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Enlightening opinions from US energy commissioners on what they really think about renewables and the electricity industry’s incumbents can only be said out loud once they’ve left their post: a reversal of poacher turned gamekeeper.
As California’s “dumb” grid gets smart over the next decade, a clever convergence between technology and PV systems is also required. Otherwise, attempts to harmonize the state’s 33% Renewable Portfolio Standard are at risk of turning into a cacophony for policymakers, utilities and technologists.
Despite the phenomenal success of California’s Renewable Portfolio Standard in creating a market for utility-scale solar, many in the industry are forecasting the end of the transmission line for large central stations stranded out in the desert.
It was a victory of sorts on this beautiful spring day for Germany’s solar industry. The protest at Berlin’s Brandenburger Tor was immense: orange balloons released into the light breeze, flags from a number of Germany’s solar companies were vehemently waved and whistles were heartily blown in protest as well as in agreement. The most imaginative of the protesters were a group carrying a coffin through the crowds. Symbolic, simple and effective.
Plunging PV prices have brought the world closer to grid parity than ever before as solar developers scramble to undercut each other with bargain prices bid into California’s Renewable Portfolio Standard.
Concern about copper prices is not a recent phenomenon in the history of electrical generation and delivery. In 1879, Thomas Edison calculated that he would need to spend $18,000 to test his first ever electric light system around his lab in Menlo Park, New Jersey.
Concentrated solar power has run out of steam as PV prices plunge and transmission costs to CSP resources stranded out in the desert soar … or so many in the PV industry would have you believe. But CSP academics and advocates say the technology could be poised to perform a very fine balancing act on California’s grid.
Sometimes relying on financial results to paint a picture of the status of a company is more than adequate but this has rarely applied to Renewable Energy Corporation (REC). Though many Chinese PV manufacturers have gone down the fully-integrated business model, it was REC that was the first and it does it with a truly international manufacturing footprint. However, it has been a difficult path to tread and many ups and downs along the way. Feisty, determined, unlucky but pragmatic are words that come to mind when characterizing the last five years or so of its activities, events and business development. Colourful is a nice way to sum it up.
2011 was hardly a vintage year for thin-film solar in the US. Doubts about revenue-ready technologies based on copper, indium, gallium and selenide coalesced around the Solyndra bankruptcy in August. In December, First Solar decided it could not replicate its success in cadmium telluride, and shuttered its CIGS division.
A 30% cut in feed-in tariffs in Germany, after a record 7.5GW of new solar power generation installed in the country in 2011, is almost guaranteed based on the current regression system; double the level seen in 2010. Pressure is now on the German government to combat another year of record installations. This would require further changes in the EEG mechanism, as PV system price declines have been greater than the FiT reductions, boosting investor IRR and renewed interest in PV after a dismal first-half year level of adoption.
