Metals Tech

China’s solar power sector should strive to cut costs and improve quality, said a top industry group seeking to restore confidence in the world’s largest market as recent policy moves in Beijing straddle producers with shrinking demand and tumbling prices.

The industry is moving away from rapid capacity expansions and suppliers should not expect the sector to grow every year, Wang Bohua, secretary general of the China Photovoltaic Industry Association, said Thursday at a conference in Beijing. Even with installations slowing by possibly 34 percent this year to 35 gigawatts, China’s solar market is still big, he said.

President Xi Jinping’s government announced a surprise decision less than two months ago to halt some new solar plant approvals this year and curb financial aid to developers after record installations in 2017. The clampdown has reverberated around the world, prompting a slew of bearish outlooks from analysts, many of whom have flagged the likelihood for a widening global glut and weaker prices.

“We should keep full confidence in the domestic market,” Wang said.

State-backed CPIA represents companies including Trina Solar Ltd., once the world’s largest maker of photovoltaic panels, according to its website. Its members accounted for 95 percent of domestic polysilicon output, over 80 percent of wafer and cell and three-quarters of panel production last year.

First Contraction

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. forecast last week that the global solar market is heading for its first-ever contraction this year. The pace of installations will shrink by 24 percent to 75 gigawatts from a year earlier, analysts led by Brian Lee said in a note.

Policy makers on Thursday reaffirmed their commitment to the solar sector, echoing remarks in June that support for the industry is “unshakeable”, according to Xiong Minfeng, section chief of renewable energy at the National Energy Administration. China “will keep a reasonable development pace” in solar power and the industry should focus on long-term growth, Xiong said.

A new study from GTM Research found that the U.S. community solar market could grow up to 50-80 times its current size by 2030 to 57-84 GW. This equates to serving nearly nine million new solar customers, including four million low-to-moderate income households, and amounting to $120 billion in capital investments. “The Vision for U.S. Community Solar: A Roadmap to 2030,” which was produced for the non-profit group Vote Solar in partnership with GRID Alternatives and the Coalition for Community Solar Access (CCSA), also informs state policy recommendations for delivering on that enormous and largely untapped potential to serve American households and businesses with affordable and reliable solar power.

“Community solar is an important piece of a strong clean energy economy that benefits everyone, and the policy decisions taking place all across the country right now will determine how big it is and how fast we get there,” said Marta Tomic, Vote Solar’s community solar program director. “This research underscores the critical role that states have to play in unlocking the full potential of community solar by designing programs that translates low-cost solar power into tangible bill savings and other economic benefits for customers. We are ready to work with lawmakers and regulators across the country to design smart community solar programs that expand solar access to all customers, build a more resilient electric grid, and create more good local jobs in the nation’s new energy economy.”

Affordable solar energy is giving families, businesses, schools and many others a way to lower energy bills and invest in America’s new energy economy. However, physical and financial barriers prevent up to 75 percent of consumers from going solar on their own rooftops – families who rent, have shaded rooftops, or don’t qualify for standard financing solutions, for example. Well-designed community solar programs give customers like these a way to go solar and save by enabling them to participate in a shared solar installation located somewhere else in their community and receive a credit on their utility bill for their share of the power produced. Thanks to pent up customer demand, community solar has become the fastest growing segment of the U.S. solar market with over one gigawatt of installed capacity nationwide, a number that could grow to 57-84 gigawatts by 2030 according to the new report.

By leveraging strong policies, business model innovation and continued cost reduction, community solar could reach millions of consumers that currently lack access to customer-sited solar options. With the right environment, community solar could provide over 2.5% of the nation’s total electricity consumption by 2030.

“The community solar model has tremendous potential to reduce energy costs and create value for low-income customers,” said Tom Figel, Policy & Regulatory Manager at GRID Alternatives. “This study shows that with the appropriate policies and support, community solar can create solar access for 50 million low-income customers, while driving significant economic opportunity and job creation for communities most in need.”

“This report makes it clear that community solar is ready to scale and play a meaningful role in our country’s overall energy mix. Industry stands ready to fulfill pent up customer demand and unlock the robust potential of local, clean community solar this report demonstrates is possible at scale,” said Jeff Cramer, Executive Director of Coalition for Community Solar Access. “Now we need state policymakers to enable smart community solar programs that bring tangible economic benefits and expand solar access to all customer types, from low-income families to major businesses. If they do, it will create a win-win-win for customers, the grid, and the environment.”

