Category Archives: Solar

Republican Leaders
 Badly Out Of Step
 With Party Regulars

Congress, Environment, Politics, Solar, Wind, ,

 Congressional Republican leaders and a number of GOP governors have marched virtually in lockstep for the past seven years in the opposite direction of President Obama’s environmental proposals, particularly regarding the development of emissions-free wind and solar power and initiatives to address climate change. It is now embarrassingly obvious that they are marching to a tune that only they can hear, and that virtually no one else, not even most of their own party, is following along.

A fascinating poll (which can be found here) released last month shows conclusively that the vast majority of Republicans nationwide (see chart below) support government action to spur the development of clean energy sources, policies that by definition would cut emissions and help address climate change concerns. Unfortunately, in the current congressional climate those very same views could get a Republican congressman run out of the GOP-controlled House of Representatives by the give no-quarter Freedom Caucus if its members weren’t otherwise preoccupied with shutting down the whole chamber. Specifically, the poll found that a whopping 72 percent of Republicans said they supported taking steps to spur the development of clean energy. Even among self-described conservative Republicans, 68 percent supported clean energy. In addition, the poll found that most Republicans, even the self-identified conservative Republicans, said the climate was changing and that human activity is at least partially responsible.

RepublicanPoll2

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 Badly Out Of Step
 With Party Regulars →

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Green Power Is The Key
 For Utilities To Keep
 Their Commercial Clients

Environment, Solar, Utilities, Wind,

For utility executives used to 40-year planning horizons, the past 10 years have been, shall we say, a difficult learning experience.

Ten years ago shale gas production was still at miniscule levels and natural gas prices were well above $6 per million British thermal units (mmBtu) and showing no signs of decline; today gas is the go-to fuel and price projections have essentially flat-lined well under $5 per mmBtu. Ten years ago nuclear was in the midst of a renaissance, with utilities considering plans to build upward of 28 new reactors; today just four new reactors are being built (by two utilities) and they are way over budget and long-delayed. Ten years ago renewables were a far-off hope, with EIA’s 2005 energy outlook pegging solar PV at 0.00 quads through the 2025 forecast horizon; today solar is shining, with 20 gigawatts of installed capacity to date and much more on the way, while wind accounts for more than 4 percent of the nation’s electric generation.

Another change in the past 10 years, harder to quantify but just as real, has been the complete shift in customer expectations. Previously, customers simply bought what their utilities offered—“We don’t have any of that clean power today, you’ll have to buy this brown stuff.” Today, customers are going out and finding the cleaner, greener power they want—a fact I see regularly in press release after press release touting company X’s decision to buy the output from a new solar or wind project or, even more telling, to develop the project themselves.

It has been hard to put numbers on this change, but a new report from DOE’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (Renewable Electricity Use by the U.S. Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Industry, which can be found here) provides clear evidence of the shift within the information/telecommunications sector. Ten years ago, the companies in an EPA initiative called the Greenhouse Power Partnership purchased essentially zero renewable energy; today, those companies (the number participating has now climbed to 68) purchase 7.8 million megawatt-hours (mwh) of green power—amounting to almost 44 percent of their total electricity consumption in 2014.

ICTRenewableUse

Taking a broader slice of the ICT market, NREL tracked 113 companies that reported information either through EPA’s GPP or another program called the Carbon Disclosure Project Worldwide and estimated overall electricity use in the sector at more than 59 million mwh in 2014. Of this total, which is well over 1 percent of annual U.S. electric consumption, 8.3 million mwh—or about 14 percent—was renewable. According to NREL, the green electricity is sourced from a mix of power purchase agreements (PPAs), on-site generation, utility green power products and renewable energy certificates (RECs). In other words, in large part, the companies are going out and getting what they want, not waiting for their supplier to bring it to them.

This growth is almost certain to continue in the years ahead, NREL said, projecting that by 2020 the amount of renewable energy used by the 113 will more than double, climbing to at least 18.5 million mwh even under a low growth scenario. In a more aggressive estimate, NREL said renewable consumption by the 113 could shoot up to more than 37 million mwh.

And some of the firms have even grander plans. Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google, for example, all have publicly announced corporate plans to purchase 100 percent of their electricity from green sources. That won’t happen overnight, but don’t be surprised if 10 years from now they have met that goal.

These commercial customers clearly are driving huge changes in the utility industry—it’s time, past time in fact, for the industry to respond and give them what they want or risk losing them as customers entirely.

