert into useful energy. But this number falls off a cliff during regular use and a lot of potential energy is lost.

    Scientists have been looking for the cause of the problem in the photovoltaic cells, as explained in the video below:

    Credits: PRINCIPIA SCIENTIFIC INTERNATIONAL

  • Emerging Technology in Electricity

    Emerging Technology in Electricity

    Could these technologies power the world of tomorrow?

    Since the dawn of the industrial age, the world has been powered by a relatively small set of technologies. The 20th century was the age of coal, but this side of 2000, that’s changed.

    The need to curb emissions and the rise of renewables, from wind to solar to biomass, has significantly changed how we fuel our power generation.

    Microbial fuel cells

    Harnessing the power of bacteria

    Bacteria are all around us. Some are harmful, some are beneficial, but all of them ‘breathe’. When they breathe oxidation occurs, which is when something combines with oxygen at a chemical level, and when bacteria do this, electrons are released.

    By connecting breathing microbes to a cathode and an anode (the positive and negative rods of a battery), the flow of these released electrons can be harnessed to generate power. This is what’s known as a microbial fuel cell (MFC). MFCs are used largely to generate electricity from waste water, but are expanding into more exotic uses, like powering miniature aquatic robots.

    New developments are constantly expanding the power and applications of MFCs. Researchers at Binghamton University, New York found that combining phototropic (light-consuming) and heterotrophic (matter-consuming) bacteria in microbial fuel reactions generates currents 70 times more powerful than in conventional setups.

    Solar

    The New Dawn

    Solar power may not be a new technology, but where it’s going is…

    BIPV solar technology

    Building-integrated photovoltaics, as the name suggests, seamlessly blend into building architecture in the form of roofs, canopies, curtain walls, facades, and skylight systems. Unlike traditional solar PV panels, BIPV can be aesthetically appealing rather than a compromise to a building’s design.

    Of course, aesthetics alone is not enough for solar buyers; economics matters too. The good news is that the BIPV solar panel systems enable homeowners to save on building materials and electric power costs. By substituting BIPV for standard building materials, you can cut down on the additional cost of solar panel mounting systems.

    BIPV technology, when used on the building’s facades, atrium, terrace floor, and canopies, provides the following benefits:

    • Increased energy efficiency

    • High thermal and sound insulation

    • Clean and free power output from the sun

    • Decreased O&M costs

    • Zero carbon footprint

    The photovoltaic PV glasses installed as building materials act as an energy-generating device, allowing natural light inside homes and offices, just as conventional architectural glasses.

    Solar Skins

    Solar skins are a novel PV technology to integrate custom designs into solar panel systems. The solar skin technology is similar to the ad wraps displayed on bus windows.

    Sistine, the manufacturer of solar skins, is testing the technology at the United States National Renewable Energy Laboratory to increase its efficiency. Solar thin-film skins maintain high efficiency due to its selective light filtration advancements. The sunlight falling on solar skins is filtered to reach the solar cells beneath it. As a result, it simultaneously displays the custom image and provides solar energy.

    These imprinted custom images, embedded into solar panels, can exactly match your grassy lawns or rooftops of your homes.

    Solar skin panels can also be beneficial for businesses or government offices. They can be customized to display business logos, business advertisements, a country’s flag, and so on.

    Moreover, solar skins utilize rail-less racking systems, sit lower, have a sleek finish, and hide metal components, giving the panels a super cool look. If panel aesthetics stops you from going solar, Sistine’s SolarSkins might be the solution you are looking for.

    The future of solar looks bright

    Solar power was earlier generated only by means of ground-mounted or rooftop panels. But thanks to all the advancements mentioned above, solar is set to become lighter, more flexible, and applicable everywhere.

    Imagine all this tech is available and you visit another city. You can buy food at a solar-powered food cart, eat it while traveling on a solar-powered highway, and charge your phone from your solar-powered clothes. This is what the near future looks like!

    And there are actually lots of other innovative residential solar technologies in development or currently being rolled out in 2020. Perhaps the most promising new tech is Perovskite solar cells, which could soon be used to create solar paint. 

    Tidal Power

    Changing the Wave

    A more predictable power source than intermittent renewables like wind and solar, tidal power isn’t new, however its growth and development has typically been restrained by high costs and limited availability. That’s changing. Last year saw the launch of the first of 269 1.5 MW (megawatt) underwater turbines, part of world’s first large scale tidal energy farm in Scotland.

    Around the world there are existing tidal power stations – such as the Sihwa Lake Tidal Power Station in South Korea, which has a capacity of 254MW – but the MeyGen array in Scotland will be able to take the potential of the technology further. It’s hoped that when fully operational it will generate 398MW, or enough to power 175,000 homes.

    We might not know exactly how the electricity of tomorrow will be generated, but it’s likely some or all of these technologies will play a part. What is clear is that our energy is changing.

    We might not know exactly how the electricity of tomorrow will be generated, but it’s likely some or all of these technologies will play a part. What is clear is that our energy is changing.

  • Rolling Blackouts

    Rolling Blackouts

    Why are they turning off MY electricity?

    Rolling Blackouts

    Q: What are rolling blackouts?

    A: Rolling blackouts are a rationing scheme utilities resort to when electricity demand outstrips supply, which can happen in heat waves as air conditioners and fans are cranked up to cool homes, offices and stores. They take blocks of circuits and the customers hooked up to them offline to balance demand with supply.

    California Expresses Frustration as Blackouts Enter 4th Day

    Lawmakers and consumer groups expressed outrage on Monday that the operator of California’s electricity grid had not adequately prepared for a heat wave and was resorting to rolling blackouts.

    Steve Berberich, president and chief executive officer of California I.S.O., said the system could be short about 4,400 megawatts of power in the late afternoon. “It’s going to be highly disruptive to people,” Mr. Berberich said. “We’re going to do everything we can to narrow that gap.”

    Q: How are rolling blackouts different from other outages?

    A: Outages caused by damage to electrical equipment are common during winter storms and heat waves, and last until utility crews repair the damage.  Safety Power Shutoffs, which preemptively shut down power lines to prevent damage from high winds and low moisture that can spark devastating wildfires. Those can last as long as dangerous conditions continue.

    Sweltering Heat

    … has smothered much of the West over the last week and is expected to strain the electric grid that serves about 80 percent of California. Temperatures in Death Valley reached 130 degrees.

    The heat is expected to continue through Wednesday evening. The governor, the grid operator and utilities have been asking consumers to reduce electricity use between 3 and 10 p.m., when power demand typically peaks in the state.

    2000-2001

    Beginning of blackouts

    Q: Why did those occur?

    The rolling blackouts of 2000-2001 resulted from California’s flawed electricity deregulation system.

    2020 – Steve Berberich, president and chief executive officer of California I.S.O., said the system could be short about 4,400 megawatts of power in the late afternoon. “It’s going to be highly disruptive to people,” Mr. Berberich said. “We’re going to do everything we can to narrow that gap.”

    After 20 years, and one of the largest states for new solar installation…

     

    Q: Why is it happening again?

    Mark Toney, executive director of the Utility Reform Network, which represents consumers before the California Public Utilities Commission, called on lawmakers to investigate California I.S.O. to determine why the agency did not adequately prepare for the heat wave.

    “Why did they not do a better job of managing the grid, which is their job?” Mr. Toney said.

    State Senator Jerry Hill, who heads a Senate energy subcommittee, said he had learned that blackouts on Friday took place in part because a natural gas power plant unexpectedly went offline.

