Green Energy

New Jersey wants to take the lead in providing offshore wind based electricity. State utility regulators have approved a plan that could pave the way for just that.

The New Jersey Board of Public Utilities has approved a bid by Denmark-based Orsted, which is planning to build an 1100 megawatt wind farm 15 miles off the coast of Atlantic City, to use the closed Oyster Creek nuclear plant as a means to connect into the regional power grid.

“One of the critical components we think about is plugging the wind farm into shore,” Kris Ohleth, an official in charge of the Ocean Wind project, told KYW Newsradio, “and we like to do that in parts of the grid that are already hardened and already have existing electrical infrastructure.”

The plant will handle 800 megawatts. They’ll need at least one more hookup point, and they’re looking at two possible sites. One is in Atlantic City, and the other is just west of Ocean City.

So what will this mean to consumers?

“This really paves the way for potential cost savings in terms of the overall project,” Ohleth added. “Those things are still being determined in terms of the exact numbers but this is a very positive development in terms of potential costs to the project and ratepayer.”

But consumers could be responsible for part of that bill down the line.

Additional state and federal environmental permits will be required before the farm goes online, which is expected in 2024.

Orsted is also looking for local businesses to help in developing a supply chain for the plant. They’ve set up a registry for companies to get involved in the project. That can be done through the project’s website.

Energy storage is becoming a hot product in corporate energy procurement, with everything from solar paired with energy storage to stand-alone storage systems on companies’ wish lists. The market is still small, but it’s growing quickly, and as companies consider their procurement plans for the future, we should see more growth in 2019 and beyond.

As much as energy storage may be important for making large amounts of renewable energy work effectively in the grid, the reason companies are investing in energy storage is all about the bottom line. There’s real financial justification for energy storage, and that’s what keeps the business going.

How energy storage makes money

Energy assets like energy storage need to make financial sense before companies deploy them at scale, and it’s not a slam-dunk that energy storage meets the minimum return on investment. Still, there are a few ways energy storage can make financial sense both through cost savings and revenue from the battery’s value to the grid: 

• Demand charges can be up to half of a commercial building’s energy cost and are based on the peak amount of electricity demand going to the building. So, a big spike in demand for 15 minutes for one hour a month can mean thousands of dollars in added costs. Energy storage can help reduce those peak demand numbers and therefore save customers money. 
• Virtual power plants are a relatively new concept in energy, and what they’re essentially trying to do is band a group of energy storage assets together to act like a much larger power plant. When they work together, they can offset the need for expensive peaker plant power by using up cheaper electrons generated in off-peak hours. Utilities are starting to pay companies like Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA), SunPower (NASDAQ:SPWR), and Sunrun (NASDAQ:RUN) for their virtual power plants, adding value to the energy storage they put into buildings. 
• Backup power is a more intangible benefit, but companies who rely on electricity to keep operations going definitely put a premium on having a quality backup, which energy storage is perfect for. 

These aren’t the only ways energy storage can add value to companies or the grid, but they show the biggest selling points. When corporations are looking at their energy needs, energy storage can be a lot more appealing when you consider the cost savings, revenue potential, and value in backup power. 

Who’s making money off energy storage?

How do investors capitalize on the energy storage growth trend? Battery makers are in a tough position because they are in a commodity business and rarely develop energy storage projects themselves. LG Chem (NASDAQOTH: LGCLF) is one of the largest battery manufacturers for energy storage, but it still only holds a fraction of the market. And it relies on third parties to install and control the energy storage system. 

In the commercial market, SunPower is the biggest name in solar, and it’s adding energy storage to about 30% of its commercial solar installations. As the cost of batteries comes down, I expect the level of energy storage penetration to go up and SunPower to be able to find more ways to monetize its energy storage installations, which are often built on the company’s balance sheet. 

Tesla is another leader in energy storage and may be playing more of a supply role than SunPower. It’s the battery manufacturer at the Gigafactory, and it’s selling Powerpacks to commercial buildings, often through projects developed by someone else. But it has the scale to make this a very big business going forward. 

Most of the other companies in energy storage are private, like Stem and Sonnen, who have built large energy storage businesses. But they haven’t hit public markets, and we don’t yet know if they’re making money on commercial energy storage. 

The size of the energy storage market

In the U.S., energy storage installations were 311 MW and 777 megawatt-hours in 2018, up from virtually nothing just six years ago. About a third of the installations so far in 2018 are commercial storage projects, and the segment has shown more stable installation trends than residential or utility-scale storage. 

Still, the industry is just getting started, and Wood Mackenzie and the Energy Storage Association’s analysts expect total MW hours deployed to grow nearly 14 times in the next five years. Commercial energy storage will be a big piece of that growth, so you can see why companies are so excited about it. 

Oregon’s High Desert is getting crowded, so wind power advocates are once again looking to the sea.

At a conference last week in Portland, ocean energy advocates presented an update on the state of offshore wind power in Oregon. Costs have dropped dramatically since the last failed attempt to harness the wind over Oregon’s Pacific waters, making an offshore, deep-water wind farm once again seem feasible.

