Using Solar and Nuclear Energy Won't Cut Our Oil Bill

A few days ago I heard a radio talk-show host say we should cut our dependence on foreign oil by using more wind, solar and nuclear power. While this is a popular notion, increasing our use of these sources will do extremely little to reduce our oil consumption.

Reason: Oil-fueled power plants generate less than 1% of U.S. electricity. Most of our power is produced from domestic fossil fuels like coal and natural gas.

According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, in the 12 months ending March 2010, about 45% of our electricity came from coal, 23% from natural gas, 20% from nuclear plants, and 7% from hydroelectric sources.

Renewable sources like wind, solar, biomass and others contributed nearly 4% of our power.

So where does the oil we drill or import go?

Once again, the EIA to the rescue. In March 2010, finished gasoline accounted for 46% of our oil usage. The rest is used in the manufacture of diesel oil, jet fuel, heating fuel, asphalt, plastics, etc., etc.

Which means if we want to reduce our dependence on oil, we need to severely curtail our use of gasoline-powered cars.

Fuel cells, anyone?

Solar-Powered Plane "Solar Impulse" Makes Impressive Debut Flight

On April 7, 2010, the 3,500-pound solar powered airplane "Solar Impulse" took off from a Swiss military airport near the town of Payerne and flew for 90 minutes.

In the history of solar powered flight, this is a highly significant achievement.

12,000 solar cells, 880 pounds of lithium batteries and 4 electric motors of 10 hp each got the plane off the ground and kept it aloft at an altitude of nearly a mile. The solar powered plane took off at just 30 mph, reaching an average cruising speed of 44 mph.

Watch a video of the maiden flight:



And if you think the plane looks too skinny and delicate to inspire confidence about its ability to carry passengers and cargo, remember that the Wright brothers' Flyer looked puny too. But it spawned leviathans like the Antonov An-225 and the Airbus A380.

Solar Cells Made From Common Substances

From CNET's Green Tech: Researchers at IBM have written a paper describing a solar cell made from common materials like copper, zinc, tin and sulfur or selenium (CZTS).

Conventional silicon and thin-film solar cells are made from scarce or expensive materials that limit production capacity and improvements, according to IBM. Solar cells made from abundant elements have no such cost or production constraints.

The cells IBM describes convert only 9.6% of the solar energy falling on them into electrical energy. While this is 40% higher than what CZTS solar cells have achieved to date, it's far lower than the efficiencies of polysilicon and even thin-film solar cells.

However, IBM's cells use only small amounts of material. If the cells' efficiency were pushed up to 12%, they would be commercially viable alternatives to current products.

Marines Target Solar Energy Development on Front Lines

In remote battle locations, electronic devices used for communications and targeting run on electricity from generators. Transporting fuel to these places is risky and expensive. The Navy is therefore focusing on renewable energy to power computers in the field.

During the first quarter of this year, the Navy will start procuring renewable power systems made up of solar panels and rechargeable batteries. Known as the Ground Renewable Expeditionary Energy System (Greens), it can provide an average continuous output of 300 watts of electricity, with peaks of up to 1 kW.

According to the report in Defense Systems, that's enough to power most of the essential communications and targeting electronics that Marine forces would need in remote locations.

Last October, Navy Secretary Ray Mabus announced five energy goals through the year 2020. One of the goals is to ensure that by the end of the next decade, at least 40% of the Navy's total energy consumption comes from alternative sources.

Plastic Solar Cells Provide Light in Villages Lacking Electricity

Photovoltaic solar cells have long been seen as the most efficient source of inexpensive lighting in rural villages that lack electricity.

Now a scientist at Denmark's Risø National Laboratory for Sustainable Energy has built a lamp made of a flexible plastic sheet on which are embedded a photovoltaic (PV) solar cell, an LED light source, a lithium battery, a diode and copper circuitry.

The rectangular plastic sheet is about the size of an overhead-projector transparency (yes, they still exist). Snapping together the fasteners on two corners of the sheet results in a funnel-shaped structure that produces directional light.

The solar PV cell charges the lithium battery during the day so the battery can power the LED bulbs at night. The cell is made of organic polymers and carbon nanostructures. It is inexpensive to produce but converts only 1% to 2% of the energy falling on it to electricity.

Sure, the light is dim, but the price ($27 for now) is about half what a villager would pay for a year's worth of kerosene to fuel an existing lamp. Each plastic sheet/lamp would last for a year. After all, you can flex a plastic sheet only so many times before it cracks.

