Ecología, medio ambiente

 

La naciente conciencia ecológica está siendo ahogada por la ola de campañas de propaganda tendiente a culpabilizar a los individuos como medio de exonerar al imperialismo de sus responsabilidades. Se minimiza así la verdadera importancia del impacto del libre comercio sobre el medio ambiente de los países pobres, a pesar de que países enteros se destruyen como resultado de la explotación indiscriminada de sus recursos por parte de las transnacionales. Peor aún, este fenómeno se está agravando como resultado de las reglas que los Estados pobres han tenido que aceptar bajo la presión de la Organización Mundial del Comercio (OMC). Al mismo tiempo, se guarda silencio sobre las consecuencias que tienen para el medio ambiente las guerras desatadas en lejanas regiones del mundo, tanto más cuanto que la Organización Mundial de la Salud (OMS) prohíbe, desde su creación, la divulgación de información sobre las consecuencias sanitarias de la contaminación atmosférica provocada por las armas nucleares. En aras de reforzar la dominación imperial, también se manipulan los cambios de nuestro ecosistema. En ese sentido, los anglosajones concentran hoy la atención internacional en el calentamiento climático, fenómeno que atribuyen única y exclusivamente a la actividad humana, y manipulan los temores milenaristas para imponer normas económicas cada vez más desiguales que frenan el desarrollo de las potencias emergentes.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Solar Energy Battery Backup Under Attack in California?

CHICAGO -- California is no stranger to rolling blackouts. When Charles and Elke Hewitt installed a solar electric system with batteries for emergency backup power on their home this April, they were shocked when Southern California Edison rejected their application for grid connection under their net metering program. And the Hewitt family was not alone. Soon all homeowners with solar electric systems with battery backup in California could be affected by Edison’s stance on backup power.

Edison informed the couple their application for grid connection was denied because the batteries they used to store energy for emergency backup power when the grid went down were considered “power generators” and not energy storage devices, said Charles Hewitt. Edison said Hewitt did not qualify for their net metering program because the utility could not distinguish between power produced by the solar panels and power produced by the batteries, which it considers a nonrenewable source of power, he said. Edison explained their policy had not changed. It was the equipment that had changed.

“We were excited to use our system and stop paying electric bills,” he said. “Summers are peak production for solar and now we are told we can’t use our system. I have thousands of dollars of PV system sitting on my roof that now I can’t use.”

The 3.7 kilowatt solar electric system installed on the Hewitt home in Santa Barbara uses an Outback grid-tied 48-volt battery system for backup power. Hewitt said his battery bank only stores power; it doesn’t produce it. The problem is, the system uses an inverter/charge controller design that does not allow batteries to be separated from the system, he said. In other words, if he disconnects the battery bank from the system, the system won’t work.

When asked if the utility could be worried homeowners will charge batteries during off-peak hours and then sell excess power back to the grid during peak hours (buy low/sell high), Hewitt rejected this idea. “This is a pretty small battery bank,” he said. “Our batteries are metal nickel hydride batteries. There aren’t a whole lot of kilowatts you can pull out of those batteries before they are ruined and they are very expensive. If Edison thinks homeowners will be using these batteries to cheat a few dollars off our electric bill is nonsense. The main reason people get backup systems is for emergency backup power only when the grid goes down.”

The Outback inverter Hewitt uses has been on the California Energy Commission approved equipment list for eight years and hundreds of these systems have been approved, he said. Now Edison is saying all battery backup systems need more review. Homeowners with battery backup solar electric systems are being asked to pay $800 as part of that review, he said. “Edison is sending small systems through the same review process as large megawatt systems,” he said. “Apparently other utilities are jumping on the bandwagon and they plan to go back and remove credits from all homeowners with backup systems.”

Hewitt filed a complaint with the California Public Utility Commission, but the complaint was rejected. He filed an appeal in mid-July.

Other homeowners affected by Edison’s stance on backup power are Matthew and Elizabeth Sperling of Santa Barbara. The couple’s 1.8-kW solar electric system with battery backup uses eight Sunpower solar panels (230 Watts each) with eight Concord batteries for backup power when the grid goes down. “The Chief Electrical inspector for the city of Santa Barbara inspected our system and said it was best he had ever seen,” said Matt Sperling. The inverters and panels were all approved by the California Energy Commission as part of the California Solar Initiative, he said.

“There is no science to support SCE’s claim,” said Sperling. “For me this is personal. I invested $21,000 in this system that is not usable. The company that installed the system can’t solve it. I’m stuck as a customer. I will get about $9,000 back from the government for a system that is not usable. I might as well have donated the system to someone because I’m not getting the benefit of a usable system. SCE is claiming the solar manufacturers are to blame because they changed the equipment.”

