Solar PV News

[mspohr]

Rapid-deployment solar arrays cut energy cost up to 20%, says 5B

Australian company 5B has developed a hinged, folding solar array for ridiculously quick and easy installation at industrial scale. In May, 5B showed just how quick: a team of 10 covered the area of a soccer field with a 1.1-MW array in a single day.

newatlas.com

Interesting that they set these up in an East West orientation.

 

[mspohr]

All I want for Christmas is 400 GW of solar installed in 2023

For a long time global installation projections have come up short in forecasting solar installation volumes, including a big miss in 2022. Is it possible that we could see outpaced growth in 2023, like we saw in 2022?

pv-magazine-usa.com

Prevailing wisdom states that an industry cannot continue to see high growth rates after it has scaled. If this aphorism is correct, then the solar industry must be continuing to scale today. The evidence supports a growth story: the past ~20 years of solar installations currently total 1 TW of deployed capacity. Going forward, projections of accelerated growth indicate that 1 TW of capacity could be deployed in 2030 alone.

 

[Jones1]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1606870341875552257

 

[mspohr]

https://nyti.ms/3Z75vjg

Why Are Energy Prices So High? Some Experts Blame Deregulation. https://nyti.ms/3Z75vjg

One big reason deregulated areas have higher rates is that utilities there are spending more on power lines to carry electricity over hundreds of miles. That spending, which is ultimately paid for by individuals and businesses, often gets minimal review by state and federal regulators. By comparison, officials in areas that have not deregulated their energy maintain much greater control over utility spending and rates. In addition, wholesale power prices tend to be higher in deregulated markets because the profits taken in by energy suppliers — companies that are separate from the utilities that deliver electricity to homes — more than offset any savings to consumers from greater competition and efficiency. In regulated markets, single utilities manage all or most parts of the grid, including producing energy and delivering it to homes and businesses.

 

[mspohr]

The price of polysilicon has fallen by 54% since August

A slowdown in purchasing in China, along with a massive ramp up of supply, has led to anticipated price declines for polysilicon.

pv-magazine-usa.com

Some projections show that globally, we could manufacture up to 500 GW of solar modules in 2023, making the once explosive projection of 1 TW a year in 2030 seem very much within reach.

 

[ItsNotAboutTheMoney]

Indian government has approved 990 MW of a government-owned utility's 2 GW identified potential floating solar.

Indian hydropower producer to set up 2 GW of floating solar

Damodar Valley Corp. has secured approval to vuild 990 MW of floating solar under India's Ultra Mega Renewable Energy Power Parks (UMREPP) scheme. It will soon launch a tender for some of this capacity.

www.pv-magazine.com

South Korea has introduced a solar panel recycling scheme. It includes module re-use and is paid for by a fee on modules of $0.61/kg ($11.09 for typical 40lb panel), plus about $0.08/kg collection fee. (I found those amount elsewhere). The scheme aims to encourage module re-use before final recycling.

South Korea moves forward with long-expected solar panel recycling scheme

South Korea's new provisions establish a standardized collection system for each of the country's major regions, in order to ensure a waste panel recycling/reuse rate of more than 80%.

www.pv-magazine.com

Solar power in spaaaaaaaaaace. Seems crazy but fun. (Current cheapest cost of payload to orbit is $1,500/kg. Starship's stretch goal is $10/kg + fixed cost/tonnage):

Space solar power technology demo launched into orbit

The launch represents the first in-situ test of the technology to harvest solar energy in space and transmit it to Earth.

www.sciencedaily.com

 

[mspohr]

IRA to drive $114 billion in U.S. renewable energy investments by 2031, report says

The advanced manufacturing production (AMPC) credit and domestic content requirement (DCR) are key to spurring a more rapid U.S. renewable energy economy, Wood Mackenzie notes.

pv-magazine-usa.com

Investments in the U.S. renewable energy market are expected to hit $114 billion by 2031, a 78% increase from $64 billion in total investments at year end 2021, buoyed by decarbonization momentum from the landmark Inflation Reduction Act. In a new report titled “Boom Time: what the Inflation Reduction Act means for U.S. renewables manufacturers,” Wood Mackenzie provides an initial assessment of how the IRA will greatly support the expansion of U.S. renewable energy equipment manufacturing capacity. “The IRA will completely reshape the renewables supply chain in the U.S., incentivizing the reopening of shuttered facilities as well as provide opportunities to build entire equipment supply chains from scratch,” said Daniel Liu, head of asset commercial performance at Wood Mackenzie.

