The phase one portion of the study included narrowing down areas with renewable resources to the zones where the best resources in each state were available. This includes areas of high solar irradiation and sufficient wind speeds at 50 meters above ground. The WECC (Western Energy Coordination Council) peak load was 150GW in 2007, so the resulting 180GW of generation capability identified by the study could significantly mitigate peak load.

Other factors that were included in the study were sufficient density – enough to provide 1,500MW of energy in a 100 mile radius, which would justify a 500kV transmission line from the zone to the demand region. Also excluded were protected areas identified by the BLM and other federal government agencies where the development of renewables is prohibited, not congruent with the development intent or could impact sensitive environmental conditions. Also not included were smaller renewable installations – generally at the local level like PV panels on rooftops.

After all is said and done, the 11 western states identified 80GW of solar thermal, about 74GW of wind, 2.5GW of biomass and 29GW of geothermal, for a total of 185GW (though only about 162GW of that was in WREZ areas).

The 11 western states in the lower 48 in 2007 consumed 667,670 GWh. In the same states, the renewable zones identified could possibly contribute over 442,000, or 66% of the total power consumption. Some states like Montana, Wyoming, New Mexico and Nevada could export renewable energy to states that wouldn’t be able to produce anywhere near what they consume – California.

Future phases of this study will analyse and create a transmission plan, as well as developing a regional purchasing system for utilities to meet their states’ RPS (renewable portfolio standards) goals, and finally getting the various local, state and federal jurisdictions to work together harmoniously in the permitting and construction process to get renewables from generation to distribution.

The article and accompanying video are a good read, and a few things stuck out at me.

First is that GM seems pretty insistent that the battery pack will last as long as it should, and wont need to be replaced. This is in contrast to whats expected by people following the development of the car. GM states that the batteries will last the entire 10 year, 150,000 mile target, but also be suitable to be re-used in a climate controlled environment after their time in the Volt is up. This would be idea for utilities to backup intermittent power like solar and wind. If GM makes 200,000 Volts in the first four years, that’s 3.2GW of batteries that will need recycling after that 10 years is up. Even if you derate their capacity by 25%, that’s still 2.4GW of storage. The average home uses around 11kW, so that 2.4GW of energy storage could store solar power and disperse it to power 30,000 homes over the course of six hours (say, from 6PM to midnight).

Next is GM’s generation 1 model production targets. They said in the video that all first generation Volts will be eligible for the $7,500 tax credit. GM’s limit is 200,000 (which is why I used that figure above), so I would expect a four year first generation run (20K units for year 1, 60K for years 2, 3 and 4), and we would see a generation 2 Volt sometime around the end of 2014. Its fun to think what kind of additional features GM could bring to the table in the second generation – a full sized sedan with a bigger motor and better batteries with a depth of discharge of 80% rather than 50%, and higher watt-hour to weight and volume ratios.

GM also doesn’t seem to have the range extender ready to go. Granted, we’re still a ways away from the official production time, but the test drives GM has offered recently have been electric only. Another point that I liked was that the author indicated that the whine associated with the electric traction motor was non-existent. That will be a huge plus from the user experience standpoint.

No one knows for sure if GM will be able to deliver on time, we wont get a better idea until their 75 integration vehicles are out on the road and they can guage real Volt handling and performance.

In December of 2008, Sempra was proud to commission their existing 10MW thin-film based power generation station in the Eldorado Valley near Boulder City, NV, near the existing Nevada Solar One 64MW solar thermal facility. The energy from the 10MW is sold to PG&E of northern California.

Now, only four months later they’re announcing that facility’s first expansion up to 58MW, an addition of 48MW and approximately 800,000 First Solar thin-film solar PV panels. The expansion is contingent on a power purchase agreement. Sempra Generation said that it had available cash to fund this project and isn’t relying on financing, rather they will self-finance.