    “It failed to produce when called on,” Mr. Hill said. “There’s something wrong, and it’s up to the Legislature and the governor to find out.”

    Q: Is it up the legislatures?

    Its time for YOU to be responsible and DROP YOUR ENERGY BILL !

    Q: Higher electric Bills?

    YES !

    The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has been monitoring California’s energy troubles. The commission said it had discussed the electricity demand and wholesale power prices, which spiked in California over the weekend, with California I.S.O.

    Review previous Post related to

    Is Green really green


    Learn more

  • Is Green Really Green

    Is Green Really Green

    Today we have a new Green Prince poised to plunge the western world into a self imposed darkness.  This Prince first creates the fiction that Carbon causes climate change, then adds the fable that green energy exists which can dispel this nonexistent problem.  The entire range of ‘green solutions’ are all nonsensical.  We’ll limit this discussion to just solar cells and batteries, saving bio-fuels and windmills for another time.

        The Sun Gives Us Nothing for Free

    As alluring as the premise may be, the promise of solar energy is not free.  The first solar cell was created in 1883 by Charles Fritts using a sheet of Selenium with thin Gold facings.  The Sun radiates approximately 1000 watts per square meter at maximum.  The Fritts cell produced 10 watts per square meter or 1% efficiency. The Russell Ohl patent of 1946 is considered the first modern solar cell.  Today’s solar panels are high purity Silicon with a light doping of Phosphorus and Boron to provide breaks in the Silicone for electron movement.

    The Universe is a radiation chamber with EMR and particle emissions from all concentrated mass, and decay particles from individual atoms.  Solar radiation strips protons from Nitrogen atoms, creating Carbon-14.  Stripping exposed electrons is even easier.  Silicon has four rather stable outer shell electrons in an orbit that can hold eight electrons.  Boron has five outer-shell electrons, and Phosphorus has only three.  Silicon forms a cubic crystal grid, and slightly impure Silicone matrix sheets can then be embedded with Boron and Phosphorus atoms.

    When exposed to sunlight, the Boron atom losses it’s easily excited fifth electron, which travels the Silicon matrix using the Phosphorus “hole” to the conducting collection grids on both sides of the photovoltaic cell and permanently exits the cell.

    Only segments of the solar spectrum activate this flow and it must be captured on both sides of the panel to create a circuit.  The required capture grid blocks some of the incoming energy and the net result is 10% efficiency, or approximately 100 watts per square meter, and only within limited ambient temperature ranges which prohibit lenses or mirrors for simple amplification.

    Efficiencies as high as 40% are available with exotic materials, but then one must address the ‘high cost of free’, which applies to every ‘green’ technology.  Silicon, Phosphorus and Boron are common elements, but to mine, refine and bring on line has a cost.  That cost is reflected in ‘cost payback’ of 5 to 7 years depending on the system and level of government forced subsidy.  But these costs are based on low cost carbon based energy systems providing these materials.   Regardless, this is a ONE-TIME, ONE-WAY EROSION PROCESS with a total system life of less than 20 years.

    Solar cells produce only Direct Current, which is electric power by the migration of electrons, and in typical PV cells is only 1.5 volts.  Alternating Current creates a voltage, but transfers power as a wave, rapidly cycled between positive and negative, with little actual electron migration.  The first municipal Edison power systems were DC, but transmission loss and multiple voltage issues prevented success, and the Tesla-Westinghouse developed three-phase AC system became the driving force for modernization.

    Converting DC to AC involves a conversion loss in an inverter, boosting to higher voltage and converting to more efficient three phase causes additional losses due to the Carnot Cycle. If you connect a hydro-turbine to a pump, you can only pump a portion of the water flowing from a dam into water pumped back to the dam.  If you use the hydro-turbine to generate electricity, then use an electric pump to pump water back ablve the dam, then the losses are even greater.  The combined losses converting 1.5 volt DC to usable 50 kV, three phase transmissible AC power is forever technically impossible.

    Ignoring just these physical limitations, supposed science leading publications like Popular Science, Popular Mechanics and Discover, regularly show fanciful space based systems where vast arrays of solar panels, positioned around the planet, beam “sustainable” microwave energy back to Earth based antennas to provide 24 hour service.  Never mind all the limitations above, now add the Carnot loss converting to microwaves on both ends of this system.  Limitations to the field density of this transmission would require massive antennas, or large, “no fly zones” for humans, and instant on the fly cook zones for any stray birds.

    To overcome solar wind and lunar gravity changes, these microwave transmitters would require constant realignment, or the transmissions would wander off the receiving antenna.  The fact that this science fiction is presented as anything other than TOTAL FICTION, is proof that these publications are all “pop” and no science.

    Much like paying your Visa bill with your Master Card, this parasitic ‘clean’ energy cannot provide the ‘spare’ energy to avoid ‘dirty’ energy.  There is a constant loss of electrons in this system and power production erodes over time until, at twenty years, they are useless.  The Silicon sheets are protected with glass covers which require periodic cleaning and are subject to damage from hail and wind debris.

    Solar cells efficiency is also a function of azimuth angle and reduces with higher latitudes, and seasonal tilt angle.  Systems with tracking ability have higher efficiency, but not recoverable installation costs.  You get progressively less energy at the poles, precisely at the time when you need the MOST energy.  To have usable power over extended periods requires a storage system. The most common of these is the battery, which is the heart of that ‘other’ planet saver.

       Dream Green Machine

    Soon Electric Vehicles, aka EVs, will replace the nasty internal combustion engine and humanity will be in harmony with the Universe.  The transition technology in this race is the hybrid auto and the front runner is the Toyota Prius.  This undeniable marvel has a 120 pound Nichol-Metal Hydride battery that costs $3500 to replace or approximately $20 per pound.  There again, a cost based on carbon energy providing the material production.

    The ‘Metal Hydride’ portion of these batteries includes the rare Earth elements of Lanthanum, Cerium and Neodymium.  These required green components do not willingly join the green cult movement.  To have your treasured EV, this planet must be mined and those elements must be extracted and refined.

    Due to chemical erosion thru use, these batteries have an eight year or 100,000 mile warranty period.  You can save $450 per year on gasoline if you spend $450 per year on a battery.  You can walk forever up the down escalator and still get nowhere.  There is no way to improve or even ‘sustain’ our carbon-based life forms without expending some geologically stored carbon energy.

    To the blue-green Hollywood Eco-Smurfs and Na’vi wannabe’s, we are NOT living on a green Pandora that needs rescue from the evil RDA mining company.  Humanity will not be saved by mythical noble savages or a forced return to a primitive life style.  It took most of the nineteenth century to formulate the Laws of Thermodynamics.  It took most of the twentieth century to apply those laws to the benefit of society.  There will be no solutions to problems in the twenty first century that do not comply with these laws.

    Curiously missing from the Climatology degree plan is any mention of Thermodynamics.  Avoidance of these Laws must give license to break these Laws.  Thus clouds can have a negative factor during the day, with their pesky ‘albedo’ effect reflecting sunlight back into space and then just hours later have a positive effect by blanketing the warmth at night….a reflector or greenhouse at the whim of a Climatologist.

    Climatologist can ignore the specific heat and thermal mass of the entire planet and provide a computer model PROVING that the trace human portion, of a trace gas, in the trace portion of the Earth mass that is the atmosphere, is the single greatest climate forcing factor.  They can then empower this three atom molecule the unique ability to radiate in a reverse flow in opposition to all proven Thermodynamic Laws.  This is lawless behavior, which is by definition, criminal behavior.

