solarnation

U.S. Solar on the Way Back?

Chris Stimpson — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 21:07:30 +0000

Some voices in the U.S. solar industry are looking for better times in 2010, despite the country’s lackluster economic condition. But solar companies still have to overcome obstacles such as competition from overseas, particularly China, and difficulty in obtaining credit.

Attendees at this week’s investors’ conference in New York hosted by investment company Piper Jaffray were told of signs on the demand side that Solar, having survived the downturn of 2008 and 2009, could be gathering strength this year. One reason given for the industry’s survival was the level of government support provided, although this came with the caveat that the support was more visible on a global basis than in the U.S. alone.

It’s also true that this global support has been dampened somewhat by the world economic situation, which has caused some European governments to scale back their subsidies and credits. But in general, those subsidy cuts were considered to be much less damaging to demand than they might have been, indicating continued base support for renewables overseas.

Continued prospects for an energy or energy/climate bill from this U.S. Congress are helping to boost hopes for a sound year in Solar. The overall feeling among solar companies was that they would need such a bill to help overcome the threat of Chinese competition. Chinese Government support for Solar, including easy access to credit, has dwarfed the support offered by the U.S. Government, resulting in prices per Watt for panels made in China that U.S. firms cannot meet. In fact, in the case of Massachusetts-based Evergreen Solar, the company’s way of ‘adapting’ to the situation is by outsourcing finished panel manufacturing to China.

It’s a very clear-cut argument; in countries where the nascent clean energy industry is appropriately valued, government plays a critical role in supporting and developing it, and economic benefits follow. If our country’s government doesn’t value, support and develop our clean energy industry, those benefits will continue to flow out of the country indefinitely.

As Thomas Friedman wrote in his 2008 book Hot, Flat, and Crowded:

If only we could be China for a day…

Feed-in Tariffs the Legal Way

Chris Stimpson — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 21:00:24 +0000

Paul Gipe runs a popular web site known as Wind-Works, which covers a spectrum of subjects on wind power — technical, regulatory, policy-related, etc. Paul has allowed us to republish an article from his site that deals with the legal aspects of establishing feed-in tariffs (FiTs) for renewable energy — solar as well as wind — in the USA.

Normally we find legal stories, unless they concern Horace Rumpole or Judge Roy Bean, to be invaluable sleep aids. In this case, however, the story addresses an important concern for the future of renewables in America. It’s worth learning how FiTs can be used here, within our legal framework, to accelerate solar deployment in our country. It’s information that you may want to use if you’re pressing your municipality, utility or state utility commission to implement this kind of system.

The Skinny on FiTs

An FiT system, in short, is one in which customer-generators are paid a premium rate for dispatching energy from approved sources (small wind, rooftop solar, etc.) into the grid. The Utility may recover this cost by levying a charge on all its customers, or a pool of money may be made available by the government to top up the rate. The tariff may vary depending on the technology, the region, and installation size, and may decrement over a lengthy period such as twenty years. Part of the tariff-setting rationale is to make it more financially attractive to participate at an early stage of the program, which leads to the rapid deployment of large amounts of clean energy generation. (more…)

But on the Bright(Source) Side…

Chris Stimpson — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 20:52:46 +0000

If you were somewhat depressed by what the previous two stories told you about the clean energy performance of the USA compared with the rest of the world, perhaps you’ll be heartened by a little good news coming out of the desert.

It only took three or four years, but the federal government finally got around to providing a loan guarantee to allow construction to start on the world’s largest concentrated solar power installation.

The Ivanpah Solar Complex will be built by BrightSource Energy in the Mojave Desert in California, thanks to some $1.37 billion in loan guarantees provided by ARRA (stimulus) funds. Construction should begin later this year, leading to full operation of the 400-megawatt facility in 2013.

You can read more about the Ivanpah project in Bill Opalka’s column in renewablesbiz magazine.

And Here in the Nation’s Capital

Chris Stimpson — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 20:40:57 +0000

Two weeks ago the Washington area received a dusting of about 24″ of snow. For those of us who have lived through a couple of New Hampshire winters without bothering to turn the heat on, this was not expected to be a cause for alarm. But we were unprepared for the unpreparedness of the nation’s capital.

The federal government saw its shadow, turned around and took the week off. The Dow Jones Industrial Average immediately gained 25 points, but there is no reported connection between the events.

On Capitol Hill, Democratic senators challenged GoP senators to a day-long
snowball fight, but no-one could agree on the rules of engagement. At one
point Sen. Lieberman (I-CT) agreed to fight on the side of the Democrats, but the deal fell apart when he stuffed snow down the back of Sen. Reid’s collar. Sen. Kerry (D-MA) sounded confident of victory, since his side outnumbered the opposition, but backed down when Sen. Murkowski (R-AK) threatened to stand up and talk at him all day. Finally the snowball fight got under way, but when Republicans noticed that Sen. Snowe was throwing from the Democratic side, they all targeted the Republican senator from Maine. Noting that Sen. Landrieu (D-LA) was throwing her snowballs from the Republican side, Democrats finally left the area, complaining that the opposition was not playing by the rules. (more…)

Your turn to Comment: The Solar Nation Forum is Open

Chris Stimpson — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 20:47:28 +0000

Here’s something new about the Solar Nation web site for 2010: solar citizens will now have the opportunity to comment, respond, sound off, and generally put in their ten cents’ worth about articles appearing on this site.

Click on the title of any story and you’ll find, at the foot of the story, a ‘comment’ box waiting for you to fill in. As befits a Solar Nation, this is where solar citizens can start a national discussion. Discuss away!

NB: This is a moderated blog, which will follow typical blog rules: comments should not be off-topic, obscene, or personal in nature.

