Metals Tech

San Antonio-based solar panel maker Mission Solar Energy LLC plans to debut four new solar panel models at the Solar Power International trade show and conference in Anaheim, California next week. The panels are touted as Mission’s most powerful solar panels to date.

“Our objective is to provide customers with the very best technology and services the industry has to offer,” Mission Solar Energy President and CEO Jae Yang said in a statement. “Launching our new product line will allow us to deliver high performance modules at competitive pricing.”

Working out its manufacturing plant and office at Brooks in south San Antonio, engineers designed three of the new models of solar panels using passivated emitter and rear cell, or PERC, solar cells while the fourth uses monocrystalline solar cells.

Designed using 60 PERC solar cells and a black background, the MSE PERC 60 produces 310 watts of power. A new model with a white background version boosts that power output to 315 watts per panel. Using 72 monocrystalline solar cells, the MSE Mono 72 produces 350 watts of electricity per panel and is touted as being ideal for commercial and utility-scale projects.

In its most powerful model to date, the MSE PERC 72 was designed using 72 PERC solar cells to produce 370 watts of power. Designed to endure extreme weather conditions, Mission said the panel is ideal for commercial and utility-scale projects.

Production for the new panels is expected to ramp up in the fourth quarter making the products available in early 2019. In addition to improved performance, Mission’s new products will also feature a 12-year warranty — an upgrade from the 10-year warranty offered for the company’s current modules.

There is no shortage of rooftops on the University of Nebraska Medical Center’s growing campus.

Now the university is working to put some of that space to another use, partnering with the Omaha Public Power District to install nearly 1,500 solar panels atop three campus buildings.

The installation, which will total 500 kilowatts of solar capacity, is expected to become the largest rooftop solar array in the state. At that size, the array’s energy production will equal the average annual electricity use of 60 homes in OPPD’s service territory, said Jared Friesen of Morrissey Engineering, which designed the project.

The project will help UNMC and Nebraska Medicine, the university’s clinical partner, move toward their goal of becoming carbon neutral by 2030. To meet the goal, all the energy they use must come from renewable resources produced either on or off campus.

“This is just a really good first step in that process,” said Darren Dageforde, executive director of utilities and energy utilization for UNMC.

The medical campus already has made strides in reducing its energy use and increasing efficiency. Recent projects and initiatives have reduced its energy load from 29 megawatts to 23 megawatts. At the same time, the number of buildings, students and staff have continued to grow.

The energy produced by the solar panels will stay on campus, first supplying the buildings that host them. Any extra electricity will power other campus buildings. Dageforde said the project will reduce the campus’ energy use by a couple of percent.

When it comes to size, however, the solar installation won’t touch that of large solar farms that have been — and are being — installed in communities around the state, he said. OPPD, for instance, recently contracted to buy 20 years of solar from a private 35-acre, 5-megawatt solar array being built east of Fort Calhoun. That project will go online in the spring of 2019.

But rooftop projects are cheaper and easier to install, Dageforde said. The university’s utilities group will pay for the installation of the arrays on the Michael F. Sorrell Center for Health Science Education, the Truhlsen Eye Institute and the Harold M. and Beverly Maurer Center for Public Health.

“Most people don’t have enough rooftops to do this kind of thing,” he said.

The partners declined to specify the cost of the project because of contractual considerations. Dageforde said UNMC expects to recover the costs of the installation in less than 10 years.

Creighton University also has added solar installations, the largest of which sits above a campus parking lot. Together, Creighton’s installations can generate about 120 kilowatts. They also serve as an on-site laboratory for students and faculty.

The UNMC arrays will provide learning opportunities both for campus officials and for OPPD and could lead to future additions. The Dr. Edwin Davis & Dorothy Balbach Davis Global Center for Advanced Interprofessional Learning, now under construction near 42nd and Emile Streets, has been designed to support solar panels. UNMC and OPPD have an agreement that allows them to work on energy-efficiency projects together.

Wyndle Young, OPPD’s manager of midsize and small commercial and industrial sales and services, said the project will help the utility explore a new business model that involves providing more customized solutions based on how customers want to get their energy.

“We think there’s an increasing interest in the technology,” he said.

On the operational side, the utility also wants to understand the production profile of solar — how it’s affected at different times of the day and of the year and how it meets consumers’ needs. Solar panels’ energy production actually is better when it’s cold outside than when temperatures soar.

Boyd Jones Construction is slated to start construction yet this month. Weather permitting, the project should wrap up in January, Dageforde said. The panels won’t be visible except from above.

Morrissey Engineering also has designed and managed solar installations at the Henry Doorly Zoo’s Skyfari station at the Africa Grasslands exhibit, Lincoln Electric System’s service center, the Bellevue public safety building and several Baxter auto dealerships in Omaha and Lincoln, as well as at its own office building.

