WASHINGTON — The political attack ad that ran recently in Arizona had some familiar hallmarks of the genre, including a greedy villain who hogged sweets for himself and made children cry. But the bad guy, in this case, wasn't a fat-cat lobbyist or someone's political opponent. He was a solar-energy consumer.
Solar, once almost universally regarded as a virtuous, if perhaps over-hyped, energy alternative, has now grown big enough to have enemies. The Koch brothers, anti-tax activist Grover Norquist and some of the nation's largest power companies have backed efforts in recent months to roll back state policies that favor green energy. The conservative luminaries have pushed campaigns in Kansas, North Carolina and Arizona, with the battle rapidly spreading to other states.
Alarmed environmentalists and their allies in the solar industry have fought back, battling the other side to a draw so far. Both sides say the fight is growing more intense as new states, including Ohio, South Carolina and Washington, enter the fray. At the nub of the dispute are two policies found in dozens of states. One requires utilities to get a certain share of power from renewable sources. The other, known as net metering, guarantees homeowners or businesses with solar panels on their roofs the right to sell any excess electricity back into the power grid at attractive rates.
Net metering forms the linchpin of the solar-energy business model. Without it, firms say, solar power would be prohibitively expensive.
The power industry argues that net metering provides an unfair advantage to solar consumers, who don't pay to maintain the power grid although they draw money from it and rely on it for backup on cloudy days. The more people produce their own electricity through solar, the fewer are left being billed for the transmission lines, substations and computer systems that make up the grid, industry officials say.
"If you are using the grid and benefiting from the grid, you should pay for it," said David Owens, executive vice president of the Edison Electric Institute, the advocacy arm for the industry. "If you don't, other customers have to absorb those costs." The institute has warned power companies that profits could erode catastrophically if current policies and market trends continue. If electricity companies delay in taking political action, the group warned in a report, "it may be too late to repair the utility business model."
The American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC, a membership group for conservative state lawmakers, recently drafted model legislation that targeted net metering. The group also helped launch efforts by conservative lawmakers in more than half a dozen states to repeal green energy mandates.
"State governments are starting to wake up," Christine Harbin Hanson, a spokeswoman for Americans for Prosperity, the advocacy group backed by billionaire industrialists Charles and David Koch, said in an email. The organization has led the effort to overturn the mandate in Kansas, which requires that 20% of the state's electricity come from renewable sources.
"These green energy mandates are bad policy," said Hanson, adding that the group was hopeful Kansas would be the first of many dominoes to fall.
The group's campaign in that state compared the green energy mandate to Obamacare, featuring ominous images of Kathleen Sebelius, the outgoing secretary of Health and Human Services, who was Kansas' governor when the state adopted the requirement.The Kansas Senate voted late last month to repeal the mandate, but solar industry allies in the state House blocked the move.Environmentalists were unnerved. "The want to roll it back here so they can start picking off other states," said Dorothy Barnett, director of the Climate and Energy Project, a Kansas advocacy group.
The arguments over who benefits from net metering, meanwhile, are hotly disputed. Some studies, including one published recently by regulators in Vermont, conclude that solar customers bring enough benefits to a regional power supply to fully defray the cost of the incentive.
Utilities deny that and are spending large sums to greatly scale back the policy.
In Arizona, a major utility and a tangle of secret donors and operatives with ties to ALEC and the Kochs invested millions to persuade state regulators to impose a monthly fee of $50 to $100 on net-metering customers.
Two pro-business groups, at least one of which had previously reported receiving millions of dollars from the Koch brothers, formed the campaign's public face. Their activities were coordinated by GOP consultant Sean Noble and former Arizona House Speaker Kirk Adams, two early architects of the Koch network of nonprofits.
In October, California ethics officials levied a $1-million fine after accusing groups the two men ran during the 2012 election of violating state campaign finance laws in an effort to hide the identities of donors.
The Arizona Public Service Co., the state's utility, also had Noble on its payroll. As a key vote at the Arizona Corporation Commission approached late last year, one of the commissioners expressed frustration that anonymous donors had bankrolled the heated campaign. He demanded APS reveal its involvement. The utility reported it had spent $3.
"Politically oriented nonprofits are a fact of life today and provide a vehicle for individuals and organizations with a common point of view to express themselves," company officials said in a statement in response to questions about their campaign.
The solar companies, seeking to sway the corporation commission, an elected panel made up entirely of Republicans, formed an organization aimed at building support among conservatives. The group, Tell Utilities Solar won't be Killed, is led by former California congressman Barry Goldwater Jr., a Republican Party stalwart."These solar companies are becoming popular, and utilities don't like competition," Goldwater said. "I believe people ought to have a choice."
The commission ultimately voted to impose a monthly fee on solar consumers — of $5.
The solar firms declared victory. But utility industry officials and activists at ALEC and Americans for Prosperity say the battles are just getting underway. They note the Kansas legislation will soon be up for reconsideration, and fights elsewhere have barely begun.
In North Carolina, executives at Dude Energy, the country's largest electric utility, have made clear the state's net metering law is in their sights. The company's lobbying effort is just beginning. But already, Goldwater's group has begun working in the state, launching a social media and video campaign accusing Duke of deceit.
