THIN FILM SOLAR PANELS

Archive for January, 2010

Suniva, Inc., a solar manufacturer based in Georgia, is aiming to bring a commercial, grid-connected, stored solar energy system to the state for the first time.  The company has just announced a partnership with Georgia-based GS Battery USA Inc., that will combine Suniva’s solar modules with high tech batteries on a 30 kilowatt solar plant at GS Battery’s headquarters in Roswell, Georgia.

To make it a trifecta, a third Georgia-based company, First Century Energy of Atlanta, is the designer of the solar array.  It’s an interesting sustainable energy threesome given that GS Battery is a subsidiary of GS Yuasa Group of Japan, which is a global battery technology leader that has just contracted with NASA to assemble lithium ion battery cells in Roswell — and there’s a couple of other U.S. government connections, too.

Stored Solar Energy and Green Jobs

Suniva’s 30 kW array is set to be the first in a series, and it takes advantage of the 2009 stimulus package aka the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), which as of January 1st applies a 30% investment tax credit to battery storage systems as well as solar systems.  On top of that, Suniva was founded by staff from the University Center of Excellence for Photovoltaics at the Georgia Institute of Technology, which was established with funding from the U.S. Department of Energy.  This powerful nexus of government funding, academic research and private enterprise is fulfilling the promise of an emerging green economy jump-started by the 2009 stimulus package.

Suniva and Solar Power

Suniva is known for its high efficiency, low cost monocrystalline solar cells, the ARTisun series.  At an output of up to 300 watts they rank among the highest performance levels, and the company has more developments in the works: improving the process for screen-printing solar gridlines, teasing out a better response from the more energetic blue end of the solar spectrum, and getting more light to reflect back into the system with a more efficient “passivization” layer.

GS Battery and Stored Energy

GS Batteries USA specializes in motorcycle and other vehicle batteries, so it will be interesting to see how the subsidiary interacts with its parent on a technological level.  According to an article in the Atlanta Constitution-Journal, the recent GS Yuasa contract with NASA represents the high end of energy storage technology, calling for satellite and space station vessel lithium-ion battery cells that go for $20,000 a pop.  The components will be pre-made and then assembled at the Roswell facility, which could nearly triple the plant’s employment from 35 to 100.

Solar Power and Stored Energy

Energy storage is the key that will unlock the full potential of solar power for use in manufacturing, and the Roswell installation could help demonstrate that stored solar energy is just as steady and reliable as any source of fossil fuel.  Aside from lithium ion technology, researchers are also developing solar energy storage systems based on molten salt, plant photosynthesis, and even the good old fashioned flywheel.

Image: Peaches by MagdaMontemor on flickr.com.

That’s right, the US government is “the single largest energy consumer in the U.S. economy.” In 2008 alone, it spent $24.5 billion on electricity and fuel.

This 28% reduction target Obama is ordering is equivalent to $8-11 billion in avoided energy costs. Additionally, it is far beyond the 17% reduction Obama has pledged to the international community for the US as whole, making the US government a leader by example on this issue.

“As the largest energy consumer in the United States, we have a responsibility to American citizens to reduce our energy use and become more efficient,” said President Obama. “Our goal is to lower costs, reduce pollution, and shift Federal energy expenses away from oil and towards local, clean energy.”

As discussed previously, addiction our to foreign oil results in a major paycheck to other economies and concern for our own national security.

As the White House aptly points out, cutting US government emissions is a big plus for the economy as well as the environment. “Actions taken under this Executive Order will spur clean energy investments that create new private-sector jobs, drive long-term savings, build local market capacity, and foster innovation and entrepreneurship in clean energy industries.” This US government pledge is actually the result of that.

The target Obama announced was based on the aggregate self-reported target of 35 Federal Agencies. On October 5^th of last year, Obama ordered that every Federal Agency submit a “2020 GHG pollution reduction target from its estimated 2008 baseline to the White House Council on Environmental Quality and to the Director of the Office of Management and Budget by January 4, 2010.”

Examples of federal actions to achieve this reduction are on the White House Council on Environmental Quality website.

For some more numbers, if you are interested, this reduction is equal to cutting 205 million barrels of oil, 646 trillion BTUs, or 17 million cars on the road.

Importanly for me, and those who want an open democracy, the White House reports: “To ensure accountability, annual progress will be measured and reported online to the public.” Keep track of the changes yourself.

Great step by Obama and the federal government. Kudos to you!

Image Credit: jcolman via flickr under a CC license

Hollywood, as a whole, is one of the most powerful entities (can I call it that?) in the world. Some of its biggest stars are getting involved in the politics of climate and clean energy now.

