February 2015 – Solar Magazine

Historic low price on wind power in Denmark

Cheap wind energy for Denmark

A massive new offshore wind farm off the west coast of Jutland will provide power at nearly one third the price of existing wind parks, the Danish Climate Ministry announced Friday.

According to The local DK, a new offshore Danish wind farm, Horns Rev 3, will be built by the Swedish state-owned company Vattenfall. The Swedes guaranteed a price of 10.31 euro cents per kilowatt hour, which the Climate Ministry said will save Danish consumers around 2.2 billion kroner (295 million euros) over the next 12 years.

The ministry said that although direct comparisons are difficult, the Horns Rev 3 project is likely to be the cheapest wind farm in Europe and one of the cheapest in the world.

“With Horns Rev 3, Denmark is making windmill history through realizing a significant reduction in the cost of establishing offshore wind farms. There is no doubt that the power from offshore wind turbines will continue to be an essential part of the green transition and contribute effectively to reducing CO2 in the atmosphere,” Climate Minister Rasmus Helveg Petersen said in a statement.

The ministry said that Horns Rev 3 will produce wind power at nearly one third the price of the most recent Danish offshore wind farm, the Anholt Offshore Wind Farm located in the Kattegat.

The Horns Rev 3 project will receive state subsidies until the wind park has produced a determined amount of energy. Although the Climate Ministry’s press release didn’t include a specific figure, Petersen said that the subsidies would like last 11-12 years, after which point the windmills will produce electricity at the market price.

Denmark is a global leader in wind energy. In 2014, the nation set a record by producing 39 percent of all electricity through wind power. By 2020, the Danish government plans to have half of all electricity produced by wind power.

But for wind power to truly take off internationally, energy experts say that costs need to come down significantly. Petersen said the Horns Rev 3 deal could help set a precedent for cheaper wind power.

“The low price is not just good for Denmark, but also for the international green transition. The general decline in prices in the market for wind power means that offshore wind power is now well on its way to becoming a viable competitive alternative to traditional fossil fuels,” he said.

Solar energy powers innovation at Cook Medical

Cook Medical to build one of the largest PERC solar installations

Cook Medical partnered with Positronic Solar and WINAICO to build one of the largest PERC solar installations in Asia Pacific – 99.90kW

According to a press release, world leading medical device manufacturer, Cook Medical, has taken one giant leap to reduce its carbon footprint and power bill, by installing a 706 square metre field of solar panels on its roof in Brisbane. The installation is the largest of its kind in Asia Pacific, utilising advanced solar panel technology called PERC (passivated emitter- rear contact).

“We have a roof and lots of sun, so harnessing solar power was an obvious solution to reduce costs for us and the environment. The investment was significant, but even so we expect our solar panels will pay for themselves within 15 years,” Barry Thomas, Cook Medical Vice President and Managing Director of Cook Medical Australia said. “Using alternative energy to power manufacturing still isn’t mainstream, but given the benefits it’s completely logical. We’ve chosen an extremely efficient technology, and the panels are now offsetting on average 30 per cent of the power we use each day.”

The installation of the panels was finished in January, and was carried out by local company, Positronic Solar, who recommended and installed the custom-design. John Inglis, Director of Positronic Solar was impressed by Cook Medical’s commitment to alternative energy. “When we put in our proposal we were very honest about what was achievable and the best technology for Cook Medical’s solar panels. They appreciated our straightforward approach, and chose an effective solution to offset a significant majority of their power use,” said Mr Inglis. “The design utilises Schneider-Electric inverters and WINAICO high efficiency PERC 280 W monocrystalline modules – some of the most advanced technology available. The panels are not only efficient even in low light, but also perform very well at high temperatures – which is of course very important here in Queensland.”

Cook Medical

Cook Medical Australia was established in 1979 and has grown to a headcount of over 500 people at their headquarters in Eight Mile Plains where its headquarters are based.

Founded in 1963, Cook Medical pioneered many of the medical devices now commonly used to perform minimally invasive medical procedures throughout the body. Today, the company integrates medical devices, drugs and biologic grafts to enhance patient safety and improve clinical outcomes. Since its inception, Cook has operated as a family-held private corporation.