First Solar, the PV module manufacturer, announced in February that it had crossed the $1/W manufacturing threshold. The $1/W price tag comes with a catch – the thin-film panels produced by First Solar are less efficient than traditional PV panels from a land area perspective. While traditional PV manufacturers offer panels that ouput between 225 and 315W, First Solar offers smaller sized panels (0.72 vs. 1.6 sq meters) from 60-77.5W, roughly one half of the solar conversion efficiency.

This results in more cost per W installed when compared to traditional PV – more panels, more freight, more labor to install, etc. However, given the race between traditional PV and thin film, it appears that thin film is leading by a hair in terms of costs.

Oddly enough there are two different maps available that show the layout of the turbines. A separate map (13MB PDF) is on the public comment page (dated September 2008), but what appears to be an older map appears in the report (January 2008). The newer map indicates they’ll be using the area on the northeast, east and south of Searchlight (though it shouldn’t affect the Searchlight airport operations). There are 153 2.3MW Siemens wind turbines that will surround Searchlight on three sides. They are oriented in east/west and northwest/southeast alignments, with some ridge and hilltop placements.

Good luck to Duke Energy getting the project off the ground!

The report (PDF) is available and goes through the all of the steps on how to calculate the LCOE and what factors go into designing a large scale solar power system. There are a few places where I disagree with their numbers but overall the report is fairly accurate (their maintenance figures a little low – not too bad, but for us our maintenance cost per kWh is not close to one cent or half a cent as they might claim in some of their cases).

There are a few highlights to point out in this report. First was a reference to a report on panel degradation (source report PDF). They tested 23-year old solar panels and found that they had only degraded 4%. Further, there was nearly no noticed degradation from years 1 through 20, with nearly all the degradation coming in a few year window between years 20 and 22, with the last year of the survey having leveled off the degradation.

Next is that most plants are financed under forecast power production, and that is usually grossly underestimated. This I have also found to be true – our guaranteed output is far less than our actual output – by more than 10%.

The biggest item in the report is the following quote…

In SunPower’s case, the grams of polysilicon consumed to manufacture a watt at the solar cell level declined from 13 g/W in 2004 to 6.3 g/W in 2008 and is planned to decline to an estimated 5 g/W with SunPower’s Gen 3 technology now under development. By 2011 this approximately 60 percent reduction in the use of silicon, coupled with an approximately 50 percent decline in the price of polysilicon, will independently drive large cost reductions for PV panels.

So while panels might have cost $5-6/Wp back in 2004, the increase in cell efficency, reduction of the quantity of bulk silicon used as well as the reduction of the cost of silicon due to the crappy economy and oversupply due to added manufacturing capacity, the cost of a panel could drop down to $2/Wp, and reducing overall costs from $7-8/Wp to $5/Wp and closer to grid parity.

While this is sort of a PR/promotional piece, the numbers in the report are backed up by my real world experiences. As long as the world doesn’t fall apart anytime soon, solar power is on track.

[Edit 6/16: Updated link to Sunpower LCOE paper after their website redesign]

Energy

• Obama’s administration pushes hard on solar and wind, geothermal doesn’t get the love it deserves, but it still does well, even in the face of the bad economy
• Wind power starts to take off in the inter-mountain west – places like Idaho, Wyoming, etc. As plans and deals are finalized to provide for the construction of transmission lines from these remote areas down to the population centers of the west and southwest (Denver, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Phoenix), plans scale up for installation.
• Solar does OK, the financial crisis hurts solar the most, hurts being a relative term. Obama pushes solar, especially rooftop solar in low to middle income areas to allow residents to not have to worry about the volatility of energy prices (modeled after the million rooftops initiative in California). Utilities don’t like it because distributed generation makes their demand patterns irregular.