Frederik Krebs, the lamp's inventor, hopes to start selling them this year. The market consists of 1.5 billion people in villages in Asia, Africa and Latin America that don't have electricity. Many of these places are so inaccessible they may never be on the grid.

If you were wondering whether an ordinary battery-powered lamp might not cost less, the answer is no. The batteries would run out after about 20 hours, which means each customer would have to buy hundreds of batteries to keep the lamp lit for a few hours every night of the year.

Solar Power Financing for Consumers: PACE, PPA, Lease

Putting a solar power system on your roof can get expensive. You're usually talking five figures at least.

But solar companies and governments have devised a number of financing options for rooftop solar systems that require little or no upfront payment and may cost you less per month than your electric bill. Here are outlines of 3 programs for consumers:

PACE

PACE, or Property Assessed Clean Energy, is a program that allows a homeowner to pay for solar power installations through their property tax. The cost of the solar system is amortized over 20 years at a reduced interest rate and tacked on to the tax bill.

The property tax attaches to the house, not the homeowner. If the owner sells the house, the buyer inherits the solar power system and the higher property tax.

For more on how PACE works, click here.

PPA

In a PPA, or Power Purchase Agreement, a solar power company installs solar panels on a house's roof, usually at little or no cost to the property owner. The company holds title to the panels. The property owner simply pays the company for the solar electricity, usually at a fixed rate lower than that of the utility.

Most solar providers offer PPAs only to commercial building owners. A commercial building typically belongs to the same landlord for several decades, which makes it good candidate for long-term agreements. For a guide to PPAs for organizations, click here (pdf).

At least one company, San Francisco-based SunRun, offers homeowners PPAs with a "small installation fee" upfront. There may be others — check in your area.

Leasing

Just as you lease a car, you can lease the solar panels on your roof. A California company called SolarCity now markets solar system leases.

The concept is simple: Instead of getting all your electricity from the grid, you get some of it from your leased panels. Which means your utility bill shrinks. And if your monthly lease payment and lower electric bill are less than the amount you paid the utility when you got all your power from them, then leasing has saved you money.

At the end of the lease, you can return the panels, upgrade them or renew the lease — just like with your car lease.

How Much Solar and Wind Power Could You Produce in Your Backyard?

The blue rectangle on the roof of the building left of center is a drawing of the solar array.

Have you ever idly mused about the amount of renewable electricity you could produce in your backyard?

Muse no more.

The National Renewable Energy Laboratory has created a nifty map-based tool called "In My Backyard" or IMBY (get it?) that enables you to measure how much solar and wind power you could generate at home.

To use it, type your address into the tool. Doing so brings up a Google Maps satellite image of your house.

Next, select the kind of power you want. If you choose solar power, the tool asks you to draw your solar array. Then it tells you things like how many kilowatts your array will generate, what your rebate and tax credit will be, your payback period and other information.

You can even compare your solar power generation with your existing power consumption.

If you select wind energy, the tool asks you to draw the location of each turbine on your property. Then it may or may not give you energy production data, because it doesn't have wind energy information for all locations.

Try it out.

Solar Panels Pit Homeowners Against Homeowners' Associations

It's happening in California, in Minnesota, and in Texas. In New Jersey, Arizona, and Maryland. And probably in a state close to you.

Homeowners' associations are forbidding solar-minded homeowners to put solar panels on their roofs. Homeowners, steamed at being told they can't be environmentally responsible or save money through solar power, are retaliating with lawsuits. And they're usually winning.

A story in the Los Angeles Times tells about the travails of a resident of Camarillo, Calif., whose homeowners' association denied him permission to install solar panels on his home.

He sued, invoking California's 1978 Solar Rights Act. And won. He went ahead with his solar panels, and now 3 other houses in the community have solar panels on their roofs too.

The issue of homeowners' groups resisting solar panels has been an ongoing one. The groups sometimes prevail, but in the long run they're fighting a losing battle. As GE's residential power systems website reassures customers, "Many states prohibit homeowners' associations from restricting solar devices."

Solar panels have been growing in popularity as their prices have dropped and utility rates have increased, according to the L.A. Times story. Many solar companies now allow you to lease solar panels, significantly reducing the cash outlay required to start enjoying solar power.

The House of Representatives passed an energy bill this year that made it illegal for homeowners' groups to prohibit the installation of solar systems. Let's see if the Senate follows suit.

Chinese Solar Panel Plant to Open in the USA

Suntech Power next year will become the first Chinese company to open a solar panel manufacturing plant in the U.S., reports the New York Times. The plant will be built near Phoenix and is expected to begin production by the 3rd quarter of 2010.

