Metals Tech

Sustainable energy enthusiasts are energized by an Oklahoma attorney general’s opinion that sheds additional light on regulatory issues involving rooftop solar systems installed on homes and businesses in the state.

They believe Oklahomans finally could have an opportunity to join other people across the nation who are able to economically obtain the systems using power purchase agreements that include lease-to-own terms.

They and Mike Teague, Oklahoma’s Secretary of Energy and Environment, note such deals are extremely popular on the nation’s West Coast and in parts of the Northeast, where retail electricity rates offered by utilities are quite high.

But because the questions the opinion addresses are quite technical in nature, it might be a while before similar agreements are offered here.

Nevertheless, local solar enthusiasts are juiced.

“It has been viewed forever and ever that you couldn’t offer (those types of agreements) in Oklahoma,” said Tyson R. Taussig, president of the Oklahoma Renewable Energy Council.

“I view it as casting a glimmer of sunlight on this issue,” Taussig said. “If the opinion gets backed up, it will be a huge development because it will allow motivated, creditworthy individuals in our state to buy their own rooftop solar systems at a really reasonable price. It would open up a whole new market.”

In other states

Questions addressed by the attorney general’s opinion specifically dealt with the legality of third-party ownership of power production.

That’s because in most other states where rooftop solar has thrived, electricity and its retail costs effectively have served as the metric owners of homes and businesses evaluate before choosing whether or not to invest in the technology.

“The electricity cost is the currency of the agreement,” Teague explained.

Typically, agreements elsewhere between property owners and solar companies are power purchase agreements that include lease-to-own arrangements with long-enough terms to keep monthly payments lower than what the property owner had been paying to buy their grid-delivered power.

As part of the deal, the solar installer becomes the property owner’s power provider. The solar installer also typically is paid by the utility for any excess power the system generates that is put back on to the grid, usually at the retail rate other customers pay for the energy.

Taussig said the property owner, meanwhile, gets power from the rooftop system he is buying at a savings.

“So you end up being net cash positive,” Taussig said.

Jim Roth, an attorney who is the dean of Oklahoma City University’s School of Law and a former member of the Oklahoma Corporation Commission, agrees that the business model thrives in other parts of the nation.

Hundreds gathered at the Byron Forest Preserve Saturday to learn how they could go green when it comes to their energy usage.

The 17th annual Renewable Energy and Sustainable Lifestyle Fair gives people an opportunity to check out some of the latest renewable energy sources. Those include solar and learning about reducing their carbon footprint. Organizers say several financial incentives from the state and federal government continue to make alternative energy sources very attractive for consumers.

“You do get some people that say, ‘well how come I’ve never heard of this?’ So we’d like to expand that base, and we’d like to expand to younger people. So it’s trying to get more people interested and knowing the opportunity that’s there because the financial benefits at this point are very good,” said Bob Vogl, the President of the Illinois Renewable Energy Association.

The Illinois Renewable Energy Association organized the fair. The group is also organizing an Illinois solar farm tour that will be held this fall.

MORGANTOWN — Carsten Milsmann, assistant professor in the C. Eugene Bennett Department of Chemistry at WVU, has earned the National Science Foundation’s prestigious CAREER Award for research that could help develop solar energy applications that are more efficient and cheaper to produce.

“In general, we are interested in so-called photosensitizers because these molecules can absorb light and convert it into chemical energy,” Milsmann said.

Milsmann, alongside five WVU graduate students, hopes to develop new compounds using early transition metals. These are more widely available and cost effective than the precious metals typically used in new solar cell technology, which has been held back by these pricy materials. Iridium and ruthenium, for example, are far more expensive and rarer than platinum.

“Chemists typically make photoactive molecules based on late transition metals, which are pricey and rare,” Milsmann said. “When tackling solar energy conversion on a global scale, you don’t want to do it with something that you don’t have very much of and that is expensive.”

However, there are significant obstacles to replacing the precious metals in solar cells with more widely available (or “earth-abundant”) elements, related to their unique chemical properties and their location on the periodic table.

“I think solar energy researchers have focused a lot on late transition metals because we understand their optical properties and reactivity very well, and this understanding makes it easier to modify them,” Milsmann said. “Because of the different chemical properties of early transition metals, we had to start thinking about how to achieve similar outcomes using alternative approaches.”

From this research Milsmann anticipates working in the field of artificial photosynthesis, which he describes as harvesting sunlight and transforming it into fuel.

“To me the only real abundant energy source that we have that is renewable is the sun,” Milsmann said. “Fossil fuels are essentially sunlight that has been stored over millions of years via photosynthesis. I would like to be able to do the same thing as a chemist—harness and store the sun’s energy.”

The NSF’s Faculty Early Career Development, or CAREER, Award recognizes promising and talented early-career faculty who have the potential to serve as academic role models in research and education. The award comes with nearly $650,000 in funding over a five-year period.

“The Milsmann lab is doing important fundamental research on cheap and abundant early transition metals, the chemistry of which is poorly understood,” said Gregory Dudley, chair of the Bennett Department of Chemistry at WVU. “His work contributes basic knowledge to our field, adds value to cheap raw materials and has the potential to make solar energy cheaper and more abundant. We are pleased that the National Science Foundation has seen fit to support him in these efforts.”