 

 

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August 07, 2013  |  7 Comments

 

Solar Businesses Fired Up

Edison’s position on battery backup systems has some solar installers and manufacturers in California worried. One of those companies is family-owned solar installer Sun Pacific Solarin Santa Barbara.

“We are a small solar company that has been designing and installing this exact same system Matt has for the last eight years,” said co-owner Cecilia Villaseñor Johnson. “We never had a problem with local jurisdiction or utility approval until three months ago. After we did Matt’s installation and another customer with a similar system, the SCE decided it was not going to allow them to be interconnected under the net-metering program because the batteries could back feed into the grid. Now all three utilities in the area are saying they are not going to approve any grid-tied backup systems until further notice,” she said.

For Villaseñor Johnson, the real issue is fear of the future. “They are feeling threatened by people being independent to them. The field engineer told us that SCE was going to go back through old customers with battery backup systems and negate their renewable energy credits. They want to stop the NEM program because it’s not working for them. “Instead, utilities should embrace solar power," she said. A recent consulting firm study shows that programs for people with PV systems that include battery backup are actually beneficial because they help stabilize the grid, she said. They are working against their benefit by making it more difficult for people to use them. Also, the utilities haven’t had to build another power plant in California because of all the people going solar, she said.

Manufacturers of solar-related equipment, such as inverters and batteries are also concerned. One such company is Outback Power Technologies, which specializes in solar electric systems with battery backup.

“California mandated that energy storage be part of the grid. That is the growth area of renewable energy and beyond,” said Philip Undercuffler, Director of Product Management and Strategy for Outback.  “I think everyone — utilities included — is struggling to understand how to make that happen, find out what’s required, and what technology is available. That future is being hammered out right now.”

Grid-tied solar electric systems with battery backup have existed since the very beginning of solar, he said. The systems are simple with batteries to provide backup power to homes if a drunk driver knocks out a utility pole or the grid goes down due to earthquakes or wildfires. “We are seeing a huge demand for customers who just want to incorporate part of a PV system with a little bit of extra reliability and ability to provide backup for those critical needs.”

That huge demand is becoming a challenge for utilities, he said. “Utilities are seeing this coming — they may want to eliminate options for net metering, I don’t know. Whether this is intentional or they just don’t understand, I don’t know, but they are putting up roadblocks for customers.  It’s not that this is new technology. It’s not that the systems have changed, because they have been used for years. All of a sudden, the utility is saying it has changed, and it hasn’t. It doesn’t make sense. It’s also not supported by Rule 21 or the RPS guidebook.”

Undercuffler is also concerned about Edison applying a multi-tariff program to the simple battery backup systems his company offers. Multi-tariff programs are for large systems that use multiple sources of power. “They are forcing a multi-tariff program when there is no second source of power. The only thing that crosses the meter is green energy.“

 

 

 

The Cost of New Renewable Power Generation: Approaching Parity?

LONDON -- Are renewable energy technologies really less competitive than non-renewables? And, given the recent uptake of renewables, is there still a business case for other forms of power generation?

New onshore and offshore wind and large solar photovoltaic (PV) plants still require policy support to bridge the gap between generation costs and market prices of electricity. But this may change in the near future, finds a new report from the International Energy Agency’sRenewable Energy Technology Deployment group. Technology and market dynamics are driving down the costs of renewable power generation while increasing the costs involved in non-renewable generation, the report found. Before long, it said, best-in-class onshore wind and large-scale PV plants should be able to offer attractive business cases to investors in regions with a high proportion of thermal generation without resorting to incentives.

The report, which focused on Canada, France, Germany, Japan, Norway, Sweden and Spain, noted that policies and regulations can significantly affect the business cases of both renewable and non-renewable power sources. Although the high cost of generation for new renewable energy technologies means policy support is currently needed, the report noted that generation costs for renewable power are falling, approaching the costs for gas- and coal-fired plants — especially if the hidden subsidies that thermal generation plants may receive are taken out of the equation.  

Onshore wind generation is already competitive in the report's focus countries. Large-scale PV’s rate of cost reduction is higher, though, due to technology breakthroughs, the emergence of lower-cost suppliers and component oversupply.

At the same time, the report stated, the cost of gas- and coal-fired plants is increasing because they are being used less — largely due to policy support for renewables, construction delays, higher financing rates, and the increasing cost of fuel in some European countries and Japan. Most crucial is the higher capital costs involved in some new-build thermal plants due to emission reduction systems, the report argued. “The future competitiveness of thermal generation is going to be positively or negatively influenced by the shape and provisions of future policies for control of emissions,” it said.