The solar cells in the panels will be made in China. But the polysilicon in those cells will be made in a plant in Texas.

Why not just make the panels in China too? Because with prices of solar panels dropping, shipping costs make up a greater portion of the panels' overall cost. Polysilicon solar panels are heavy because of all the aluminium and glass they contain. A typical 280-watt Suntech solar panel weighs about 60 lbs. (27 kg.).

It also doesn't hurt that the solar panels will carry a "Made in the U.S.A." label.

The move by Suntech comes amid increasingly loud objections by U.S. lawmakers over stimulus funds paying for green jobs overseas.

If you appreciate irony, you will find this story especially poignant. Just 2 months ago, Tom Friedman of the New York Times had written about an American company, Applied Materials, that is also in the solar power business.

Applied Materials, based in Silicon Valley, is the "world leader" in making the equipment that makes solar panels. It has 14 plants worldwide.

Not one is in the United States.

Largest Photovoltaic Solar Plant in North America Opens Today in Florida

The largest photovoltaic (PV) solar power plant in North America opens today in DeSoto County, Florida.

When fully ramped up, the solar power plant's 90,000 panels will follow the sun and churn out 25 MW of power daily.

But dark clouds on the horizon dim the solar plant's future. Florida has no renewable portfolio standard, hence no requirement that power companies produce a percentage of their electricity from renewable sources, or a formula to set rates for such electricity.

That means solar power must compete for customers on the same footing as conventional power. Which makes it almost inevitable that solar plants like this one will not survive, because solar power is way too expensive.

The money to build the DeSoto county solar power plant came from a one-time customer rate increase that the Florida legislature authorized. There's no legislative backing for a rate measure that would keep the plant economically viable.

Team Germany Wins Solar Decathlon

Team Germany's solar house. Photo credit: Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, U.S. Department of Energy.

The Solar Decathlon in the National Mall at Washington, DC, is over. Team Germany won the contest, scoring 908.29 points out of a possible 1,000.

The team from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign ranked 2nd with 897.30 points, and Team California from Santa Clara University's California College of the Arts was 3rd with 863.08 points.

Team Germany, from Technische Universität Darmstadt, achieved a perfect 150 score in the heavily-weighted net metering category of the contest. Throughout the event, the team's house produced more energy than it consumed.

The application process has begun for the next Solar Decathlon, to be held in 2011.

Solar Decathlon Comes to National Mall, Oct. 8-18 2009

Solar fans, your solar home demonstration extravaganza is here! The Department of Energy's 4th Solar Decathlon will be held at the National Mall in Washington, D.C., from Oct. 8 to 18 this year.

Twenty university teams comprising over 800 students from the United States, Canada, Germany and Spain will show off the high-efficiency solar-powered homes they have built for the Solar Decathlon.

Homes entered for competition in the Solar Decathlon will open to the public from Oct. 9 to 18. The winner will be announced Oct. 16.

The Solar Decathlon includes 10 contests that evaluate the architecture, engineering, comfort, marketability, appliances, lighting and other aspects of the teams' houses. The teams will have to perform everyday tasks, including cooking, laundry and washing dishes, to test the energy efficiency of their homes.

Of the 20 teams, 16 are from the U.S., 2 from Canada, and 1 each from Germany and Spain.

You can learn more about the teams and the homes and technologies they have entered in the Solar Decathlon by visiting this page.

World's 10 Largest Renewable Energy Projects

From Scientific American, a slideshow of the world's 10 largest renewable energy projects.

The world is going to need 2 TW (terawatts, or million megawatts) of electricity in the next 40 years. The projects shown in this slideshow are producing electricity right now. They are:

1. Horse Hollow Wind Energy Center, Taylor and Nolan Counties, Texas (currently overtaken by the Roscoe Wind Complex 220 miles west of Dallas)
2. Lynn and Inner Dowsing Wind Farm near Skegness, Lincolnshire, England (now in second place behind the Horns Rev 2 project off Denmark)
3. Rance Tidal Barrage in Bretagne, France
4. SeaGen Turbine in Strangford Lough, Ireland
5. Solar Energy Generating Systems in Southern California
6. Olmedilla Photovoltaic Park in Olmedilla de Alarcón, Spain
7. The Geysers in Sonoma and Lake Counties, Calif.
8. Oy Alholmens Kraft in Pietarsaari, Finland (dry biomass-fired power plant)
9. Aguçadoura Wave Farm near Póvoa de Varzim, Portugal
10. China's Three Gorges Dam
11. (Bonus) Puente Hills in Whittier, Calif. (landfill gas recuperation plant)

Distributed Solar Power Market to Exceed $55 Billion by 2012, says Pike Research

You can make electricity in massive, utility-scale generators and push it hundreds of miles over high-tension wires. Or you can make it close to where you use it, and skip the high-tension wires, the towers, the whole bit.