     Environmental Side Note

    Every ton of pure Polycrystalline Silicon, refined for photovoltaic use, produces EIGHT tons of Silicon Tetrachloride and Ammonium Chloridadized Silicon TOXIC waste.  Similar levels of toxic waste are produced in the mining, refining and production of all batteries and the rare Earth elements needed for DC motors in Electric Vehicles and windmill DC generators.

    Western monarch-monopolists have no use for meritocracy and have been at war with freedom and property rights for eternity.  When the Chinese democracy movement threatened Universal Democracy at Tiananmen Square, it was feudal elites who rushed to prop up the Chinese dictators with western capital and western technology.  The trade off was Chinese slave labor and environmental degradation to destroy competitiveness.

    The reason that China is the main producer of all of these ‘green products’ is that China has a vast slave labor population, no property rights, no land use restriction and NO environmental restrictions.  Just more proof of the blindness induced by wearing green goggles.  We are borrowing money to subsidize non functional green energy to supplant functional energy….taxing, regulating and inflating our way to extinction….the ultimate darkness.

    Article source: https://principia-scientific.com/green-prince-of-darkness-exposed/

  • Grand Solar Minimum

    Grand Solar Minimum

    grand solar minimum

    What does it mean for life on earth

    The Sun has entered a period of reduced activity, known as a solar minimum, which happens on a cyclical pattern; meaning the burning heart of our solar system swings between energetic peaks and lows. When the sun peaks in activity – the solar maximum – more sunspots and solar flares erupt.

    Sun Cycles

    The sun has a cycle that lasts between nine and 14 years—typically 11 years, on average—and right now we’re in the trough. At the peak of that cycle—called solar maximum—the sun produces more electrons and protons as huge solar flares and coronal mass ejections.

    From a visual perspective, the solar cycle is a “sunspot cycle” since solar scientists can gauge where the Sun is in its cycle by counting sunspots on its surface.

    what is a sunspot

    It’s an area of intense magnetic activity on the surface of the sun—a storm—that appears as an area of darkness. Sunspots are indicative of solar activity, birthing solar flares and coronal mass ejections (CMEs).


    What is a solar minimum

    Solar Minimums are prolonged periods of reduced solar activity, typically every 11 years.  In the past have gone hand-in-hand with times of global cooling.

    Just as solar maximum sees many sunspots, the trough of solar minimum features zero sunspots—and that’s what’s going on now. However, it’s been continuing rather longer than expected, which means the sun is in the midst of a particularly deep solar minimum. The most infamous happened between 1645 to 1715 when a “Maunder Minimum” saw a prolonged sunspot minimum when sunspots were very rare for an extended period.

    According to Spaceweather.com reports that there have already been 100 days in 2020 when our Sun has displayed zero sunspots.   That makes 2020 the second consecutive year of a record-setting low number of sunspots


    The last time we had a GSM (the Maunder Minimum) only two magnetic fields of the sun went out of phase.

    This time, all four magnetic fields are going out of phase.

    Note: never look at the Sun with the naked eye or through binoculars or a telescope that aren’t fitted with solar filters.

    “This is a sign that the Grand solar minimum is underway,”

    “So far this year, the Sun has been blank 76% of the time, a rate surpassed only once before in the Space Age. Last year, 2019, the Sun was blank 77% of the time. Two consecutive years of record-setting spotlessness adds up to a very deep solar minimum, indeed.” (source1), (source2)

     

    During a Solar Minimum, the sun’s magnetic field weakens. This ‘heliosphere’ usually protects the solar system from charged particles from deep space known as cosmic rays, and with its strength diminished, more of these rays can sneak through.

    Earth has a second line of defense in the form of its own magnetic field and atmosphere, but for people and objects in space, such protection isn’t afforded, and cosmic rays can cause technical complications.

    It’s more the activity of the sun in the years following Solar Minimum that we should be paying attention to.

    “After our sun passes the current Solar Minimum, solar activity like eruptive prominences are expected to become more common over the next few years,” said NASA.

    These prominences can be huge – the entire earth would easily fit inside them – and may erupt in a Coronal Mass Ejection, expelling hot gas into the solar system.

    In 1859, a Coronal Mass Ejection was so large it caused a geomagnetic storm called the ‘Carrington Event’.

    “The Carrington Event compressed the Earth’s magnetic field so violently that currents were created in telegraph wires so great that many wires sparked and gave telegraph operators shocks,” said NASA.

    “Were a Carrington-class event to impact the Earth today, speculation holds that damage might occur to global power grids and electronics on a scale never yet experienced.”

    // How does the grand solar minimum affect earth?? //

    A new study predicts that the next grand solar minimum could see the sun with almost a 7% reduction in light and heat – and this is 7% below the normal solar minimum. So pretty darned cold.

    Historians believe that a grand solar minimum occurred between 1645 and 1715. That event was named the Maunder Minimum after the scientists who studied it at the time.

    It got so cold that the Thames River in England froze solid. The Baltic Sea also froze and the Swedes were able to invade the Danes by marching across the frozen sea.

    This wasn’t the first grand solar event in history. Another one is figured to have occurred from 1450-1540 called the Spörer minimum. (source)

    The things preppers would need to focus on would be a food supply, alternative ways of growing, and ways to keep warm. An event lasting multiple decades would definitely outlast any supplies that most of us could squirrel away, so the key to survival would be adaptation to the new climate.

    It is unlikely to send us the way of the dinosaurs, but should it begin to occur in earnest, you’d want to take prepepping steps to an entirely different level.

     

  • Solar Breakthrough

    Solar Breakthrough

    Perovskite Solar Breakthrough

    Each hour, the sun sends 430 quintillion Joules of energy our way, more than the 410 quintillion Joules that humans consume in a whole year. With the sun likely to be around for another five billion years or so, we have a virtually unlimited source of energy–if only we could tap it efficiently.

    Unfortunately, we are currently only able to harness a minuscule amount of this energy due to technical limitations.

    But that could be about change, thanks to advances in one wonder-crystal–perovskite.

    The U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) has forged a public-private consortium dubbed the US-MAP for US Manufacturing of Advanced Perovskites Consortium, that aims to fast track the development of low-cost perovskite solar cells for the global marketplace.


    Silicon Panels

    More than 90% of those photovoltaic (PV) panels installed were constructed from crystallized silicon. 

    Silicon panels have their advantages: They’re quite robust and relatively easy to install. Thanks to advances in manufacturing methods, they’ve become quite cheap over the past decade, particularly the polycrystalline panels constructed in Chinese factories.

    However, they have one major drawback: Silicon PV panels are quite inefficient, with the most affordable models managing only 7%-16% energy efficiency depending on factors like placement, orientation, and weather conditions. Si panels are wafer-based rather than thin-film, which makes them sturdier and durable, but the trade-off is a sacrifice of efficiency.  

    To meet the world’s rapidly growing energy appetite–and achieve the kind of de-carbonization goals that would help slow the impact of climate change–it would take hundreds of years to build and install enough silicon PV panels. 

    This is way too slow, given that we have a mere 10-year window to act to avert irreversible and catastrophic climate change.

    More critically, the best (and most expensive) silicon panels to-date boast an efficiency rating maximum efficiency rating of 26.7%, pretty close to the theoretical maximum of 29.1%.

    Thin-film PV panels can absorb more light, and thus produce more energy. These panels can be manufactured cheaply and quickly, meeting more energy demand in less time. There are a few different types of thin-film out there, all of them a little different from standard crystalline silicon (c-si) PV panels. 