A Novato-area ranch may become home to a small-scale solar energy farm that would generate enough energy to power roughly 1,000 homes, according to the project applicant.

The San Francisco-based Renewable Properties’ proposal is in early planning stages, according to company President Aaron Halimi.

Halimi said this will be their first solar project in the county, but said the company has completed several projects throughout the country.

“This is an opportunity for members of the community to get behind local solar,” Halimi said. “Climate change is a global problem that requires local solutions and we’re proposing this project in Marin County because we believe Marin County is a community that prioritizes the adoption of renewable clean energy. This has been properly sited to take that into account.”

Should the project ultimately be approved, the local community choice aggregation Marin Clean Energy would purchase the power through its “feed-in tariff program.”

“MCE supports local renewable energy and jobs in our community,” said David Potovsky, Marin Clean Power’s power supply contracts manager. “Our Feed-In Tariff program provides the opportunity for local developers — once they have secured county and community approvals for their project—to sell their energy to MCE under a long-term contract.”

Renewable Properties plans to install about 11,310 solar modules and 66 string inverters — which convert direct current, or DC, energy produced by the solar panels into usable alternating current, or AC, energy — on the Silveira Ranch nestled on the eastern side of U.S. Highway 101 north of Novato near the Marin-Sonoma county border. The property is owned by the trust of Lorraine and the late Anthony Silveira, according to county records. Halimi said Renewable Properties will be leasing the property.

The Silveiras’ attorney, Richard Bowles, said the proposed solar array is in no way affiliated with the Silveiras’ other ranch property near San Rafael, which is off limits to commercial development under a 10-year agreement with the county made last year.

The array as proposed would produce 3 megawatts of AC power and 4 megawatts DC power, Halimi said. The array would interconnect to an existing onsite Pacific Gas and Electric Co. distribution system, according to the county’s summary of the project. Renewable Properties also proposes to build energy storage infrastructure.

In addition to providing more renewable energy to the local and state energy portfolios, the project will also create local construction jobs and be an investment into the community, Halimi said.

Halimi said the proposed construction site has traditionally been used for cattle grazing and that some constraints on the site make it unsuitable for other types of development. There are several wetland areas and streams near the site, according to Halimi and a preliminary layout of the project, but Halimi said their design includes the necessary setbacks that will avoid disturbing this habitat.

Building permit applications have not been submitted to the county yet, with the project in its pre-application phase in which county agencies are providing feedback on the proposal, Halimi said.

Because of this, Halimi said they do not have a set timeline on when construction is expected to start.

Meanwhile, Halimi said they are eyeing Marin County for other local projects, which he said are also in the very early planning stages.

Ready-made snap-together solar panels that turn waste heat into hot water are being developed at Brunel University London in a £10 million sustainable energy scheme starting next month.

With energy use in buildings predicted to double or even triple by 2050*, and most home energy used to heat water, project PVadapt promises to crack several sustainable energy problems at once.

Funded by Horizon 2020, the three and a half-year multi-disciplinary project aims to perfect a flexible solar powered renewable energy system that generates both heat from hot water and electricity.

The hybrid solar panels combine photovoltaic (PV) cells with flat heat pipes. Heat pipes transfer unwanted heat away from surfaces. They’re widely used in industry to recycle waste heat and to cool electronic devices from PCs to the International Space Station, which they stop the sun from melting. PVadapt will use heat pipes to cool the PV cells themselves to make them more efficient and longer-lasting. And the heat removed from the cooling is reused.

“With our system, there is no waste heat,” said technical co-ordinator, Professor Hussam Jouhara, who invented the multifunctional Flat Heat Pipe and whose leading role will bring Brunel £816,000.

“The approach focuses on low-cost, high-efficiency and modular prefabricated ‘Lego’-type construction elements for near-zero-energy buildings,”,he explained.

PVadapt is a team effort involving 18 organizations from 11 different countries. It will see click-in-place hybrid solar roofing panels installed into eight buildings such as homes, offices and shops in Spain, Greece, Austria and Portugal.

Professor Jouhara and the Brunel team will combine all the different technologies into a prefabricated building integrated photovoltaic (BIPV) energy and thermal storage system of the future. The £260-a-square-metre panels could be used in social housing, public buildings and offices and even in developing countries and off-grid. And the prefab parts that only need snapping together on site mean buildings using PVadapt technology can go up very quickly.

A surprising problem the hybrid system solves is that the more sunlight solar PV panels suck up and the hotter they get, the less efficient they are at converting energy. That means the sunnier it is, the more energy they produce, but less is converted into electricity. Heat pipes use that snag to their advantage and whisk away that generated heat and use it to produce the building’s hot water.

There are other practical wrinkles the ready-made hybrid panels iron out. Installing solar panels in new buildings with normal roofing structures has a poor track record.