Distributed energy generation, as the latter method is called, is one of the most important tools for meeting the world's energy needs, says Pike Research, a cleantech research and consulting firm.

Solar photovoltaic (PV) systems make up the biggest component of the distributed energy generation market, according to the firm.

In a study of the PV market, it forecasts that "global installed capacity will approach 2.5 gigawatts by 2012, with annual system revenues surpassing $55 billion." The U.S. will become the largest market for small PV systems by 2011, Pike says.

If you'd like to read an executive summary of the report, click here.

Distributed renewable energy has lots of appeal. Making your own electricity is the kind of thing that swells the heart of the archetypal rugged American individualist. I've written about my view that the future of solar power lies with distributed energy.

But distributed energy has problems. It's not continuous, power quality varies and you can't easily adjust supply to match demand.

Technological solutions to these problems are afoot and the world remains undaunted. Use of distributed energy will keep growing and might even eclipse Pike's projections.

Solar Power From the Sahara -- Could Supply 15% of Europe's Needs

More energy falls on the world's deserts than the entire world consumes in a year. Gather some of the energy falling onto the 9 million square kilometers (3.5 million square miles) of the Sahara, and you could power large chunks of the globe.

That's the thinking behind Desertec, a plan to build massive solar thermal plants in the Sahara desert to bring electricity to Europe, the Middle East and North Africa. A dozen finance and industrial firms have lined up to support the plan, which is expected to be complete in 2050.

The benefits of Desretec are plenty. It would meet 15% of Europe's power needs with clean electricity. It would help European countries achieve their goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions to 80% of their 1990 level by 2050. It would bring electric power -- and jobs -- to resource-poor areas of northern Africa and the Middle East.

But Desertec has a few pitfalls too. It will use Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) technology, which involves mirrors that focus the sun's rays onto tubes carrying water. The sun's heat boils the water, and the resulting steam drives turbines that generate electricity. It takes large amounts of water to keep the tubes filled and mirrors clean. And water is a resource the desert, by definition, doesn't have much of.

There's also the need for a great deal of cooperation between the governments of the countries included in Desertec's span. These Maghreb nations -- Algeria, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, Tunisia and Western Sahara (which is claimed by Morocco) -- have their own laws about foreign investment and a record of missed opportunities to integrate their economies.

Policing such a monumental installation would present another challenge. And who knows whether in 40 years technology will have left CSP behind. With prices of photovoltaic cells falling, localized solar power may become the favored method of tapping the sun in the next few years.

And then of course, there's the cost. Desertec's price tag is projected to be $774 billion, or 400 billion euros.

Just 6 weeks ago, it was pegged at $555 billion.

Hmmm....

Wringing Water out of Desert Air

The desert, by definition, has little no moisture. You would expect desert air to be as dry as... well, desert air. Why bother trying to squeeze water from it?

Turns out, desert air isn't that arid after all. Israel's Negev desert, for example, is humid enough to hold 11.5 milliliters (ml) of water in every cubic meter of air. Granted, 11.5 ml is a little more than 2 teaspoons, and 2 teaspoons of water don't go far toward slaking a thirst or boiling an egg.

But think of all the cubic meters of air piled above the 17.4 billion-square-meter (6,700 square miles) area of the Negev. The amount of water trapped in the air within 1 meter of the ground alone shoots to 17.4 billion times 11.5 ml, or 200 million liters, or about 53 million gallons.

Got your attention, did I?

Now, the point: Two German organizations have found a way to extract the moisture from desert air and convert it to potable water using only renewable energy.

Scientists at the Fraunhofer Institute for Interfacial Engineering and Biotechnology IGB in Stuttgart and at Logos Innovationen developed the process.

In their method, hygroscopic brine runs down a tower-shaped unit, where it absorbs moisture from the surroundings. This diluted brine is then sucked into a tank by a vacuuming process. Solar collectors heat the tank.

Because the brine is in a vacuum, it boils at a temperature considerably lower than 100 degrees C. Thus the solar collector doesn't need to work as hard as it would have under normal atmospheric pressure.