"The intention of these proposals is to eliminate the rooftop solar industry," said Bryan Miller, president of the Alliance for Solar Choice, an industry group. "They have picked some of the most conservative states in the country," he added. "But rooftop solar customers are voters, and policymakers ultimately have to listen to the public."
http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-solar-kochs-20140420,0,7412286.story?page=2#ixzz2zSKtWcxD
The United States of Koch
I don't have a problem with utilities charging a reasonable fee to net metering customers, but the fees for infrastructure maintenance need to be transparent on their bills. Whatever the utility charges needs to be able to be justified. They know what the cost for infrastructure maintenance is and it really isn't that expensive. If the costs average out to $0.50/kwh or $1.00/kwh per customer then that is what the net metering customer should see reduced from the amount they are credited to sell excess energy to the utility.
Personally I am not a fan of solar power because the space needed for a solar farm requires too much land. I am a bigger fan of wind power, but even that comes with its own set of challenges.
All of us who have rooftop solar still pay some to the utilities, just less than we would have without the panels. I wonder if the real opposition to solar has to do with utility bonds, fewer of which will have to issued to build power plants and transmission lines the more of us have our own generating capability.
Quote from: stephendare on April 20, 2014, 03:54:32 PM
see. its nonsense like this that convinced me that my Republican Party had lost its mind and was reduced to idiots, fools, and evildoers.
I agree, but they're two sides of the same coin. Example: Dems are currently pushing HARD in lots of states (and in other areas inside the fed) for e-cigarettes to be regulated & taxed the same as tobacco products. I'm not going to get into it (people can do their own research), but they're not EVEN the same thing. They know this, everyone knows this, but still. They want that tax money, while their tobacco & pharma lobby buddies nudge them (who both stand to lose as they gain popularity), & will spin it every which way they can until it happens. "Think of the children!" Sound familiar? It should because thats their go-to.
My point is both parties are corrupt as hell & big business rules at the end of the day. Whether we're talking about solar, Tesla auto sale bans or ecigs.
Solar is a deeply disruptive technology for an industry that has heretofore enjoyed a fairly comfortable monopoly. The monopoly has been reasonably premised on the huge infrastructure costs of producing and providing power, but one of the classic shortcomings of monopolies is so-called "rent seeking behavior," and the price of solar has been falling so fast for so long that it is on the cusp of being directly competitive with utilities' decades-old business model everywhere, not just in states with favorable policies. Faced w/ competitive pressure, some utilities may find it more cost-effective to influence public policy (in places where that is feasible, like AZ and NC) than innovate. In places where "rent seeking" is better controlled, innovation is happening. In either scenario, billions of dollars in investment is at stake and the timing of change is important. This is an important public policy issue that will be fascinating to watch going forward.
Apparently the The Alliance for Solar Choice (TASC) is a new lobbying group for large solar companies. "
At the nub of the dispute are two policies found in dozens of states. One requires utilities to get a certain share of power from renewable sources. The other, known as net metering, guarantees homeowners or businesses with solar panels on their roofs the right to sell any excess electricity back into the power grid at attractive rates."
http://runonsun.com/~runons5/blogs/blog1.php/ranting/solar-alliance-formed-to-resist
QuoteThe nation's leading rooftop solar companies today announced the formation of The Alliance for Solar Choice (TASC). TASC believes anyone should have the option to switch from utility power to distributed solar power. Founding members represent the majority of the U.S. rooftop solar market and include SolarCity, Sungevity, Sunrun and Verengo.
TASC is committed to protecting the choice for distributed solar. Most immediately, TASC will focus on ensuring the continuation of Net Energy Metering (NEM). Currently in place in 43 states, NEM provides solar consumers with fair credit for the energy they put back on the grid, which utilities then sell to other customers. In simple terms, NEM is like rollover minutes on your cell phone bill. Monopoly utilities are trying to eliminate NEM to halt the consumer-driven popularity of rooftop solar, which is helping create thousands of local jobs around the country.
Id like to know when jea is going to start up an easy finance program to help the citizens of the city to install solar in their home and get away from the nasty coal we all breath here in jax in order to our power service. Dont we as owners of the agency have to right to make them change their business model to suit a renewable source of energy. If we are paying such high rates shouldnt we be able to apply some of that towards solar or wind energy.
^What he said.
They will now, for solar water heaters.
Quote from: Josh on April 21, 2014, 11:39:09 AM
They will now, for solar water heaters.
only bread crumbs of what they can do if they wanted to.
^^ Time to lobby and bug 'em.
Quote from: Rob68 on April 21, 2014, 11:47:10 AM
Quote from: Josh on April 21, 2014, 11:39:09 AM
They will now, for solar water heaters.
only bread crumbs of what they can do if they wanted to.
Yes, but with current laws, there is zero "want" for them to do such. It will be a reality in the not-too-distant future even at the current rate of legislation, but as of today they don't need the green credits, and as a homeowner I wouldn't be interested in taking on that kind of infrastructure/debt only to sell excess power back at a fraction of its real value.
I don't think they are anti solar directly. They are against subsidies.
