Metals Tech

Pueblo Community College is partnering with NextEra Energy, the world’s largest utility company, to install 52 photovotaic solar panels and establish a learning laboratory for students in the promising field of renewable energy.

The 20-kilowatt solar farm will be located next to PCC’s Gorsich Advanced Technology Center. NextEra’s initial donation, panel installation and training on campus is valued at $50,000 to $75,000. An added bonus is that the solar panels will help power the technology center and offset a small percentage of PCC’s energy costs.

“The students will learn not only how to build, maintain and operate the facility, but how to analyze the data it will generate,” NextEra representative David Gil announced to a full audience in the Gorsich center.

The educational aim is to help PCC develop degreed, skilled workers for the renewable energy industry, which boasts fast-growing jobs, such as solar panel installers and wind technicians.

Former Interior Secretary and U.S. Sen. Ken Salazar, a champion of renewable energy, was on hand for the on-campus announcement. “This is the first day of a $1 billion, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for Southern Colorado,” the San Luis Valley native said.

Xcel Energy plans to replace Pueblo’s Comanche 1 and 2 coal-fired plants with $2.5 billion of investment in renewable energy production.

PCC President Patty Erjavec welcomed NextEra, saying: “We are so excited, so pleased and so humbled that you sought us out to be your community college, leading the initiative in the whole workforce development associated with this absolutely fabulous project.

“My team has already begun to explore the realm of educational possibilities this learning lab will afford our students and we are eager to unleash their creativity and innovative prowess.”

PCC focuses on developing skills and knowledge of value to students’ futures.

What happened: Huang Ming, founder of Himin Solar, one of China’s largest solar water-heating companies, is confronting local governments for the latter’s failure in compensating a promised $440 million. Insiders believe that the tightening liquidity was forcing companies to call in debts, even from local governments, to survive. Huang also acknowledges that market and policy shift in the solar energy industry has reduced profit margin.

Why it’s important: Regardless of business model and key technology, tech companies’ life and death in China at the moment is tightly tied to macro economic uncertainty. The seemingly close business-administration relationship may see more turbulence as enterprises sink into deeper debt and encounter more business operation issues.

In June, EU energy ministers agreed to aim for a renewable energy-use target of 32 percent by 2030. At the time, EU climate commissioner Miguel Arias Cañete said the target would help Europe meet its Paris agreement goals and would “translate into more jobs, lower energy bills for consumers, and reduced energy imports”.

Within the EU, Germany has been leading the way in renewables. In April, the country set a national record for renewable energy use: at one point during the holiday weekend at the end of the month, 85 percent of all the electricity used was produced from renewable sources. Meanwhile, more than one million homes in the country are equipped with solar panels.

The green revolution in Germany has been supported by government subsidies and driven by public opinion, but there are also free-market forces at work. Renewables are becoming increasingly viable from an economic standpoint. Solar cells, for example, are being manufactured for less and becoming more efficient year on year.

But challenges remain. The most obvious being the need for these green energy sources to provide the consistent power we enjoy from the fossil fuels they are intended to replace.

The peaks and troughs associated with solar energy – as the sun rises and sets – have, in some cases, led to excess power being generated and huge amounts of energy being wasted.

For example, in California in May an oversupply of solar energy led to plummeting prices, which caused the state to force renewable energy plants to scale back production. More than 95,000 megawatt hours of electricity were lost as a result.

One way to prevent that from happening is to develop better energy storage technology and make it available to the masses. The solution? Domestic batteries.

Germany hits another energy transition milestone

This week, Germany hit another green energy milestone, announcing that 100,000 homes now have their own battery storage systems connected to the national grid.

These systems allow homeowners to store the solar energy they’ve generated and use the power even after the sun has gone down. Electricity consumption tends to be lower during the day and rise in the evenings. Storage solutions allow homeowners to offset that imbalance and even sell unused energy back to the grid.

Since 2013, the cost of lithium-ion batteries has dropped by half. The idea of becoming part of a ‘virtual power plant’ – distributing energy to and from homes, depending on supply and demand – has also gained traction.

