It`s an understandable reaction, however, the popularity and growth of the solar panel industry has increased rapidly and this could be to do with the emphasis governments and society are placing on “going green” and with becoming more energy conscious. With mention of the Ozone layer, our children`s future and the state of the natural world, people have started to take notice of these energy alternatives to help reduce our carbon footprint.

Currently there is a guaranteed feed-in tariff rate of 21p per kWh if the system is installed before the 31st March 2012. It would be guaranteed for 25 years and it`s tax free. So far, so good. It`s a good incentive but with popularity and growth, comes the opportunity to make more money and I`m sure many were waiting for the caveat with using this wonderful new energy resource solution. The government launched an appeal to the high court and we still don`t know whether solar panel users will receive 43.3p per kWh instead of the standard 21p currently in place but as this issue hangs in the balance, consumers either way earn some money by participating in this scheme and helping to contribute to the environment, albeit in a small way.

From April onwards stricter guidelines will be enforced on property owners and solar pv installers regarding energy efficiency in the consumer`s property itself. This makes sense in that it would be a waste of time and money for the consumer if they had a system installed where the maximum potential of that system wasn`t reached but on older properties that don`t qualify for a full feed-in tariff, it would cost more to outfit the property so it is up to standard. Are we becoming elitist as to who can have this service and who can`t? Or are we ensuring that the efficiency side of the project takes priority?

One aspect that cannot be denied is the cost of solar panels. Prices have been reduced and this would make it a more viable option for those looking to not make too big a financial commitment but that want to participate in the scheme. However, we all know that energy prices are increasing constantly and that doesn`t look like changing anytime soon.

So considering these points, there is a lot to be said for solar energy as an acceptable resource and the cost of installation and set-up is justified by the advantage of reduced energy bills in the long run. We just have to be aware that as the scheme changes and evolves and more consumers get on-board with solar energy, we need to be prepared that like with most things, the advantages could disappear. Now is definitely the time to jump on the bandwagon.

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Those whose interests including super high-end exotic automobiles may know the name Alain Clenet and the eponymous retro-designed “drivable art” he built in the late 1970s and early 1980s. In the meeting I had with him at his home this morning, I was taken by the keenness of his mind, as well as the breadth of his heart and spirit. Though he still builds cars as a hobby, he’s turned most of his efforts to helping the poorest of the poor, mostly in undeveloped places in Africa.

I thought I’d relate a quick story that blends Alain’s compassion with his skill for building things – and even a bit of clean energy.

When Alain and his people go to an area, they always ask what the people lack, but they also ask, “What do you have too much of?” In the case of the people of Uganda – in particular, in the rural areas around Uganda’s capital and largest city Kampala, the answer to BOTH questions is “food.”

“What do you mean?” he asked. “You have too much food? How can that be?” “That’s right,” they explained.  ”Sometimes it all comes at once. We can’t keep it from rotting.”

“Ah, you need a way to dry it and then store it,” Alain replied. “Let me see what I can do.”

Soon he and his team, working with local people, had fabricated a large tent with solar powered fans and ovens to dry the food, and huge metal cylinders, with cones on top, flipped upside down – makeshift grain hoppers. A little ingenuity, a dash of mechanical engineering, and a ton of heart.

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Renewable Energy World’s Steve Leone published an article today on solar and its attempts to go mainstream, in which he mentions a great number of developments that will ultimately make solar far more appealing to consumers than it is currently. Some of these notions include transparent PV on windows, as well as PV roof shingles and other forms of building-integrated solar.

It was good to see he noted the role of electric transportation in the equation. I.e., there is clearly a growing number of people who want to control the source of electricity that charges their cars – and what better way to do that than to install that source on their roofs?

If we still have a civilization here in 2050, we will have “gotten there.” The questions are how much damage we will have done, and who’s going to get rich in the process.

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In April 2010, the UK government introduced their own version of a feed in tariff scheme to help boost our renewable figures and to cut carbon emissions. It is a scheme where homeowners are paid 41.3p for generating electricity with photovoltaic solar panels on their roof, and they are then extra in the case that they don’t use the electricity. Combining the average bill savings with these payments amounts to approximately £1,000 per year at today’s prices. With the scheme lasting for 25 years, the panels will pay themselves off over time, usually 9 to 10 years, and then they will start to generate a healthy income. Our national solar panels company has seen demand for solar skyrocket by over 400% from before the FIT was introduced.

Has this scheme had much success with other companies? The most recent statistics released from the Department of Energy and Climate Change show that photovoltaic use has rocketed. By the end of the second quarter of 2011, the UK’s solar electricity capacity had reached 135MW, an increase of 106MW compared to the end of the first quarter of 2010 – an impressive, but unsurprising, 465% increase due to the new profitability of these systems, with the average system taking about 10 years to pay itself off, and then continuing to generate approximately £1,000pa until 25 years have lapsed since the installation.