A great new video on the web featuring Leonardo DiCaprio, Felicity Huffman, Forest Whitaker, Ed Norton, Justin Long, and others nails the key points of climate and energy legislation with the most popular language.

One of the stars even decides to drop his pants because of the heat (climate change).

First, the video sets the stage with the fact that this is about a specific piece of legislation in Congress. Next, Leo, Forest, Felicity, Justin and others cut right to the population’s top interest — economy/jobs. Rightfully so, they focus a lot on the fact that clean energy is the economic powerhouse of the future, and, as Obama said, “the nation that leads the clean energy economy will be the nation that leads the global economy.”

They also give quick mention to a couple of other more obscure or polarized but extremely important issues, the oceans acidifying (something outside the realm of “climate change” but caused from the same thing and, perhaps, equally or more concerning) and decreased national security due to our foreign oil addiction.

Coming back to the economy, they make sure to say that “it won’t increase the deficit.” Of course it won’t. It will stimulate the economy.

The video uses comedy mixed with serious concern to make the video fun and useful.

Watch it now:

This post contains additional media. Click here to view the full post.
.

via grist

Related Stories:
1) Who’s More Powerful than Obama?
2) It’s Time to Get Angry
3) Who Wants a Climate & Energy Bill? 83 Leading US Companies

Image Credit: SpreePiX – Berlin via flickr under a CC license

Probably the biggest news piece this week was Obama’s State of the Union address. David Roberts of grist seemed to hate it. Whereas often like-minded and equally critical Joe Romm of Climate Progress actually seemed to love it.

Dan Harding of CalFinder had mixed reactions, first “feeling passion stir deep within [him] and tingles of inspiration buzz beneath [his] skin,” then thinking that “[Obama's] speeches have grown more and more centrist.”

Immediately after reading those first two reviews (David and Joe’s), the idea for this article came to my mind. Who’s more powerful than the President of the United States of America?

Why did this come to my mind? Probably because I’ve been reading a lot on 1) how to communicate climate change and climate and clean energy legislation, 2) the way the media ignores the scientific consensus on climate change, and 3) public perception of climate change lately. And because my first thought on who’s more powerful than Obama was “the media.”

The Media

Many people probably turned to David Roberts to help them decide what to think of Obama’s speech. And many of them probably turned to Joe Romm to do the same. And the fact is, these people’s opinions help shape liberals’ (and some conservatives’) views of Obama, climate legislation, and the like. Even more so, the popular (or “status quo“) media that a large portion of the population aligns themselves with translated Obama’s speech for them as well, helping them to decide what to think of it.

This speech was actually watched by people, giving them the opportunity to think for themselves about it, unlike the vast majority of speeches or statements Obama makes that the media basically has full access to shape for the public?

How does this translate into power?

Very simply, the media is largely responsible for shaping what people think of Obama, what people think of major issues (like climate change), and how much pressure is put on members of Congress and Obama to pass different bills or different portions of bills. For example, a climate and clean energy bill, or different portions of that, could get tremendous support from the public if the media portrayed it positively. The media could get the public so much behind such a bill that Congress would have to respond or be kicked out of office.

The media, perhaps, has much more power to shape the contents and success of a climate and clean energy bill (or other major legislation) than Obama himself.

Hu Jintao, President of China

Well, Forbes puts Obama first and Jintao second, but this is clearly a tight race.

Obama acknowledged in his speech that “the nation that leads the clean energy economy will be the nation that leads the global economy.” He says that “America must be that nation.” But you have to admit that we are getting our lunch eaten by China right now.

Obama’s clean energy push is so big that it is being compared to the Manhattan Project, but even so, China is investing far more in clean tech (some estimate that the investment ratio will be 4:1 per GDP in the next five years).

As the Brookings Institute reports, “Asia’s rising ‘clean technology tigers’ – China, Japan, and South Korea – have already passed the United States in the production of virtually all clean energy technologies, and over the next five years, the governments of these nations will out-invest the United States three-to-one in these sectors.” China, the largest of those three countries, will out-invest the US in gross as well as per GDP according to this report.

I think Obama was right on to bring this competition so strongly into his speech, because the truth is, he can’t do it (or make the decisions) on his own. Jintao has a lot more immediate and direct influence on the matter.

One case comparison we can look at in this field is high-speed rail (HSR). I was thrilled to report this week that Obama has awarded $8 billion to HSR projects across the country. We are hoping for a few billion more, at least. Meanwhile, though, China has been investing billions in HSR lately as well and has specific plans to invest $300 billion by 2020. It seems that Obama just doesn’t have that option (right now).