One unsurprising conclusion is that there is no unique cost of renewable or non-renewable power generation. Cost ranges associated with any power generation technology are relatively large and highly dependent on the regulatory and market contexts, the report said. It pointed to best-in-class plants — those with high utilisation rates, low capital costs, and low rates of financing — rather than to any particular technology as having generation costs up to 50 percent lower than average plants. It singled out the case of large-scale PV, where comparing plants built several years apart and based on different technologies showed big differences in cost. Policies in some regions also significantly affect generation costs by offering a variety of reward mechanisms, such as R&D grants, assumption by the TSO of the cost of connecting to the grid, tax breaks and reduction of administrative burdens. 

Both new renewable and new non-renewable power plants find it difficult to compete in regions where the market prices of electricity remain low, said the report. This is driven in part by excess capacity, and also by an installed base that includes depreciated plants.

In general, the costs of both new renewable power plants and new non-renewable generation are higher than the market price of electricity, because of which the report stressed the necessity of maintaining current incentives in order to provide business cases that will interest investors. However, it noted that when incentives do not exist or are not appropriately defined, “the business case of new generation does not hold.”

Lead image: solar power station via worradirek on Shutterstock

 

 

 

 

Energy Storage Opportunities Opening Up in US and Europe

SAN FRANCISCO -- According to Marcus Elsässer and other executives at Intersolar North America 2013, Energy Storage + PV is the next big thing and we should all prepare ourselves to see more of it. Three years ago, Intersolar decided to focus a bit on the technology and signed up about 10 battery manufacturers to exhibit at its European show — the largest solar power show in the world. This year, there were more than 200 energy storage companies exhibiting.

Elsasser and representatives from the German solar industry believe the focus on energy storage has come as a result of the declining FIT in Germany and other parts of Europe.  Now, instead of selling PV energy to the utility to make money, consumers are looking to save money. By using energy storage consumers can now use the energy they generate themselves instead of having to purchase energy from the grid.  Markus Hohner of the International Battery Energy Storage Alliance (IBESA) use the term “Prosumer” to describe this phenomenon of people producing and using their own energy.

Matthius Vetter from the Fraunhoffer Institute explained it rather simply. His father, who installed a PV system 10 years ago, sells power to the German utility at 55 eurocents per kWh and purchases it from the grid somewhere in the ballpark of 26 eurocents per kWh.  For him, energy storage has no value.  Today’s FIT rate, however, is just 14 eurocents per kWh so rather than sell your PV energy, why not keep it by using energy storage technology and offset that 26-eurocent per kWh charge. 

American energy storage executives agree that storage has great value in the U.S. electricity market but for different reasons.  They say that the sweet spot for the U.S. energy storage market is in large commercial installations.  These large entities have negotiated contracts with utilities so their electricity rates aren’t very high.  But their demand charges, the fee that the utility charges them based on their highest peak energy use during a month, have been rising as much as 10-12 percent per year, according to Tom McCalmont of McCalmont Engineering.

By installing an energy storage system alongside a PV system, large commercial end-users of electricity can lessen that peak demand, and thereby lower their demand charges.  Further McCalmont believes that in the future utilities are going to realize how this type of storage system actually helps them firm up the grid and he says one day soon, we will start seeing U.S. utilities offering incentives for companies to install energy storage.

Energy storage companies large and small are exhibiting at Intersolar North America this year, hoping to tap into this emerging market. ABB, AEG Power Solutions, Green Charge Networks, MK Battery, Outback Power, Trojan Battery, STEM and more are showing their solution in the Energy Storage Hall at the show.  Intersolar’s Elsässer said that 40 energy storage companies are exhibiting at the show. 

Hear more from Elsässer by watching the video below.

 

 

 

Doing Good by Doing Solar

For those of us who live in communities traversed by power lines, it's hard to imagine life without electricity. But large swaths of the globe remain without this modern necessity. About one-fifth of the world, or 1.3 to 1.6 billion people, live in energy poverty, mostly in sub-Sahara Africa and parts of Asia, and to a smaller extent in Latin America and the Middle East.

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The basics in an electrified society — food, modern medical care, a lit path at night — come only with great effort for the powerless, if they come at all. Filling up a glass with water takes the energy-rich seconds; for the energy-poor it may require a full day of walking.

Fortunately, awareness is growing about energy poverty among those who can do something about it — the famous and influential. And the solution they often adopt is solar energy.

Oprah Winfrey has solarized schools in Africa. Grammy-winning reggae band Steel Pulse donated record sales for solar in Haiti. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation put up money for researchers to develop a solar-powered portable toilet, an effort to prevent the deaths of 1.5 million children linked to poor sanitation. The William J. Clinton Foundation has helped fund a range of projects in Haiti, including solar lights for a resettlement community with 168 deaf families. And the UN Secretary-General last year launched the 'Sustainable Energy for All' initiative that strives to eradicate energy poverty worldwide by 2030, and do so with clean resources like solar.