The report finds that, despite clear market opportunity, the model hasn’t yet achieved scale because only 19 states and the District of Columbia have statewide community solar policies and even fewer have well-designed policies that adequately serve the diverse market segments, including low-income customers, that stand to benefit most from cost savings and stable electric bills and opportunity to drive clean energy access and economic impact in their communities. Well-designed state policies and market-enabling programs that deliver tangible economic benefits to customer participants are key to successfully scaling the community solar market, which is itself a critical piece of the U.S. transition to a clean, smart and resilient grid.

Solar panels are a terrific source of renewable energy … until it gets really cloudy.

This is particularly worrisome for areas where the skies are overcast more often than not, but researchers may have found out how to harvest the silver lining of cloudy days.

All it took was some genetically modified E. coli.

Lycopene energy

This isn’t the first time biology has been applied to solar cells. Solar cells make solar panels work; they absorb the sunlight and convert it to an electrical current. Biogenic solar cells have relied on extracting a natural dye produced by bacteria during photosynthesis for conversion to electricity. This process is expensive and toxic, however, and it can cause the very thing that creates the energy, the dye, to degrade and become less useful over time.

But researchers from the University of British Columbia decided to take a different approach, leaving the dye in the bacteria. They modified the E. coli so it would produce lots and lots of lycopene, the same thing that gives tomatoes their bright red color. Lycopene is a natural — literally — at harvesting sunlight to convert it to energy, and its color allows it to absorb more light even on cloudy days.

To test how successful this biogenic solar cell would be, researchers coated the modified E. coli with a semiconductor metal and then applied that mixture to a glass surface. They generated a current density of 0.686 milliamps per square centimeter, an improvement on the 0.362 achieved by others using biogenic cells.

“We recorded the highest current density for a biogenic solar cell,” Vikramaditya Yadav, a professor in chemical and biological engineering who led the project, said in a statement. “These hybrid materials that we are developing can be manufactured economically and sustainably, and, with sufficient optimization, could perform at comparable efficiencies as conventional solar cells.”

Researchers announced their biogenic cell in the journal Small.

Light at the end of the tunnel

Achieving a sustainable model with this will take time, however. The E. coli doesn’t survive the process, meaning the bacteria need to be replaced each time. If a process can be developed that allows the E. coli to produce lycopene indefinitely, well, that would be a major step forward.

“Our invention is a first-generation prototype that needs significant improvements before it can reach the levels of silicon solar cells that can deliver about 25 times the current density of the bacterial-based solar cell,” Yadav told Popular Science. “We don’t view our technology as a competitor to conventional solar cells. Not yet, at any rate.”
Still, the biogenic panels can help areas like British Columbia and Northern Europe where the clouds are a bit more present. These sorts of biogenic sources of light can also be useful in other areas, including mining and deep-sea exploration.

The adage holds that a picture is worth a thousand words. But in the solar industry, a picture is worth about $500 — and maybe a lot more.

At least that is one conclusion that can be drawn from a recent survey of more than 200 U.S. solar installers conducted by Aurora Solar, a San Francisco-based startup that provides software to streamline the sale, design and construction of solar projects.

“We found that, on average, solar installers spend over $500 in change orders,” said Samuel Adeyemo, a co-founder of Aurora. “That’s what happens when you sell something you can’t install or there are errors in the estimates of how many modules can fit on a property.” In many cases, obtaining more accurate imaging upfront could limit or eliminate the need for changes.

The errors can lead to negative outcomes, including excessive site visits to a customer’s property and potentially poor word of mouth from unhappy customers. Compounded across the solar industry, these are also the type of inefficiencies that have kept soft costs stubbornly high, even as panels, inverters and other types of equipment have consistently gotten cheaper.

U.S. soft costs are falling overall, according to GTM Research, but at a slower rate than other solar PV elements. Non-installation soft costs still make up more than half the price of a residential solar PV system, and GTM Research forecasts that customer-acquisition costs will continue to rise in the short term.

Installers are increasingly avoiding some of the inefficiencies and mistakes that lead to change orders by leveraging aerial imagery. Solar installers big and small have moved away from sending crews out to climb on roofs to take measurements on the homes and businesses of prospective customers.