“It needs an engineered approach,” said Professor Jouhara. “Our solar panels are PV coated for the most southerly-facing aspect of the roof and are designed to clip together as a weather-tight roof as simply as clicking together Lego or laminate flooring.”

With a plan to get the majority of its power from renewable energy by 2026, Xcel Energy Colorado on Tuesday celebrated the completion of one of the projects that will help realize that goal — a 300-turbine wind farm that sprawls across five counties on the Eastern Plains.

The 600-megawatt Rush Creek Wind Project covers nearly 100,000 acres in five counties: Lincoln, Arapahoe, Elbert, Kit Carson and Cheyenne. It is the largest wind farm in the state and the first large-scale wind farm owned and operated by the utility. Rush Creek was built with all made-in-Colorado turbines, produced in Vestas plants in Brighton, Pueblo and Windsor.

“It’s a billion-dollar investment. It’s a huge investment for us,” said Kent Larson, Xcel Energy’s executive vice president. “There’s enough wind in these wind turbines that it will serve over 300,000 homes.”

Larson, speaking at a site near Limon and to a crowd of Xcel Energy employees, state and local elected officials, construction workers and area residents, said the electricity generated by Rush Creek will cost three cents per kilowatt hour, which should save customers money. He said the wind-fueled power will also eliminate about 1 million tons of carbon dioxide annually that would otherwise be produced.

The local benefits are huge, too, Larson said. Landowners and the counties will reap $180 million in lease payments and property taxes during the project’s 25-year life.

Elbert County has already benefited financially, according to two county commissioners at the event, held in a building near a power substation and amid the towering turbines. Commissioner Grant Thayer said the county received $4.2 million in permit and impact fees from the project. He said the county will put the one-time windfall into a rainy-day account.

The Rush Creek project builds on Elbert County’s goal of attracting more renewable energy projects. Commissioner Chris Richardson said one company plans to build a solar farm in the county and a wind-energy company has installed towers to test the area’s wind.

And, importantly, said Thayer, ranchers are getting paid to lease their land for the turbines.

“It’s going to allow many of the multi-generation ranchers in this part of the county to survive,” Thayer said.

In August, Xcel Energy got the go-ahead from the Colorado Public Utilities Commission to pursue its Colorado Energy Plan. The company, Colorado’s largest electric utility, says the plan will cut carbon dioxide emissions by nearly 60 percent, increase its renewable energy sources to 55 percent of its mix by 2026 and save customers about $213 million.

Xcel Energy is among the nation’s leading utilities in terms of adding to its renewable energy portfolio, said Tom Darin, Western state policy director for the American Wind Energy Association.

The company is responding to growing consumer demand for cleaner and cheaper energy, he said.

“We’re not really seeing much federal leadership on energy strategy,” Darin said. “The specifics are coming from the states.”

Larson of Xcel Energy said the utility, which operates in eight Western and Midwestern states, plans to have 10,000 megawatts of wind-generated power by 2021. The company currently has 6,674 megawatts of wind power across its system. That doesn’t include Rush Creek.

The new wind farm has been generating some electricity the past several months and will begin commercial operations Oct. 31. Construction began in early April 2017. The last turbine was installed early this month. There were about 350 workers at peak construction.

The team at JennSolar says that one billion people have no access to clean water, and two billion people suffer from water scarcity for at least one month of the year. Further, the demand for water in 2050 is projected to be fifty five percent higher than the world’s current needs. Kevin Jennings has been focusing on renewable energy for the last decade, and thinks that ocean water is one of the answers to the world’s water needs. More than 20,000 desalination plants exist today but few if any are run using renewable energy. Jennings and the JennSolar team are developing a solution to desalinate water using solar energy on a large scale.

The Ringtrough is a system using 40 foot wide parabolic mirrors to heat water flowing through a 6 inch pipe to a temperature just higher than the water’s boiling point. Water heated to 230 degrees Fahrenheit is then sprayed into a flash distillation tank, the brine goes back toward the ocean, and the fresh water is collected. This massive crowdfunding goal of $400,000 is will develop a prototype system capable of creating 3000 gallons of fresh water per hour. This will supply the group with a working system on a small scale. By comparison, my favorite desalination plant, the Tampa Bay Seawater Desalination Plant made famous in an episode of How It’s Made, provides up to 25 million gallons of drinking water per day. The patent for “Parabolic trough solar reflector with an independently supported collector tube” was granted to Kevin Jennings in 2012 for the device.

Using solar energy to create clean drinking water is a great goal, a great mix of service engineering and sustainability. It’s odd to me that this project hasn’t gained more attention, and that instead of creating more small prototypes and doing onsite installations the group has moved forward with the proof of concept model shown in the campaign video and plans for a small scale desalination plant. The comment section is relatively quiet, and this is usually the perfect type of project for engineers and laypersons to throw opinions around for all to read. This crowdfunding campaign ends on October 7, but I couldn’t find any timing stated for the first desalination plant to be operational.