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Utilities Are Losing the Battle Against Solar Energy

November 30, 2016 Webmaster

Rooftop solar energy is becoming a financially viable way for millions of U.S. consumers to generate their own electricity — and utilities are doing everything to kill the solar boom before it gains too much traction. Utilities in states such as Florida, Wisconsin, and Nevada have tried to undermine rooftop solar at the regulatory level and in ballot measures. As a reaction, voters have fought back and beaten the efforts to squash solar energy.

The impact on residential solar companies Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA), Vivint Solar(NYSE: VSLR), Sunrun (NASDAQ: RUN), and SunPower (NASDAQ: SPWR) shouldn’t go unnoticed. They’re winning the policy war against utilities, and as they do, it’ll open a larger and larger market across the country.

POLICY WINS ARE GOING TO RENEWABLE ENERGY

The election earlier this month was accompanied by a number of ballot initiatives that will impact solar energy for years to come. And for the most part, solar energy was a huge winner.

Despite utilities’ spending $26 million to pass a referendum that would have undermined solar economics in the state, Florida voters rejected the utility referendum. The state now looks like it’ll have a bright solar future.

In Nevada, less than a year after the public utility commission essentially killed the rooftop solar industry, residents overwhelmingly voted to break up Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE: BRK-B)-owned NV Energy’s long monopoly in the state. Customers have to be given energy choice, meaning more solar in one of the country’s sunniest states.

In the past, Wisconsin has tried to add fees to utility bills that would kill solar energy before it ever got started, but those attempts were rejected by the court.

There’s an important trend here for utilities and solar companies: When solar energy goes on the ballot or to the court, it wins. That should have every utility in the country frightened because that gives millions of customers choice regarding their energy needs.

THE LOOMING THREAT FOR UTILITIES

Policy wins are important because they lay the groundwork for future innovations to take hold in energy. Today, that means rooftop solar on more than 1 million homes in the U.S. — and that number is growing quickly.

The next step will be adding energy storage to homes, something that Tesla is leading on and that Vivint, Sunrun, and SunPower are all adding, as well. As energy storage is added, customers can use more of their own energy, making net metering less important and providing more flexibility for customers.

The holy grail for renewable energy is allowing customers to cut the cord to the utility altogether. We may be a decade from that being a reality, but the more utilities add fixed fees or demand charges, the more quickly the economics of cord-cutting will become compelling. Long-duration energy-storage technologies are already beginning to be deployed, and before long, a couple of Powerwalls and a long-duration energy-storage system may be a viable option for consumers, making utilities irrelevant.

THE SLIPPERY SLOPE IN ENERGY

Utilities are in a tough position, having incentives to apply policies that protect short-term profits but which may undermine long-term competitiveness. It’s clear that when push comes to shove, voters are willing to overturn utility policies, voting for solar energy across the country. That has to be a concern for utilities, and it shows that the future is getting brighter for solar energy companies providing the solutions customers want.

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Alternative Energy Climate Change Electricity Energy Saving News Solar Energy

SunPower Breaks World Record for Efficient Solar Panels

February 23, 2016 Webmaster

The more efficient the solar panel, the less space used.

Solar giant SunPower announced on Monday that it can now make a solar panel that can convert 22.8% of the sunlight that hits it into electricity. According to SunPower, that’s a new world record.

The efficiency of solar panels is an important metric to both solar companies and to its customers. When panels are more efficient it mean that rooftops can be covered in fewer efficient panels, which use less materials, but that can generate the same amount of energy as more less-efficient panels.

SunPower says its highly efficient panels can generate 70% more energy in the same space over the first 25 years, compared to less efficient panels. Many solar panels are somewhere between 15% and 18% efficient. SunPower and others have been working to boost the efficiency of panels using material science and optics tech innovations.

Solar companies are in a battle to boost the efficiency of their panels and tout new records. SunPower SPWR -5.85% says its 22.8% solar panel was verified by the federal National Renewable Energy Laboratory.

Last year, SolarCity claimed that it had started making its own highly efficient panels, with an efficiency that “exceeded 22%,” verified by the Renewable Energy Test Center (which isn’t one of the more commonly used verification labs). But SolarCity’s SCTY -5.92% solar panels were also planned to be made in small volumes on a pilot solar panel manufacturing line in Fremont, Calif.

Creating solar panel efficiency breakthroughs in the lab or on a small scale, is far easier than making those efficient panels in very large volumes. But SunPower says the average efficiency of its solar cells (which make up panels) at the end of last year was close to 23%.

SunPower’s stock was up over 3% in morning trading to $21.84. Oil giant Total owns 66% of the Richmond, Calif.-based SunPower.

Last week SunPower announced fourth quarter and year 2015 earnings. SunPower says it generated $1.58 billion in revenue in 2015, with an annual loss of $299.44 million. The company was profitable on an annual basis in 2014 and 2013.

Check out Fortune’s recent interview with SunPower CEO Tom Werner.

