Enjoy the beautiful line of diversity and the faces of happy folks breaking ground on the 250 MW Solar Project of the Moapa Southern Paiute Solar Project. Community, government, and energy industry leaders symbolically joined on March 21st to actively commemorate the start of construction for the project.
(From right to left) US Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid joins Moapa Band of Paiutes Chairwoman Aletha Tom, First Solar CEO James Hughes, LADWP director of power system planning and development Randy Howard, and the Moapa Band of Paiutes Tribal Council to break ground on the 250 MW Moapa Southern Paiute Solar Project.
Image Credit: First Solar
“Today’s event marks a very important milestone for Nevada, the Moapa Band of Paiutes, and tribal nations throughout the country,” said Reid. “The Moapa Southern Paiute Solar project is the first utility-scale solar project on tribal land and will deliver much needed economic benefits to the Tribe and Nevada. It will also create about 400 construction jobs, and replace dirty energy with clean solar power.”
The news release from First Solar states: ”U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (NV) joined representatives from the Moapa Band of Paiutes, executives from First Solar, Inc. (Nasdaq: FSLR) and the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP), as well as other community, government and energy industry leaders to celebrate the start of construction of the 250 Megawatt (MW)AC Moapa Southern Paiute Solar Project. The project is located on the Moapa River Indian Reservation just north of Las Vegas, and has a Power Purchase Agreement (PPA) with the LADWP to deliver clean, solar energy for 25 years to the City of Los Angeles.”
Continuing, the news release describes how much of leadership from the Moapa Band of Paiutes will help to generate clean electricity and reduce pollution:
The power plant, anticipated to be fully operational by the end of 2015, is expected to generate enough clean solar energy to serve the needs of more than 93,000 homes. This amount of renewable energy will displace approximately 313,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) annually—the equivalent of taking about 60,000 cars off the road.
The project will play a key role in LADWP’s efforts to build a clean energy future by expanding renewable energy to 33 percent of its total power supply and eliminating coal power. Solar energy from the Moapa plant will contribute 2.4 percent toward LADWP’s renewable energy portfolio. This transformational goal also includes reducing energy use by at least 10 percent through energy efficiency measures; expanding local solar and other forms of distributed generation; initiating a robust demand-response program; and rebuilding local power plants to better integrate renewable energy and be more flexible to meet peak demand.
Of course, this will also help the Moapa Band of Paiutes. It will create jobs and economic growth. ”This is an important step in becoming a leader in Indian Country and will help to create a model for other Tribes to follow,” said Aletha Tom, Chairwoman of the Moapa Paiute Tribal Council. “If our small Tribe can accomplish this, then others can also. There are endless opportunities in renewable energy, and Tribes across the nation have the available land on which to build them.”
Read the entire press release for more information. Enjoy some more details about the Moapa Band of Paiutes here:
The Moapa Band of Paiutes is part of the Southern Paiute Nation with a mission to preserve its homeland, particularly the 72,000 acre Moapa River Indian Reservation, by building an independent and self-governing community and providing opportunities for economic, educational and cultural growth. The Paiutes respect and honor the land and all living things upon it, and the Tribe has the ability to be a front-runner in the clean energy field. The Tribe also operates farms, the Moapa Travel Plaza, a sand and gravel operation and has other future plans for expansion at the Valley of Fire area.
Read more on related solar stories:
Native American Tribe’s Push For Solar & Wind (To Replace Coal & Keep Out Natural Gas)
First Solar Module Cost To Almost Halve (While Natural Gas Prices Increase)
First Solar And GE Team Up For Next Generation PV Plants
First Solar & Moapa Paiute Tribe Break Ground On 250 MW Solar Project was originally published on Solar Love!.
The days when solar power was more expensive than other power sources are quickly passing us by. News out of Europe is that commercial solar power is now at grid parity in some major European countries.
A new study, the PV Grid Parity Monitor, conducted by consulting firm Eclareon, has found that commercial solar power hit grid parity in Italy, Germany, and Spain in 2013. Based on levelized cost of energy (LCOE) calculations, commercial solar now competes with retail electricity in these European countries.
“In countries such as Italy and Germany, both at grid parity and with proper regulation, PV systems for self-consumption represent a viable, cost-effective, and sustainable power generation alternative,” said David Pérez, partner at Eclareon in charge of the study.
As you can see in the chart above, of the 7 countries studied, 4 are yet to hit commercial solar grid parity. Of them, Mexico certainly looks the best-positioned to hit it next, and France seems to be next in line after that.