    Amorphous silicon (a-Si) panels are the oldest form of thin-film: a chemical vapor deposits a thin layer of silicon onto glass or plastic, producing a low weight panel that isn’t very energy efficient, managing 13.6%. Then there are cadmium telluride (CdTe) panels, which uses the cadmium particle on glass to produce a high-efficiency panel. 

    The drawback there is the metal cadmium, which is toxic and difficult to produce in large quantities. 

    These panels are usually produced using evaporation technology: the particles are superheated and the vapor is sprayed onto a hard surface, such as glass. They are thin, but not as dependable or durable as c-si panels, which currently dominate the market.

    NREL Perovskite Breakthrough

    Perovskite has now managed to break the efficiency glass ceiling.

    Perovskites are a family of crystals named after Russian geologist Leo Perovski, “perovskites.” They share a set of characteristics that make them potential building blocks for solar cells: high superconductivity, magnetoresistance, and ferroelectricity. Perovskite thin-film PV panels can absorb light from a wider variety of wave-lengths, producing more electricity from the same solar intensity.

    In 2012, scientists finally succeeded in manufacturing thin-film perovskite solar cells, which achieved efficiencies over 10%. But since then, efficiencies in new perovskite cell designs have skyrocketed: recent models can achieve 20%, all from a thin-film cell that is (in theory) much easier and cheaper to manufacture than a thick-film silicon panel. 

    The National Renewable Energy Laboratory NREL has been able to build composite Silicon-Perovskite cell by putting perovskites atop a silicon solar cell to create a multijunction solar cell, with the new cell boasting an efficiency of 27% compared to just 21% when only silicon is used. 

    But perhaps more significant is that the organization has been able to boost the longevity of Perovskite solar cells by altering their chemical composition to overcome light-induced phase-segregation– a process through which the alloys that make up the solar cells break down when exposed to continuous light. 

    Low-Cost Perovskite Panels

    Solar power has become more affordable, accessible, and prevalent than ever before thanks to technology improvements, competitive procurement, and a large base of experienced, internationally active project developers.

    According to the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), solar power generation is now fully competitive with fossil fuel power plants, with the global weighted average levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) for utility-scale solar PV cells having declined 75% to below USD 0.10/kWh since 2010.

    However, there’s still work to be done.

    At an LCOE of $0.085/kWh for photovoltaic cells and $0.185/kWh for concentrating solar projects, solar power(utility-scale + residential rooftop) remains more expensive than other renewable sources including hydro, onshore wind, geothermal and bioenergy.

  • $110T Renewable Energy Stimulus Package

    $110T Renewable Energy Stimulus Package

    $110 Trillion Renewables Stimulus Package Could Create 50 Million Jobs

    The past few weeks of current events have led us to unprecedented levels of job and capital destruction, decimated consumer spending, underperformance by nearly all major financial markets, and a breakdown in the world fiscal order. 

    Even giant economic powerhouses have not been spared, with California–one of the wealthiest states in the United States thanks to its booming tech sector–having obliterated all its job growth over the last decade in just two months.

    But now a renewable energy think-tank says directing those stimulus dollars to renewable energy investments could not only help tackle global climate emergency but spur massive economic gains for decades to come.

    The International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA)–an organization dedicated to promoting global adoption of renewable energy and facilitating sustainable use–says that it will cost the global economy $95 trillion to help return things to normal. 

    Investing $110 trillion in renewables could, on the other hand, potentially spur an even more robust economic recovery from COVID-19 by creating massive socioeconomic gains as well as generate savings of $50 trillion-$142 trillion by 2050. 

    The big question is: Will the world’s governments be willing to put their money where their mouths are?

    A Deluge of New Jobs

    IRENA alleges that channeling all those stimulus dollars into the renewable energy sector would grow global GDP about 2.4 percentage points faster than the currently recommended scheme and spur a 13.5% increase in global welfare indicators such as education and health.

    Related: This Oil Price Rebound Is Only Temporary

    But here’s the kicker: investing that amount of money in renewables could quadruple the number of jobs in the sector to 42 million as well as create tens of millions more in related industries. In other words, it could easily create more than double the 26 million jobs that the United States has so far lost to the pandemic.

    IRENA director-general Francesco La Camera says COVID-19 has “…exposed deeply embedded vulnerabilities of the current system…” notably the fossil fuel sector which is finding itself in dire straits due to an epic collapse in demand amid a global lockdown. Francesco has opined that the world needs more than a kickstart and that accelerating renewables can potentially achieve multiple economic and social objectives that would help build a more resilient economy.

    Beyond 2050 and over the long-term, the report identifies investments in ‘five key pillars of decarbonization,’ namely electrification, renewable energy generation, system flexibility, green hydrogen, and innovation–as being necessary for the achievement of a near- or zero-carbon global economy.

    Too Much Rhetoric

    Not surprisingly, the renewable energy sector has lauded the report, with Ignacio Galán, CEO of Spanish power company Iberdrola, saying aligning economic stimulus with climate goals is crucial in enhancing the long-term viability of the global economy.

    A previous report by the IEA aired pretty much similar views, with IEA executive director Fatih Birol saying some of the stimulus packages being rolled out by governments should be invested in the renewables sector:

    “We have an important window of opportunity. Major economies around the world are preparing stimulus packages. A well-designed stimulus package could offer economic benefits and facilitate a turnover of energy capital which will have huge benefits for the clean energy transition,” he said.

    The IRENA report has also come in for some panning, with Charles Donovan, executive director of the Centre for Climate Finance and Investment at Imperial College London, saying its long on facts and figures but short on actionable interventions that governments can undertake right now to bend the carbon emissions curve.

    Related: Shale’s Decline Will Make Way For The Next Big Thing in Oil

    But what are the chances that IRENA’s ambitious ‘Transforming Energy Scenario’ that aims to lower global CO2 emissions by 70% by 2050 through channeling stimulus dollars into clean energy will see the light of day?

    Unfortunately, slim-to-none.

    The report has already sounded a warning on the “widening gap between rhetoric and action” by governments regarding climate change.

    COVID-19 has resulted in a significant reduction in CO2 emissions due to travel restrictions and depressed economic and manufacturing activity, it will end up being far more inimical to the sector.

    The IEA has warned that governments are likely to deeply scale back on clean energy investments, with the current year set to record the first fall in solar energy growth in nearly four decades. 

    Meanwhile, EV sales are expected to come to a standstill for the first time in more than a decade as well as trigger a dramatic reversal in the incremental shift away from coal-fired power plants.

    The unfortunate fact is that whereas governments everywhere have been paying lip service to climate change and clean energy, in reality, they are wont to go to much greater lengths to try and save the fossil fuel sector from collapse than invest in clean energy projects with much longer and unproven paybacks.

    Credits: Oilprice.com

  • Batteries for Grid Backup

    Batteries for Grid Backup

    Distributed energy platform provider AutoGrid has been developing “co-optimisation” capabilities that will allow residential battery storage deployed to mitigate power outages to continue participating in market opportunities such as joining virtual power plant (VPP) programmes.

    In a recent interview with Energy-Storage.news, AutoGrid general manager for new energy, Rahul Kar, acknowledged that California’s recent wildfires had led to people “putting in a lot more batteries,” in the state as they seek to keep their lights and appliances running as utilities enact public power shutoffs that can last for days, or even weeks or months. A report out this week from analysis firm Wood Mackenzie Power & Renewables appears to back this up, finding that California was by far the US leader in behind-the-meter residential storage deployment in the final quarter of 2019.

