Green Energy

A new report ranks Denver ninth for solar energy installed out of 69 cities surveyed across the country.

The report released Tuesday by Environment Colorado also said that Denver has doubled its total solar capacity since 2015. The sixth edition of the report, “Shining Cities,” said Denver had 83.4 megawatts installed citywide at the end of 2017.

Los Angeles was first with 349.3 megawatts installed.

The report puts Denver at No. 8 nationally in terms of installed solar per capita at 120.3 watts per person, earning the environmental organization’s designation of a “Solar Star.” Honolulu was first with 606.4 watts per person.

“The Mile High City is one of America’s Solar Stars, doubling our solar power over the last few years and leading the way to a clean energy future,” Kelsey Maxwell, with the Environment Colorado Research & Policy Center, said in a statement. “With tens of thousands of rooftops across the city, Denver can serve as a major source of clean energy production that will benefit everyone.”

Denver Mayor Michael Hancock said the city has made it easier for residents and businesses to install solar energy because it recognizes the importance of cutting carbon dioxide emissions and “embracing progressive climate and energy goals.”

“From streamlining solar permitting and inspections to working with Xcel Energy and stakeholders to ensure equitable access to solar energy, Denver is proud to be a Solar Star,” Hancock said in a statement.

City officials and Environment Colorado said Denver has created a new low-income community solar garden program through Xcel Energy. City facilities are subscribers to three community solar gardens.

Community solar gardens, which Colorado helped pioneer, are centralized arrays of solar panels that users “subscribe” to. They’re often aimed at people who want to use solar power but whose roofs aren’t suitable, who live in an apartment or can’t afford to install a system.

Denver has the potential of generating up to 677 megawatts of solar energy from rooftop arrays on small buildings, according to the report.

Last year, Denver announced its 80×50 Climate Action Plan. The goals are producing 100 percent of the city’s electricity from renewable energy by 2030 and reducing greenhouse gas emissions 80 percent from 2005 levels by the year 2050.

What was once the largest coal-fired power plant in North America has been converted to a 44-megawatt solar farm with 192,431 photovoltaic panels spread across 260 acres, the electric utility Ontario Power Generation announced. The facility, situated on the shores of Lake Erie in Ontario, will generate enough electricity to power more than 7,200 homes.

The project is located on the grounds of retired Nanticoke Generating Station, which operated for more than 40 years before closing down in 2013. The idea to use part of the coal facility’s property for a new solar farm was spearheaded and paid for by Ontario Power Generation (OPG), the Six Nations of the Grand River Development Corporation, and the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation. Its opening last week coincided with the one-year anniversary of the demolition of Nanticoke’s smokestacks, which once stood 650 feet tall, Mining.com reported.

Stacey Laforme, Chief of the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation, called the Nanticoke Solar Project “an important economic development” in the region and for tribal nations.

“Gone are the days when our First Nation suffered the burdens of the development of our territory without sharing in the benefits,” she said in a statement. “This project, along with others, sets the stage for future mutually-beneficial partnerships with OPG and others…across our territory.”

When the U.K.’s largest subsidy-free solar farm opens later this year, there will be something a bit different about its panels: Unlike traditional panels that absorb energy on only one side, these panels will be absorbing sunlight from both sides.

The new solar farm in York, developed by Gridserve, uses “bifacial” modules, a technology that has become one of the fastest-growing trends in solar because it helps solar panels generate more electricity.

The 35-megawatt plant will generate enough power for 10,000 homes. “Bifacial panels are a no-brainer,” says Toddington Harper, chief executive of Gridserve. “In our opinion, they will be the panel of choice for the utility-scale market.” He estimates the solar farm will generate 20 percent more energy due to its combination of bifacial solar panels and trackers that enable each panel to follow the sun, compared with traditional static photovoltaic panels.

Solar has become the world’s biggest source of new electricity — it is bigger than wind, gas or coal in terms of new installed capacity each year, according to S&P Global. Last year some $131 billion was invested in solar, in spite of decreasing government subsidies, according to Bloomberg NEF.

However the solar sector has been relatively slow to innovate on the traditional photovoltaic panel, which is now seen as a low-margin, commoditized product. While the price of solar panels has fallen dramatically in the last decade, the improvement in the physical performance of standard panels has not changed nearly as much.