Whilst the percentage change is large, it is still questionable whether solar panels are a feature of everyday life in the UK. In total, as of April this year, there are 28,505 domestic solar installations benefiting from the Feed in Tariff in this country. However, this means that if you walk down a street of 100 houses, there is just a 5% chance you’ll see any solar panels – not brilliant, but certainly an improvement from pre-2010.

Regarding renewable energy, these schemes have helped the UK catch up with much of the rest of Europe, where the leading solar-superpower has historically been Germany. By the end of 2006, the UK’s solar capacity amounted to a paltry 0.3% of Europe’s totally solar contributions towards energy usage. Under heavy state funding, Germany’s total amassed to 90% of Europe’s solar power generation, with a relatively enormous 3GWp (Gigawatts Peak). This growth on the Continent is continuing – Italy has just announced plans for 26GW installed capacity by 2016. This is to be aided by their generous Feed In Tariff scheme; Italians get paid 0.43EUR per unit of electricity that they generate, with an additional 30% payment if they have a property certified as energy efficient, and with further regional incentives such as interest free loans, the Italian government have arguably the most attractive financial rewards structure within Europe for encouraging domestic solar installation.

The introduction of community solar projects is a sign of a paradigm shift where people are much more conscious of solar panels, possibly due to the publicity of their significant financial benefits, or possibly due to the publicity of global warming. Photovoltaic systems are not cheap, with domestic systems costing approximately £11,000, and this has led to several large scale group-buying projects. In the USA, the ‘1 Grid Off The Block’ company has had continued success – they contact a solar panel installation company within a particular state and come up with a heavily-discounted price for a certain solar panel system on the proviso that at least a certain number of households sign up to the scheme, which is then advertised across the state to get the homeowners on board.

The UK has yet to see such a broad scale of community installations, although progress is being made on a more local scale. The Ouse valley Energy Service Company (a non-profit organisation) decided to try something similar – they held a meeting to fund-raise for a large solar installation where the dividends could be shared between those investing anything from £250 to £20,000. The directors were “blown away” by the response – 300 people attended the meeting and £307,000 was raised in just six weeks, funding 544 panels, and saving 1,200 tons of CO2 emissions over the expected lifespan of the panels. Since this initiative, despite a slight reduction in payments available for large-scale solar power generation, the Energy Efficiency Financing Scheme and the Renewable Heat Incentive have both been introduced by the government to push for more community-led solar power projects.

Arguments against the current schemes in place are based heavily on their bias towards richer households – only those who can afford solar power can benefit from it. An increase in split ownership projects could bring the benefits to a wider audience and heighten awareness of the environmental issues involving renewable energy generation. The Renewable Heat Incentive, which applies to relatively cheap hot-water-generating solar panels, is a positive first step, but greater action from community groups or the government is necessary for solar to continue being adopted until it reaches a mass scale.

Unfortunately, the government have just announced that in the UK, subsidies will be slashed – from their current high levels of 41.3p per kWh to 21p per kWh. Today is the day that these changes come into place – it’ll be interesting to see if this will devastate the industry, or if the falling prices of panels – the reason for the cut to the subsidy – will mean that households realize solar is still a good investment.

By James Hawkins, TalkSolarPanels.co.uk.

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Sungevity, based in California and known for its home solar products and services, recently announced its international launch into Holland.  While Sungevity has expanded across the U.S. into various states, this will be the first time it is crossing abroad. In fact, Sungevity is the first United States-based home solar company to expand internationally. This great news for the home solar industry, environmental enthusiasts, and those looking to save money on their electric bill.

To accomplish the international endeavor, Sungevity invested a significant stake into Zonline, a Dutch start-up solar company. Zonline will be utilizing Sungevity’s proprietary software and brand identity assets. The two companies plan to work closely together in order to provide Dutch homeowners with clean and renewable solar energy. Holland has the second highest electricity rates in Europe, making their need for solar energy quite significant. Both companies have shown excitement about the partnership and believe it will be a mutually beneficial relationship. Danny Kenned, President of Sungevity, explains, “Our recent successful expansion to five Northeast states simultaneously was a significant proof point that our business model is highly scalable. We are now excited about the opportunity to introduce our business model in Europe through our new partnership with Zonline.” The two companies have voiced their strong emphasis on a customer-focused user experience.