WINAICO – Manufacturer and system supplier

As a global PV brand based in Taiwan, WINAICO manufactures and distributes crystalline high performance modules worldwide. Furthermore, as a systems house for photovoltaic, WINAICO delivers complete PV system packages.

Target customers include solar specialists, solar technologists, installation specialists and project developers. Installation specialists profit here from the superior product quality of products manufactured in Taiwan in accordance with the highest quality standards, as well as from the comprehensive consultation, planning and maintenance services from WINAICO. Generous stock levels ensure the rapid availability of WINAICO products.

Cheap solar cells made from shrimp shells

Solar cells from shrimp shells

Scientists from Queen Mary University of London (QMUL) have created electricity-generating solar cells using chemicals derived from the shells of shrimp and other crustaceans, a development that could have a major impact on the cost of producing solar panels.

According to Energy Matters, the research is focused on nanotechnology, specifically the highly conductive light-absorbing quantum dots used in thin-film and spray-on solar technology.

These tiny crystals can be tuned to specific wavelengths of light, multiplying the energy production of electrons throughout solar devices. They can also trap and convert infrared light to energy, light that would otherwise heat up and degrade photovoltaic processes.

The team discovered that two materials found in the shells of shrimp and crustaceans, chitin and chitosan, could be used to replace expensive metals like ruthenium and platinum, the expensive and rare metals used to make carbon quantum dots (CQDs).

Using a process known as hydrothermal carbonisation, the QMUL scientists incorporated the shrimp-derived chemicals to successfully produce CQDs. They then coated zinc oxide nanorods with the quantum dots to make solar cells.

“This could be a great new way to make these versatile, quick and easy to produce solar cells from readily available, sustainable materials,” said Dr Joe Biscoe, a researcher on the project.

The efficiency of the solar cells is low compared to the silicon-based solar panels used in rooftop PV systems, but the team hopes their discovery of an organic replacement for rare-earth materials in the production of CQDs will result in cheaper solar energy, at least in the field of thin-film technology.

“Once we’ve improved their efficiency they could be used anywhere that solar cells are used now, particularly to charge the kinds of devices people carry with them every day,” Dr Briscoe said.

Professor Magdalena Titirici, Professor of Sustainable Materials Technology at QMUL, added,

“New techniques mean that we can produce exciting new materials from organic by-products that are already easily available. Sustainable materials can be both high-tech and low-cost…We’ve also used biomass, in that case algae, to make the kinds of supercapacitors that can be used to store power in consu

Solar to become cheapest source of energy over next decade

Solar energy to become the cheapest source of energy

Solar energy is set to become the cheapest source of electricity in many parts of the world within the next 10 years, according to a new report from German think tank Agora Energiewende.

Solar energy is set to become the cheapest source of electricity in many parts of the world within the next 10 years, according to a new report released by German think tank, Agora Energiewende.

The report was commissioned by the independently funded organisation, designed to steer Germany towards its 80 per cent renewable energy target.

According to Radio Australia, chief executive officer Dr Patrick Graichen said they wanted to see if recent falls in the cost of photovoltaics would continue.

“The finding is there’s no end to the cost decline in photovoltaics,” he said.

“The technology still has further improvements so we expect that within the next 10 years photovoltaics will become, in many regions of the world, the cheapest source of electricity.”

Dr Graichen said in some sun drenched parts of the world, it would be cheaper than burning fossil fuels.

The Current and Future Cost of Photovoltaics report found the price drop is set to occur even in conservative scenarios, and assuming no major technological breakthroughs.

Dr Graichen, former head of the Division for Energy and Climate Policy at the German Federal Environment Ministry, said the falling price was being driven by several factors.

“It’s the technology itself, the modules have become cheaper because China is now producing them on a very large scale,” he said.

“So we have the effect of the mature technology with a global market, where prices decline, and second, we’ve got to know better how to integrate it into the systems during the past five-six years.”

He said it was surprising Australia had not taken up the technology to the extent of countries like Germany.

“We have in Germany an extensive program on photovoltaics in the past years, and that has led to about 40 gigawatts being installed,” he said.