    As reported by this site previously, Kar said that Japan – where AutoGrid is participating in a 10,000 asset virtual power plant (VPP) programme with local partner ENERES – and Australia are also markets where disaster consciousness, be it from storms, fires or earthquakes, are helping drive a strong uptick in interest and purchases of batteries. It helps that these markets already had experienced some deployment of home storage, Kar said.

    “One of the use cases is something we are working on with ENERES, is how we provide emergency planning,” Car said.

    “Suppose you have an imminent disaster or suppose there’s a storm coming, if there’s an earthquake warning, is there some way that you charge up all the batteries under your control so that it provides relief for whatever period that battery is available for?”

    While a technical barriers to doing that is having in place the right software and intelligence to co-ordinate the charging of those batteries, for instance processing weather forecast data and feeding it to networks of many many units, being able to create “co-optimisation capabilities” could turn out to be important for the economic case for customer-sited, behind-the-meter energy storage. It also helps that batteries bought to backup loads for at least several hours at a time tend to be higher capacity in kilowatt-hours than those sold purely for optimising solar self-consumption. 

    “Suppose someone needs to be ready for offering emergency services like in an imminent storm, while participating in the market, while making sure you’re still optimising the rate tariffs that the customer is on, while making sure that you’re not feeding it back to the grid,” AutoGrid’s Rahul Kar said.

     

    “All of these things are like constraints in the multi-scale optimisation algorithm, and that’s not easy to solve in real-time across hundreds of thousands of DERs. That’s why we invested quite heavily in solving that problem for well over two and a half years and that’s bearing fruit right now.”

    Customer acquisition the primary barrier for grid services programmes

    After all, Kar said, there have been some VPP projects around the world that show great promise. South Australia’s VPP network programmes that battery storage system providers Sonnen and Tesla have signed up to participate in, are planned to reach a scale of tens of thousands of units over the next few years.

    With those being government-run programmes that include systems deployed on public housing helping bulk up numbers, the main barrier until now – and likely in the future – for other VPPs is getting customers to not only buy the batteries but also sign up to join programmes. The latter consideration extends also to making not only the customer understand what they’re signing up to, but also to making the network and the battery manufacturers come to a mutually beneficial arrangement.

    “The primary limitation [to VPP participation] is, as with any aggregation play, customer acquisition. That’s where the primary cost goes to. [But also] customer comfort, when you’re acquiring the customer, that you have the right contracts in place.

    “In certain cases the battery manufacturer may not give you complete control over the battery while the customer wants complete control, stuff like that in the contracting phase. There has to be a very simple and clear communication to the customer as to what they’re signing up for.

    “If you want to use their batteries for grid services, what sort of payment they’ll get from that and so on. The simpler you make it for them, the easier the customer acquisition. That still is kind of the primary barrier of scalability, which is, especially on the residential side, if you’re trying to aggregate tens of thousands of batteries and sign up residential customers, that’s a pretty significant cost,” Kar said.  

    Energy-storage.news

  • Micro-Energy-Grids

    Micro-Energy-Grids

    All across N. America, sustainable microgrids are emerging as a vital tool in the fight against climate change and increasingly common natural disasters. In the wake of hurricanes, earthquakes and wildfires, the traditional energy grid in many parts of the country is struggling to keep the power flowing.

    Microgrids — power installations that are designed to run independently from the wider electricity grid in emergency situations — have been around for decades, but until the turn of the century, relied almost exclusively on fossil fuels to generate power. While it’s taken another 20 years for solar panels and battery storage costs to fall far enough to make truly sustainable microgrids an economic reality, a recent surge in interest and installations have shown that they’ve reached an inflection point and could very well be the future of clean energy.

    These solar-plus-battery-storage microgrids would greatly enhance the ability of chosen schools to serve communities during natural disasters or power outages, like the ones induced by California’s PG&E electric utility that affected hundreds of thousands of residents last October. The sites will provide a place to coordinate essential emergency services, store perishable food and provide residents with light, power and connectivity in times of distress.

    A completed feasibility study for the microgrid installations is expected in June, and while initial estimates put the final cost around $40 million, long-term power purchase agreements (PPAs) will allow the school district to have the sites set up for free and paid for over time via its normal electric bill — at a cost no greater than grid power. Agreements like these have only become economically viable in the last few years as renewable energy generation costs have continued to fall, and are a major driver of the microgrid boom.

    Hurricane Maria

    Meanwhile, on the opposite side of the country, successive disasters are already proving the value of solar-plus-storage microgrids in Puerto Rico. In 2017, Hurricane Maria catastrophically damaged the centralized electricity grid in the U.S. territory and left many without power for more than a year.

    A project funded by the Rocky Mountain Institute, Save the Children and Kinesis Foundation installed solar-plus-battery-storage microgrids at 10 schools in the mountainous central regions of the island, designed to provide energy for on-site libraries, kitchens and water pumps indefinitely during power outages. The installations were completed in December 2019, just weeks before a series of earthquakes that began in January endangered the island’s already sluggish economic recovery. The RMI Island Energy Program told Microgrid Knowledge that while grid power around several of the sites had gone down, the microgrids had continued to operate successfully and provide critical services.

    Microgrids go beyond schools though. Several communities are also linking solar-and-storage systems mounted on their homes, employing inverters and controllers that have only become efficient and affordable in the last few years to create “community microgrids” that share power among the participants to supplement or replace grid energy.

    Residential retail energy prices in Puerto Rico were as high as 27 cents per kilowatt hour (kWh) in 2019, while the calculated cost from home solar-plus-battery-storage systems fell as low as 24 cents in good conditions.

    The cost of solar installations has plummeted 90% in the past decade.  At the same time, the early effects of a warming climate and associated natural disasters have started to take a toll on American energy infrastructure already struggling to keep pace with regular maintenance and demand growth. Impacted communities have already seen the value of microgrids and are racing to adopt them, even as many larger utility providers look to natural gas or other partial solutions that rely on the aging centralized power grid.

    The greatest impact of these early sustainable microgrids may reach beyond the emergency power they provide to nearby residents. They offer a glimpse of a radically different way for communities and energy consumers to think about how power is produced and used. In community microgrid systems, residents have a concrete, practical connection to their source of energy and are asked to work together with their friends and neighbors to control their energy demand so there is enough to go around.

  • Night Solar….Hmmm?!!

    Night Solar….Hmmm?!!

    What if solar cells worked at night?

    That’s no joke, according to Jeremy Munday, professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at UC Davis. In fact, a specially designed photovoltaic cell could generate up to 50 watts of power per square meter under ideal conditions at night, about a quarter of what a conventional solar panel can generate in daytime, according to a concept paper by Munday and graduate student Tristan Deppe. The article was published in, and featured on the cover of, the January 2020 issue of ACS Photonics.

    Story Source:  Materials provided by University of California – Davis. Original written by Andy Fell. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

    Munday, who recently joined UC Davis from the University of Maryland, is developing prototypes of these nighttime solar cells that can generate small amounts of power. The researchers hope to improve the power output and efficiency of the devices.

    Munday said that the process is similar to the way a normal solar cell works, but in reverse. An object that is hot compared to its surroundings will radiate heat as infrared light. A conventional solar cell is cool compared to the sun, so it absorbs light.

    Space is really, really cold, so if you have a warm object and point it at the sky, it will radiate heat toward it. People have been using this phenomenon for nighttime cooling for hundreds of years. In the last five years, Munday said, there has been a lot of interest in devices that can do this during the daytime (by filtering out sunlight or pointing away from the sun).

    Generating power by radiating heat

    There’s another kind of device called a thermoradiative cell that generates power by radiating heat to its surroundings. Researchers have explored using them to capture waste heat from engines.