“That is time wasted. You use trucks, you use gas, you sit in traffic. Workers can sometimes collect or enter the wrong data,” said Tony Agresta, vice president of marketing at Nearmap, a company that provides cloud-hosted aerial maps to solar installers and other industries. “People want to see the truth on the ground, verify data, and reduce the time they spend traveling to various sites.”

In recent times, solar installers have used satellite imagery to gauge how many panels could fit on a roof and estimate how much production could be expected. But like so much else in solar, the sophistication around what’s possible with aerial maps has accelerated as the industry has matured. At the most basic level, the aerial maps solar installers can use today to produce sales presentations and plan for efficient installations are far more accurate and detailed — and will only become more so in the near future.

For example, Nearmap outfits airplanes with its patented high-resolution camera system. “Not only do you see the truth on the ground, but you see it in sub-3-inch imagery,” said Agresta. “That means one pixel on the camera equals 2.8 inches on the Earth’s surface.” By comparison, satellite resolution is typically between one pixel per foot to one pixel per meter. Nearmap’s imagery includes vertical maps, which provide a vertical view of sites, as well as multi-perspective angled views and wide-area panoramas.

“We fly over 430 cities either one, two or three times per year,” said Agresta. “For example, Tier 1 cities like Chicago and New York are captured three times per year, spring, summer and fall, so it’s possible to see how roofs and locations look in different seasons and get an assessment of whether trees cause shading in spring and summer.”

Imagery-as-a-service for solar

Most of the cities are captured at least two times per year, providing both “leaf-on” and “leaf-off” imagery. The images are provided through an imagery-as-a-service business model, in which small installers can access a smaller volume of photos at a lower price, while larger installers can get thousands of images. The company originated in Australia and now has over 87,000 users across more than 8,500 companies in Australia, New Zealand and the U.S.

Momentum Solar has tapped the power of higher-resolution images to spur its growth, evolving from a regional installer in New Jersey to become a national player. “They have found a way to drive their business with it,” said Agresta. “They direct their sales force in a more focused way to the people who are more likely to buy solar, and they have had a dramatic increase in their lead generation while cutting proposal time from weeks to days.”

Momentum utilizes Nearmap’s imaging through Aurora’s platform, which basically turbo-charges what is possible with Nearmap’s API using algorithms that improve the accuracy and efficiency of solar system design. For example, while it’s undoubtedly a big help to the designers of a solar array to have an accurate image to help pinpoint potential shading issues and roof obstructions, it’s even more efficient if a sophisticated algorithm can do it automatically.

“We developed a feature that identifies the obstructions on a roof. And some commercial rooftops have hundreds of obstructions. It would take a long time for a designer or installer to draw them all out,” said Aurora’s Adeyemo. “With us, you have computer vision algorithms detect them for you through image recognition.”

Today, Nearmap customers using MapBrowser can easily migrate to the Aurora platform at no additional cost or continue to access the imagery directly from Nearmap’s MapBrowser.

The ability of imagery to transport designers directly to potential project sites will only become more sophisticated over time. Even today, the imagery is granular enough to provide a view of the pitch of a roof and the height of a building.

But not long from now, according to Nearmap, 3D visualization will likely be the norm, a development that will allow installers to virtually float around a site to inspect it. “Now you are immersed inside the visualization,” said Agresta. “You can navigate up and down, through neighborhoods, landscapes and around properties.”

In the future, machine learning and artificial intelligence will allow Nearmap to detect features that are useful in prospecting, installation and service, an evolution of the technology to reality-as-a-service. “Rather than hunt and peck through properties, with applied machine learning you can say, ‘Show me the properties within 10 square miles of this point that have solar,’ or ‘Show me the ones that don’t,’” said Agresta.

Through more accurate detection of property features, Nearmap’s machine-learning algorithms will be able to differentiate skylights from panels, pools from ponds and other ground features, allowing for highly specialized instant search. The result will allow installers to close more deals with fewer change orders and better designs.

A statewide team of scientists, business owners, energy sector workers, volunteers from environmental and solar organizations, and others have worked with the state government on a plan to make Pennsylvania 10% solar-powered by 2030.

The program, named Finding Pennsylvania’s Solar Future, is funded by the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), which received a grant from the U.S. Department of Energy’s SunShot Initiative.

Jack Barnett, board member of the Honesdale-based environmental group Sustainable Energy Education Development and Support (SEEDS) and president of the Clean Energy Co-op, is one of over 500 stakeholders in the project. David Ford and Jocelyn Cramer, chair and executive director of SEEDS respectively, are also stakeholders.