“That is still only 6 per cent of our electricity production, but still it is already 6 per cent, and we’ve seen how that already impacts on our electricity system in the sense that we don’t need peak power of gas-fired power plants in the summer anymore.”

He said given Australia’s sunny climate, solar energy should be thriving.

“If you look at that technology and you ask yourself the question, ‘where in the future will we have cheap and clean energy?’ It’ll be those countries in the world with a lot of sun and with stable investment conditions,” Dr Graichen said.

“You see a lot of solar projects are now coming up in the Gulf, in New Mexico, California, Texas, but Australia is lacking in that concept.”

The study highlighted while the cost of producing hardware for solar will continue to decline irrespective of local conditions, the financial and regulatory environments will be key to ongoing price falls.

It said stable regulatory conditions are needed to keep the cost of finance down.

Dr Graichen said the world needs the cheap and clean energy solar power can provide.

“Obviously this is a threat to all those that are betting on coal, but there has always been structural changes, major structural changes to economies,” he said.

“Those that were building railroads weren’t happy about cars either, but in the end the cars came because the technology was better suited to the needs of the 20th century.”

SunEdison to build 15 GW renewable energy capacity addition in India

New energy capacity addition for SunEdison in India

SunEdison has announced that it will set up 15.2 GW of solar and wind energy capacity in India over the next 5 years. The company is expected to develop solar as well as wind energy projects.

This would be SunEdison’s contribution to India’s ambitious target to add 100 GW renewable capacity by 2022. India’s installed renewable energy capacity currently stands at just above 32 GW.

According to Clean Technica, SunEdison had recently signed agreements with the state governments of Rajasthan and Karnataka to set up large-scale renewable energy projects. In Rajasthan, the company will add 5 GW solar power capacity while in Karnataka the company will add an equal capacity but through solar and wind power technologies.

SunEdison has been taking part in solar power project auctions conducted in the past by several state governments and the central government.

In addition to utility-scale power projects the company will also set up significant distributed renewable energy capacity. The company recently announced an agreement with a local firm to set up 250 MW distributed solar photovoltaic power projects in around 5,000 villages.

SunEdison also commissioned India’s first canal-top solar PV project in Gujarat.

Last month SunEdison signed an agreement with Adani Enterprises to set up India’s largest solar PV modules manufacturing unit in Gujarat. The project is expected to require a total investment of $4 billion.

SunEdison made this ambitious commitment at RE-INVEST, an investor summit organised by the Indian government. First Solar committed to set up 5 GW solar power capacity at the same summit. This brings to total commitment to over 20 GW over the next 5 years from these 2 American companies.

In comparison, when the Indian government launched the National Solar Mission in 2010 it had set a target to add 22 GW of solar power capacity by 2022.

Meet the vanadium-flow battery with 250kW of liquid energy storage

Vanadium-flow battery

Imergy Power Systems developed a new, mega-sized version of their vanadium flow battery technology. The EPS250 series can deliver up to 250kW of power with a 1MWh capacity.

According to Extreme Tech, a flow battery can be thought of as a type of rechargeable fuel cell. The electrolyte fuel, in this case, is kept in large external tanks that can be pumped through a reactor.

One of the characteristics of a flow battery is that the energy storage can be decoupled from the energy output. The size of the reactor determines how much power can be released at once, while the size of the storage tanks determines how much total power can be stored.

This, in turn, makes it theoretically much easier to expand the size of a flow battery installation as compared to a lithium-ion battery. Doubling your battery life is theoretically as simple as doubling the size of the storage tank. Flow batteries can charge and discharge rapidly — refilling the tank with “charged” electrolyte can be as simple as opening a nozzle and pumping in the replacement fluid while the original electrolyte is recharged in a separate container.

There are different types of flow batteries and multiple compatible battery chemistries, but Imergy’s designs all use vanadium for both electroactive elements.

The ability to fill both ‘sides’ of the equation is an unusual property of vanadium and it simplifies certain aspects of the reactor design. Vanadium flow batteries are extremely stable — leaving the battery in a discharged state causes no damage, and the battery has an estimated lifespan of 30-50 years and supports thousands to tens of thousands of discharge cycles — far more than lithium-ion can manage.

