Metals Tech

India is planning to implement a major change in the way project developers would participate in future solar power tenders. The Ministry of New and Renewable Energy has proposed to reduce the maximum allowed tariff bid in at least the national-level solar power tenders.

According to media reports, the Ministry has issued a letter to Solar Energy Corporation of India (SECI) with a direction to reduce the maximum allowed tariff bid from Rs 2.93/kWh (¢4.08/kWh) to Rs 2.50/kWh (¢3.48/kWh). The proposed limit shall be exclusive of the financial impact of safeguard duty recently imposed on imported solar cells. With the inclusion of the safeguard duty, the maximum tariff bid allowed would be Rs 2.68/kWh (¢3.73/kWh).

The directive comes weeks after SECI cancelled allocation of 2.4 gigawatts of solar power capacity to several project developers in India’s largest-ever solar power tender. The lowest bid submitted in that tender was by Acme Solar at Rs 2.44/kWh (¢3.39/kWh) for 600 megawatts of capacity. The second-lowest bid was placed by Azure Power and Adani Green Energy at Rs 2.64/kWh (¢3.67/kWh), a hike of over 8%, while the highest bid was placed by SB Energy at Rs 2.71/kWh (¢3.77/kWh) for 1.1 gigawatt of capacity.

Only Acme Solar was awarded the right to develop projects while all other bids were rejected despite being well below the maximum threshold of Rs 2.93/kWh (¢4.08/kWh).

The most recent national-level solar power auction conducted by NTPC Limited saw tariffs in-line with the recommendations of the Ministry. NTPC allocated 1.2 gigawatts in the bid range of Rs 2.59-2.60/kWh (¢3.60-3.62/kWh). These bids were inclusive of safeguard duty impact.

According to Mercom India, which claims to have reviewed this letter, SECI has been advised to come out with tenders of 1.2 gigawatts in capacity. Project developers would be allowed to bid for the entire capacity of 1.2 gigawatts, while the lowest bid volume would be 50 megawatts. SECI had announced a third national-level solar power tender with capacity of 3 gigawatts. The fate of the cancelled capacity of the second tender, and that of the third tender, remain unknown.

While evidence exists that project developers may be willing to match the proposed tariff bid limits at the national-level tenders, the same called by for state-level tenders. Tenders issued by SECI and other central government companies like NTPC Limited attract large numbers of companies willing to quote competitive tariffs due to a greater sense of surety over payments. The converse is true for state-level tenders. While some developers do not participate in state tender at all, others quote substantially higher bids compared to those in the national-level tenders due to local conditions, like land costs, transmission infrastructure, and track record of state firms to make timely payments.

Mercom Capital CEO Raj Prabhu indicated that there could be delays in auctions of already announced tenders as stakeholders would review that positions.

“The downside will be that all other state and government agencies will want to set similar tariff levels no matter what the project economics are in that state and we have seen this happen over and over on the past years. The tender and auction activity typically comes to a halt after something like (this) is announced as agencies will now look to re-tender and re-auction projects”

The new directive could pave the way for a new record-low in tariff bids for solar power projects in India. The lowest tariff bid has been stuck at Rs 2.44/kWh (¢3.39/kWh) since May 2017. Only Acme Solar has managed to quote this price on three separate occasions, with no other developer willing to match it. This new development could change that.

Diagnosing degraded, or “diseased,” solar panels would contribute to lower electric bills on clean energy and cut manufacturing costs. Companies and governments have regularly invested in solar farms and lost money when weather degradation unexpectedly cut panel lifetime short.

As electricity generated from solar energy increasingly matches fossil fuels in price, companies feel pressure to keep panels living past their warranty and stretch the billions of dollars paid up front for their construction.

“We need to look at the heartbeat of a solar farm to understand its diseases,” says Xingshu Sun, a doctoral graduate in electrical and computer engineering at Purdue University.

A solar farm’s “heartbeat” is data on how well it generates electricity. The researchers created an algorithm using the physics of panel degradation that can analyze solar farm data from anywhere, essentially as a portable electrocardiogram (EKG) for solar farms. The findings appear in the journal Progress in Photovoltaics.

The algorithm is in an experimental stage, but already downloadable for other researchers to use.

‘THE DOCTOR WILL SEE YOU NOW’

“It’s the difference between daily life and the doctor’s office. Previously, facilities were just checking a solar farm’s heartbeat in a controlled environment, like with an EKG in a hospital lab,” says Muhammad Ashraful Alam, professor of electrical and computer engineering.