That could shift though, as subsidies for renewable decline, according to solar executives and analysts. In the absence of subsidies, projects that are more efficient and perform better have a greater economic advantage, they say.

“There is a lot of room for further performance improvements [in solar],” says Cedric Philibert, senior renewables analyst at the International Energy Agency. In addition to bifacial modules, he says that technologies combining different types of substrate material into panels to capture more of the light spectrum also offer potential to grow.

“Bifacial technology captures more light, and it is not very much more expensive, so it makes sense,” he says. The first large-scale bifacial projects are only one or two years old, he points out, adding that the technology started to take off “only very recently.” In a bifacial panel, the back of the panel is replaced with glass, allowing energy to be absorbed from both directions. To date only about 1GW of bifacial projects have been built globally — representing less than 1 percent of all solar projects — but that figure is expected to grow.

Bifacial panels could be more than a third of the solar panel market by 2028, according to an estimate in a recent academic paper in Energy and Environment Science. Bifacial modules were a core element of one of the lowest solar bids recorded — at just 1.79 cents per kilowatt-hour for a 300MW project in Saudi Arabia, the 2017 bid was the cheapest solar project ever proposed up to that point. However Saudi Arabia’s government, which awarded the project, instead awarded the contract to developers using traditional one-sided panels despite their higher price. The government did not give a reason for its decision; analysts however attribute it to a view prevalent two years ago that the technology was too unproven for such a big project.

Oliver Davies, renewables performance manager at Rina, a certification consultancy, says uncertainty about how the new design will perform has slowed its adoption. “One of the biggest barriers on utility scale projects is getting that comfort and reducing those risks for investors,” he says. It is hard accurately to model how much sunlight will be reflected off the ground and on to the back of a bifacial panel. This varies depending on whether the ground is covered with dirt or plants and can also vary from season to season.

“A key focus is looking at the ‘albedo’ of the ground, which is essentially the reflection of the ground,” says Davies. This allows for an accurate prediction for how much power bifacial panels will be able to generate on a specific site. He says a typical gain is 5-15 percent. “The good thing about bifacial technology is that it is more of an evolutionary step, rather than a completely different technology,” he adds. “It is considered as an easy gain.”

Harper of Gridserve points out that bifacial panels like those to be used at their new solar farm in York cost nearly the same as regular one-sided panels. Bifacial made a “huge difference” to the economics of the project, which does not have a feed-in-tariff subsidy, he adds. “I knew that fundamentally we should be able to make it work without subsidies,” he says. “A key piece of that is to try to generate as much value as possible from a project, without increasing the costs.”

Ohio’s Republican-controlled legislature has drafted “clean air fund” legislation that would slash renewable energy and efficiency subsidies while adding about $300 million a year to electricity bills in the state, in the name of keeping its nuclear fleet from closing. The move diverges sharply from other state-level policies in the U.S. to prop up financially struggling nuclear power plants for their carbon-free electricity.

Last week, Energy News Network released draft legislation (PDF) being circulated by majority leaders in Ohio’s Republican-controlled House of Representatives, primarily aimed at rescuing two nuclear power plants — the Davis-Besse plant near Toledo and the Perry plant near Cleveland, which bankrupt utility FirstEnergy Solutions has threatened to close by 2021.

The draft bill would add a maximum surcharge of $2.50 per month to every residential customer’s bill, a $20 per month surcharge to every commercial customer’s bill and a $250 monthly charge to every industrial customer’s bill, to raise roughly $300 million a year.

Of that, about $180 million would go to subsidize FirstEnergy’s two nuclear plants, according to analysis reported by Energy News Network. The remaining $120 million would be available to resources that are deemed by the newly created board of political appointees to meet the fund’s criteria.

But the newly created board would operate with more secrecy than a regular public utilities commission proceeding. And while the draft bill doesn’t use the word “nuclear,” its criteria for which emissions-reducing technologies are allowed to claim a piece of the new pot of money would appear to exclude most of the carbon-neutral energy resources now available, besides nuclear power.