Technology

• BluRay doesn’t take off because of the bad economy. People aren’t going to give up their cheaper DVDs until 2010 or 2011.
• The prices of LCDs comes down 25% by year’s end, but mostly because factories want to get them out the door to try and pay for the facilities they built to handle the LCD ramp up.
• Nothing big comes out – no big technological revolution (iPhone, etc). Everyone is trying to tool up for the exit of the recession and hope they can pounce at the right time.
• The Web 2.0 comes to a grinding halt – companies have a hard time finding VC. And sadly, one of the casualties is a major site.

Apple

• Apple doesn’t reveal an iPhone nano. They might reduce the price of the current iPhone devices, and add a 32GB iPhone, but the current rumormill is really just to ferret out leaks, I don’t think Steve was too happy about the iPhone 3G leaks.
• Nehalem/Core i7 Mac Pros are released, possibly using desktop parts in a glueless 2-socket system using the X58 chipset. This would reduce costs and bring the price down.
• Notebooks and the iMac (and the mini) don’t get Nehalem chips this year, set to land early/mid 2010. They cruise along on Intel’s incremental speed bumps over the course of 2009.
• A MacBook Air refresh in the first half of the year, cheaper SSDs and the new Intel 2.13Ghz SFF processor. This increases the Air purchases because it doesn’t look like its hobbled in terms of processor speeds.
• No Netbook, no xMac (mid-range desktop tower), no new media server/media center/htpc (the new Mini might be a good HTPC, but nothing specifically targeted at that niche).
• Apple TV continues to not make waves in the mainstream, gets hardware rev to go to the Ion platform. Gets lots of attention in the hacker/modder community for apps like Boxee.

Anything Else

• I’m still single this time next year. Mom gets on my case more about finding a girl, getting married, having kids, etc.
• My stock picks in tech and renewables give me a 50% increase in 2009. Too bad I didn’t invest more.
• I cant stick to my 30 month stock picking plan ($2,000 each into 5 emerging stocks, on 2 or 3 of the stocks hoping for returns measured in multiples).

Whats the difference between normal geothermal and enhanced geothermal? Water. In traditional geothermal systems, the system relies on hot water coming out of the ground that was already in the ground. Meanwhile, enhanced geothermal relies on pumping water back into the ground at high pressures over hot, dry rock (which there is more of than hot, wet rock), and reclaiming that heated water through other wells and using that water to transfer that heat into energy.

One of the interesting side effects of the stark decline in the price of oil and the subsequent demand reduction is that the same type of equipment that you need to drill wells for oil is the same equipment you need to drill for geothermal wells. So if the oil company equipment suppliers have been ramping supply for drilling equipment the past few months as prices crossed $90, $100, $125, and up to $147, they’ll now be left with excess inventory after the price per barrel dropped in half. This makes a great time for geothermal companies to acquire the drilling equipment necessary to start drilling due to the dynamics of the oil market.

To get off the ground, companies can start in areas near existing traditional geothermal systems. This would allow for low risk projects – nearby access to roads, powerlines and other necessary equipment will allow them to test a few wells. Most of the land suitable for EGS is concentrated on the western US – states like Nevada, Oregon, Idaho, Utah and Colorado.

In Google’s recent report, they had estimated 80GW of geothermal – 65GW of which was enhanced geothermal. Because of the very high capacity factors however, that 80GW of geothermal outproduced solar and wind in terms of annual GWh.

First, let me note that there are two separate components to this project. One is a 250MW agreement with SunPower, and the other agreement is with OptiSolar and is 550MW. The area for the project is in the San Luis Obispo County, California. The most important thing to note is that both projects are contingent on the extension of the renewable energy tax credits that Congress will take up when they resume in September, under the compromise energy bill that includes both renewable energy incentives as well as selected offshore drilling.

The SunPower agreement is for 250MW in San Luis Obispo County, California. This is located about half way between LA and San Francisco. The project is slated for California Valley, which is a dry, arid, and is agriculturally undevelopable due to high alkali levels in the soil. This diminishes the value of the land greatly. SunPower has their patented Tracker systems that allow for approximately 1MW for every 6.2 acres. Thus, the 250MW system would require about 2.5 square miles, or 1600 acres.