"I am excited to see changes that are taking place at the high political level. For a long time, energy was not on people's radar," said Robert Freling, executive director of Solar Electric Light Fund (SELF).

If anyone is aware of the long struggle to raise awareness about energy poverty, it is Freling. Well before most others focused on energy poverty — more than two decades ago — SELF was installing solar panels in rural outposts. The organization has completed solar projects in more than 20 countries, partnering along the way with many governments, institutions, businesses and foundations.

Among the many forms of energy, why is solar so often the choice to serve the energy poor? First, it is clean and can help displace the polluting and dangerous energy sources now used — dung, wood and charcoal for stoves, kerosene lamps, and diesel generators. It is also a universal form of energy; the sun is everywhere and photovoltaic panels can be easily installed to capture it. Solar requires no construction of massive power lines and no trucking or piping of fossil fuels, all difficult in parts of the world that lack roads and basic infrastructure.

Solar and Nourishment

Operating under the motto 'energy is a human right,' SELF initially focused just on electrification through solar. But now the organization employs a broader mission, what it calls a whole village development model, which tackles critical problems in a community that solar can solve. As a result, SELF has helped develop drip irrigation systems for farming and brought modern medical care, refrigeration, online learning, microenterprise, and other life-changers to developing communities.

Malnutrition is widespread in the Kalalé District of Benin, West Africa, where SELF began a pilot project in 2007. "There we have managed to do something that is addressing a very, very basic human need — and that is to eat," Freling said. Sitting down for a needs assessment of the community, "their number one concern turned out to be food security, or lack thereof."

Kalalé is considered to be one of the poorest parts of the world. The 104,000 people who live in the district's 44 villages face particular hardship from November to April, the region's dry season when local food production comes to a near halt.

SELF is helping two villages through what it calls the Solar Market Garden, an approach the organization has pioneered to help communities overcome food scarcity and gain income from sale of crops. Solar pumps and electrified drip irrigation systems spare the farmers, largely women, from walking long distances to fill gourds with water to irrigate the fields. The women now spend half as much time watering.

"Prior to our intervention, these fields were largely barren during the six-month dry period. Now, year-round they are growing all kinds of leafy green vegetables," Freling said.

The families consume about one-fifth of the food; the remainder can generate income. As a result of the solar project, the women have gained both economic and psychological strength, exhibiting optimism and a new entrepreneurial spirit, according to Freling.

The organization has recently expanded the pilot to eight additional villages in Benin, and hopes the Solar Market Garden will eventually become a model for the developing world.

Solar and Livelihood

 

In parts of Haiti, fishermen must travel far out to sea in non-motorized boats because the near-shore waters are overfished. The return back to shore with their catch can be long. They must sell the fish immediately or else it will spoil, since they have no power and therefore no refrigeration. As a result, by the end of the day they are willing to sell the fish well below market prices.

NRG Energy, the largest independent generating company in the U.S., is helping the fishermen as one of its many projects in Haiti. (The company also has also partnered with SELF to solarize medical facilities and schools, as well as food production facilities in the country.) NRG partnered with ENERSA, a Haitian solar company, which offered the fishermen loans for electrified freezers. With the new tool, the fishermen can develop better business models — and an important source of protein for Haiti does not go to waste.

"We have a lot of innovative technology. The real joy is translating it in such a way that it works for that culture so that it can thrive," said Jennifer Brunelle, head of global giving for NRG Energy.

But it is not only the developing world that benefits from the idea of doing good by doing solar. The concept also is gaining traction in the U.S.

San Francisco-based Everybody Solar helps non-profits install solar panels at a low cost, so that they can cut back on their energy bills and channel the savings to their mission. Everybody Solar recently raised $34,000 through crowd funding for its first project, a 13.5-kW array for the headquarters of Rebuilding Together Peninsula (RTP), which does home retrofit projects for low-income families. The solar panels are expected to save RTP $100,000 in energy costs. Everybody Solar hopes its approach will be used as a model for non-profits throughout the U.S.

The work of SELF, NRG Energy, ENERSA, Everybody Solar and others may point out a new direction for the solar industry. For years, the industry has been growing by leaps and bounds as modern societies increasingly embraced the technology a way to aid a planet in need. But more and more, solar is showing itself as a way to aid people in need. Solar, it turns out, is not just an environmentalist, but also a humanitarian. This is an argument for solar that even environmental naysayers can embrace, and it's one that might benefit the industry as renewable energy becomes increasingly politicized. We can expect to hear more about how solar is doing good in the coming months and years.