    “We were thinking, what if we took one of these devices and put it in a warm area and pointed it at the sky,” Munday said.

    This thermoradiative cell pointed at the night sky would emit infrared light because it is warmer than outer space.

    “A regular solar cell generates power by absorbing sunlight, which causes a voltage to appear across the device and for current to flow. In these new devices, light is instead emitted and the current and voltage go in the opposite direction, but you still generate power,” Munday said. “You have to use different materials, but the physics is the same.”

    The device would work during the day as well, if you took steps to either block direct sunlight or pointed it away from the sun. Because this new type of solar cell could potentially operate around the clock, it is an intriguing option to balance the power grid over the day-night cycle.

     

  • Energy Consumption by Country

    Energy Consumption by Country

    2020

    Few people can argue that electricity isn’t one of our world’s most greatest inventions. After all, electricity allows up to light up our homes without the need for candles or lanterns, lets us watch television, and even is used to charge or power the computer or smartphone you’re using to read this.

    While electricity does have its advantages, there are also some disadvantages. This includes the need for large, expensive infrastructure, millions of wires and cables, and dangers in the home, such as electrical fires. Power plants also create pollution, which degrades the quality of the air that we breathe as well as contributes to global warming.

    In this article, we’re going to explore the top consumers of electric energy around the world. Topping this list is China. Based on data from 2017, China consume over 6.3 trillion kilowatts of energy per hour annually. However, the highest consumption of energy per capita does not go to China. Instead, that honor goes to Iceland. Overall, Iceland is ranked 73rd in the world based on its total energy consumption at 17 billion kilowatts per hour annually. However, the average energy use per capital is about 50,613 per person per year. Compare this to China, which has a much larger population and an average energy use of 4,475 kilowatts per person per year.

    The United States is the second largest consumer of electric energy in the world with over 3.9 trillion kilowatts per hour used each year. Other nations that use at least 1 trillion kilowatts per hour per year include Russia and India.

    On the flip side, there are nations that consume very little electric energy as a whole. The lowest is the Gaza Strip, which consumes roughly 200,000 kilowatts per hour per year. 

  • Texas and Renewable Energy

    Texas and Renewable Energy

    2019 Texas Produced More Renewable Energy Than Coal

    Last year Texas generated more energy from renewable sources than from coal, according to data from the Electric Reliability Council of Texas.

    Texas produces the most wind energy of any state in the nation, and its solar energy capacity is growing rapidly.

    Earlier this year, Texas’ wind energy output surpassed its coal energy production for the first time. 

    Texas uses the most coal in summer and winter, during which hot and cool temperatures lead to high air conditioning and heat use and put more demands on the energy grid.

    In 2019, the sum total of renewable energy produced in Texas did turn out to be more than coal. Last year, energy facilities in the state produced 21.5% of energy from renewable sources (wind, solar, hydro and biomass) and 20.3% from coal.

    Here’s the catch: Those hoping to see Texas produce primarily renewable energy, have a long wait ahead. The state still makes more energy from gas, a largely non-renewable resource, than from any other form of energy.

    Although Texas generates three times the wind energy of the next most prolific state, Oklahoma, and is poised to increase solar power production by up to 30 times the current level, according to the council’s numbers, this year Texas generated 47.3% of its energy from gas sources.

    Data from Electric Reliability Council of Texas

    While natural gas burns cleaner than coal, most of it still has to be extracted from the ground, it exists in a finite quantity and creating energy from it still pollutes the atmosphere.

    Some natural gas can be gleaned from decomposing natural matter in places like landfills and waste water, but right now the process is expensive and complicated to produce. If the process is refined, it might become a viable source of energy, especially because bio gas, as this form of natural gas is known, can be stored in and travel through existing natural gas infrastructure, per Michael E. Webber, a professor of energy resources at the University of Texas at Austin, stated last year.

    Because of the sheer quantity of existing natural gas facilities, and their owners’ expectations that they continue to be used, switching to a more renewable energy future in Texas is more complicated than simply installing more wind turbines and solar panels and connecting them to the energy grid, Webber said. Still, over time, as renewable production becomes cheaper and easier, the trend toward more green energy production is likely to continue.

  • SOLAR VS COAL

    SOLAR VS COAL

    Solar, Wind Are Now Cheaper Than Coal In Most Of The World

    The world’s premiere authority on global warming, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (or IPCC for short), announced in an alarming report at the end of last year that the world is running out of time to curb carbon dioxide emissions. In fact, the data they collected found that in order to keep global temperatures from rising more than 1.5 degrees centigrade over pre-industrial averages within this century (the goal set by the Paris climate agreement), the entire world would have to transition to 100 percent clean energy by the middle of the century. This, it goes without saying, is a lofty goal. But up until now, clean energies just haven’t been able to compete in a market flooded with cheap fossil fuels. 

    Low- and no-carbon renewable energies like solar and wind power have long been subsidized by governments around the world because while they hold great promise for a clear, more sustainable energy future, they just couldn’t compete with natural gas, coal, and oil when it comes to the bottom line. But now, what was once so prohibitively expensive that governments needed to give financial incentive for these green energy technologies to be adopted at any serious scale, have become extremely cheap–even with no government subsidies at all.

    This week Bloomberg reported on the once unthinkable phenomena of solar and wind subsidies disappearing across the world because the industry has outgrown the need for them. “On sun-drenched fields across Spain and Italy, developers are building solar farms without subsidies or tax-breaks, betting they can profit without them. In China, the government plans to stop financially supporting new wind farms. And in the U.S., developers are signing shorter sales contracts, opting to depend on competitive markets for revenue once the agreements expire,” Bloomberg said. 

    Perhaps most importantly, the article goes on to point out, these developments of self-sufficiency and profitability in the renewable energies sector “have profound implications for the push to phase out fossil fuels and slow the onset of climate change.” The importance of our global energy production and consumption in terms of the global community’s impact on greenhouse gas emissions and climate change can’t be overstated. The Bloomberg report continues: “Electricity generation and heating account for 25% of global greenhouse gases. As wind and solar demonstrate they can compete on their own against coal- and natural gas-fired plants, the economic and political arguments in favor of carbon-free power become harder and harder to refute.”

    Related: Traders Scramble To Find ‘Plan B’ As Sanctions Ground Chinese Oil Tankers

    The reason that wind and solar have outgrown government subsidy programs is not because they never needed them at all–to the contrary, the fact that financial state support of renewables is no longer needed shows that the subsidies did exactly what they were supposed to. They allowed renewables, a young innovative sector, to get past the often-fatal initial stages of a new market sector where the prohibitively expensive first steps of scaling up an industry can often crush a company before it truly begins to function and then stabilize. Now, as JMP Securities equity analyst Joe Osha told reporters, “the training wheels are off.” 

    Wind and solar have successfully been able to expand to a level where they can mass-market and standardize, meaning costs go down and efficiency rises, especially as solar and wind technologies become more and more efficient. According to data from BloombergNEF, wind power now costs half of what it did in 2010, and in the same period of time, the cost of solar has plummeted by a jaw-dropping 85 percent, making wind and solar cheaper than building a new coal or gas plant in most of the world.

    Now, we just need wind and solar to be more widely adopted. Much, much more widely adopted. Sales are already up, but renewables still account for a very slim proportion of global energy mixes. The profits are there, and the need is most certainly there, but the status quo can be hard to shake. 