The Optisolar agreement is for 550MW also in San Luis Obispo County, California, near the California Valley as well. This project will use about 9 and a half square miles, or roughly 11 acres per MW of generation. This is due to the cheaper, but far less efficient thin film solar panels. Also, the panels are fixed-mounted and do not track the sun like the SunPower project, which will result in a lower output per installed DC nameplate capacity.

If we analyze the cost from a cents/kWh perspective (or $/MWh), the SunPower system will generate 550,000 MWh/year. At the standard solar installation cost of $7/W, plus maintenance (0.5% of capital costs), plus $10,000/acre buy or equivalent lease costs, the cost for the power is roughly $110-$133/MWh over 30 years. Which isn’t out of line – summertime peak power in California can cost between $125-$175/MWh, winter daytime power is roughly $60, and spring/fall daytime power is around $80. Now granted more of the power will be generated in the summer (specifically May, June, July) than in the winter (November-March) – the five months of April – September will generate about the same as the seven months of October – March – so a simple average doesn’t fairly asses average sold power. It turns out its roughly a 65/35 split from a revenue standpoint – 65% of the revenue from the 5 months of high demand and 35% of the revenue from the low price months. If we apply this to the numbers above we’ll find that the plant will have an ASP (average selling price) of $120/MWh. This figure does not include and tax credits that are available or will be available with the renewable tax credit passed (hopefully) by Congress.

Optisolar has a similar business case, while their panels are cheaper due to the use of thin-film technologies, the panels have lower efficency ratings (% of light turned into energy). So while PV may cost $4/W, thin-film panels have a stated target of $1/W. If we go with the $1/W figure, plus $4/W installation (due to the fact that there are more panels per MW installed vs standard PV), and all the other same constraints from above, we see that 1.1M MWh will cost between $105-126/MWh.

In summary, unless the price of energy decreases dramatically (HAH!) or the earth stops rotating and Ben Stiller isn’t around to save us, the plants are providing affordable power at a small premium now, and probably cheaper further down the road.

Would solar thermal been cheaper? Probably – in the neighborhood of $4/W installed. Why they didn’t choose that, I don’t know. Perhaps the sun wasn’t intense enough as it is within the Mojave Desert proper, and that would have negatively impacted capacity, increasing $/W costs. Or maybe SunPower and OptiSolar managed to bring their costs down enough to make it worthwhile.

The best hope is that thin-film efficiencies improve. Panels getting 150W (10-12% efficient) instead of 75W could really turn around the solar industry, making rooftop installations worthwhile. While they might not always be generating power – cloudy days – the south and southwestern US is suited for solar power. Every little bit helps – if we can reduce grid demand and take the dirtiest, most inefficient peaking plants out of operation, the impact is disproportional to the amount of effort put into clean energy.

I’ve covered why Solar power is important before. But this is really the piece that will probably cement it and make sure solar power is here to stay. Not to be too optimistic, but I wouldn’t be surprised that if by 2016, solar power is efficient enough for us to not have to renew the ITC!

Lets also take a look at the other energy-related provisions of this bill…

• Biodiesel tax credit
• 50% Write-off of facilities related to cellulosic ethanol before the end of 2013
• Tax credit for Plug-in electric hybrids (the upcoming Chevy Volt would receive a $5,000 credit, the base amount is $3,000 for a car with a 5kW battery)
• Tax credit for energy efficiency improvements to existing homes, as well as new commercial buildings
• Expedited depreciation for smart grid and smart meter systems (from 20 years down to 10 years)

The one that stuck out to me that I wasn’t aware of was the credit for PHEVs. I’m a huge fan of EVs and PHEVs – the Chevy Volt can reduce the amount of gasoline consumed on a per-car basis upwards of 95% – even up to 97-98% in various circumstances. Of course, this would require the car also run on E85 (which GM has committed to), and hopefully this E85 would be cellulosic rather than corn-based.