Tailor-made for nuclear

First, the draft bill would require any qualifying resource to “exclusively” obtain compensation from the wholesale energy markets run by mid-Atlantic grid operator PJM and overseen by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission — a feature met by FirstEnergy’s nuclear plants, but not by energy efficiency, rooftop solar, or other non-wholesale forms of carbon-free energy.

Second, the bill would exclude any facility that receives “state tax exemptions, deferrals, exclusions, allowances, payments, [or] credits, including production tax credits and investment tax credits” — the same federal tax credits provided to wind and solar, respectively. And third, it would bar any municipal utility or rural electric cooperatives.

The release of the draft legislation prompted a legislative aide of one of the bill’s sponsors, Republican state Rep. Jamie Callender, to tell Cleveland.com that much of the text was out of date, with a new version “still in a state of flux.” The aide declined to say what would differentiate the newer version of the bill from the draft version obtained last week.

The bailout bill comes at a difficult time for FirstEnergy, which has announced plans to close nuclear and coal-fired power plants in Ohio and Pennsylvania if it does not receive additional state or federal support. Last week, Bankruptcy Judge Alan Koschik, who is overseeing the utility’s case in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court of the Northern District of Ohio, rejected FirstEnergy’s proposal to get out of bankruptcy more quickly in part by indemnifying parent company FirstEnergy Corp. from paying any future costs for environmental cleanup at its power plant sites.

“Opt-in” to support renewables

Ohio’s plan stands in stark contrast to the nuclear incentive programs that have been rolled out in states including Connecticut, New Jersey, New York and Illinois. While these states have largely built their nuclear support programs on the foundation of existing state clean energy and carbon reduction policies, Ohio’s plan would actually undermine existing payment structures for the state’s relatively mild clean energy and efficiency goals.

The draft bill would do this by declaring that Ohio’s existing monthly charges for renewable energy, energy efficiency and peak demand reduction are now “opt-in” rather than “opt-out” charges on residential and commercial customers’ utility bills.

Today, these charges appear on every home and business electric bill, with only large industrial customers having the opportunity to opt out of them. But the draft legislation would flip this arrangement on its head, doing away with the monthly charges unless the utility customer sends “written notice of intent to opt in” to pay the extra fees.

The vast body of utility experience shows that switching programs from opt-out to opt-in leads to a drastic reduction in participation rates, since few people will choose to pay more every month, even if they support the services the surcharges pay for. These numbers are likely to be winnowed even further if opting in requires written and mailed-in applications, rather than simpler on-bill, over-the-phone or online options.

FirstEnergy Solutions bankruptcy rumbles on

FirstEnergy Solutions filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in March 2018, after failing to convince the U.S. Department of Energy to issue an emergency declaration that would have forced grid operators and utilities to pay out-of-market prices to its coal and nuclear power plants. While FirstEnergy and the Trump administration have argued the plants are critical to keep the regional power grid stable, multiple studies from PJM indicate the closures won’t affect grid reliability.

Many coal and nuclear power plants are struggling to remain competitive. Such plants have been closing at a record rate amid a flood of cheap electricity from natural gas and renewables, as well as continued gains in end-user efficiency.

Pennsylvania lawmakers are also considering a bill that would increase utility bills by about $1.77 per household per month to raise about $500 million per year, largely to support two nuclear power plants that owners FirstEnegy and Exelon have said they will be forced to close in the coming years without state support.

That bill has drawn fire from consumers and environmental groups for potentially allowing still-profitable nuclear power plants to receive incentives, while not addressing the state’s relatively low ranking in terms of the share of its electricity coming from wind, solar and other carbon-free resources.

A new look at a burgeoning solar boom in Texas reveals an unlikely source behind much of the demand — oil and gas companies.

Demand for electricity in Texas is so high, much of it due to “power-hungry” oil and gas drilling operations, that solar power is now becoming highly sought after in the state, Bloomberg reports. Developers expect to add more than 6 gigawatts of solar in the state by 2022, quadrupling the current capacity in Texas.

Texas solar is being built solely for economic reasons, not due to incentives. BloombergNEF estimates that, spread over the lifetime of the plant, it currently costs about $32 per megawatt-hour to build a solar farm in the state — and it’s $38/MWh for a comparable high-efficiency gas plant.