    There is also the issue of variability with wind and solar–if the wind doesn’t blow or the sun doesn’t shine, production dips, but demand for energy does not. Luckily, there are solutions to this problem, and the market for energy storage, which would help provide a steady energy flow to the grid, is growing rapidly as well. We have a long, long way to go towards reaching the IPCC’s deadline of 100 percent renewables by the middle of the century, but the goal is now more attainable than ever. 

    By Haley Zaremba for Oilprice.com

  • Renewables Lead Peak Energy

    Renewables Lead Peak Energy

    It can be hard to get your head around just how much energy the world uses. Expressed in terms of oil, it was equivalent to almost 14 billion metric tons.  That’s like burning through all of Russia’s proved reserves in the space of 12 months, which is, in technical terms, a lot.

    But there’s an even trickier issue to ponder: What does it even mean to “use” energy? Granted, that sounds like something you might hear from a stoner at the engineering faculty. But it’s an increasingly important question as renewable energy and electrification expand. 

    Harry Benham, an oil-industry veteran who now runs Carbury Consulting, wrote an elegant blog post this summer about the fundamental difference between thermal energy — mostly from burning stuff or splitting atoms — and what he calls the “universal energy” captured in wind and solar power. While earlier shifts, such as swapping wood for coal, are often called energy transitions, they were really substitutions of one thermal source to another. But wind and solar “are different energies in kind, not degree.”

    The big thing here is waste. Broadly speaking, when you burn a gallon of gasoline, perhaps only a quarter of the energy released actually goes into turning the wheels. The rest is wasted, mostly as heat. In other words, you buy roughly four gallons of gasoline to get the useful energy of one. Renewable energy doesn’t work that way, with wind turbines or solar arrays effectively capturing energy from the ether. Yes, they only convert a portion of the energy hitting them into electricity, but that energy is infinite and hasn’t had to be mined or pumped and transported.

    This presents an apples-and oranges-problem for statisticians. Here are projections of global primary energy demand in 2040 from BP Plc and the International Energy Agency.

    Related:  Global Investments in Electricity Beat Investments in Oil and Gas for Second Year in a Row

    The estimates for thermal energy from fossil fuels and nuclear power are very similar. The “other renewables” bars are different largely because BP excludes some non-traded fuels that the IEA measures.

    The really interesting difference concerns hydro, solar and wind power. BP’s higher figure isn’t because it is more bullish on these. Rather, in order to make the renewables figures comparable with the ones for fossil fuels and nuclear power, BP grosses them up as if they also produced waste energy. The IEA doesn’t do this, so its figure represents just the energy derived from a solar panel, wind turbine, or hydro plant. The IEA figure is 36 percent of the BP one, similar to the 38 percent conversion factor BP uses to adjust the data.

    There are pros and cons to both approaches. The IEA’s reflects the fundamentally different nature of renewable energy, but at the cost of making its share of the market look very low: Solar and wind are 11 percent of BP’s mix in 2040 but less than 4 percent of the IEA’s.

    By far the biggest element in both forecasts, though, is the one you can’t see: waste.

    Here are BP’s projections, but with a few adjustments. First, I’ve grouped them into thermal sources (oil, gas, coal, nuclear, biomass and biofuels), hydro power, and wind and solar power. Then, I’ve assumed a flat conversion efficiency of 38 percent for the thermal sources (i.e., the amount of useful energy they produce). This is in line with BP’s assumed average for thermal power plants and is used across the board for the sake of simplicity:

    The numbers aren’t exact, but the picture is clear: Perhaps 60-70 percent of what we call primary energy isn’t usefully consumed at all.

    That’s a moot point when fossil fuels plus nuclear power dominate. Their sheer energy density (the power they pack into a small volume) combined with, in the case of fossil fuels, inconsistent or absent pricing of greenhouse-gas emissions, has made them dominant. Waste heat just comes with the territory.

    But as renewable energy falls in cost and makes inroads, especially in conjunction with increased electrification of things like heating and transportation, it becomes a far more interesting issue. Consider an electric car being charged mostly with power from renewable sources. If it replaces a car running on gasoline, then it doesn’t just displace the useful gallon turning the wheels, but also the other three that were just making the radiator do its job.

    In his blog post, Benham proposed a thought experiment, shifting some estimates around on energy consumption and the growth of solar and wind power. Using my broad assumption on conversion, BP’s projections imply useful energy demand — that is, excluding the implied waste — growing by almost 1.2 percent a year from 2020 to 2040. Hydro power grows by about 1 percent a year (it’s hard to build dams everywhere) and solar and wind together by an average of just under 7 percent a year (front-loaded and down from 20 percent in the previous decade).

    Now plug in more aggressive numbers for wind and solar, growing at an average of 10 percent instead through 2040 and dropping to 7 percent in the next decade (leaving everything else unchanged): 

    In case it needs to be said, this isn’t supposed to be an accurate picture of the future. The point is to show how renewable energy, at higher penetration, subverts the way we think about the world’s energy consumption. By displacing not only useful thermal energy but also the waste, renewable sources add to the overall level of useful energy while simultaneously slowing and even reversing the growth in primary energy consumption.

    A growing world economy and population coupled with flat or even falling primary energy demand might seem paradoxical. But we’ve seen it happen already in the U.S. and some other countries (see this recent analysis by Nikos Tsafos at the Center for Strategic & International Studies).

    At the very least, the rise of renewable sources means we should be thinking about “useful energy” as a way of adding up our needs rather than just “primary energy.” Competition from renewable technologies, coupled with higher electrification, represents a decisive break with the past. All that primary energy that isn’t actually being used is like a target on the incumbent system’s back; especially as, for some fuels, it also serves as a metaphor for more pernicious forms of waste, such as carbon dioxide. As with any other industry, such excess invites disruption.

    by Liam Denning, Bloomberg Opinion

  • Solar Tax Credit Extension

    Solar Tax Credit Extension

    Tax credit extension

      return on investments

    The U.S. solar energy industry will add an additional 113,000 jobs and generate $87 billion in investment over the next decade if U.S. lawmakers extend the sector’s key tax credit, a report on Tuesday.

    The forecast by the U.S. Solar Energy Industries Association trade group and energy research firm Wood Mackenzie comes as the solar industry is lobbying lawmakers in Congress to pass an extension of the credit, which is worth 30 percent of the value of a solar energy system.

    The incentive is scheduled to drop to 26 percent next year and decline annually before settling at a permanent 10 percent in 2022 for utility and commercial projects. Residential projects will lose the credit entirely after 2021.

    The SEIA forecast assumes the tax credit is allowed to remain at 30 percent until 2030. Under that scenario, the United States would install 36 percent more solar energy than it would if the credit was phased out as scheduled. That additional 82 gigawatts (GW) of capacity would be enough to power more than 15 million homes, the forecast said.

    More than three-quarters of the additional capacity would come from the utility sector, where solar increasingly competes on cost against other forms of energy.

    The credit’s phase-out is a major change for an industry that has relied on it to underpin growth for well over a decade. Since it was implemented in 2006, U.S. solar installations have grown by more than 50 percent a year, according to SEIA. It has also helped create more than 200,000 jobs.

    Democratic lawmakers in both the House and Senate have advocated an extension, but a key Republican, U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley, opposes it. The Senate Finance Committee chairman, a longtime supporter of the credit, has said he is against an extension because he promised opponents of the subsidy in 2015 – the last time it was extended – that he would not seek it again.

    The extension would need Republican support to pass the Senate

  • Energy Efficiency is the Global Economy’s “Hidden Fuel”

    Energy Efficiency is the Global Economy’s “Hidden Fuel”

    The global demand for power is rising. Although the increasing prevalence of solar farms and lithium-ion batteries is making energy expansion greener, the need for ever-increasing volumes of electricity remains an issue.