They believe the use of solar should be set at market rates. They are against mandates that bury the true cost of non fossil sources into the overall rate structure.
Now if consumers had a choice of what made up their energy sources in their monthly bill then it would alleviate their concerns. but policy makers know that any alternative energy development won't reach anything close to consumer choice if it can't get a reasonable level of investment and acceptance.
With regards to net metering the issue is that billing is highly inconsistent across the country. Some PUC's mandate the utility eat certain costs to promote the alternative source. Which people translate to an unfair subsidy.
Some PUC's require the homeowner to pay all the upfront costs to connect and pay a monthly fee to stay connected, essentially a service charge while they net out only the actual kwh used.
Another issue in net metering is that in some states the utility only nets your excess power in wholesale prices, not retail.
Solar owners got ticked because net energy use was billed at 9 cents per kwh but net energy returned was only credited at 3 cents per kwh. Some states passed laws requiring net returns to be credited at the retail rate.
This highly upset the utilities. Wholesale pricing in net metering pushed the ROI for the homeowner out past 20 years. Retail pricing in net metering gets it down near 15 years.
Today's power generation is based on a model developed by Nikola Tesla
at the turn of last century. It was based on a premise that the larger the generation source the cheaper it would be to create it and distribute it. And Tesla's genius was in figuring out how to distribute it just as cheaply.
What people are looking for now is something that has all the price benefits of central generation, but has all of the flexibility of distributed generation.
Who is going to pay for that?
In this analysis we can't assume the variables as they are today will stay the same. It is important to recognize that "solar" isn't a fuel at all, but a technology. As such, its price is on a historic decline similar to TVs, computers, cell phones, etc. Coal, nuclear, natural gas -- all fuels -- have price components that will only go up long term.
So, solar with or w/o subsidy is going to change the utility industry substantially in our lifetimes.
Left to their own devices, utilities will choose to respond to this in different ways in different places. As regulated entities, how do we want them to respond and do we understand the consequences of our choices? Net metering is a partial answer to these kinds of questions, but not the only one and certainly not the last. A highly nuanced policy discussion is required.
(There are rational arguments for a subsidy. There are also valid theoretical reasons to have no subsidies whatsoever in an economy. The incumbent energy sources, by the way, already have tremendous subsidies in place that the utility industry is not against.)
Even w/o invoking indirect subsidies ("externalities" like environmental and health impacts, security, etc.), renewables are directly subsidized to a far lesser degree than coal, oil/gas, and nuclear.
Utilities are asking legitimate questions about whether we want "cross-subsidies" for solar power (i.e. the large mass of ratepayers subsidizing the small group who invest in solar and receive some form of net metering).
They did not call for a similar debate when putting in place subsidies for nuclear power that essentially asked ratepayers to subsidize future residents / generations.
But nuclear aligns much better with their traditional regulatory model than solar does.
There need to be much broader discussions of energy policy in this Country (and this State and this City).
Quote from: bencrix on April 21, 2014, 04:20:13 PM
Even w/o invoking indirect subsidies ("externalities" like environmental and health impacts, security, etc.), renewables are directly subsidized to a far lesser degree than coal, oil/gas, and nuclear.
Utilities are asking legitimate questions about whether we want "cross-subsidies" for solar power (i.e. the large mass of ratepayers subsidizing the small group who invest in solar and receive some form of net metering).
They did not call for a similar debate when putting in place subsidies for nuclear power that essentially asked ratepayers to subsidize future residents / generations.
But nuclear aligns much better with their traditional regulatory model than solar does.
There need to be much broader discussions of energy policy in this Country (and this State and this City).
Agreed on the broader discussions on energy policies, but with high involvement of special interests supporting their respective industries, any decision will be fraught with lawsuits and legal entanglements for many years.
Stephen referred to a coming change in the order of certain industries, I think this is a perfect example.
As solar inches yet closer in cents per kwh to mass generation, this issue is going to get larger. But its going to take a few years to reach it.
What if WalMart decided to build out a solar infrastructure on the roof of every store around the globe? Once the price of solar reaches that level, then there are going to be big problems in existing policy.
RMI has been producing a series of interesting articles regarding what is at stake (an example is excerpted below w/ a link). I am guessing that some of these issues are prompting some utilities to "act out" in places like those mentioned in the article that started this thread.
Quotehttp://blog.rmi.org/blog_2014_04_15_the_urgent_need_for_innovative_business_models
Apr 15, 2014
The Urgent Need for Innovative Business Models: Could RMI's Economics of Grid Defection base case and more aggressive scenarios actually have been conservative?
Earlier this year RMI and partners Homer Energy and CohnReznick Think Energy released The Economics of Grid Defection, a report that predicted when and where solar-plus-battery systems might reach parity with retail electric prices. In other words, it identified the times and places that customers could defect from the grid by installing an off-grid solar-plus-battery system to get their electricity as cheaply and reliably as from their utility.
...
Consider these significant changes and market developments that have taken place since The Economics of Grid Defection released at the end of February:
For example, Bloomberg New Energy Finance, whose battery cost forecasts we cited in our base case, lowered its projections in favor of faster cost declines—by nearly $200/kWh!—from 2012 through the first quarter of 2014 alone.