The heat from the solar collector boils the water. The evaporated water -- minus the brine -- is condensed and poured down a tube, ready for human use. The weight of the water column helps create the vacuum in the tank, negating the need for a powered vacuum pump.

The leftover brine, freed of the atmospheric water it had absorbed, runs down the tower again, gathering more moisture from the air.

Any electrical power needed by the system is supplied by photovoltaic cells. Which, like the solar collectors, get their power from sunlight.

Which, by definition, is something else the desert has an abundance of.

The scientists have tested prototypes of this system in the lab. Next step: a live demonstration.

600-Mile California Renewable Energy Transmission Line Canceled

The Transmission Agency of Northern California (TANC) has dropped plans to build a 600-mile transmission line from northern California to the Sacramento area. Three of the largest utilities backing the project had pulled out earlier this month, causing TANC to cancel all development plans.

The line would have carried energy from renewable sources like solar, wind and geothermal systems.

As we reported earlier, several communities along the transmission corridor had opposed the line's installation.

DuPont and Dept. of Energy Collaborate on Thin-Film Solar Cells

Moisture degrades the performance of thin-film solar cells over time. Now DuPont has partnered with the Department of Energy in a $9-million effort to bring to market an ultra-thin film that will protect solar cells.

The protective film will be about 3,000 times thinner than a human hair. It will initially cover flexible, thin-film solar cells made from copper indium gallium selenide (CIGS), and will later be used on other types of solar cells as well.

Thin-film solar cells can be made from plastic. They can be twisted and rolled, unlike glass, and can be used in a greater variety of applications than rigid solar panels made of glass and polysilicon.

The thin-film segment of the solar cell industry is projected to expand significantly in the next few years, according to a study by British research and consulting firm Frost & Sullivan. Thin-film solar cells have low manufacturing costs, don't rely on silicon and have relatively high energy conversion rates. Improvements in technology, such as the one promised by the DuPont-DOE collaboration, will solidify thin-film CIGS solar cells' potential to be the world's dominant form of clean energy in the future.

DuPont is contributing $6 million to the program and the DOE will foot the remaining $3 million.

Any improvement in solar cell technology is good news. Unless costs come down and efficiencies go up, solar photovoltaic power will remain a niche source of clean energy.

New Jersey Ranks 2nd Among States With Solar Power

Here's one for the "Who'd a thunk it?" category: New Jersey ranks 2nd among states with grid-connected solar power. Right after California.

That's right, New Jersey. Not Nevada, not Arizona, not New Mexico. Not the Sunshine State, which doesn't even rank in the top 10.

But tiny, cloudy New Jersey, up here in the gray Northeast. It generates 9% of the nation's grid-connected solar power. Some 4,000 photovoltaic installations are pumping out more than 85 MW of electricity.

How did the state do it?

As this article explains, by a combination of goal-setting, smart policies and investment. Here's a summary of what New Jersey did:

1. Set up new standards for 2-way metering and interconnections between meters and the grid.

2. Did away with rebates funded by the state and instead introduced free-market-based Solar Renewable Energy Credits (SREC). Utilities that didn't want to invest in solar power generation could buy SRECs from installers and operators of solar facilities.

3. Invested $3 million to set up the 1st SREC tracking and trading system in the country.

4. Added Master Plan goals to reduce energy use 20% by 2020 and generate 30% of all electricity from renewable sources by 2020, including 2.12% (about 3.1 GW) from solar power.

5. Invested $260 million between 2002 and 2008 to stimulate the solar power industry.

They learned from their experiences and fine-tuned their programs over the years, and now solar installations are growing like bamboo shoots all over New Jersey.

Tiny Generator Powered by Sunlight and Motion

Take a thin-film solar cell embedded with dye-coated zinc oxide nanowires. Put it on a slice of silicon.

On the other side of the slice, add a nanoscale generator that uses zinc oxide nanowires to turn any kind of motion into electricity. This generator produces electricity using the same principle that a record player uses to convert vibrations in a vinyl LP's groove into electrical impulses.

The result is a tool that harvests energy from sunlight or motion.

Such a tool was recently devised by researchers from the Georgia Institute of Technology, or Georgia Tech as it is affectionately called.

Since the generator can make electricity from any kind of movement -- including biological -- it would thrive near a throbbing environment like a jet engine. Sure enough, according to Zhong Lin Wang, the inventor of the nanoscale generator, these devices would likely be used first in military aircraft brimming with sensors.

Down the road, nanogenerators could eliminate the need for batteries in implantable medical sensors. They would create electricity from simple human motion such as walking, typing or the rise and fall of a person's chest with every breath.