“But a solar farm itself is always generating new field data for us to collect and analyze, so we need to bring the EKG to the field,” Alam says. “This information-driven approach is transformative, because the approach would allow continuous monitoring and decision making. Ours is a first step in that direction.”

Real-time diagnostics would ultimately inform better panel designs—the cost-saving “treatment” that could prolong lifespan and continue to cut electrical bills.

“If you look at solar modules on the market, their designs hardly differ no matter where they are in the world, just like how iPhones sold in the US and China are almost identical,” Sun says. “But solar modules should be designed differently, since they degrade differently in different environments.”

Degradation in humid environments, for example, comes in the form of corrosion, but high altitudes with no humidity cause degradation through the increased concentration of UV light. Like with human diseases, symptoms of corrosion or sun-beaten silicon tend to not show up on a solar panel until many years after the degradation started.

Without knowing when degradation is happening, companies tend to compensate for different weather conditions by under- or over-designing solar panels, driving up manufacturing costs.

PULLING THE NUMBERS

The researchers used public solar panel data from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory to pull together parameters of how well the panels are generating electricity, such as resistance and voltage. When researchers fed these parameters into the algorithm, a curve generates to show the power output of a solar cell.

The next step is improving the algorithm over time. In the long term, the researchers hope the algorithm could show how much energy a solar farm produces in 30 years by looking at the relationship between weather forecast data and projection of electric circuit parameters. Integrating the algorithm with other physics-based models could eventually predict the lifetime of a solar farm.

The US-India Partnership to Advance Clean Energy-Research for the Solar Energy Research Institute for India and the United States and the National Science Foundation supported this work.

A new residential and commercial property in downtown Bryan is making its own electricity.

Local installers say the green energy is a trend that seems to be catching on.

When the sun is shining bright, the Perry Place lofts in downtown Bryan is producing 40,000 watts of instantaneous power.

That’s enough electricity to power 4 homes. The residential loft and business space is the third property owned by Brent Hairston that operates under solar power.

“It just seems to make sense to capture the energy that’s coming down from the sky each day,” said Hairston.

Hairston says the solar panel system on top of his 30 thousand square foot building may be one of the largest in the Brazos Valley.
“Economically it’s good because it has a 7 to 10 year pay off,” said Hairston. “After that, we’ll be making the power for free.”

Adam Burke of Texas Green Energy installed the system and says he’s noticed a lot of commercial businesses catching the solar trend because of a federal tax credit.

“There is this dollar-for-dollar tax credit of 30 percent plus depreciating the cost that they put into the system in the first place,” said Burke.
Hairston says his tenants indirectly benefit from the solar power because the common areas and the first floor are powered by the panels.

“If we need more power than the solar system is creating we’ll draw from the grid,” he said. “If we’re producing more power than we need than the excess power will go back into the grid.”
Hairston says that helps him offset the cost of the electric bill.

Burke says the average homeowner can get a system for around 20 thousand dollars in most cases, that system would offset a hundred percent of their electricity bill. Homeowners also have access to the tax credits.

You already know that using solar and wind power can influence the climate by reducing our dependence on heat-trapping fossil fuels. Now scientists say these renewable forms of energy can change the climate more directly — and do it in ways that might surprise you.

If wind turbines and solar panels were deployed across the Sahara, more rain would fall and more plants would grow in the massive African desert, according to research published in Friday’s edition of the journal Science.

“Renewable energy can have multiple benefits for climate and sustainable development,” wrote a team led by researchers from the University of Maryland’s Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Science.

To figure this out, the researchers imagined three scenarios for the Sahara and the Sahel, a semi-arid region immediately to the south.

In one, the area is studded with wind turbines that stand more than 300 feet high. In another, solar panels cover 20% of the land. The third case combines wind and solar farms — a setup that would produce about 82 terawatts of electrical power. That’s far more power than the world currently needs, said study co-leader Yan Li.

Once their hypothetical energy farms were built, the researchers fed the details into a sophisticated computer program that simulates Earth’s dynamic climate. Then the program made predictions about how the farms would change the environment.

In the case of wind farms, the giant turbines would cause warmer air from above to mix with cooler air below, bringing more heat close to the surface. Air temperatures near the ground would increase by nearly 4 degrees Fahrenheit.

