THIN FILM SOLAR PANELS

Archive for February, 2011

A new 15 megawatt, utility scale geothermal power plant has just come online in Jersey Valley, Nevada.The project is significant because according to its host company, Ormat Technologies, it was the only utility-scale geothermal plant to be completed in the U.S. within the past year or so. Geothermal is reliable, renewable, clean energy produced right here in the U.S., and it’s not subject to global market fluctuations or political turmoil overseas — say, shouldn’t we be building these things at a rate of more than just one per year?

First, The Good News About Geothermal Energy in the U.S.

Geothermal energy from the new plant in Nevada will be purchased by NV Energy, which already has an extensive geothermal energy portfolio dating back to the 1980′s. The portfolio currently includes 400 MW and the company expects to give it a big bounce up to 570 MW in the near future. That’s just one utility company, and it’s a drop in the bucket compared to the U.S. potential. The Department of Defense recently estimated that the geothermal potential on U.S. military facilities alone is a cool 926 gigawatts. Along with massive new wind power projects and solar installations, geothermal could play a significant role in our domestic energy future.

And Now, the Bad News

The only thing needed to speed things along is a forceful national energy policy that supports clean energy. The Obama administration has gone a long way with grants and loans for new clean energy projects and research, but Congress also has to step up with a regulatory framework that promotes clean energy. That’s not likely to happen any time soon given the stated intention of some members to gut the federal government’s ability to regulate greenhouse gas emissions.

Another Path to Clean Energy

Even though some members of Congress digging in their heels, the Obama administration can still keep things moving in the right direction by tinkering with the federal budget. The President’s forthcoming budget still includes plenty of public support for the fossil fuel industry but he will propose ending $4 billion in annual subsidies for oil companies, presumably to help provide some wiggle room for clean energy support. The pushback from the oil industry is only just beginning so hold on to your hats.

Image: Geothermal energy by Ken Lund on flickr.com.

A milestone in solar pricing has been met in California this month, according to Vote Solar.

Southern California Edison has selected 250 MW worth of solar bids from companies able to produce solar electricity for 20 years for less money annually than the 20 year levelized cost of energy of a combined-cycle natural gas turbine power plant.

SCE’s bidding process for smaller renewable projects is smart. These small projects do not face the multi-year bureaucratic delays for extensive reviews, like most utility-scale solar, so each small unit can be built as quickly as normal commercial rooftop solar projects. They are made up of multiple distributed solar installations of under 20 MW, which in combination total a power plant-sized 250 MW.

The utility already gets more than 19% of its electricity from renewable sources, placing it in the lead between California’s three big utilities to reach the Renewable Energy Standard requirement to get 20% of its electricity from renewables (which excludes large hydro and nuclear) by 2013.

This year SCE had put out a request for bids to get 250 MW of just solar power, made up of multiple smaller rooftop arrays. Fremont-based Solyndra was one of the early bidders to be accepted. Solyndra will supply 20 years of power, with its unique cylindrical solar panels, to be installed by its subsidiary, Photon Solar.

With a bidding process, SCE can save money by making renewable energy companies compete to offer the lowest price for supplying the utility some of its electricity through its Renewable Standard Contract

The requirement is that the renewable energy has to be priced to cost no more than the Market Price Referent (MPR) – which is an annual calculation of the 20 year levelized cost of energy of a combined cycle gas turbine.

This year, the solar bids are below the MPR, meaning that they cost less than the annual cost of getting the same amount of electricity from natural gas over the same time period.

Even more interesting, SCE says that they received over 2.5 GW – 2,500 MW – of offers from solar companies eager and apparently able to supply solar power for less than the cost of gas.  I was not able to locate that price in their detailed filing with the California Public Utilites Comission (PDF), a hefty tome. but the MPR for 2010 appears to be in the 11 cent range.

According to Adam Browning at Vote Solar, “prices are kept confidential for something like 3 years. All we know is whether it is above or below MPR—and the advice letter says it is below”.