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As solar companies strive to provide consumers with the sun’s renewable energy, they too are doing their part to help those in need. Many U.S. solar companies have reached out to the third world in effort to provide them with solar equipment that will help improve lives on the daily, from lighting schools, to power communication equipment. Countless rural towns throughout Africa do not have direct access to a power grid because of the sheer cost to transport the electricity over far distances. However, solar companies are changing this.

For example, Empowered By Light, an organization dedicated to encouraging the use of renewable energy, and Sungevity, a home solar company, joined together to bring solar power to Zambia in Africa. They provide lighting and charging devices, powered by the sun, to help improve the lives of residents. In countries like Rwanda, The Rwanda Ministry of Infrastructure encourages solar power and has even created a solar power plant that connects to the national grid in effort to reduce energy costs in increase the access to renewable energy. As technology becomes cheaper and more advanced and with solar companies significantly aiding in accessibility and installation of these devices, access to solar will only become more prolific in these areas.

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This is based on the data from the US Energy Information Administration(1) (note that solar which is composed of PV, CSP and CPV is part of Other Renewables, but is also shown separately).
Total Electric Power Industry Summary Statistics, Year-to-Date 2011 and 2010
Net Generation (thousand megawatts)
Year Coal NG Nuclear Hydro Other Renewables Petroleum Total Solar

and on a projected growth table based on growth of the current production for solar energy.

This is despite an over 60% per year increase in installations (2). Being a CPV technology developer, you tend to think that if you came up with some ideas, there are probably a lot of people right behind you with similar ideas, and tend to think you are on a tight timeframe. I had a quick education about that not being the case. I worked with a VC who really liked the technology, did the due diligence and had it checked out, and then when everything was a green light, decided that CPV was too small a market.
This is somewhat troubling for me because I am a very strong advocate for solar energy because of the huge benefits compared to burntech (burning fossil fuels) and nonrenewable energy source are by definition a degrading energy source. Are there examples of capital intensive industries with hyper growth? Well if you are using a computer to read this and are using the internet to get the information, you are now using two examples. From 1995 to 2007 the number of internet users grew at an average of 48.6% per year (3) . The first few years were even more dramatic; with the growth rate from 1995 to 2000 the number or internet users grew at 88.7% per year. Personally I think that we will have about 40% increase per year in solar power generation for the next two years. In 2014 there will be an inflection point as solar is now cheaper than the grid and new electrical generation switches more to solar. I would predict between 60% to 70% growth per year. After that the growth rate will diminish quite a bit because while the majority of new electrical generation will be solar, the older forms (especially Hydro and Nuclear) that have already sunk the capital costs will still have cheaper electrical then solar. I would guess that around 2020 the growth rate will slow down by about 5% per year until it stabilizes at between 10 to 15%. How big can the industry get? Well six of the largest seven companies (by revenue) are energy companies. While the solar industry can pat itself on the back for getting $2.4 billion in 2010 for the energy companies that is chump change with the top six bringing in 1,782 Billion (4) during that same time. Almost all of the final big players will be decided by 2017, with most of them being in place by 2014.

Now what does this have to do with the title? Well being in a solar startup, the expectations are much different than other companies. If your company told investors that they expected to grow 100% per year for the next ten years (that works out to about 6% per month), they would probably be delighted. For a solar startup if you mentioned 100% growth per year it will be a short conversation. You need to be growing around 8% per month. Now let’s say that you decide to grow more aggressively at 9% per month. Well if you and your competition start out the same, in 9 months you will be about twice the size while your “slow moving competitor” is only about 1.85 times larger. Now let’s say you have a supply problem which halts your growth for three months. It will take you 20 months regain the lead. A startup with hyper growth is walking a fine line between aggressive growth and being able to maintain and control that growth.
For me personally it means that I will want and organization in place with good products, good engineering, supply chain management … by the beginning of 2013. It also means that this will not be a sprint, but a marathon. My oldest son will be going to college next year; I will definitely suggest he tries to do something related to solar. Finally for my sanity, in fact I do have some time which means I can see my younger son’s soccer game.

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Interesting facts and trends emerged from the study:

• Thirty utilities report owning 140 MW of solar as opposed to simply purchasing the power from facilities owned by others, which is up 300% over last year.
• About 63% of the new solar capacity came from utilities OUTSIDE California in 2010.  7 of 10 ranked utilities were outside California and 4 of the top 10 were in the Eastern U.S.
• The largest concentrating solar power (CSP) project in 20 years was installed in 2010, a hybrid CSP-natural gas plant owned by Florida Power & Light.

Centralized projects are another trend gaining traction. Solar markets have mostly relied on distributed PV for new capacity. But centralized project are growing, with eight centralized projects with greater than 10 MW capacity installed in 2010.

Two of the largest PV projects to date in the U.S. were installed in 2010: the 48 MW Copper Mountain project in Nevada and the 30 MW Cimarron project in New Mexico.