A stretch of the Pacific Ocean off the coast between Humboldt County in California and Coos Bay in Oregon has some of the highest wind power generating potential in the country. The area north of the California border looks particularly promising to green energy advocates because the region already has a functioning electric grid. But a past attempt to install five floating turbines off Coos Bay faced rising costs and opposition from the fishing industry, and was eventually moved to California when no one could be found to buy the high-priced power the facility planned to generate.

But one big thing has changed since then, according to Jason Busch, executive director of the Pacific Ocean Energy Taskforce and a speaker at the conference: The number of offshore wind farms across the globe has skyrocketed, and the cost of wind power has dropped 75%.

“These cost curves are really well documented,” said Busch, who expects prices to keep falling. By 2030, he expects costs to be comparable to those of coal power and natural gas. Even now, “government subsidies are no longer necessary,” Busch said.

Unlike the Atlantic Ocean, the Pacific rests on a continental shelf and the water gets very deep very fast. So unlike the wind farms of the Atlantic, which are fairly close to shore and are installed by drilling deep into the ocean floor, this farm would be floating. Researchers say that means it would be less likely to harm ocean ecosystems.

That doesn’t mean wind power is a consequences-free panacea, Bush pointed out.

“There will be some impacts to fishing grounds, some good, some bad, and some unknown,” he said. “But at the end of the day, the issue is: some people can’t fish where they want to or have historically fished.”

Any offshore wind farm on this stretch of the Pacific will essentially act as a marine reserve, because commercial and recreational fishing will likely be limited in the area. That could mean that fishermen can’t access fishing grounds, but it could also increase fish abundance on the edge of the farm.

Researchers are studying what effects offshore wind farms have on whales and other marine life. And offshore wind energy operations will almost certainly have some effect on migratory shorebirds.

Any wind farms off the coast of Oregon will be far out to sea, past Dungeness crabbing grounds — and, perhaps beneficially, harder for people to see from shore.

A meeting of the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Managemen is planned for Friday in Portland. The meeting will include engineers, public officials from coastal counties and representatives of companies that may want to develop wind energy off the Oregon Coast.

Busch doesn’t expect any policy decisions to come out of the meeting. He said it’s more of a chance for different stakeholders up to speed on the state of the technology. He expects there will be representatives from major corporations in the room. “There’s a lot of interest,” Busch said.

It will be the first step toward developing a large-scale wind operation off the coast.

It’s a step Busch said the Northwest needs to take.

“Our options for energy are limited. There will be no new hydropower, no more coal, no more nuclear. Geothermal is struggling. Solar is great, on-shore wind is great, but the best sites are limited,” Busch said. “Our options are offshore. We need to look at them very closely.”

As a modern homesteader, I’m often asked why I don’t have solar power and live off the grid.

That sounds like a great idea, right? Imagine no monthly electric bills, no dependency on the power company and no worries about power outages!

To answer it as simply as possible, I can’t afford it. Or, to be more specific, I can’t afford an off-grid system that would provide all of my electricity.

With each passing year, the costs of solar power are getting lower, and the technology is getting better. But an off-grid system with enough battery backup to power an 1,800-square-foot house both day and night would cost more than $85,000. And on those days when a solar array can’t produce and store enough electricity to meet my needs, I would need a whole-house generator or else remain connected to the grid.

Sure, there are compromises that can be made, such as having a big array of solar panels installed without battery backup. The panels would produce electricity during the day, but at night and on cloudy days, you would still need to rely upon your power company. Still, that system would cost more than I can afford.

Instead, I’ve adopted a few cheaper applications involving solar panels on my homestead. But before I describe them, let’s consider some basic information about solar panel systems and the electricity they can produce.

Electricity is commonly measured in watts. A watt is a specific amount of energy produced or used per second. Some approximate wattage requirements for common household devices are shown in the accompanying graphic.

As you can see, there’s a wide range in the wattage requirements for different appliances in your home. Without getting into detailed calculations, suffice it to say that anything more than a couple of hundred watts can’t be powered with a small, inexpensive solar panel setup. That means no air conditioning, heating, pumping water from a well or other basic necessities. So the best application for small solar panels is for powering small devices.

One application of solar power on my homestead is electric fencing for my goats. For less than the cost of extending a dedicated power line from my house to the pasture, I bought a solar charger that can power up to 5 miles of electric fencing. The unit is self-contained and portable, and it has a small solar panel and a built-in battery. The fence charger is maintenance-free, and it works night and day, far away from any electrical service.

Another application I have is a small solar panel connected to a battery to power an electric gate opener at the end of my driveway. For years, I had to get out of the truck to open the gate, then get back inside to drive my truck through the open gate, and then go back out to close the gate. It’s really convenient to just push the button on a remote control inside my truck to open and close the gate. But because I don’t have electricity extending that far from the house, I needed the solar panel and battery hookup to power the gate opener.