Our report modeled lithium-ion batteries as a storage technology, the same type of battery found in most electric vehicles (EVs) on the road today. As more vehicle manufacturers race to release hybrid and all-electric vehicles to meet customer demand for cars that are cheaper to drive and that can meet stricter government mileage standards, battery prices are expected to drop via economies of scale to meet that demand. The Electric Vehicle Initiative's 15 member governments found that EV sales more than doubled between 2011 and 2012 and that battery costs dropped by over 200 percent from 2008 to 2012. Extrapolating forward, and realizing the incredible innovations being made by the likes of Ambri and others, a $125/kWh battery might not be so far off.
To wit, Tesla is targeting battery prices in line with our accelerated technology scenario. The EV company recently released details of a high-volume lithium-ion battery manufacturing "Gigafactory" that will produce more batteries annually by 2020 than all of the batteries produced in 2013. Tesla plans to use this plant to support its mass-market car, supply batteries for up to 500,000 vehicles per year, and drive down the battery per-kWh cost by 30 percent—matching the $125/kWh target used in our accelerated technology scenario. With partners like Toyota and Daimler already using Tesla's batteries in their vehicles, it isn't hard to imagine the macro effect this factory will have on the industry and battery prices overall.
Furthermore, no-cost financing for batteries will cause a surge in grid-ready battery storage systems for homes and businesses alike, as no-cost financing already has done for solar systems. Offerings by companies such as Green Charge Networks have already shown utility bill reductions of 15 percent or more.
Finally, the Department of Energy's SunShot Initiative aims to make solar energy fully cost-competitive with traditional energy sources by 2020, which is what the report assumed could happen in its Aggressive Technology Improvement scenario. JinkoSolar, a Chinese manufacturer, already reached the SunShot goals of sub-50 cent per Watt solar modules.
...
So if parity is coming even sooner than we thought, it is more urgent than ever for utilities and regulators to act quickly. Utilities and regulators need to evolve business models and policies so we can live in an electricity future in which grid-connected solar-plus-battery systems are optimized for individual customer and societal benefit.
I like the fact that this blog refers to the spin off industries that a cheap battery supply can create.
While people think of batteries for EV's and Commercial UPS systems, a real target market for the industry is for non-commercial home use.
Either the use of solar roof shingles or LNG based fuel cells combined with these next generation batteries that are mass produced so cheaply that it will be considered a standard addition/appliance with any new home (like your AC unit).
That market is massive and has huge economies of scale available to it. It will still be a few years, but when it reaches the sweet spot, it will be massively disruptive to the current energy regulatory environment we see today.
Houston/TX (and everything it stands for) v San Francisco/CA (and everything it stands for). Lol, ages old at this point...at the end of the day it's just politics. The two energy sides and cultures inherent in any form of energy market are not all that different. But the means to the end, the politics, is virtually opposite.
Whatever the Koch brothers say or do is not going to change the fact that the country's largest economy, by far, is still requiring all new residential construction to be net zero energy certified by 2020, and all new commercial by 2030. And tech and all of the other drivers of this massive CA economy are not showing any signs of slowing down any time soon. Houston folks better keep praying to the oil gods that crude prices remain high. They have nothing otherwise.
Alternative energy education should begin in 4th grade! With enough time we can heal the damage the
industrial age and greed has caused.
QuoteWe've now entered an era in which affinity politics has gotten so toxic that even motherhood and apple pie are fair targets if it turns out that liberals happen to like apple pie. There are dozens of good reasons that we should be building out solar as fast as we possibly can—plummeting prices, overdependence on foreign oil, poisonous petrostate politics, clean air—but yes, global warming is one of those reasons too. And since global warming has now entered the conservative pantheon of conspiratorial hoaxes designed to allow liberals to quietly enslave the economy, it means that conservatives are instinctively opposed to anything even vaguely related to stopping it. As a result, fracking has become practically the holy grail of conservative energy policy, while solar, which improves by leaps and bounds every year, is a sign of decay and creeping socialism.
Does it help that the Koch brothers happen to be oil barons who don't want to see the oil industry lose any of the massive government support it's gotten for decades? It sure doesn't hurt, does it?
http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2014/04/right-wing-trains-its-hysterical-eye-renewable-energy
Quote from: finehoe on April 22, 2014, 04:32:10 PM
We've now entered an era in which affinity politics has gotten so toxic that even motherhood and apple pie are fair targets if it turns out that liberals happen to like apple pie.
I agree on the era of affinity politics, but it has been happening both ways unfortunately.
QuoteThe two energy sides and cultures inherent in any form of energy market are not all that different.
I can't agree w/ this. They are fundamentally different: centralized vs. distributed; fuel extraction vs. technology development; monopolies vs. competitive marketplaces; major negetive externalities vs. very few / none; mega-finance vs. innovative business models; structural subsidies vs. intermittent incentives. These are just some of the starkest differences. It's like saying sprawl culture is the same as urban culture.
If the politics were the same (or inconsequential or "happening both ways") then we wouldn't have the situation we have today, where solar and renewables provide a fraction of our nation's energy, it is illegal for businesses to build and sell renewable energy systems in Florida, and utilities get bigger returns for selling more energy and we pay less for each kWh we waste on the margin (among other realities). The politics are highly asymmetrical.
