Solar Energy Industries Association and U.S. Solar Heating

Today the Solar Energy Industries Association and the U.S. Solar Heating and Cooling Council (SHC Council) launched the U.S. Solar Heating & Cooling Alliance (SHC Alliance). The Alliance is focused on growing the solar heating and cooling market through reducing barriers and advocating for policies on the federal, state and local levels."We're thrilled that this partnership between SEIA and the U.S solar heating and cooling (SHC) industry has been established to focus on securing pathways to greater deployment of solar heating and cooling technologies," said newly elected SHC Alliance Chairman Mike Healy. "This collaboration will empower us to heighten awareness of this technology and the benefits it can provide to families and businesses."
"SEIA encourages all companies and organizations interested in the expansion of the solar heating and cooling sector in the U.S. to join the SHC Alliance," said SEIA president and CEO Rhone Resch. "Solar heating and cooling is an expanding, significant sector of our industry -- which is providing affordable, accessible and reliable clean energy technology for our nation while helping us achieve energy independence and security."Solar and heating cooling technologies comprise a growing proportion of the solar technologies being deployed throughout the U.S. They collect the thermal energy from the sun and use this heat to provide hot water, space heating, cooling, and pool heating for residential, commercial, and industrial applications. These technologies displace the need to use electricity or natural gas.
Today, Americans across the country are at work manufacturing and installing solar heating and cooling systems that significantly reduce our dependence on imported fuels. In 2010, the U.S. saw 35,464 solar water heating systems and 29,540 solar pool heating systems installed, heating a total of more than 65,000 homes, businesses and pools.Renewables are not just of interest to Abu Dhabi for domestic power generation. The expanding international market provides a promising investment opportunity. Masdar is involved in building state-of-the-art solar plants in Spain and owns 20 percent of the "London Array", the world's biggest offshore wind farm, off the coast of England.Presenting the UN Network for Sustainable Development Solutions at Sustainability Week in Abu Dhabi in January, Tubiana said even if the transition in the region itself was a slow one, the Gulf states' willingness to invest in innovative technologies which would only make a return in the longer term would help renewables to become competitive.

Solar panels provide savings, lessons at Jefferson High School

Solar panels affixed to the roof at Jefferson High School will mean energy savings for the school and learning opportunities for students.Think of it as a life-sized science lab. Instead of huddling around a battery and a light bulb in the physics room next year, students will be able to pull up a website and learn how much power the panels are generating.They'll be able to adjust the panels and see if that results in more or less energy production. Then, they'll apply the raw production numbers to the building's overall electrical usage and calculate what it means in terms of dollars and cents.
The solar panels — purchased from Rockford Renewable Energy — are expected to arrive in a few weeks, but the educational value arrived last year when teachers Nancy Cleburn and Dallas Turner led students through the state grant application.Teachers and students across the state were challenged to study solar panels and wind turbines and determine which one would work best to improve energy efficiency at their particular school. They also were asked to weigh cost, warranties and durability and come up with a recommendation.Jefferson's environmental science students conducted lab work to prove their theories, supplied data and eventually chose solar panels. They should be able to reduce the building's electrical bill by $100 a month, Turner said.
Going forward, students across the building will get pulled into the project. Writing students will be able to report on the panels' outcomes and perhaps help instructors apply for another grant. Design students may be asked to come up with a better way to mount the panels on the roof.The project is a great opportunity for kids to connect lab work with real life."It was a real project, and they could see the results of their work doing something. It's not just something on paper," Turner explained. "It's something that's going to be here at their school."It's going to be something that students will remember long after they leave the school and much more than something they read about in a textbook."It's real-world science," said Laura Jernigan, an assistant principal for science curriculum K-12. "We're moving away from the traditional classroom and from memorizing and reading text to assessing real-world problems."Jefferson also will be getting a windmill soon, Jernigan said, as will East High School.

The Case for Grid-Connected Energy Storage

This past week, I attended the Midwest Energy Forum at the University of Chicago.  The Forum focused on the future of the U.S. electricity grid and the technologies that are likely to transform it over the next 30 years.   Experts in many of these technologies, including energy storage, wind, solar, nuclear, gas, and high voltage DC transmission systems, made presentations.Of all the technologies discussed, however, I came away with the impression (which I suspect was shared by many) that energy storage was the poor step child of the renewables industry.  Although the representatives of the wind, solar and other renewables industries were polite and nominally supportive of storage, they were consistent in their message that storage has a long way to go and that Best Custom Solar Chargers was certainly nowhere near as important as the renewable energy technologies they were advocating.
In fairness, the storage experts did not do much to rebut this perception.  While several experts gave good presentations about what storage could do on the grid, none explained with anything near the coherence of the wind, solar and transmission proponents why what storage could do was important and why the public or the government should care about it.It is, of course, critically important that the energy storage industry make its case for support to the government and to the public in a way that is honest, rational and persuasive.  Our colleagues in the wind and solar industries have done a great job of doing that.  At least in terms of public relations and dialogue, I would agree with them that storage has a long way to go.
So let me give it a try:  Storage is important for the same reason that wind and solar energy are important but only more so--and only assuming that the true value of wind and solar energy technology is properly understood.While it is true that wind and solar are relatively clean forms of energy, cleanliness in itself is not their principal value to the grid.  Some experts argue that because of the cycling of thermal energy plants that generally must take place in order to balance the variable nature of wind and solar power, the overall environmental benefits of wind and solar are overstated.  Whether or not that is true, it is certainly true that the relative environmental benefits of wind and solar energy depend on the nature of the fuels they replace.  Where that fuel is relatively clean natural gas (which appears will be the case in the United States for the foreseeable future), it is difficult to argue that the low relative environmental benefits of wind and solar over natural gas justify the billions of dollars of subsidies that the wind and Best Custom Solar Mp3 player and charger industries have received.But wind and solar energy are, in fact, of great value to the electricity grid.  Their value, however, derives not just from the fact that they are relatively clean but from the fact that they each represent a useful new power resource that permits us to operate the grid more flexibly.  Society can use this new flexibility to change the way that electricity is generated and used across the system so as to pursue whatever goals society wants to achieve.