If this race is exactly what Obama calls it, Obama needs more support from corporations, other politicians, and the citizens of the United States to be able to out-compete Jintao.

This race is a tight one and the results should help people, in retrospect, to look back and evaluate who was more powerful.

(By the way, for a few other articles getting into this discussion on other sites, see: Did China block Copenhagen progress to pave way for its own dominance in cleantech?, Is clean tech China’s moon shot?, and China powers the global green tech revolution.)

Hollywood

Well, coming out of left field with this one, this is my final idea of who might be more powerful than Obama. Of course, like “the media” this isn’t a single person. Nonetheless, it is something to consider.

As we all know, climate change rose to the top of national and even global concern when Al Gore made “An Inconvenient Truth” and people saw this movie on the topic. This, without the flash and flare of Hollywood even, was a prime example of how popular forms of media can affect the population and politics.

Millions of people watched Obama’s State of the Union speech, but how many millions more saw Avatar?

The popularity and influence of Hollywood could be a stronger force getting more people behind climate and clean energy legislation than Obama ever could (at least, in the population at large — the people who do elect members of Congress).

A new video on the web has just come out along exactly these lines, starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Felicity Huffman, Forest Whitaker, Ed Norton, Justin Long, and others. I am writing about that in my next post, so stay tuned. If “Hollywood” continues on this path, I think it alone could drive the necessary public support for climate and clean energy legislation, but they need to really get behind it, (do more than a youtube video).

Well, it is a string of thoughts here. And I guess the point of it is, we cannot only pin our hopes and disappointments on Obama or even Congress. We have to look at the issue more broadly; tackle tragic media coverage of these issues; engage in our democracy more ourselves to get people in all sectors energized around the fact that if the US doesn’t give Obama and Congress some support and some push, China is going to win the game before we realize we’re playing with them; and hope that some bigshots in Hollywood or other popular arenas help get the common citizen behind strong climate and clean energy legislation.

Related Articles (not linked above):
1) Clean Tech: #1 in Worldwide Venture Capital Investments
2) 1st World Ranking of Clean Energy Technology (CET) Sales — CET to Become 3rd Largest Global Sales Sector by 2020
3) China Forgets “China-Only Wind Turbines” Policy, but Why?

Image Credit 1: tsevis via flickr under a CC license
Image Credit 2: London Summit via flickr under a CC license

In a high tech, low key twist on American Idol, green technology competitions are springing up all over the country.  Among the newer ones is the Clean Energy Prize sponsored by the University of Michigan and DTE Energy, and it offers some clues about the technology stars of the sustainable energy future.  For one thing, they better be prepared to go on stage and pitch their talent – one element of the competition is an oral presentation before a panel of judges.

DTE’s involvement is another interesting aspect of the competition.  A large part of the company is a conventional natural gas utility, Detroit Edison, but an emerging part is DTE Energy Ventures, which focuses on sustainable energy tech.  That puts DTE among a growing list of large energy companies that are turning more investment resources over to sustainable fuels – yet another indicator that peak times for fossil fuels are on the horizon.

The Clean Energy Prize Competition

The competition has already winnowed the starting field of 32 hopefuls down to eight teams from six different Michigan colleges and universities.  The projects include advanced energy storage, services that help consumers manage energy consumption (especially peak demand), kinetic energy for wireless devices, biogas digesters/composters for restaurants, and “green” silane gas production (silane is used in electronics, flat screen displays and solar panels).  Like California’s Cleantech Open, the competition focuses squarely on commercialization.  Advancement in the competition is based on a written business plan, and the prize money is targeted towards jump starting new clean energy businesses.

Conventional Utilities and Emerging Clean Energy

DTE is by no means the first conventional utility to jump from fossil fuels into sustainable energy.  Industry giant Duke Energy already owns more than 700 megawatts of wind power and last year it announced plans to build hundreds of mini-solar energy plants in North Carolina.  Just this month Duke also announced the purchase of a 14 megawatt solar plant that will provide energy for San Antonio, Texas.

Start-Ups and Clean Tech Competitions

Clearly the big players see a potential gold mine in moving away from fossil fuels, and they have the resources to go after it.  The emergence of clean tech competitions helps start-ups get in on the sustainable energy action, providing seed money in the form of prizes or investment opportunities (the ZINO Society is a good example).  They can play an especially important role in developing sustainable technologies that are scaled to individuals and small sites, which are an essential part of the sustainable energy puzzle but may not represent an attractive market for larger companies.

Image: Stage lights by Richard Anderson on flickr.com.