I'm hearing a lot of the "false equivalence" narrative here that unfortunately dominates discussions of climate change too. I recognize that I'm getting pulled into setting up too many dichotomies here too. It's counterproductive.
Natural gas, for instance, is very synergistic with renewables. Nuclear power has a big role to play. Some people think coal w/ carbon capture and sequestration will play role.
I guess my point is that we don't have rational discussions regarding energy policy. Fiddling while Rome burns.
Someone mentioned an idea/paradigm regarding competitive fuels that I had never really heard phrased this way before. He said the problem is that auto makers, electric companies, etc. don't realize what business they're in.
For instance, auto manufacturers are in the car making business and electric utilities are in the electric creation/distribution business. What the car runs on is irrelevant, as is the type of engine. Also the type and distribution of fuel for electric generation is irrelevant.
So all car makers (especially the big ones) should have been the first and fastest to develop good, competitive electric autos years and years ago. Likewise, electric utilities should have always been on the solar forefront, experimenting and setting the standard.
Instead, small, aggressive and creative independent companies have had to fill the void.
Quote from: spuwho on April 22, 2014, 09:28:58 PM
I agree on the era of affinity politics, but it has been happening both ways unfortunately.
Really? What's an example of something liberals are against merely because conservatives are for it?
Quote from: bencrix on April 23, 2014, 08:44:59 AM
QuoteThe two energy sides and cultures inherent in any form of energy market are not all that different.
I can't agree w/ this. They are fundamentally different: centralized vs. distributed; fuel extraction vs. technology development; monopolies vs. competitive marketplaces; major negetive externalities vs. very few / none; mega-finance vs. innovative business models; structural subsidies vs. intermittent incentives. These are just some of the starkest differences. It's like saying sprawl culture is the same as urban culture.
If the politics were the same (or inconsequential or "happening both ways") then we wouldn't have the situation we have today, where solar and renewables provide a fraction of our nation's energy, it is illegal for businesses to build and sell renewable energy systems in Florida, and utilities get bigger returns for selling more energy and we pay less for each kWh we waste on the margin (among other realities). The politics are highly asymmetrical.
I'm hearing a lot of the "false equivalence" narrative here that unfortunately dominates discussions of climate change too. I recognize that I'm getting pulled into setting up too many dichotomies here too. It's counterproductive.
Natural gas, for instance, is very synergistic with renewables. Nuclear power has a big role to play. Some people think coal w/ carbon capture and sequestration will play role.
I guess my point is that we don't have rational discussions regarding energy policy. Fiddling while Rome burns.
I think you'd be surprised that TX and CA, while politically on opposite ends of the spectrum, are both "energy" states that share similar histories and "wild west" cultures that have for generations bred a higher degree of innovation and advancement of the industry as a whole (and other industries). The oil companies aren't 100% oil. And the solar companies aren't financed as incrementally as you think without subsidies (dear Lord, Solyndra was one of Obama's biggest scandals!).
My point was to be taken extremely high level. You have a bunch of smart energy guys in TX who are all Repub/Libertarian. You have a bunch of smart energy guys in CA who are all liberal/libertarian. These guys all employ lots of smart engineers and chemists who all come out of the same schools in this country and move to one of these states. At the end of the day, they aren't as different as we give them credit for.
Calpers shares a headquarters between San Jose and Houston. Literally. Google is getting into the game (they just funded a solar thermal plant here in CA) just like BP got into wind energy.
At the end of the day, the folks in CA are going to beat out the folks in Houston. It's just going to happen. The major breakthroughs are going to happen here. Google slinging cash around is about as big finance as it gets (have you looked at Goog's books? They are basically a country, LoL). Google is the "smartest guys in the room du jour" right now, and it's likely to be another Bay Area company after them, but in the 90s it was Enron in Houston. Same kind of deal, different political flavor.
An interesting EPA list just came out...
http://www.epa.gov/greenpower/toplists/top30localgov.htm
Of the Top 30 cities using renewable energy (or providing on-site using renewables), Houston ranked #1 in sheer KwH.
Ranked by KwH with % of electricity used in parentheses:
1) Houston (48%)
2) DC (100%)
3) Austin (40%)
4) Dallas (40%)
5) Montgomery County (26%)
6) Philadelphia (18%)
7) Chicago Public Schools (20%)
8 ) DFW Airport (30%)
9) Portland OR (103%)
At the end of the day, Houston has a gay mayor, has been making lots of "green" lists, and is a dynamic, growing city with a huge economy and a super diverse, educated population. All of this mud-slinging is really just Washington politics. I'm sure the "conservative" energy guys in Houston and the "liberal" energy guys in CA get together routinely and are buds. Everybody no matter what they produce wants a handout and today's business leaders see what the future holds, even if yesterday's business leaders (aka today's lobbyists and occasional Congressmen) don't. Heck, elements of both TX and CA don't even feel like they are officially part of the US...people in both states basically could give a crap what goes on in Washington. The two states definitely move to the beat of their own drum.