Solar Bus Stops Light The Way In Perris, California

With an abundance of sunshine, it's no wonder that some of the most innovative and successful solar power installations are found in California. Recently, the City of Perris, located in green energy-friendly Riverside County, announced that it would use solar power to transform its ordinary bus stops into miniature power plants.According to city planner Clara Miramontes, six solar-powered bus shelters, similar to these in Japan, will be erected in different locations around the city. Each will have 1.2-kilowatt solar arrays on their roofs and the energy will be used to power nearby traffic lights.Work on the solar powered bus shelters is expected to begin in late March 2013. The cost of each solar-powered bus stop is about $17,000 while the cost of a traditional shelter ranges from $7,000 to $17,000. While the cost difference may be negligible, the benefits are quite clear: "The solar bus shelters will be able to generate approximately 25 percent of the electricity needed to power the traffic lights," Miramontes said.
The City is working with Greencrest Energy Solutions on the design and installation of the solar bus shelters. Amrita Holden, senior managing partner at the energy firm, says that excess solar power collected throughout the day will be stored in an on-site battery so that the sun can continue to offset the lights' energy use, even at night."The city will save not hundreds, but thousands of dollars in electricity costs per shelter," she said. "The sun is paying for that electricity."Two other companies that will likely be impacted by LEDs in the future will be The Home Depot, Inc. (NYSE:HD) and Lowe's Companies, Inc. (NYSE:LOW). Both are major hardware stores serving both the professional and individual markets. A quick walk into either store will reveal large lighting sections. The housing slump and recession took a toll on sales at these two companies, however, a big push into the housing market by companies like The Blackstone Group L.P. (NYSE:BX), suggest that we might be at the start of a housing turnaround.
If so, remodeling activity will likely increase as people spruce up new homes and rehab old ones to increase sales values. With LED technology finally hitting the mainstream, more and more projects will likely include the technology because it is the "best in class" option. Particularly if companies on the scale of Blackstone do renovations across massive single family home portfolios.Since new technology usually carries higher margins, the sales mix in Home Depot and Lowe's lighting segments is likely to improve. This will help results at both companies, though probably not materially enough to really move the earnings needle. While not nearly as direct a play as Philips or GE, this is an indirect, and perhaps safer, way to benefit from increasing LED sales.

Solar power rising in West Virginia, company official says

Just four years ago, solar power got little recognition as a viable alternative to mainstream energy."There wasn't something you could consider an 'industry,'" said Colin Williams, the vice president of marketing and sales of Mountain View Solar. "There were very few people who had installed systems, but there was little in the way of industry."Things have changed.Experts say solar power is now one of the fastest-growing industries in America, with a total capacity of 1,992 megawatts, enough to power one million homes, according to data from the Solar Energies Industry Association.With increasing demand, the prices of raw material and installations are plummeting. In 2011 alone, the average price of a solar panel has dropped 58 percent. The price drop and the hiked demand has put a strain on oversees manufacturers, according to the SEIA.
Williams said that since 2009, Mountain View Best Custom Lighting Africa has installed solar systems on 200 homes in the state, along with a bevy of government buildings -- some as part of projects funded out of the federal stimulus."Our company has grown from three people in 2009 to 25 full-time employees," he said. "And you know they're good-paying jobs."Mountain View Solar started as a custom homebuilders company 20 years ago, Williams said. They switched to a model that focused on renewable energy systems in 2006.In 2011, Mountain View Solar installed 84 solar panels on the wastewater plant in Hurricane. Town officials said that the 20-kilowatt panels, which are visible from Interstate 64, are expected to shave $1,000 a month off the power bill.
"Our plant costs the city a lot of money -- around $15,000 a month -- to operate," city manager Ben China Portable Exporters said at the time.The installation marked the first time that solar panels were built on a West Virginia wastewater plant, Williams has said.And the city didn't have to pay a dime, thanks to a $193,000 federal grant from the U.S. Department of Energy, which was part of a larger $9.5 million energy conservation block grant awarded to West Virginia.The grant also funded other solar projects, including 25-kilowatt panels on the Morgan County Courthouse, 19-kilowatt panels on the municipal building in Man, and a 4-kilowatt system on the Beach Bottom village municipal building.The panels range from 8 to 11.5 feet in height and would face east in the morning and west in the afternoon.