The disadvantage of flow batteries is that the total energy density of the solution is rather low energy density and the complexity of the storage and pumping mechanisms. Research into improving vanadium’s energy density is underway, a team at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory has found a way to boost the energy density of vanadium batteries by up to 70% by switching to a different electrolyte formulation.

The long-term market

Much of the debate over the long-term usefulness of battery technology in the US centers around whether or not batteries can be combined with solar and wind power while still matching the cost of existing natural gas, coal, and nuclear plants.

What’s often ignored is that these equations look very different in other parts of the world, particularly in Africa or Indonesia where import costs are high, infrastructure limited (or nonexistent) and natural deposits of fossil fuels are low.

Africa also has enormous renewable energy potential — it receives huge amounts of solar power, its hydropower generating capability is largely untapped, and its geothermal and wave power are both abundant. The East African Rift in particular has high potential as a long-term geothermal power source.

Vanadium flow batteries could potentially augment renewable power in many areas across the continent, and Imergy is focusing its efforts on both the developing and the developed world.

The company claims it can deliver power for a levelized cost as low as $300 per kWh, which would put it in competition with lithium-ion costs — including, possibly, in competition with Tesla as that company scales up its own industrial battery efforts.

Community wind farm rises near Ithaca

Community wind farm

For the past eight years, Marguerite Wells, an organic flower farmer, has quietly raised more than $1 million to build seven wind turbines on a hillside outside of Ithaca. During that time, she’s also had a lot of kitchen table discussions with neighbors worried about 475-foot turbines spinning in their backyards.

“This is a way we’re getting it done without any changes in legisation,” the 37-year-old Enfield resident said. “It’s just regular people doing something they want to happen. It’s just democracy by dollars.”

Large renewable projects often take years of planning, but Wells’ project in Tompkins County is unique because she has no energy industry background and has undertaken a major project large companies and investment groups take years to bring to fruition. She’s doing it, she says, to show that renewable energy projects are feasible, a good investment and important for the future of the energy grid.

According to Capital New York, Wells has already received many of the key state and local approvals a large project requires and expects the first holes for the turbines to be dug this summer. If completed, the Black Oak Wind Farm in the town of Enfield, about 20 miles west of Ithaca, will be the first community-owned wind farm in New York. And while its construction is still not guaranteed, landowners have agreed to site the wind turbines on their property.

At the same time, Black Oak has received the backing of the state as well as a major community institution.

Cornell University has agreed to purchase all of the power produced by the project. The New York State Energy Research and Development Authority will support the project for a decade by purchasing renewable energy credits.

NYSERDA will work to encourage more community projects like Black Oak, said Doreen Harris, senior project manager.

“We see this as a model for considering in terms of its replicability for New York,” she said. “NYSERDA sees a large role for communities and involvement in reaching the state’s targets.”

Wells said there were so few projects like hers, she had to travel to South Dakota to find another community-owned wind farm to copy. Now that she is so close to breaking ground, she said she expects this project won’t be the last time private citizens organize their own utility-scale renewable projects. They can use her ideas, and fit them around the unique needs of their community projects, she said.

Black Oak is relatively small. At 12 megawatts, it would provide enough power for about 5,000 homes. The site in Enfield has average wind speeds of 17 m.p.h., better for generating electricity than other state wind farms that have average wind speeds of 14 m.p.h.

The project will cost about $40 million to complete. Wells has raised at least $1 million, much of it from private citizens, including a number who lives near the farm. She said she recruited more than 100 like-minded investors in initial rounds of funding, including those who support clean energy and view it as a chance to make money. The bulk of the funding, she said, will come from banks and private equity firms who see the project as economically viable.

The project has been delayed a few times and has been cut in size from 20 megawatts to the current configuration. And while there is no guarantee Wells will get the money she needs in time to begin construction in just a few months, she said she is close to final deals with three major financial backers. She is also working on a payment in lieu of taxes, or PILOT, agreement with the Ithaca city school district, the town of Enfield and the Odessa Montour Central School District.

For Cornell, the project allows the school to move closer to a goal of zero carbon emissions by 2035.