Anybody who has driven across TX on 10 sees humongous wind farms on the other side of SA. I keep bringing TX up and CA up because people tend to associate TX almost exclusively with oil and Republicanism and CA exclusively with green energy and liberalism. But neither fits those stereotypical molds and when we hear of "the energy" companies getting subsidized and the Koch Bros bitching, we are really just witnessing a routine if not flawed system and a bunch of New York City conservatos going at it.
Let the Tea Party run itself out of steam and existence...
Sounds like most new generation coming online is the good kind.
Per Next City
http://nextcity.org/daily/entry/92-percent-of-new-u.s.-power-plant-capacity-this-year-came-from-renewables (http://nextcity.org/daily/entry/92-percent-of-new-u.s.-power-plant-capacity-this-year-came-from-renewables)
92 Percent of New U.S. Power Plant Capacity This Year Came from Renewables
(http://d2srwfcq9qlp1g.cloudfront.net/images/made/renewables1.jpg_920_431_80.jpg)
Earlier this month, the Office of Energy Projects at the U.S. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission released their monthly update on new electricity generation projects, and the news is bright for renewable energy: a full 92 percent of all new capacity added in the United States so far this year came in the form of renewable energy, a larger share than over the same period last year.
In the first three months of the year, 1,150 megawatts of new generation capacity, in the form of new plants or expansions of existing ones, came online in the United States. Of this, all but 91 megawatts came from renewable generation sources. Solar took home the crown with half of the new capacity, while wind picked up the majority of the rest, with 37 percent of the added capacity. The only major non-renewable source to add capacity was natural gas, which added a measly 90 megawatts of generation capacity.
Compared to the same period last year, much less overall capacity was added — from January through March of 2013, the country added nearly 3,300 megawatts of capacity, or nearly triple the amount that came online this year. But the renewable slice of the pie grew, up from 84 percent over the first three months of last year.
The largest two renewable projects to come online in March were in New York and California. In Wyoming County, in Western New York, the 92.8-megawatt Orangeville Wind Farm was activated. The farm has 58 turbines, each 430 feet tall (which, in addition to electricity, generated a bit of controversy when approved), and was enabled by the state's Renewable Portfolio Standard, which aims for a 30 percent renewable share of the electricity market by 2015.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the country, the largest project to start producing electricity last month was phase two of the Genesis Solar Energy Project in Riverside County, outside of Los Angeles in the sprawling Inland Empire. That array of solar panels can produce up to 125 megawatts of electricity, which will be sold to Pacific Gas & Electric.
Zero coal, nuclear or oil capacity (or close to it, in the case of oil last year) was added in the first three months of either this year or last.
392 MW of the solar comes from the February opening of the Ivanpah Solar Thermal plant (http://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/news/2014/02/14/brightsource-google-ivanpah-solar.html) in the Mojave Desert. $2.2B, $1.6B coming from the feds and $168M coming from Google. Warren Buffett spent the same amount on a PV plant up the road in Bakersfield that puts out 1.5x the power, just to give an idea of which form of solar is currently more efficient.
I'd say we'll have to look at year-end, because this past quarter was definitely inflated as a result of the opening of that plant (these things don't open that frequently yet).
As you mentioned, the other plant to open this quarter was in Riverside County, also in CA. So between Genesis an Ivanpah, solar saw a very non-consistent spike in additional capacity.
Simms, it looks like you beat me to some of this, but anyway, here goes:
I would not take issue w/ your characterization of CA and TX as having similar "wild west" cultures.
I would take issue with the idea that there is a monolithic "solar" or "renewables" or "sustainability" industry identified with CA that can be compared in a dichotomous way with oil/gas & Texas.
Sure, CA has very favorable public policy, and yes, there are some tech companies there that invest in projects, and certainly it is a significant sector for the state, but Oregon, Colorado, Iowa, Massachusetts, etc. can also boast significant markets. Ironically, the City of Houston is one of the largest buyers of renewable energy in America (you got to this before me!). Texas is a national leader in wind power. Georgia is one of the fastest growing markets for solar.
My point is that the industries are fundamentally different and are organized very differently, including geographically. San Francisco may have the highest percentage cleantech jobs (i.e. clean tech jobs to total jobs in the metro), but several metros have far more and others have just as many (e.g. NYC, LA, Chicago, DC, Boston, Houston, Dallas, etc.)
To convey that it is somehow the other side of the coin to the oil/gas industry is not accurate. To invoke Solyndra as somehow equivalent to the finance and subsidy systems set up for incumbent energy industries is also not accurate.
I agree that "cleantech" will ultimately disrupt the incumbents dramatically (but not through subsidy or greater lobbying clout, rather through technology and business innovation). It won't result in a "same kind of deal" just based in California. It will be far more dispersed and diversified, with very different business models / infrastructure / politics / behavior / etc. implied.
I think this explains some of the reactionary behavior reported on at the top of this thread, but provides opportunities for a City like Jacksonville.
I think we're actually saying the same thing. I brought up CA and TX initially because people stereotype and associate both conservative politics and oil/Koch bros with TX (the Koch bros are all big NYC guys who collect art and talk politics and fund PACs). Likewise, people associate solar/clean energy with lefty politics, and both with CA where SF is kind of the center of that.