You can also see large variation in the solar policies of these countries. For example, Spain is infamous now for its retroactive solar feed-in tariff cuts. It has also made it illegal for people to consume electricity they generate from their own solar panels.
Italy and Germany, on the other hand, have largely cut solar feed-in tariffs as initially scheduled. Overall, their solar policies have been much more stable. They also have policies supporting the adoption of energy storage, which is a good supplement to rooftop solar, especially if costs can be brought down as they were with solar panels.
Of course, Brazil and Mexico are seen as having the most supportive policies for solar PV electricity self-consumption.
Notably, LCOE for commercial solar power has been coming down in all 7 countries a great deal, but, as might be expected, they’ve been coming down slowest in the countries already at grid parity, which have more mature solar PV markets and have less incentive to further cut prices:
For more details, check out the full PV Grid Parity Monitor.
This was the first commercial solar grid parity monitor from Eclareon. I’ll keep you up to date with changes in the coming ones.
Commercial Solar Grid Parity Now Reality In Italy, Germany, & Spain was originally published on Solar Love!.
A recent Federal Energy Regulatory Commission analysis finds that it would be fairly easy for terrorists to knock out all the electric grids in the US. And not just for a short time, but for about a year and a half!
“Destroy nine interconnection substations and a transformer manufacturer and the entire United States grid would be down for at least 18 months, probably longer,” FERC officials wrote in a memo for a former FERC chair.
John Upton at Grist further summarizes: “Crippling America’s old-fashioned electrical grid for a long period of time would be disturbingly easy. Saboteurs need only wait for a heat wave, and then knock out a factory plus a small number of the 55,000 electric-transmission substations that are scattered throughout the country.”
Oh, but surely these substations are heavily protected, right? Umm…
From a Wall Street Journal article on this story:
In last April’s attack at PG&E Corp.’s Metcalf substation, gunmen shot 17 large transformers over 19 minutes before fleeing in advance of police. The state grid operator was able to avoid any blackouts.
The Metcalf substation sits near a freeway outside San Jose, Calif. Some experts worry that substations farther from cities could face longer attacks because of their distance from police. Many sites aren’t staffed and are protected by little more than chain-link fences and cameras.
Holy yikes!!
Now, I think solar enthusiasts know what one very helpful solution would be. And if you didn’t before, you probably caught it in the title above. It is: a very distributed electricity system. For example, an electricity system that uses a ton of distributed solar power systems (e.g., rooftop solar).
Microgrids would be especially helpful and protecting against any such attacks. High military officials have been telling us this for years.
So, let’s get on it! Let’s install a ton of solar power, and let’s get moving on microgrids of the 21st century.
(By the way, FERC was not too pleased with the Wall Street Journal covering this sensitive topic. But the fact of the matter is: we need to develop a more secure grid, and maybe we need the public to push for that.)
Photo Credits: tieden / Foter / CC BY-NC-ND & Abdulelah_Qutub / Foter / CC BY-NC-SA
Terrorists Could Black Out US Electric Grids With “Simple” 1-2-3 — Developing More Solar Would Increase Grid Security was originally published on Solar Love!.
Yingli Solar (aka Yingli Green Energy*), which is “the largest vertically integrated photovoltaic (‘PV’) module manufacturer in the world,” recently landed its largest order to date in Israel and the Middle East as a whole. The order is for just 27.5 MW of solar PV panels, which isn’t a ton but demonstrates that Yingli is getting its foot in the door of the young, high-potential Middle East market.
“The Company will supply its YGE 72 Cell NH Series modules to a solar power plant that will occupy more than one million square meters of land in Israel. Designated a National Infrastructure Project by the Israeli Government, the solar farm has been granted the conditional feed-in tariff approval from the Israeli Public Utilities Authority,” a press release about the news stated.
“This supply agreement builds upon our long-standing relationship with Ledico Ltd., our local distribution partner in Israel, and it also extends our presence and visibility throughout the region. We view Israel as an important and sustainable growth market with the potential to reach more than 340 MW of installed solar PV capacity in 2014. We are excited to continue supporting the region’s successful implementation of solar PV through this major supply agreement,” said Mr. Liansheng Miao, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Yingli Green Energy.
*Full disclosure: I own stock in Yingli Green Energy.
Yingli Lands Largest Order To Date In Israel & Middle East was originally published on Solar Love!.