Fortune.com

Alternative Energy Climate Change Crude Oil Electricity Energy Saving Government News Solar Energy

What Just Happened in Solar Is a Bigger Deal Than Oil Exports

December 21, 2015 Webmaster

The clean-energy boom is about to be transformed. In a surprise move, U.S. lawmakers agreed to extend tax credits for solar and wind for another five years. This will give an unprecedented boost to the industry and change the course of deployment in the U.S.

The extension will add an extra 20 gigawatts of solar power—more than every panel ever installed in the U.S. prior to 2015, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF). The U.S. was already one of the world’s biggest clean-energy investors. This deal is like adding another America of solar power into the mix.

The wind credit will contribute another 19 gigawatts over five years. Combined, the extensions will spur more than $73 billion of investment and supply enough electricity to power 8 million U.S. homes, according to BNEF.

“This is massive,” said Ethan Zindler, head of U.S. policy analysis at BNEF. In the short term, the deal will speed up the shift from fossil fuels more than the global climate deal struck this month in Paris and more than Barack Obama’s Clean Power Plan that regulates coal plants, Zindler said.

Data Source: Bloomberg New Energy Finance

This is exactly the sort of bridge the industry needed. The costs of installing wind and solar power have dropped precipitously—by more than 90 percent since the original tax credits took effect—but in most places coal and natural gas are still cheaper than unsubsidized renewables. By the time the new tax credit expires, solar and wind will be the cheapest forms of new electricity in many states across the U.S.

The tax credits, valued at about $25 billion over five years, will drive $38 billion of investment in solar and $35 billion in wind through 2021, according to BNEF. The scale of the new projects will help push costs down further and will stimulate new investment that lasts beyond the extension of the credits.

Few people in the industry expected a five-year extension. Stocks soared. SolarCity, the biggest rooftop installer, surged 34 percent yesterday. SunEdison, the largest renewable-energy developer, climbed 25 percent, and panelmaker SunPower increased 14 percent.

Congress is expected to vote by the end of this week on the tax credits as part of a broader budget deal that also lifts the 40-year-old ban on U.S. oil exports. Oil producers have lobbied for years to lift the ban, but it isn’t likely to significantly affect either consumption of oil or deployment of renewables. Leaders from both parties reached an agreement on the bill late Tuesday.

The 30 percent solar tax credit was set to expire next year and will now extend through 2019 before tapering to 10 percent in 2022. The wind credit had expired at the end of 2014, and the extension will be retroactively applied from the start of 2015 through 2019, declining in value each year.

Wind power has had an especially tumultuous relationship with U.S. lawmakers, who have kept the industry’s credits alive through a disruptive ping-pong game of short-term extensions every year or two. “You open manufacturing plants and then you close them. And then you open them and you close them,” BNEF’s Zindler said. “It’s economically inefficient. This will give them a good five-year line of sight on what the market will look like, and that’s really important.”

Bloomberg

News Solar Energy

Solar Summit Slideshow: The PV Module Market

April 30, 2013 jrobinson

GTM Research Senior Analyst Shyam Mehta provides actionable intelligence for the solar module manufacturing industry.

ERIC WESOFF: APRIL 25, 2013

GTM Research Senior Analyst Shyam Mehta spoke at this week’s Solar Summit in Arizona on solar module manufacturing. Rather than preaching “big ideas [and] grand narratives [that] don’t always give you actionable intelligence,” Mehta tried to provide real-world data points and tried to “start from the ground.”

Here are a few of his points and the accompanying data.
The performance gap between p-type mono-crystalline silicon and multi-crystalline silicon is narrowing

Efficiency gains in conventional multi c-Si have accelerated and the gains have come “without significant increase in capex or material cost,” according to Mehta. Yet mono crystalline still commands a 4 cent to 8 cent per watt premium in sales price. Mehta suggests that the value proposition for p-type mono continues to deteriorate.

P-type might make sense in highly real estate-constrained Japan, but in the long term, Mehta sees n-type mono as a key to maintaining the efficiency advantage of mono. Panasonic, SunPower and Yingli are working on n-type cells.

Are 72-cell modules the future?

Mehta noted that 60-cell modules are the current standard but there are 72-cell, 96-cell, and 128-cell modules available. He said that 72-cell modules have gained significant market share because large modules can reduce balance-of-system costs by up to 7 cents per watt.

The 60-cell modules still have an advantage over larger modules in that they are more rigid, can be carried by one person, and more modules can be fit onto complicated rooftops.

Mehta suggests we will start to see increasing numbers of larger and different sized modules that are “highly segment-specific.”

Will module prices just keep dropping?

Spot pricing for polysilicon, as well as for cells and modules, has actually risen 5 percent to 15 percent this year. Is this an indication of a sustained price increase? Mehta points to some salient data from GTM research — 81 percent of ASP reduction over the last two years has come from margin evaporation and polysilicon. He notes that non-silicon materials such as glass and encapsulants have little cost-reduction potential remaining.

Long

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First Solar Shines as the Solar Industry Falters

April 12, 2013 Webmaster