    Instead of having to resort to traditional sources, there may already be a new source of energy within the global power grid: energy efficiency.

    While the term is often associated with localized changes aimed at reducing power bills, energy efficiency goes further than just reducing energy consumption. Imagine two separate buildings with two unique heating systems, one standard and one energy efficient. The building with the energy-efficient system can provide the same level of energy with a lower cost, thereby reducing operating costs and increasing net operating income.

    According to research by the IEA, each dollar spent on energy efficiency displaces $3 of utility-scale transmission and distribution investment. Each dollar of energy saved also has a corresponding potential reduction in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Since it is cheaper to conserve energy than it is to build it, intelligently harnessing energy reserves by reducing wasteful usage is one of the most available energy resources today.

    Financial incentives for consumers are also a component of energy efficiency. Besides reducing utility costs, information compiled on a building’s power consumption could someday be monetized and sold to third parties from either residential or commercial properties for a profit, adding further incentive.

    The policy push behind energy efficiency

    Concerted policy efforts to attain energy efficiency are also underway elsewhere. The North American Energy Working Group was founded by the US, Canada and Mexico in 2001 as a joint effort to enhance energy cooperation on the continent. By instituting minimum energy performance standards in all three nations, the group has prompted the emergence of policies targeting energy efficiency.

    In Canada, for instance, all regulated energy-using products, whether imported or shipped between provinces, must carry an energy efficiency certification mark from an organization accredited with the Standards Council of Canada.

    Reducing energy wastefulness in commercial buildings

    The building sector has the largest potential for delivering long-term, significant and cost-effective greenhouse gas emission reductions, while National Resources Canada stated that energy efficiency, achieved through retrofits and other means, is a “high-volume, low-cost approach to reducing energy use and greenhouse gas emissions.”

    .

    One method for managing a building’s thermal performance more efficiently is improving its windows. Properly treated or glazed windows reduce heat gain by reflecting heat energy while reflective coatings reflect solar energy, according to the Whole Building Design Guide. By properly treating windows, the amount of air conditioning needed to offset a rise in temperature can be reduced.

    Larger changes, known as deep-energy retrofits, can involve replacing a heating system or reinstalling a building. “Due to their disruptive and cost-intensive nature, deep-energy retrofits are usually triggered by non-energy-related factors, such as a significant change in building occupancy. 

    How tech is reducing energy waste

    Properly managing current energy use is also paramount to reducing GHG emissions, an area of focus the tech sector hopes to address. Companies like Kontrol Energy are working to introduce technology solutions to help reduce their customers’ spending and emissions while maximizing energy efficiency.These reductions are achieved, in part, by leveraging the Internet of Things (IoT). The IoT is essentially the name for the interconnectivity between devices that can generate and share data in real time. In Forbes, Jacob Morgan writes that the IoT “includes everything from cellphones, coffee makers, washing machines, headphones, lamps, wearable devices and almost anything else you can think of.”

    Data collected from the IoT by companies like Kontrol Energy can track the energy output of each device so users, ranging from building managers, asset managers and institutions, can reduce waste in their energy consumption. For instance, a company using smart lighting to monitor its light usage can identify if conference room lighting is contributing to an overly high electricity bill. If so, the company can install sensor lighting that will automatically shut off if no movement is detected to curb energy waste.

    IoT can essentially turn a building into a live system of connected devices reporting information in real time. This technology allows users to take greater control of their energy expenditures and is reinventing the power distribution industry, according to Ghezzi. “Through this real-time energy management, building owners and assets managers gain access to deep analytical profiles of how energy is used and also where there are potential for improvements and savings,” he told INN.

    Monetizing efficiency

    Numerous governments offer tax credits for buildings that comply with energy-efficiency standards. The US’ Energy Star program, for instance, provides a “tax deduction of up to $1.80 per square foot to owners or designers of commercial buildings that meet certain standards.” However, this is just part of the financial incentive for monitoring energy use data.

    Data gathered from energy usage can become an independent revenue stream. After compiling energy analytics and usage trends, building owners could potentially sell this data for a profit to third parties that could use it to better target services to their customers.

    For example, a utility company could use this data to improve customer satisfaction or to garner insight on a customer’s likeliness to purchase additional utility-offered services.

    This new influx of information is helping to radically shift relationships between consumers, providers and the ways they view energy. “From a disruption perspective, similar to how the taxi industry was disrupted by Uber, the utility industry is experiencing massive disruption from energy efficiency and distributed energy generation,” said Ghezzi.

    “There are over 120 billion square feet of commercial real estate that consume close to US$240 billion in energy costs per annum. The energy efficiency opportunity alone within the North American commercial building sector is in excess of US$70 billion per annum,” he added.

  • Solar Energy

    Solar Energy

    Solar is Renewable Energy Source

    Solar is an original renewable energy source as the sun gives us heat and light.

    The tremendous growth in the U.S. solar industry is helping to pave the way to a cleaner, more sustainable energy future. Over the past few years, the cost of a solar energy system has dropped significantly — helping to give more American families and business access to affordable clean energy.

    Unknown Facts:

    • Solar energy is the most abundant energy resource on earth —173,000 terawatts of solar energy strikes the Earth continuously. That’s more than 10,000 times the world’s total energy use.
    • The first silicon solar cell, the precursor of all solar-powered devices, was built by Bell Laboratories in 1954. On the first page of its April 26, 1954 issue, The New York Times.
    • Today’s demand for solar in the United States is at an all-time high. The amount of solar power installed in the U.S. has increased more than 23 times over the past eight years — from 1.2 gigawatts (GW) in 2008 to an estimated 27.4 GW at the end of 2015. The U.S. is currently the third-largest solar market in the world and is positioned to become the second.




    Click here

    As prices continue to fall, solar energy is increasingly becoming an economical energy choice for American homeowners and businesses. Still, the biggest hurdle to affordable solar energy remains the soft costs — like permitting, zoning and hooking a solar system up to the power gird. On average, local permitting and inspection processes add more than $2,500 to the total cost of a solar energy system and can take up to six months to complete.

    • California’s Mojave Desert is home to Ivanpah Solar Power Facility, the world’s largest operating solar thermal energy plant. It uses concentrating solar power (CSP) technology to focus 173,500 heliostats, each containing two mirrors, onto boilers located in three power towers. The plant, which came online in 2014, has a gross capacity of 392 megawatts (MW).


    Solar technology can be classified as:

    Active Solar − Active solar techniques include the use of photovoltaic systems, concentrated solar power and solar water heating to harness the energy. Active solar is directly consumed in activities such as drying clothes and warming of air.

    Passive Solar − Passive solar techniques include orienting a building to the Sun, selecting materials with favorable thermal mass or light-dispersing properties, and designing spaces that naturally circulate air.

    Conversion of Solar Energy

    The other form of obtaining solar energy is through thermal technologies, which give two forms of energy tapping methods.

    The first is solar concentration, which focuses solar energy to drive thermal turbines.

    The second method is heating and cooling systems used in solar water heating and air conditioning respectively.

    The process of converting solar energy into electricity so as to utilize its energy in day-to-day activities is given below −

    • Absorption of energy carrying particles in Sun’s rays called photons.
    • Photovoltaic conversion, inside the solar cells.
    • Combination of current from several cells. This step is necessary since a single cell has a voltage of less than 0.5 V.
    • Conversion of the resultant DC to AC.