The plan’s 10% target aims significantly higher than the state’s current goal of becoming .5% solar-powered by 2021.

In 2017, only .2% of Pennsylvania’s electrical-consumption was solar-produced, according to the Solar Energy Industries Association. That number is nearly 6 times lower than New York’s and about 19 times lower than New Jersey’s.

Barnett believes that this is partially due to the powerful industries in Pennsylvania that oppose solar development. “[Compared to surrounding states], Pennsylvania has a lot more special interests in the embedded energy industry,” he said. “Both our history of coal production and the more recent natural gas industry have interests that would counter and fight against increasing the solar proportion.”

Pennsylvania is a national leader in unsustainable energy practices, currently the sixth-largest producer of electricity from coal and the second-largest producer of natural gas. However, the leaders of this program hope to make the commonwealth a leader in clean energy instead.

One of the biggest obstacles to success is gridlock in Harrisburg. “In the past three or four years very little progress has been made on these kinds of initiatives… There are so many special interests that can divert legislators’ attention and therefore not do the right thing for the whole state and the community,” said Barnett.

Despite this history of gridlock, shareholders are optimistic that this plan offers a variety of benefits that make it attractive on both sides of the aisle. The report states that committing to solar energy can have “enormous benefits” including improved public health, economic growth, job opportunities and decreased greenhouse gas emissions.

The report estimates that moving forward with the plan would cost between $513 and $613 million annually, which would account for less than 1.5% of Pennsylvania’s annual energy expenditures—$45 billion. However, the findings also showed that the economic benefit to committing to solar would be roughly $1.6 billion a year, a benefit of over $25 billion by 2030.

Barnett urges all Pennsylvanians who care about the state’s future energy supply to read the plan and comment on the DEP’s website, either to express support or criticism. “Only with rational discussion and compromise across the broad set of interests will progress be possible,” he said.

New England’s behind the meter solar hit maximum generation at 2 GW this summer and contributed to lowering peak load and shifting peak demand to later in the day during this summer’s heat waves. This in turn allowed for lower utilization of older coal and oil resources.

While certain factually challenged politicians have joined with utilities in making inaccurate claims that rooftop solar is raising costs on other ratepayers, including the poor and elderly, we are now seeing increasing evidence that behind-the-meter solar and batteries are actually saving ratepayers substantial sums.

Distributed and behind the meter solar power has saved Californians hundreds of millions a year, has slowed down infrastructure upgrades by billions, and this summer solar+storage saved Vermont specifically $500,000 during the peak demand hours during a heatwave.

A series of tweets posted by Joe LaRusso, the Energy Efficiency and Distributed Resources Finance Manager at City of Boston, shows more evidence of this from New England, where distributed solar power is lowering the cost of electricity across the region, as well as providing environmental benefits, during the region’s recent heat waves.

From the New England ISO directly,

Solar generation peaked each day at around 2 p.m. during the heatwave, providing approximately 2,000 MW. Solar contributes to the reduction in the peak load and also contributes to moving the peak that we see here at ISO New England to that 5 to 6 p.m. time frame.

As a result of these peaks being lower, overall pricing for everyone was lower. This mirrors the example we saw in California, where distributed solar power lowered wholesale pricing – in turn saving utilities $650-730 million in 2013-2015 when purchasing electricity.

On July 19th, LaRusso notes that around the 2 PM solar peak two gigawatts of behind the meter solar was pumping out power, and met over 11% of New England’s total electricity demand. When accounting for 866 MW of grid tied solar power, that value increases to 15% of demand.

This is far lower than California’s peak solar of approximately 67%, meaning we have plenty of space when managing this growing output.

Of course, broader society is benefiting environmentally as solar power is generating clean electricity – but during a heatwave in New England, society doubly benefits in that the dirtier forms of electricity normally called on to meet peak power demand are not needed. Per ISO New England:

With demand evading high levels, ISO New England had to call only minimally on older coal and oil resources.

Solar power is projected to continue aggressively growing in New England, so expect these trends to continue evolving. With Massachusetts launching a “Clean Peak Standard” to specifically attack these high priced and dirty periods with energy storage, wind and solar power this evolution could be dramatic.

And if you wonder what happens when you have high daytime peak electricity usage and record heatwaves, but your region is missing out on solar power – look no further than Texas during the past couple of weeks as it set demand records and spot market pricing went through the roof.