‘Consider spot selling of excess power’

Wind energy generators have urged State Electricity Boards to arrange to sell surplus energy generated through power exchanges and not to back down on renewable energy generation.

This was a key resolution passed at the annual meeting of the Indian Wind Power Association held here.

K. Kasthurirangaian, chairman of the association, said that in Tamil Nadu, which has 8,700 MW of the 34,000 MW installed wind energy capacity in the country, 6,234 million units of wind energy was generated between April 1 and August 5 this year. This was 7,547 million units during the corresponding period last year.

Delayed winds

The winds started late in the State this year and evacuation can be improved, he said. Several other States have 4,000 to 5,000 MW each. Evacuation of wind energy is better in States such as Gujarat and Karnataka.

“When the load drops, the State Electricity Boards should not back down wind energy generation. Instead, they should look at options such as spot selling of the excess power or swapping it with power deficit States,” Mr. Kasthurirangaian said.

Similarly, some States have settled all the dues for the power purchased from wind energy generators. In States such as Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra, the dues are pending, he said.

By the end of this year, Siemens Gamesa and its research partners in Denmark plan to install at sea a prototype suction bucket foundation that could reduce the cost to construct and install offshore wind turbine foundations by 40 percent compared to existing technology.

The gravity-based suction bucket foundation, also known as a caisson, is sunk into mud at the seafloor in shallow waters up to about 30 meters deep. Unlike steel monopile foundations, which can disrupt whales and other marine life when hammered into the seafloor, the installation of suction bucket foundations is almost noise-free.

In the first phase of the project, the consortium, which also includes Aalborg University, Universal Foundation A/S, and Fred. Olsen Windcarrier A/S, assembled a full-scale 8×8-meter prototype at a facility in Frederikshavn, Denmark.

The consortium was awarded a €3.8 million (USD $4.4 million) grant from Denmark’s Energy Technology Development and Demonstration Program for a second phase, during which the prototype will be installed in different soil conditions at a test site off the coast of Denmark.

Project researchers say they can build the new suction bucket foundations at a lower cost than existing foundations partially because they will be using much less steel.

Existing suction bucket foundations are constructed of steel plates that are 30 to 40 millimeters thick. The project team says it can reduce the steel plate thickness in their foundation to 16 to 20 mm.

According to a joint press release, Siemens Gamesa and the Danish steel components manufacturer Ib Andresen Industri originally developed the steel fabrication process for use in onshore turbine towers.

Industrializing turbine foundation construction

The project is emblematic of recent activity in the offshore wind space to streamline both the construction and installation of turbine components. Greentech Media has reported in recent months on research into “industrializing” offshore wind project development and the potential use of 3D printing to erect concrete offshore turbine towers.

In this case, the researchers contend that mass production of foundation components, as called for in their design, should save time and money.

Existing steel suction bucket foundations are welded at the shipyard into finished units. The prototype foundation developed for this project comprises prefabricated steel modules that can be mass-produced, stacked and then shipped to the staging port. Final assembly of the modules would be done with bolts at port.

“We have made the suction bucket in modules to make construction and installation easier. That will lead to more producers of the metal pieces,” wrote Finn Daugaard Madsen, project manager at Siemens Gamesa, in an email.

“And we are not limited by space. We could mount it close to a harbor; therefore, the concept allows us to make as many workstations as needed,” he added.

Asked how the prototype is able to exhibit the same strength as existing foundations with less steel, Madsen said, “That is the beauty of innovation. We have tried different shapes and tested them at Aalborg University to find the best and cheapest.”

“We have made calculations that show that the very special profile on the individual steel sheet ensures an extremely strong construction even with the use of significantly less steel,” Lars Bo Ibsen, professor in the Department of Civil Engineering, Aalborg University, told Energy Supply.

Finn Daugaard Madsen said the project teams hopes to install and begin testing the prototype by the end of this year. The testing phase extends through April 2019.

At that time, said Madsen, “If everything is looking fine, we and our partners will start to promote the system.”

We’ve known for a few years now that solar power is surging in the U.S. and the rest of the world: costs have been falling for a while and countries like the United States, China, and India have been building so many solar panels that solar was the world’s fastest growing energy source in 2016. But thanks to a recently-published report from the U.S. Energy Information Administration, we now know the full extent of that trend.

The EIA report looks at the costs and spread of energy sources like solar, wind, and natural gas from 2013 to 2016. Over this three year period, the report finds that natural gas costs stayed roughly flat, and wind got slightly cheaper. The standout statistic, however, is the change in the cost of solar panels over those three years.

In 2013, the cost per kilowatt of solar power hovered around $3,700, significantly pricier than the other two options. But by 2016, the cost had dropped by about a third, to less than $2,500 per kilowatt. That price also doesn’t take into account various federal, state, and local incentives for building new solar plants, so the real cost to utilities is likely even less.

That drop in price likely explains why solar farms suddenly got a lot more popular in 2016. According to the EIA data, eight gigawatts of new solar power was built in the U.S. in 2016, up from only around three the year before. That makes solar the second most common new power source for that year, surpassing natural gas for the first time.

Solar does still have a long way to go before it reaches the same cost per kilowatt without subsidies as natural gas, so that doesn’t mean we’re headed to a purely solar country anytime soon. But it does mean that solar is here to stay, and will almost certainly be a big part of the foreseeable future.