With electrical demand in Texas booming — expected to hit 74.9 gigawatts in the state this summer — shortfalls are a possibility. The Electric Reliability Council of Texas said average $32/MWh prices may spike, perhaps to “an unprecedented $9,000.”

Jigar Shah of Generate Capital told Bloomberg the solar boom is betting on those spikes, with developers selling power directly into the wholesale market. Shah said, “Solar companies think they can get paid enough on the spikes.”

Solar Advantages

Gas is so abundant that prices have turned negative, with drilling operations and resulting growth sparking electricity demand. Solar farms can be built relatively quickly, and Texas needs as much power as it can get, as soon as possible.

Solar also complements wind power, which is far bigger in Texas than any other state, supplying about 15 percent of the state’s total electricity. Texas turbines generate most power at night, while solar obviously peaks during the day. As Bloomberg notes, this is when “oil fields are bustling.”

Analysts believe the boom will slow down in the coming years as more power comes online, but for now, everyone seems to want in. A few Texas solar projects already in the works will create a 1 GWdc solar park when combined.

The Navajo and Hopi have fought hard to hold onto coal.

Three generations have worked for the the west’s largest coal-fired power plant, the Navajo Generating Station. The tribes have relied heavily on its revenue. So when the Phoenix-based Salt River Project announced it was shutting down the plant at the end of the year, the tribe scrambled to find a buyer or — as a last resort — purchase the plant themselves.

It finally came down to a vote late last month at a Navajo Nation Council Special Session meeting. The delegates deliberated for eight hours.

“Are we ready?” Delegate Nathaniel Brown said. “Are we ready for the shutdown? I don’t think we are. We stand to lose a lot, our children the future generation.”

Delegate Charlaine Tso said she’s done with coal and its health impacts on her people. The plant is one of the country’s biggest carbon emitters.

“Shame on you,” Tso said. “Money money money. It’s replaceable. Enough is enough. This is the time that we’re going to take a stand that we’re going to come together for our people. I am ready to take on that challenge.”

Other delegates pointed out that many energy companies were moving away from coal in favor of cleaner and cheaper energy sources.

The council finally voted against the purchase.

End of an era of resource extraction

That decision marks the end of an era. Before coal, many tribal members worked with the federal government to blast uranium out of the Navajo Nation to make atomic weapons.

“The Navajo economy had been kinda built upon resource extraction,” said Brett Isaac, who grew up next to the Peabody Kayenta Coal Mine. “I still have an uncle that works for the Peabody Energy Company. I’ve had other uncles and cousins and friends and … You had a lot of people who that’s the only industry and job they ever knew.”

So a decade ago, when Isaac started installing off-grid solar panels in people’s homes, people looked at him funny.

“But my family have more recently gotten more supportive with the way the world and global economy is moving towards a more renewable focus,” Isaac said, laughing. “They’re motivated by the fact I got in so early, into it before it was cool.”

Now Isaac and a group of entrepreneurs have formed Navajo Power, a renewable energy company that’s trying to help the tribe shift away from coal. The tribe has built two utility-sized solar farms already. And it’s working on a third.

“It takes the benefit of something that’s abundant and converts it into something useable,” Isaac said. “So that aligns a lot not only with Navajo philosophy, but a lot of indigenous communities about how you responsibly source things.”

There’s just one problem. The number of jobs at a solar farm can’t compare to coal. The plant and mine supplied 800 of the best-paying jobs on the Navajo Nation and many more support jobs.

Solar on the other hand requires hundreds of temporary employees to construct the farm, but after it’s built the sun does most of the work. That’s a tough sell to a tribe where half of the people are unemployed.

But Isaac envisions solar farms sprouting up faster than corn on the vast reservation. And has hopes they could build a manufacturing facility to assemble the panels.

“It starts with embracing change,” said Navajo President Jonathan Nez, who’s on board with the idea.

He just signed a proclamation to make renewable energy the tribe’s top priority. But he’s also realistic. He knows the tribe has to invest in other economic engines, like tourism.

“People all over the world come to Navajo,” Nez said. “If we could keep some of our visitors here on the Navajo Nation a little longer, that’s going to bring dollars and jobs.”

He said ultimately they have to think about cleaner jobs and a cleaner environment for their children and their grandchildren.