Another application I have is a 100-watt solar panel array on the roof of my car port. I built an adjustable stand for the array of panels so I can change the angle of the panels depending on the season. In the summer, the panels are almost parallel to the ground, and in the winter, they are almost at a 45-degree angle. There are online calculators to determine the optimum angle for your solar panels, depending on where you live and the time of year.

That solar panel array is connected to a charge controller, which is connected to a battery. The controller prevents overcharging the battery, and it has USB outputs for charging a cell phone, laptop or other devices that charge with a USB cable. It also has an output for an LED light that’s surprisingly bright.

The battery is a deep cycle, 12-volt battery. It stores the electricity coming from the solar panels. However, to run a small appliance from the battery, the direct current (DC) of the battery needs to be converted into alternating current (AC). So I connected a power inverter to the battery that has 2 outlets for plugging in household appliances.

The maximum output from that inverter is 200 watts. That means that the battery can run a device that requires more than the 100 watts produced by the solar panels. Weird, right? Think of it like a rain barrel. On a rainy day, water from the roof enters the barrel at a certain rate, let’s say 5 gallons per minute. You could open a large valve on the side of the barrel and discharge 10 gallons of water per minute, but it’s not sustainable.

Likewise, keep in mind that the battery can’t discharge more than 100 watts for very long. If I wanted more electricity output, or for longer periods, I would need additional batteries for storage and a power inverter that discharges more wattage.

To power several high-wattage appliances, including a heat pump/air conditioner, hot water heater and well pump, I would need many more solar panels, more batteries and a high-output power inverter. That’s why a whole-house solar panel system is so prohibitively expensive and why it’s simply not feasible for most people to live off the grid.

The International Energy Agency (IEA) expects the capacity for renewable energy to grow by almost 12 percent this year. Gotta love us some solar and wind energy! The problem is, the world is still having a dirty love affair with coal.

The agency released these new projects Friday, noting that this growth is the fastest the industry has seen since 2015. The findings are much welcome: Renewables saw virtually no growth between 2017 and 2018. And in the era of the climate crisis, the industry needs to grow if our energy grid can shift toward cleaner energy without government intervention.

This year’s increase amounts to some 200 gigawatts. However, as the IEA makes clear, the capacity for renewables needs to grow more than 300 gigawatts a year by 2030 globally if we’re going to actually meet the goals the Paris Agreement lays out.

“These latest numbers give us many reasons to celebrate: Renewable electricity additions are now growing at their fastest pace in four years after a disappointing 2018,” said IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol, in a statement. “We are witnessing a drastic decline in the cost of solar power together with strong growth in onshore wind, and offshore wind is showing encouraging signs.”

Around the world, we’re seeing more investment in renewable energy—whether it’s the largest offshore wind farm that came online in the U.K. earlier this year or the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe launching a solar farm in North Dakota. Even multinational corporations are signing on. Google just announced Thursday it will purchase 1,600 megawatts (or 1.6 gigawatts) of wind and solar, which would be the largest purchase of clean energy from a single company. It’s encouraging, especially as the science shows that time is running out to address the climate crisis.

Still, this only one side of the coin. Another report out Thursday reminds us that many countries are still growing their dependence on coal. Germany-based environmental group Urgewald published an update to its list that tracks coal expansion and found that if all the planned coal projects actually happen, they’ll add more than 579 gigawatts to the global grid. That’s a nearly 29 percent increase to current coal capacity—and that’s the complete opposite of what is needed to prevent further climate disaster.

However, in countries such as Bangladesh, Vietnam, and Indonesia, coal is often the most affordable option for increasing energy access. This energy is only affordable, though, because our current economic system fails to account for the externalities of extracting and burning coal. There are health costs related to pollution, as well as costs related to killing our planet! Yet our economic models fail to examine these impacts. A study published earlier this year found that, in the U.S., replacing coal plants with solar facilities would save us money.

Put simply, world powers got a lot of work to do. As leaders meet next week to talk climate change at the U.N. Climate Action Summit, let’s hope they figure out a way to ensure that all energy infrastructure moving forward is good for both the planet and public health.

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos said Thursday that the company has committed to meet the terms of the Paris climate agreement 10 years ahead of schedule, including by purchasing 100,000 electric vans and moving to 100% renewable energy.

Amazon, which committed to be carbon neutral by 2040, has been facing pressure from its employees and activists to reduce its emissions in an effort to combat climate change.

A day before a global climate strike is expected to call attention to the world’s environmental plight, Bezos said the company would use its considerable leverage to slash carbon emissions.

Bezos told reporters that Amazon would “implement de-carbonization strategies in line with the Paris agreement,” alter its “actual business activities to eliminate carbon” and acquire “credible” carbon offsets with “nature-based solutions.”

Former United Nations climate chief Christiana Figueres, who appeared alongside Bezos in an endorsement of the company’s plan, said Amazon would also pressure its business partners to meet the goals.