The Row to Hoe Just Got Tougher

Chris Stimpson — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 20:17:31 +0000

Can you help Solar Nation help the American Nation?

The need for citizens to be engaged in the fight for clean energy in today’s America just grew more acute, with the result of the recent U.S. Senate election in Massachusetts.

Is that a political statement that will alienate large numbers of solar citizens? It shouldn’t be, for it was meant as a cold statement of political reality, not a partisan plaint. And the cold facts are that practically the entire Congressional Republican delegation and an uncomfortable number of Democrats have decided that clean energy, energy independence, and climate regulation are not worth advancing through legislative means. It’s not even the case that senators dissatisfied with the Kerry-Boxer bill combined to offer alternative legislation, perhaps with a carbon tax instead of cap-and-trade. No serious alternative—by which we mean a bill with even a modicum of co-sponsors—was presented as a challenger. The strategy for the minority party is simply to defeat whatever initiative is out there and hand the Administration a major defeat.

It’s also clear that the minority party has been, for the last year, much more disciplined and united than the majority. One would think that a party controlling 58% of the votes in the upper chamber would be able to proceed with a fairly robust agenda, but that hasn’t been the case. Nor did the proposed energy and climate legislation especially smack of ideology; it was a long overdue attempt to exercise common sense and face up to reality. But, in a way that is endemic to our political system, parochial and personal priorities won out over farsightedness. And now that the governing party’s supermajority (which was always conditional upon the adherence of two independent senators) has disappeared, the kind of far-reaching and comprehensive energy legislation we need will be significantly more difficult to achieve. (more…)

The Solar Bill of Rights

Chris Stimpson — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 19:18:19 +0000

The Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA), the trade association for the solar industry, recently published a ‘Solar Bill of Rights’ for the United States. The eight-point bill, reproduced below, appears not to contain any revolutionary concepts; nothing in it should appear unreasonable, irrational or excessive. Yet every one of the points listed is there because it has been, and in many cases still is being, resisted or abrogated by authority.

Of course, that other Bill of Rights—the eighteenth century one—was considered revolutionary at the time, and only in retrospect was seen to be unequivocally fair and reasonable. So if that seminal document from the early days of our nation could pass from being avant-garde to being accepted, how much more readily should these ‘solar’ rights, unquestionably fair, be accepted today?

Take a look at the Solar Bill of Rights and determine whether you feel Americans are entitled to them, whether they contain truths that are, in the words of another historic document of the time, “self-evident.” If you think so, perhaps your local and state officials need to consider adopting them too. (more…)

Gathering PACE

Chris Stimpson — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 18:27:25 +0000

We wouldn’t normally revisit a subject as many times as this, but things are moving even faster than we thought on the subject of solar installations funded through property taxes.

We first reported on this phenomenon a year ago in connection with the first community to activate such a program: Berkeley, CA, in November 2008. This was, appropriately enough, the Berkeley FIRST program. By July 2009, interest in property-assessed clean energy (PACE) programs was spreading across the country, and in November last year we wrote about the efforts of the state of New York to allow for special tax financing districts as a precursor to launching their own PACE program.

Nothing succeeds like success, and there are now no fewer than eighteen states with PACE legislation on their books.* Better yet, the U.S. Department of Energy (DoE) is offering free technical assistance to local governments who are starting PACE programs with ARRA (stimulus) funds. (more…)

Maryland Finds a Way to Build Big Solar

Chris Stimpson — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 16:57:33 +0000

In a recent joint announcement, Constellation Energy Group and Mount St. Mary’s University of Emmitsburg, MD described plans for what could become the nation’s third largest photovoltaic power plant. The project serves as an example of the level of solar deployment that can be achieved with a favorable climate of incentives from state and federal sources.

part of Mount St. Mary’s campus

Clean Horizons

The project is being developed under Maryland’s Generating Clean Horizons initiative, which was launched a year ago to spur the development of large-scale commercial renewable energy projects. The initiative specifically calls for projects that encompass long-term power purchase agreements (PPA), under which customers would agree to purchase power at a price that is fixed, or that increments per an agreed schedule, over an extended term (in this case, twenty years).

Constellation Energy will build, own and operate the 17.1-megawatt DC, $60-million solar farm on 100 acres of Mount St. Mary’s 1400-acre campus. The university will receive income from leasing the land and will purchase 1.2 megawatts of electricity from the facility. The rest of the power will be sold to University System of Maryland under a similar PPA.

(more…)

What Happens in Pennsylvania…

Chris Stimpson — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 20:45:21 +0000

What’s happening in Pennsylvania is a miniature of the clean energy battle being fought at national and international levels today (this story), as well as an example of how ordinary citizens can be energized when vital issues aren’t accorded the attention they deserve.

In November we issued an Action Alert to solar citizens in Pennsylvania about HB80, a bill that seeks to strengthen the alternative energy portfolio standard in that state to 18%, with a 3% carve-out for solar. It’s worthwhile legislation that can, if passed, give a boost to clean energy and create some 75,000 jobs in Pennsylvania between now and 2025.

The bill, introduced by House Environmental Resources and Energy Committee member Greg Vitali, has been debated and amended and is currently awaiting a vote. Realistically, according to Vitali, this won’t happen until the new year—January or February, he expects. And at present, the usual suspects have lined up on both sides of the issue. Opposing the bill are electric utilities such as Pennsylvania Power and Light, coal producers like the Pennsylvania Coal Association, and the state Chamber of Commerce. Power company Exelon is pushing for a pro-nuclear amendment. On the supportive side, amongst others, are environmental groups like PennFuture, the local IBEW chapter and a veterans’ group called Operation Free.

(more…)