The road to 200,000 solar batteries

On the day the 100,000th battery was installed in Germany, Carsten Körnig, MD of the German Solar Industry Association, said the progress was down to “the encouraging willingness of many citizens to invest, the innovative strength of the industry, and the market incentive programme launched five years ago by the German government.

“If politicians are now resolutely pursuing the energy transition, solar storage will soon become the standard, and we are delighted that domestic storage providers are among the best in the world, and particularly benefit from them,” he continued.

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The German solar industry is on the right path. According to Körnig, more than half of domestic solar energy system buyers order a battery storage unit right away.

This is driven by the potential to save money in the long term, the sense of independence it brings, and the desire to make a contribution to Germany’s energy transition.

“With this momentum, we will reach the next milestone – 200,000 solar batteries – in just two years,” said Körnig.

If you write the checks and swipe the cards to stay warm and keep the lights on in the winter, you know that energy in Alaska can be pricey.

However, the University of Alaska Center for Economic Development – along with the University of Alaska Anchorage Business Enterprise Institute – reports that while Alaska has the highest per capita energy expenditures of any state, renewable technologies that are uneconomical in the Lower 48 can and often do make financial sense in the Last Frontier. Solar power is one of those options.

“A lot of people think solar power and Alaska, or anywhere in the Arctic, don’t go together,” said Dr. Erin Whitney, a research professor at the Alaska Center for Energy and Power. “But the truth of the matter is, we do have a viable solar resource up here.”

Stephen Trimble, CEO and founder of Alaska-based Arctic Solar Ventures, said that there are many misconceptions out there about solar energy and that a lot of the issues can be solved through education.

“Between the spring and fall equinox, we have more than twelve hours of daylight, so more than we think,” Trimble said. “In the winter, production in December and January is only about 10 percent of a peak summer month, and that also happens to be the time we have snow on our rooftops as well.

“So what you lose by snow coverage isn’t a lot,” he said.

Whitney explained the process of light becoming energy as follows: Sunlight comprises photons, which are essentially little packets of light. When those hit a solar panel – a semi-conductor material – the photons knock electrons off of atoms. And when those electrons are knocked off and routed through a circuit, you have electricity.

As for popularity of solar energy in Alaska, she said, the business of solar energy is nothing short of booming.

“The solar industry has expanded tremendously nationally,” Whitney said, “and Alaska is certainly following that trend. We’re easily doubling in installed capacity here in Alaska just in the last year or so.”

Trimble said that over the past few years, he’s noticed a tremendous increase in requests for solar panel installation. In Arctic Solar Ventures’ first year, the company installed about 100 panels; in its second, there were 300; last year, 1,000 panels were installed, and only halfway through the install season in 2018, ASV has already surpassed that.

Tampa Electric is preparing to launch two new solar projects in September, beginning with Balm Solar in Hillsborough County and Payne Creek Solar in Polk County.

Once online, the 548-acre Balm Solar farm will have the capacity to generate 74.4 megawatts of electricity for some 12,000 homes.

Payne Creek Solar will generate 70.3 megawatts of electricity on 500 acres of land reclaimed from phosphate mining.

“We are excited to see these first two solar projects come online in September,” says Mark Ward, director of renewables for Tampa Electric. “They, along with the eight other solar projects we’re constructing over the next few years, will help minimize fuel costs for our customers.”

TECO invested $110 million in the Balm Solar project. By 2021, the utility plans to put a total of $850 million into solar energy projects, including 10 solar plants generating enough electricity to power over 100,000 homes in Hillsborough, Pasco, and Polk counties.

The panels installed at the TECO farms are designed to track the sun through the sky throughout the day, generating maximum energy.

Although the solar projects are intended to prevent future utility rate hikes, the recent projects will come at an added cost to consumers of $1.85 to offset TECO’s construct costs, reports the Tampa Bay Times. The rate increase will take effect September through December 2018. Through the end of 2018, TECO expects its customers will save $3.3 million in fuels costs thanks to the utility’s increase in solar.

The utility faced criticism in March for a solar proposal farm proposal in Pasco County, according to the Times, as residents were worried that the project would detract from the area’s rural landscape. Ward said that the new projects have received community support.

“Balm Solar will be a good neighbor,” he says. “Solar projects produce no noise, no emissions and do not increase traffic.”