Susan Kraemer@Twitter

After the record-breaking flooding in Australia, now what has been described as the worst cyclone in its history is bearing down on Queensland at 33kmh (20 mph).

Waves of over 14 meters (46 feet) and wind gusts above 260km/h (162 mph) are predicted from cyclone Yasi. Forecasters are saying that “phenomenal seas” are predicted – the actual technical term. It indicates that the specific wave heights predicted are the highest on the chart.

Like the recent flooding that scientists attribute to the warmer seas due to climate change, this more intense cyclone is also commensurate with the long-predicted effects of warmer temperatures due to climate change.

The warmer seas intensify the La Nina and El Nino cycles in the region, making them more frequent and more intense. El Nino brings Australia droughts, which have been more intense. La Nina blows winds that pile up warm water in the western Pacific and around Australia.

The ocean around Australia is now warmer than at any time in history.

This La Nina has been one of the strongest La Nina patterns ever recorded, according to the Australian government. The flooding of Queensland on Australia’s Pacific coast has been the worst in history. Warmer ocean temperatures increase the frequency and intensity of cyclones.

“The waters off Australia are the warmest ever measured and those waters provide moisture to the atmosphere for the Queensland and northern Australia monsoon,” Matthew England of the Climate Change Research Center at the University of New South Wales told Reuters earlier this month.

Around Northern Australia and Indonesia, ocean temperatures are 0.54 °C  (1°F) higher than the last 50 years, on average, and 2010 was the highest in the last ten years, which was itself the warmest decade on record for sea surface temperatures.

Scientists collect and tabulate temperature data worldwide to find average global temperatures of both water and air. The average temperatures have increased, which is commensurate with the predicted effects of adding more greenhouse gases to the air. The global average is found by counting temperatures in some regions that are warmer than, and others that are cooler than, the global average.

Making the changes needed to help prevent further, and worse climate change is not hard, but it takes overcoming the habit of procrastination. You can switch to many clean sources of energy, news of which we cover at Cleantechnica.

Two of the biggest effects you can have on reducing your own contribution to climate change, if you drive,  are to buy an electric car instead of a gas car the next time you buy one, and to get a solar estimate for your home electricity. An estimate is free and could yield surprising news. Few people know that in many states, solar is now cheaper than your utility electricity.

For a larger effect, vote for the party in your country that espouses the policies that encourage the switch to clean energy with incentives that counter the natural tendency to procrastinate on making a change.

Image: google earth

Susan Kraemer@Twitter

A serious challenger has emerged to take on graphene’s title as the miracle material of the 21st century, and that is a common, silvery looking mineral called molybdenite. Like graphene, molybdenite occurs in nano-thin sheets. It could play an important role in engineering the next generation of super small, super high efficiency electronics, especially when it comes to saving power while a device is in standby mode.

A New Role for Molybdenite

Molybdenite is commonly used in lubricants and in steel alloys. Researchers at the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne have now determined that molybdenite is also a highly efficient semiconductor. It can be fabricated in sheets that are much thinner than conventional silicon sheets, which enables electrons to move around more efficiently. The lead researcher asserts that compared to conventional silicon transistors, a molybdenite transistor would use about 100,000 times less energy in standby mode.

Move Over, Graphene…

Molybdenite also has an important advantage over graphene, because it has an ideally spaced “band gap” (a band gap is an electron-free space, which electrons can “hop” across). Graphene lacks this naturally occuring feature, though researchers are discovering ways that graphene can be manipulated into producing the desired properties.

…Or Not

If cost-efficient graphene fabrication can be commercialized, it could have a long term advantage over molybdenite. As a mineral, molybdenite is a non-renewable resource. Given that the amount of electronic equipment flooding the world right now is nothing compared to what it’s going to be in the future, mining the earth for components may not be sustainable over the long run. In contrast, graphene has potential has a renewable resource: researchers have discovered that it can be made from plain table sugar.

Image: Molybdenite on quartz by John Chapman on wikimedia commons.