“As we use more wind, we reduce our dependence on carbon-produced electricity,” KyuJung Whang, Cornell vice president for facilities services, said in a statement. “This is a major step toward Cornell becoming a carbon neutral campus.”

After announcing a fracking ban in December, Governor Andrew Cuomo said some of the areas that would have benefited from natural gas drilling could now receive clean energy projects. Environmental groups that have spent years mostly focused on fracking said they would turn their attention toward promoting renewable energy. Those efforts have yet to be rolled out.

Wells is ahead of both, though the state signed on to support her project in 2013 because it was economically competitive. Environmental groups have been slow to realize its promise, but Wells is traveling to Albany soon to meet with them to encourage more outreach to their members on investments in community renewables.

The project is also an example of what the state needs most to grow its renewable energy portfolio, private capital invested in major initiatives that can succeed in an open market without major subsidies. After years of stagnant growth, Cuomo has launched billions of dollars in clean energy initiatives, most with the aim of aligning solar, wind and other renewable sources with the market, so that they can exist without subsidies. The state’s Reforming Energy Vision initiative, which is being watched nationally, is designed to make the state energy markets more accomodating to renewable projects.

It’s also the type of clean energy resource, a utility-scale project, that the grid needs if it is to reduce carbon emissions 80 percent by 2050, as Cuomo has pledged. Wind projects have increased more than any other renewable energy under Cuomo, by about 600 megawatts to a total of 1,875 megawatts since 2010. Still, the state got just 23 percent of its power from renewables in 2014, far short of former governor George Pataki’s plan to get 30 percent of the state’s power from renewables by the end of this year.

Wells said it has helped that her project is near liberal Ithaca, a place where people appreciate renewable energy, she said. That made the tough sell of convincing people to have turbines as tall as a skyscraper spinning in their backyards.

“Ithacans take green energy so seriously, they know they can’t say ‘not in my county, in someone else’s county,’” she said.

Thus far, the project has received little support from the state’s most prominent environmental groups, Wells said, despite years of pitches.

Wells said getting popular public support, and showing people the investment power of renewable projects, is her next push. She has a meeting with green groups in Albany later this month, to get them on board with the project and to convince them to encourage their members to invest in the future of the energy grid.

“They haven’t seen anything like me and don’t know how to support me,” she said.

Japan looks to ocean for renewable energy

Marine power generation plan

As an island nation, Japan controls large swaths of ocean territory, about the sixth-greatest expanse of any country in the world, according to government data. That is stark contrast to its relatively meagre land area, which ranks near the middle of list, in 60th place. So it makes sense for Japan to look to the seas for renewable energy — something it hasn’t done so far.

That is about to change, as the government is teaming up with two major industrial conglomerates, IHI Corp. and Toshiba Corp., to start field testing marine power generation in the near future.

“Our goal is to enable large-scale marine energy farms,” said a Toshiba spokeswoman, noting that the nearest site for testing is the area off Japan’s southern Pacific coast, where the Kuroshio current flows northward.

According to The Wall Street Journal, the initiative is an effort to develop new technologies to harness renewable energy and nurture future businesses opportunities as the need for renewable energy grows world-wide amid stricter regulations on coal in the U.S. and Western Europe. The Japanese government’s energy plan put forward in April 2014 called for an increase in use of renewable energy “to the greatest extent possible.”

IHI and Toshiba will spend about two years collecting data on currents at various locations to select the most promising ones. They will then conduct field tests by setting up a power generation system similar to an underwater kite anchored to the ocean floor that “flies” in the current.

The budget for the program is ¥2.75 billion ($23 million) for the current fiscal year through March. The government will subsidize part of the costs, but doesn’t disclose how much.

Marine current power generation technologies have already been developed and used in Europe, although they aren’t widespread. Japan wants to create its own technologies, say officials with the government-financed New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization, or NEDO, which works with the private sector on new energy technologies, and chose the two companies for financial support.

“Our marine environment is not the same as Europe’s,” said Yoshinari Takayanagi, an offshore wind and ocean energy project coordinator at NEDO. “There can be more suitable technologies.”