I was actually trying to point out that at the end of the day, it's not so simple as that and stereotypes are kind of dated now. Also was trying to point out that there is a NYC-Washington centric political class totally out of touch with the industries they actually talk about. The O&G industry is evolving (much of oil & gas is now global...off the coasts of Africa or wherever it may be), with engineering employment and office space to match that. TX and CA each are big energy titans of states, TX being the larger and more well known. However, if anyone has spent time in CA, you'll see oil wells *everywhere*. Chevron is based here (my roommates father was general counsel for them when they occupied one of the tallest buildings in the city). Within eyesight of Chevron's HQ are a bunch of solar cell manufacturers. My roommate was raised in the city of SF as a Republican. gasp
Whenever I hear the right demonize the left for something, or vice versa, I have to roll my eyes because these politicians (even if some of them were former businessmen in the 70s/80s) are so out of touch with reality and seem to have no idea what they're talking about.
Folks in CA and TX will gladly take subsidies and pay for lobbyists (on both sides of the aisle), but it's funny because if there are two states in this country that feel like Washington is so distant from them and that they could and perhaps should be their own countries, it's CA and TX.
Yes, agreed. As with so many issues, our country's dysfunctional politics are a hindrance to innovation, problem-solving, wealth-creation, improving-QoL, etc. In this case we happen to be talking about energy policy, but it could be something else.
Energy incumbents are either super-large or they are monopolies (or both). Significant political clout comes with this territory. That makes wielding influence in DC or state capitals efficient for some of them in the short term. Long term, I'm not sure it serves their interests very well.
A battle is looming over renewable energy, and fossil fuel interests are losing
The stage has been set for what one lobbyist called "trench warfare" as moneyed interests on both sides wrestle over some of the strongest regulations for promoting renewable energy.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/a-battle-is-looming-over-renewable-energy-and-fossil-fuel-interests-are-losing/2014/04/25/24ed78e2-cb23-11e3-a75e-463587891b57_story.html?hpid=z1
Stephen, I thought you might be interested in this story....
My finance professor and advisor in college was hired by JPL and NASA to research the economics and finances of doing space based solar for power on earth. With the Shuttle operational, they were looking at new possible uses. It would convert the energy to microwaves where it would be beamed back in geostationary orbit. Anyway, he said the cost was prohibitive due to high launch costs.
With SpaceX now driving down the cost to orbit, they are discussing the idea once again.
Per Aviation Week:
Low-Cost Launches May Boost Chances For Space Solar Power
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Preparations for launch of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rigged to flight test a nascent flyback capability in its first stage drew close attention from solar power satellite (SPS) advocates meeting here, who know that low-cost reusable launch is one key to realizing their dream of providing abundant electric energy from space.
While they are taking different approaches to developing SPS, the small but international group of participants at the SPS 2014 conference here agreed that their goal continues to be an end to the increasingly dangerous struggle to meet the energy needs of a growing world population. They see space solar power as an alternative to the environmental fallout from extracting and burning fossil fuel, and the military cost of securing supplies in unstable regions.
Like California-based SpaceX, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) is conducting research into reusable launch as a way to cut the cost of space launch drastically. Japan is the only nation that has made beaming solar power collected in space back to Earth a goal of its space policy, and JAXA engineers calculate reusable launch is one way to reduce the up-front investment needed to put gigawatt-class power stations in geostationary orbit.
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"We need a reusable launch system," says Susumu Sasaki of Tokyo City University, a professor emeritus at JAXA who has studied the relationship between launch costs and the cost of power delivered from space.
Using a 2003 JAXA reference model with a 1-gigawatt station weighing 10,000 tons, Sasaki says power would cost a prohibitive $1.12/kwh at a launch cost to low Earth orbit (LEO) of $10,000 per kilogram. That is in the ballpark of what space launch costs today. Cut that to $1,000 a kilogram—in the ballpark for a reusable launch vehicle (RLV)—and electricity from space drops to 18 cents/kwh.
The SpaceX RLV work, which includes prototype landing legs on the current Falcon 9 taking cargo to the International Space Station (see photo on page 25) and using the rocket's engines to control the first stage's return to a splashdown in the Atlantic, is but one development in the fast-changing worldwide spaceflight endeavor that holds promise for space solar power.
Sasaki also cites the need for an orbital transfer vehicle (OTV) to move SPS hardware from LEO to the geostationary Earth orbit (GEO) where space power systems would operate, a development that meshes nicely with NASA's efforts to develop a high-power solar electric propulsion system for deep-space exploration (AW&ST March 31, p. 26).
Such a system would shuttle "like a Ferris wheel," in Sasaki's analogy between LEO and GEO, delivering 50 tons a year in the JAXA model with a four-month round trip. Overall, the JAXA approach—which already has a prototype robotic assembly device aggregating simulated power-converter units into larger structures on the ground at Tsukuba Space Center near Tokyo—would require 15 RLVs and more than 200 OTVs to build a power station in GEO, according to Sasaki.