 

[mspohr]

Vertical PV for clean energy and crop production

Agrivoltaic installations with vertically oriented solar panels are increasingly being adopted and studied across the globe.

pv-magazine-usa.com

“A vertical installation uses only a minimum space of the farmland while maintaining more than 85% of the light reaching the crops, ensuring an optimal balance of solar and farming, which is crucial in Japan,” he said. “This allows us to build agrivoltaic systems on utility crops farmland, like for wheat, potatoes or rice, on a big scale.”

The scientists found that vertical PV systems can shift solar yield into hours of higher electricity demand and more electricity supply in the winter months, thus reducing solar curtailment. “If electricity storage of 1 TW charging and discharging power and 1  TWh capacity is integrated into the energy system model, the effect is reduced to CO2 savings of up to 2.1 Mt/a with 70% vertical east-west and 30% inclined south facing modules,” they said. “Finally, while it might seem unrealistic for some to achieve a rate of 70% vertical power plants, even a lower rate has a beneficial impact.”

At a global scale, it is estimated that 1% of all farmland could produce the world’s energy needs if converted to solar PV.

 

[mspohr]

Solar may cover the world’s electricity demand with 0.3% of its land area

An international research group claims that raw materials and land availability do not present a real barrier for a global energy system with solar at its center. They said that forecasts for PV growth should not have their axis on utility-scale power plants and instead consider vertical PV...

pv-magazine-usa.com

The researchers said conventional assumptions about global PV deployment for the years to come are generally based on land cover and cost projections that chiefly consider classic, densely packed, utility-scale power plants. They claim such projections ignore the potential of vertical PV, floating installations, agrivoltaics, and building-integrated arrays, as well as other innovative PV system configurations.

The researchers also reported that solar maintained a learning rate of 23% since 1976 and that the cost of the PV technology dropped by 23% every time the capacity doubled.

 

[ItsNotAboutTheMoney]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-solutions/2023/02/06/france-solar-parking-lots/

Could be interesting.

 

[iPlug]

More than half of new U.S. electric-generating capacity in 2023 will be solar​

More than half of new U.S. electric-generating capacity in 2023 will be solar

 

[mspohr]

Solar microgrid to support critical water infrastructure

An Ohio water station will enhance its ability to deliver safe and clean water during extended grid outages.

pv-magazine-usa.com

Microgrids are increasingly being adopted by critical infrastructure and transportation providers to ensure long-term resilience of operations under a changing climate and grid. According to Wood Mackenzie data, the U.S. microgrid market saw a 47% increase in solar and storage capacity additions in 2022 compared to 2017 levels. Moreover, the data shows that more than 175 solar projects and solar-plus-storage microgrids have been in active development and were scheduled to come online by the end of 2022. The U.S. microgrid market reached 10 GW in the third quarter of 2022, with more than 7 GW in operation and the rest in planning or construction stages. Military microgrid installations will likely grow as a result of the U.S. Army’s resiliency goal to install a microgrid on every base by 2035. These will include renewable generation and large-scale battery storage, with the goal being able to “self-sustain its critical missions” on all Army installations by 2040

 

[mspohr]

Biden celebrates 100,000 jobs and near half-trillion dollar investment in clean energy

More than $60 billion in private investments in clean energy have been announced since the landmark Inflation Reduction Act was passed in August. The Act includes $370 billion in climate and energy spending.

pv-magazine-usa.com

In his State of the Union address, President Joe Biden celebrated U.S. progress towards a decarbonized energy future. Now that the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), containing $369 billion in climate and energy spending, is being implemented, the focus now turns to deployment and growth as solar energy takes center stage in the energy transition. Since the IRA was passed, over 100,000 energy transition jobs have been created, many of which are manufacturing jobs in solar and battery energy storage. Already over $60 billion in private investments have been announced since the law went into effect in August.

Annual U.S. energy expenditures are expected to fall by at least 4% by 2030 under the act, a savings of nearly $50 billion dollars per year for households, businesses and industry. “By 2032, there will be five times the amount of solar that’s installed today, which is enough electricity to power every home east of the Mississippi River. People in every zip code will be breathing cleaner air and working in stable, family-supporting clean energy careers,” said Abigail Ross Hopper, chief executive of the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA).

 

[mspohr]

Blue Origin claims its new method unlocks 'unlimited solar power'

Jeff Bezos' private space firm developed a technique for building solar cells using only lunar regolith and sunlight.

interestingengineering.com

The Blue Alchemist method uses molten electrolysis to separate aluminum, iron, and silicon from bound oxygen in lunar regolith to extract the materials for solar cell construction. In a statement, Blue Origin points out that the technique can be used to build solar cells, cover glass, and aluminum wire. All that's required is sunlight and the reactor's silicon. The method could prove to be a vital part of NASA's mission to establish a permanent presence on the moon as part of its Artemis program. It could dramatically cut costs associated with transporting materials to the moon while providing a robust solution; in its statement, Blue Origin says its solar cells can operate in the moon's "harsh environment" for over a decade.