In addition, the turbines would interrupt the smoothness of the desert surface. Winds blowing through the area would move more slowly.

That, combined with the added heat, would change the atmospheric conditions over the Sahara and bring more moisture to the area. Average rainfall would increase by up to 0.25 of a millimeter per day — about double what it would have been otherwise, according to the study.

The additional water would fuel plant growth, and those extra plants would reduce the amount of sunlight that’s reflected off the desert surface.

From there, it’s a positive feedback loop, the researchers explained: The reduced reflectivity (or surface albedo) enhances precipitation, which fuels plant growth, which reduces albedo, and so on.

The story is a little different for solar farms.

Instead of slowing the wind or causing hot and cool air to mix, the main effect of solar panels is to reduce albedo. That would increase average daily precipitation by about 0.13 of a millimeter in the Sahara and 0.59 of a millimeter in the Sahel. The additional water would induce more plant growth, further reducing albedo and allowing the cycle to continue.

These changes were predicted to increase the maximum temperature by more than 2 degrees Fahrenheit, the researchers reported.

If wind and solar farms were combined, these effects would be “enhanced,” they said. Average daily precipitation would increase to 0.59 of a millimeter. That’s nearly 1.5 times higher than the Sahara would be in its natural state.

But the rain wouldn’t be spread evenly everywhere. The computer simulations predicted that parts of the Sahel could get as much as nearly 20 inches of additional precipitation per year. All that extra water could have “major ecological, environmental, and societal impacts,” Li and his colleagues wrote.

Average temperature would also rise, by nearly 5 degrees Fahrenheit.

Changes like these wouldn’t necessarily happen everywhere solar farms are built, the researchers cautioned. In the Sahara, the key is that today’s typical solar panels would increase the surface albedo. But if the landscape were different, that might not be true.

Ditto if the solar panels were more efficient — that could cause temperatures to fall instead of rise. Without added heat, rainfall wouldn’t increase. It might even decrease, the researchers noted.

These are all factors to consider when building a wind or solar farm, they wrote. If placed just so, these power plants could generate more rain and plants in addition to more clean energy.

Following the European Commission’s decision to lift trade tariffs on the import of solar panels from China, Europe’s energy experts have described the block’s decision to end the trade war with Beijing as a “watershed moment for European solar energy.”

In 2013 the EC imposed tariffs of up to 64.9% on the original price of solar panels imported from China, after accusing Beijing of selling subsidised panels below cost in Europe. The tariffs were imposed to protect European solar panel manufacturers which at the the time faced losing 25,000 jobs as a result of cheaper Chinese imports, according to Sun Investment Group

The EC’s decision to lift the Minimum Import Price (MIP) came on September 03. On its website, it stated the removal of tariffs was in the “best interests of the EU as a whole to let the measures lapse,” as the European Union seeks to meet its renewable energy targets by 2020 and 2030 respectively. By 2020, the EU is pushing for its member states to have 15% of their total energy consumption from renewable sources, increasing it to 32% by 2030.

It also happens that United States has unintentionally strengthened diplomatic and commercial trades between Europe and China. Earlier in 2018, the Trump administration imposed similar sanctions to those recently lifted by the EU. At the time of writing, Washington is considering putting further sanctions of $200bn on Chinese goods, thus strengthening Europe’s position as a more attractive market for Chinese solar than the U.S.

The world’s largest offshore wind farm, the Walney Extension Project, opened Thursday off the northwest coast of England.

Orsted, a Danish energy group, says the wind farm has a capacity of 659 megawatts, enough to power almost 600,000 homes, and overtakes the London Array off England’s east coast which has a capacity of 630 megawatts.

Walney Extension is made up of 87 turbines and covers 55 square miles, which is about 27,000 football fields.

The turbines being used stand 640 feet tall and are the largest wind turbines in operation globally. Blades for both sets of turbines were made at British factories.

According to the Global Wind Energy Council, Britain is the world’s largest offshore wind market, hosting 36 percent of globally installed offshore wind capacity.

Walney Extension was among the first renewable projects to secure a so-called Contract for Difference subsidy from the British government in 2014.

The contract guarantees it a minimum price for electricity of $195 per megawatt hour for 15 years.

Since this was awarded, the cost of offshore wind has fallen dramatically to a low of less than $75 per megawatt hour in the last auction held in 2017.