John Mankins, a former NASA chief technologist who has worked with Kobe University professor Nobuyuki Kaya for decades on SPS, has devised a modular approach that would take a small SPS prototype into LEO, increase its capability and then upgrade it to megawatt-class stations in GEO. Parts of the "SPS-Alpha" concept (see illustration on page 24), outlined in great detail in a new book by Mankins entitled The Case for Space Solar Power, match up well with the modular "satlet" self-assembly concept the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa) is pursuing to lower the cost of military satellites (AW&ST Jan. 20, p. 24).
To help fund development of the mass-produced components that would self-assemble in LEO and later GEO to increase capability, Mankins proposes a commercial approach that would sell electricity from the beginning. Users of the early systems in LEO could attach their payloads to the system in place of the power transmitters that are the ultimate goal, enabling much more powerful—hence capable—systems than exist today.
"You have costs, but you also begin to have revenues, because these systems are directly applicable to GEO communications satellites," says Mankins, who co-chaired the SSP 2014 conference with Kaya. "They are directly applicable to all manner of LEO communications satellites, Earth-observing satellites and so on."
Unlike Japan, which is working toward an SPS orbital test, and China, the U.S. has no government program supporting SPS development. But last year the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) thermal vacuum ran a small program to test a lightweight prototype device melding a photovoltaic cell and a flat radiofrequency transmitter in a "sandwich" assembly that lends itself to the evolving space power station architectures and the mass production that would be needed to hold down the cost.
Paul Jaffe, the NRL engineer who put together the demonstration, says that aside from being the first test of SPS technology in space-like conditions, it also gives a data point for forecasting the economics of space-based power.
"It gives you kind of a rough estimate of what the cost is going to be, and it really just considers four factors," Jaffe says. "We've talked a lot during this conference about how the cost of launch figures very prominently into whether SPS is likely to be economically feasible; the cost of the satellite [is important] as well [as the satellite service life]. This watts per unit kilogram is critical and probably the most difficult to quantify, which is one reason why the research we did with the module development is helpful in establishing this empirical basis."
Last fall Ge Changchun, a Chinese academician who conducts SPS research at the University of Science and Technology in Beijing, told the International Astronautical Congress that China's work in the area was underfunded because of the focus on human spaceflight. Since then, the government has paid more attention, he said here. Other attendees say the annual expenditure on the research in China has reached an estimated $30 million, which exceeds that of Japan.
Ge gave a detailed technical presentation on the Chinese SPS program, including his own focus on materials for the enormous but lightweight spacecraft that would be needed to collect solar energy in GEO. Although China is pursuing both laser and microwave power transmission options, there appears to be a growing consensus that microwaves in the 2.45 GHz or 5.8 GHz regions are the preferred wavelengths to pursue because of their all-weather capability, less-rigorous pointing requirements and other factors.
At those microwave wavelengths, conference participants agreed, there is not a safety risk in beaming huge amounts of power down from GEO-based power satellites. Birds could fly through the beams without injury and the huge rectennas set up to receive the microwaves and convert them into electricity would allow enough sunlight to pass through to the ground to support some kinds of agriculture in the proper climate zones.
But the preferred frequencies are already used for scientific research, and the International Telecommunications Union would need to allocate spectrum for SPS. Conference participants noted that the ITU has raised questions about SPS spectrum requirements that need to be addressed in time for the organization's World Radiocommunication Conference in November.
There was also an appreciation that development of SPS should be incremental, both for technical reasons and to avoid "sticker shock" by those who hold the public and private purse strings. Additionally, other uses need to be found for the technology to broaden support for its development, as Mankins suggests.
Isabelle Dicaire, a physicist with the European Space Agency, outlined studies that show both microwaves and lasers from space could literally weaken dangerous hurricanes and other tropical cyclones by heating the water in them with microwave radiation to change the thermal dynamics or by using lasers to seed rainfall in a storm's outer walls to weaken the strength of its rapidly rotating eye. Given the $100 billion cost of Hurricane Katrina in Louisiana, she said, the cost of a system that could mitigate cyclones and provide a space-based power source might be more acceptable.
3 major breakthroughs are in progress for solar energy that are going to drive the prices down.
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- IBM made a breakthrough in 2008 with HCPV (High Concentration Photo Voltaic) where a water cooled PV cell could take on over 2000 suns of photo energy. The heated water can then be used for other purposes, like desalination. A 5000 sun model is currently planned.
- Fabrication of graphene to a thickness of 1 atom. Graphene conducts electricity 100 times faster than silicon, therefore is more efficient.
- Finally the recent ability to grow semiconductor nanowires on graphene.
(http://img.optics.org/objects/news/thumb/5/4/41/NNTUnanoM.jpg)
The combination of these technologies have increased the efficiency of solar output from a long term traditional 44 percent to an astounding 80 percent. Once in mass production, they expect the cost of this produced energy to be around 10 cents per kwh. This would make it entirely competitive with coal, natural gas and nuclear generation on a per kwh basis, but would still require scale to replace central generation.
Research is now looking at efficiency in solar bandwidth to see if more energy can be extracted at certain light frequencies as opposed to the entire rainbow as use today.
The research is entirely promising, it just comes down to how long it will take to reach production and how many regulatory and political hurdles it will have to cross to get deployed.
Has anyone called Elon Musk yet?