–Dennis Wamsted

 

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Out On A Limb:
 Energy Storage To Track
 Rapid Development
 Of Marcellus Shale, PV

Forecasts, Solar, Utilities, , ,

Predicting the future is hard, I get it, but it shocks me how abysmally wrong some of the smartest people in the business can be, even with the best information.

For example, in a recent interview with EnergyWire John Rowe, chairman emeritus of Chicago-based Exelon Corp. and a long-time big thinker in the utility industry, acknowledged that he and his executive team essentially missed the coming shale gas revolution: “What we didn’t see, even as late as ’08, we just didn’t see what shale gas was going to do to gas prices. Some of our downside scenarios were at $4 [per mmBtu] gas. We did not see below $3 gas. … I have a wound on my neck from that one.”

Rowe is hardly alone in having missed the explosion in shale gas production. As I pointed out here, EIA’s 2004 Annual Energy Outlook didn’t even mention the Marcellus and Utica shale resources. Pity that, since output from Marcellus has jumped from basically nothing a decade ago to 16 billion cubic feet a day this year—accounting for roughly 13 percent of overall U.S. output.

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 Energy Storage To Track
 Rapid Development
 Of Marcellus Shale, PV →

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LEDs Pose Same Threat
 As Solar & Net Metering
 For Utility Ratemaking

Distributed Generation, Environment, Ratemaking, Solar, Utilities, ,

What is the difference between LEDs and residential solar panels? Plenty, clearly, but for a utility executive worried about slow or no load growth they amount to exactly the same thing—trouble.

I have written extensively about the broad utility-led campaign to quash state net metering programs (see these posts here and here). In general, this effort is based on the premise that net metering unfairly benefits residential solar users (by overpaying them for their generation) and shifts costs onto non-solar customers (by forcing companies to charge them for the fixed costs no longer being paid for by the solar customers through their electricity purchases). But that premise is also true of LEDs if you think it through.

This week I decided to replace a bank of six aging incandescent lightbulbs in my home’s master bathroom with new LEDs—something homeowners are doing with increasing frequency around the country. In years past, this would have been a non-event, but with LEDs’ vastly improved efficiency and lengthy lifespan the equation has changed significantly.

I did a little back of the envelope calculating about the switch: The six bulbs I pulled out consumed 260 watts of electricity when turned on (for reasons unclear to me I had five 40W bulbs and one 60W bulb installed in the bathroom), the new ones just 66W total (and they are brighter to boot, but that is another story). So, every time I turn on the bathroom light switch I am saving 194 watts. That’s an admittedly small amount of power, but if you figure the lights are on for three hours daily that adds up to 582 watt-hours per day. That’s still not much, but over the course of a month, these six lights could save me on the order of 17.5 kilowatt-hours (30×582=17,460 watt-hours or 17.46 kwh).

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 As Solar & Net Metering
 For Utility Ratemaking →

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Utilities Risk Losing
 Commercial Customers
 Without New Approach

Distributed Generation, Ratemaking, Solar, Utilities,

The U.S. commercial sector spent just under $146 billion on electricity in 20141, and that has prompted business leaders across the country to sit up and take notice.

In a fascinating study released late last month, Deloitte’s Center for Energy Solutions reported that 79 percent of the businesses it surveyed viewed cutting their electricity expenditures as “essential to creating and maintaining competitive advantage.” To this end, the survey (which is available here) found that 57 percent of the businesses surveyed have formal energy reduction goals—up significantly from the 46 percent that said they had such goals the year before.

This transition is occurring even though electricity prices are relatively low currently, and businesses do not expect substantial increases in the near term. In other words, energy management is quickly moving from the realm of reactive cost cutting to active planning and forward thinking: what can we do as a business to curb our energy consumption and improve our competitiveness?

The answers to that question may surprise you. Conventional measures such as sensors to raise/lower heating and cooling controls are still the go-to choice. But increasingly, Deloitte said, businesses are forging a path of their own, pushing ahead with options such as in-house batteries and onsite generation. Specifically, 39 percent reported installing some form of onsite generation (solar panels or other options) during the year, up from 31 percent in the previous year. Similarly, 26 percent said they installed batteries during the year compared to just 15 percent in 2014. In addition, 34 percent reported installing recovery equipment to capture previously lost energy used in production and other processes.

Deloitte

The moral of the story? Companies are increasingly concerned about their energy costs and looking for ways, both conventional and not so, to reduce their usage and boost their competitiveness. The question is, who is going to step up supply those needs?

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 Commercial Customers
 Without New Approach →

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