Students help small businesses to save energy

Green Impact Campaign rezults

One way for small businesses to green up their operations can be through choosing a renewable energy source, whether it’s a rooftop solar installation or the purchase of clean energy through their local utility. However, a much lower hanging fruit for small business sustainability initiatives, and one that can have a big positive effect on the bottom line as well, is reducing the energy demand of the business.

Of course, improved energy efficiency doesn’t sound nearly as exciting as getting solar power does, but it should be an essential element of any business sustainability plan, whether renewable energy is part of the mix or not, and and having an energy audit done is an important first step.

By training students to conduct free energy audits for small businesses, the Green Impact Campaign is helping both parties, by helping students gain important green business skills while also identifying big energy savings for businesses.

According to Planet Save, students are trained to use a cloud-based energy audit tool, called GEMS (Green Energy Management System), which they use to answer prompts about the business as they do a walk-through of the building. Once all of the data about the business’ energy and water use has been entered, said to take about 20 minutes, the GEMS tool generates a report about energy efficiency recommendations, with both the estimated costs and estimated savings for those suggestions.

According to the Green Impact Campaign website, small businesses in the US incur about $60 billion per year in energy costs (along with generating carbon emissions from that energy), yet most of them could cut their energy consumption by an average of 20% with an appropriate energy efficiency plan. By participating and having students conduct the free energy audits for them, small business owners can have a very good idea of what they need to do to increase the energy efficiency of their business, how much it will cost, and how much they will save by doing so.

Since its inception in 2011, Green Impact Campaign has helped students at more than 70 universities to conduct energy audits at more than 300 small businesses, identifying a cumulative annual energy savings of 2 million kWh, the equivalent of about $250,000 in savings.

According to an article by one of the founders of the program on New Global Citizen, the students also gain from it, by being able to get real-world experience in sustainability and energy efficiency practices:

“Through their involvement with Green Impact Campaign, students have an opportunity to deepen their knowledge on energy-efficiency and sustainable business practices by being able to touch, see, and interact with sustainability concepts in a real-world setting. Many student volunteers have gone on to internships and jobs with firms that specialize in energy audits or sustainability consulting. Others have gone on to take their sustainability knowledge further by sitting for and passing the LEED Green Associate exam, enabling them to work in the green buildings industry.”

Dutch company uses plants to power streetlights and mobile devices

How Plant-e works

A Dutch company found a way to harvest electricity coming from the most unlikely of sources: plants.

According to Yes Magazine and followed-up by Inquisitr, the Dutch company known as Plant-e initially introduced their new energy project, known as “Starry Sky,” at a demonstration in Hembrug, Netherlands. In it, they were able to power 300 LED lights, a truly marvelous show for anyone in attendance.

The unique part of this project is that the harvested electricity didn’t come from conventional or even traditional green energy sources — it was harvested from living plants.

Marjolein Helder, the co-founder and CEO of Plant-e, believes that the aforementioned method of harvesting electricity can be revolutionary. Using plants to generate clean energy provides an option on the table that has little to no impact on the environment, and may save consumers up to millions as a whole if implemented correctly into society.

Yet, Helder understands to achieve such big dreams, one must take initial steps. For Plant-e, that is done not only through providing light, but by selling Wi-Fi hotspots, mobile chargers, and rooftop electricity modules, all fueled by living plants.

Apparently, the idea for using plants and photosynthesis to extract energy is an old one. Until now, such endeavors have been delegated to middle school projects, mostly in the form of clocks being powered by potatoes. Jim McGowan provided a graphic that gives a general summary of how this is done.

Though such an endeavor is novel, at this moment, it isn’t reliable as a commercial product. Ramaraja Ramasamy, an adjunct professor at the University of Georgia College of Engineering, explains that Plant-e utilizes sediment microbial fuel cells, a method that isn’t advanced enough to compete with more established green technology like solar panels and wind turbines. Also, it is fairly new, thus the research is quite limited.

In conclusion, Plant-e’s way of providing power through plants is interesting but not practical to use, especially in the United States and Japan, countries that use a monumental amount of electricity. Presently, Plant-e and other green technology companies like them are researching if it is possible to get around this situation.