This is what you call bad solar policy, bad investment and business policy, and overall bad policy. Greece has retroactively cut solar feed-in tariffs (FiTs) by 30% on average. Of course, it comes as part of broader economic problems in Greece.
Feed-in tariffs aren’t the only thing being cut either.
“The new measures ask solar photovoltaic energy producers to contribute 35% of their 2013 income to the Greek electricity market operator LAGIE. The intention is to plug a €700 million gap in LAGIE’s fund used, which is used to pay renewable energy producers in Greece. The country has promised its international lenders – the European Union, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund – that it will completely eliminate LAGIE’s fund deficit by the end of 2014,” PV Magazine writes.
“While the same measures also apply to other renewable power producers, they are currently only required though to contribute 10% of their 2013 income to the LAGIE fund, with one exception: rooftop solar PV installations are exempted completely from this measure.”
Here are some details on the FiT cuts:
The second measure introduced by YPEKA regards the drastic reduction of FITs for operational RES plants. Again, solar PV installations face the sharpest reductions, which on average reach 30% of the initial tariffs. Retroactive FIT cuts also apply to rooftop installations.
A smoother FIT reduction, around 20% on average, applies to smaller PV projects up to 20 kW each that are not installed on buildings, and to those projects owned by farmers should they not exceed 100 kW each.
Other renewable energy systems such as wind and hydro projects have been instructed to take a much smaller FIT reduction of around 5-6% on average.
Reductions for solar PV FITs have taken into account a number of factors, such as the technology used, the time of project development, the cost of the installation, and even the location (specifically differentiating between projects in mainland Greece and in the smaller electricity grids of the many Greek islands). A critical factor also taken into account is whether a RES project has received any additional form of aid (e.g direct subsidy, tax exemption). FITs for projects receiving such aids face even sharper cuts.
Read more over on PV Magazine.
Image Credit: NickWinslow (CC BY-SA 3.0)
Greece Cuts Feed-in Tariffs 30% Retroactively was originally published on Solar Love!.
This isn’t a new commercial, but I ran across it recently and had to share again. It’s so funny and so well done. And it does nail the #1 reason why people go solar. Check it out:
Why People Go Solar (Not For Dolphin Babies) was originally published on Solar Love!.
Originally published on Cost of Solar.
The second definition of “insanity” in Google is, “Extreme foolishness or irrationality.” Unfortunately, that definition actually applies to more of what we do and don’t do than we probably want to admit. With extreme insanity, a key thing those of us observing the insanity from the outside tend to notice is that the insane action is done repeatedly. The same insane thing is done over and over and over again, and sometimes the insane person even expects to somehow get a different result despite plenty of experience showing that he or she won’t. It can be quite difficult to watch, and its certainly not a recommended way of life.
You may now be wondering, “What the hell is this guy talking about? Isn’t this site about solar power? Is he insane?” So, let’s get to the solar power part of this.
Earth as we know it… sort of. (Photo Credit: spdorsey | CC BY-NC-ND)
We are actually engaging in very extreme foolishness and irrationality as a society, as we are destroying the climate that makes this world livable for our species (and many others). There aren’t many planets out there that have a climate in which life can exist… actually, we’re yet to find a single one. But we are altering ours in such a way that this highly comfortable climate could disintegrate, so to speak, and become unlivable.
The good news is that we already have the solutions we need to solve this problem. One critical thing we need to do in order to solve this problem is cut the global warming pollution created from producing electricity. And that’s one of the key advantages of solar power. Creating electricity using solar panels doesn’t create any global warming pollution.
Want to keep this? Think about it. (Photo Credit: IronRodArt – Royce Bair (“Star Shooter”) | CC BY-NC-ND)
One wonderful thing about this solution is that so many of us can participate in this one. Have a roof? Go solar! It would be insane not to.
We have been burning and burning coal and natural gas. We have identified that this is warming our world. And we have identified that this warming could wreak havoc on our civilization, and could even destroy the livability of this planet. And yet, we keep burning and burning coal and natural gas. Insane. It’s time to go solar, and anyone who can do so should really be involved in solving this crisis.
Unfortunately, the whole “save the planet that we need in order to survive as a species” thing doesn’t seem to have enough power behind it for many of us. Perhaps it’s just too abstract and hard to grasp while the climate is still in fairly good shape. Perhaps it’s just not our priority while we wrestle with other issues. We will just have to face more extreme hurricanes, more extreme droughts and wildfires, more extreme floods, quickly rising food prices, and so on… no big deal.