Diversification is also growing. Utilities are looking at a variety of solar procurement. Some utilities purchase power directly from their customers (such as rooftop PV) sold back to the grid; others create solar electric markets by owning or by procuring solar generation. Some use plants in concert with natural gas, CSP and/or PV. Utilities are taking different paths, to be sure. However, not all utilities are diversifying procurement – FPL’s portfolio, for instance, is almost all based on 3 utility-owned PV and CSP projects.

Who ranked at the top in the 2010 SEPA report for annual solar megawatts?

Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) in California installed 157 MW in 2010, which is the top position for new installation. PG&E also purchased output from the aforementioned new Copper Mountain PV facility.

Florida Power & Light (FPL) ranked second, installing 87 MW. Two utility-owned projects in 2010 were the 10 MW PV project at Kennedy Space Center and the 75 MW hybrid CSP power plant at a natural gas plant.

New Jersey’s Public Service Electric & Gas (PSE&G) was in 3^rd place with a 75 MW portfolio, says the SEPA report.

Cumulatively, Southern California Edison comes out on top. Cumulative solar megawatts is a measure of solar use over time, including prior to 2010. Southern California Edison has used 578.3 MW while Pacific Gas & Electric is at 476.5 MW. Third place is tied between New Jersey’s PSE&G and Florida’s FPL, both at 117 MW.

What about penetration rates?

I find this to be an interesting statistical measurement.  The actual number of solar systems per customer is reflected in this chart rather than the solar capacity per customer. This is a method of analyzing how solar is integrating.

Roseville Electric (a municipal utility in northern California) has about 20 solar systems per 1,000 customers, ranking at the top. Verendrye Electric (a coop in North Dakota) came in at 19 solar systems per 1,000 customers. Palo Alto Utilities (CA) and Maui Electric (Hawaii) came in third and fourth with 14.8 and 13.8 solar systems per 1,000. In fact, Hawaii utilities were also in the 6th and 7^th position as well, indicating solar integration is moving well there.

Which state led the nation in solar module manufacturing in 2010?  According to another organization, SEIA (Solar Energy Industries Association), it is Oregon. That is thanks to SolarWorld, a company which opened North America’s largest solar manufacturing facility in Oregon 2 years ago. Oregon was followed by Ohio, Massachusetts, Tennessee and Michigan.

SEPA says there is a variety in approach by municipalities to solar systems. Some are cooperatives, some are municipal, and others are private investor-owned.  It is interesting that all top ten ranking utilities for 2010 were investor-owned, and eight of the top ten were ranked last year as well. The two newbies were Atlantic City Electric Company and Jersey Central Power and Light.

Who is SEPA? It is an non-profit resource for information about solar technologies, policies, and programs. SEPA focuses on working with electric utilities, but provides value to all businesses that have an interest in solar energy.

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Mason speaks in a calm, measured tone, but there was clearly urgency in his voice as well. “We pay $0.41 to $0.43 a kilowatt-hour for electricity here, and it’s ruining us. The major hotel says that it will be forced to close its doors if we can’t come up with less expensive electricity. But no one is really trying to solve the problem. Can we talk about this?” he implored.

“Of course.  Let me ask you: What are the issues re: solar?” I asked.

“It’s cultural,” Mason explained. “As far as the leaders here are concerned, there is no problem to fix. You flip a switch and the lights come on. Until the power goes out, there is no issue at all. I can do solar arrays for private customers, but there’s no incentive. Not only are there no feed-in tariffs, it’s even illegal to tie them to the grid.”

“Isn’t there any public consciousness on the subject?” I asked. “Won’t these so-called ‘leaders’ eventually be replaced by more enlightened people?”

“Oh yes, the government turns over completely every four years. But instability just makes the problem worse. Investors have no certainty in what they’ll be dealing with even a few short years in the future.”

“I hear you,” I sympathized. “I can tell you about a larger country in which that kind of uncertainty is putting a damper on clean energy. It’s called the United States.”

As we chatted and exchanged ideas, I came to know Chris as a terrific person with a heart the size of Texas. Information on his company, Comet Energy,  and his blog, Caribbean Renewable, is linked here.

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In this short video, MIT Professor of Energy Dan Nocera makes several interesting points about bringing electric power to the third world using solar energy and fuel cells. His analysis of how much energy will be required by the year 2050 is fascinating.

In it, he asks the question: How can we prevent three billion additional babies from being born into poverty?  The simple answer: educate poor females.  When you do that, the birth rate drops like a rock.

Thus the extraordinary value of organizations like the Turimiquire Foundation, which I hope readers will put on their Christmas giving list; I know it’s on mine.

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