 

[mspohr]

https://www.npr.org/2023/02/18/1154867064/solar-power-misinformation-activists-rural-america

But her group's rhetoric points to a broader agenda of undermining public support for solar. Analysts who follow the industry say Citizens for Responsible Solar stokes opposition to solar projects by spreading misinformation online about health and environmental risks. The group's website says solar requires too much land for "unreliable energy," ignoring data showing power grids can run dependably on lots of renewables. And it claims large solar projects in rural areas wreck the land and contribute to climate change, despite evidence to the contrary.

 

[ItsNotAboutTheMoney]

UK added 555 MW of new solar in 2022

The United Kingdom hit 14.3 GW of cumulative solar capacity by the end of last year, according to provisional government data. New solar capacity grew by 4% year on year, with the rooftop PV market accounting for most of the new installations.

www.pv-magazine.com

Data from Solar photovoltaics deployment

Month	Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Sep	Oct	Nov	Dec
2021	12.6	12.8	101.1	17	24	17.6	17.6	18.1	21.6	19.9	25.9	17.9
2022	22.4	27.6	37.4	36	43	42.6	43.9	48.8	57.3	80.6	65.4	50.2

The trend seems to be higher than 555MW. Installers are extremely busy.
In the above data only Mar 2021, May 2021 and Nov 2022 had systems > 50kW. The rest is from smaller systems.

 

[mspohr]

The IRA is on a tear,.

Republicans in the US ‘battery belt’ embrace Biden’s climate spending

Since the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) in August, billions of dollars of new clean energy investment has been announced for solar, electric vehicle and battery manufacturing in Georgia, pushing it to the forefront of a swathe of southern states that are becoming a so-called “battery belt” in the economic transition away from fossil fuels.

But last year’s IRA, with its sweeping tax incentives for emissions-reducing technologies, has made the environment even more enticing. Scott Moskowitz, head of market strategy for Qcells said that Georgia has been a “great home” since 2019 but that the IRA is “some of the most ambitious clean energy policy passed anywhere in the world” and gave the Hanwha-owned company certainty to triple capacity at its site in Dalton, which already cranks out around 12,000 solar panels a day, as well as create a new complex in Cartersville that will manufacture ingots and wafers, the basic building blocks of solar panel components, made from poly silicon.

 

[ItsNotAboutTheMoney]

January 2023 numbers added to UK Solar photovoltaics deployment

All in systems <= 50kw, 7/8 systems <= 10kW. Growth continues.

MW/Month	Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Sep	Oct	Nov	Dec
2021	12.6	12.8	101.1	17	24	17.6	17.6	18.1	21.6	19.9	25.9	17.9
2022	22.4	27.6	37.4	36	43	42.6	43.9	48.8	57.3	80.6	65.4	50.2
2023	68.6

 

[mspohr]

Solar already Australia’s largest source of electricity as rooftop capacity hits 20GW, consultancy says

Almost one-third of homes have panels, the highest in the world, says SunWiz, and will soon outpace capacity from coal

www.theguardian.com

Australia’s rooftops now boast 20 gigawatts of solar panels and will soon have the capacity to produce more electricity than the country’s entire coal industry, according to the industry consultancy SunWiz. Almost one in three Australian households have solar photovoltaics – or solar panels - the highest penetration in the world. Queensland had the highest share of solar panels installed on dwellings deemed suitable for the technology with an 82% penetration, ahead of South Australia’s 78%, New South Wales’ 51% and Victoria’s 43%.

 

[mspohr]

Energy Insecurity

Energity insecurity leads to vulnerability, but it can be avoided by using renewables in decentralised power generation.

cleantechnica.com

Defence departments throughout the world are discovering that being dependent on another nation for energy supply is a recipe for energy insecurity and hence vulnerability. The good news is that technology already exists to make everyone energy secure.

One of the lessons that countries are learning from the current war in Ukraine is that centralised power generation creates energy vulnerability, and therefore energy insecurity. In a despicable move against the civilians of Ukraine, Russia has targeted energy infrastructure.

Following the example of other countries, Australia is not only decentralising its energy generation, but installing renewable energy generation on Australian Defence Force (ADF) bases. Ten ADF sites will receive solar energy and battery storage systems at a cost of AU$64 million. The newly elected federal Labor government is acting quickly to move all parts of the economy over to renewables.