However, there is one thing that never seems to fail to get our attention — money. And that’s one of the other big advantages of solar power. Right now, almost all electricity is delivered to us from utilities that are nearly monopolies. We don’t have a lot of control over the massive amount of money we send to them. It’s “good” that we send it on a monthly basis, at least — can you imagine if you had to pay it all at the end of the year like with taxes?
But here’s the thing. We get into the habit of sending our money to the electric companies month after month and slowly begin to just stop paying attention to that action. We get into the habit and consider it a normal part of life that we all have to go through. However, all of us don’t have to go through it. Some of us generate our own electricity through solar panels. And many others cut into that bill so much through solar power systems that it frees up tens of thousands of dollars. (Seriously, over $20,000 is the average in the US!)
Average 20-year savings from going solar in US = over $20,000. Over $30,000 in several states, and over $60,000 in Hawaii. (Image Credit: Cost of Solar)
This is one of the big advantages of solar power, and one of the advantages that seems to most influence people to finally break their insane habit of sending money to electric companies (to pollute our world).
And why wouldn’t it? Who would pass up saving tens of thousands of dollars and cutting about 1/3 of their global warming emissions?
In the end, many of us have a fairly simple choice:
Get solar power on our home and/or business, help the planet, and benefit financially.
or
Continue sending our money to electric companies to make a handsome profit on our insanity while polluting the planet.
Sanity vs insanity. Your choice.
Choose wisely. (Photo Credit: . Entrer dans le rêve | CC BY-NC-SA)
Advantages of Solar Energy > Insanity was originally published on Solar Love!.
Originally published on Cost of Solar.
Where does the energy we need, animals need, and plants need come from? Largely, it just comes from the sun. Plants use solar energy to grow and develop, and animals and humans then get that energy from plants. It’s an amazing thing that we generally don’t give much thought to.
Interestingly, a similar thing we don’t give much attention to is that the fuel we use to create electricity and to power our vehicles also essentially comes from the same source. Fossilized remains of plants and animals are burnt in order to create our electricity and move our cars and planes forward.
Does all this get you thinking? It certainly got me thinking….
When it comes to energy, the bottom line is, solar energy is the motherload. The sun is the mother of our gigantic energy supplies. Many people who have reflected on this have seen that solar energy is the most promising source of energy in the long term (and, increasingly, in the medium and short term). As a 1931 quotation from Thomas Edison on the bottom of this website states, “I’d put my money on the sun and solar energy. What a source of power! I hope we don’t have to wait until oil and coal run out before we tackle that.”
Unfortunately for Mr. Edison, we have probably waited quite a bit too long. But at least we are getting to it now!
Beyond general reflection, check out this fascinating chart below regarding the potential of solar energy compared to other commons sources of energy. But before doing so, pay attention to this very important note: solar energy potential and energy potential shown for the other renewable energy resources is annual potential, while the energy potential shown for the fossil fuel resources is total recoverable reserves.
Image Source: Perez & Perez, 2009a
Yep, solar energy really is the motherload.
So, the question is, what have we been waiting for? Well, we had to develop a technology that could efficiently and cost-effectively capture that solar energy and turn it into electricity. Luckily, we’ve now been able to develop such technology, and solar panels are so ridiculously cheap now (after years of rapid cost drops) that the average American who goes solar now saves over $20,000 over 20 years from doing so.
Perhaps it’s time to do the obvious and put your money on solar energy… just as Thomas Edison would have done if he were alive today. At the very least, get a quote in order to see how much you could save by going solar today.
Join the US solar power rooftop revolution!
Renewable Energy Sources — 1 Important Chart was originally published on Solar Love!.
Solar power has long been a dream of technologists, environmentalists, and clear thinkers of all sorts. As Thomas Edison said in 1931, “I’d put my money on the sun and solar energy. What a source of power! I hope we don’t have to wait until oil and coal run out before we tackle that.” In recent […]
Is It Time For A Solar + Storage Revolution? was originally published on Solar Love!.
By Sun Day Campaign Washington DC – According to the latest “Energy Infrastructure Update” report from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s Office of Energy Projects, non-hydro renewable energy sources (i.e., biomass, geothermal, solar, wind) accounted for more than 99% of all new domestic electrical generating capacity installed during January 2014 for a total of 324 MW. Solar […]
Solar Was #1 Source Of New Electricity Capacity In January was originally published on Solar Love!.