There is one thing in this bill in the energy section that made me take notice – a provision to make the black lung disability trust fund solvent. So the next time you hear someone complain about renewable subsidies, remind them that coal not only has an impact on the environment, but on the workers too, and the federal government is going to spend $1.2B on making this fund solvent for all the miners who will have to suffer with black lung.

The bill does other things too, most notably bump up the AMT limits and extend the deduction of local and state taxes for 2008 (yeah for me since I don’t pay state income tax but do pay a good amount of money in car registration “fees” and property taxes).

The bill is supposed to be packaged in such a way that’s its hard to vote against – it is called “The Jobs, Energy, Families, and Disaster Relief Act of 2008″ after all. I would expect it to pass.

In part 2, I went into detail about thin-film technologies that stand to dramatically bring the price down.

In this part, I’ll talk about Solar Thermal, focusing in on Concentrated Solar Power, or CSP. This is using the heat energy from the sun to generate power.

Before I begin, some housekeeping. I found an article on west Texas wind power interesting because of the information provided as well as the graph that shows how much power is consumed and how it was generated (coal, natural gas, etc). Just about all the power generated for peak demand (between baseload at 35GW to 61GW at peak demand) as well as an additional 15GW 24/7 is all natural gas. Now regardless of which solar mechanism you use (PV, thermal, etc), that is a lot of natural gas and the resultant pollutants that would be removed if solar gets enough traction to replace a large part of the peak demand.

Likewise, oil tycoon T. Boone Pickens is even supporting west Texas wind power. Wind could help abate the usage of natural gas he says, to be used in vehicles as a replacement for gasoline. While I’m not necessarily in favor of that aspect of his plan, it might be a preferable alternative to high gas prices, and made useful in range-extended electric vehicles (REEV – first x miles on electricity, further range on some other fuel).

Also, Ars Technica tries to calm everyone down about supposed shortages of Indium and Gallium (two key components to the production of CIGS thin film solar cells).

On to the issue of solar thermal energy. I’ll start with a very basic way to use heat to reduce the use of power (either electric or natural gas) – rooftop water heaters. By circulating water with a small 1HP pump up to your home’s roof in a black painted tube or bladder, it will heat up. This is a good way to provide for hot water during the day for either your house or your swimming pool (which is common in Las Vegas).

I’ve even seen alternate implementations of this tactic. Back a few years ago on a camping trip in the Utah high desert, folks on the campsite next to us had black bags full of water they left in the sun while they went on a hike. When they came back the water was hot and ready for them to mix with some colder water to take a shower.

OK, so onto solar thermal power generation. There are several types – parabolic trough and power tower are the two most common. After that, there is dish stirling (using a stirling engine as the focal point for an array of mirrors), Fresnel concentrators and reflectors and a recent invention from MIT that can flash boil water for any number of applications.

Lets go over each type, along with an example.

Parabolic trough is where you have mirrors around a tube containing a heat transfer liquid to focus sunlight on the liquid to heat it. There are several of these types of power stations online, including the 64MW Nevada Solar One. I thought I had heard rumors about troubles, but after some googling, I found this PDF that showed some of their production from June 2007, and it was peaking between 55 and 60MW from 10AM until about 4PM, and from there it trailed off until just before 7:30PM. One of the interesting items also noted in that PDF was the future goal of developing and commercializing thermal storage. Doing this, the plant can siphon off power early in the day when the peak demand hasn’t materialized, and then use that energy at the peak (and sell it for more $) as well as after the sun sets until about midnight the peak finally subsides. The trick is to see if they can figure out

Next is power tower – these designs use an array of mirrors on two-axis trackers on the ground, which reflect the sun’s rays onto a tower holding either water or other heat transfer material to ultimately generate power. There is a lot of momentum behind power tower designs – PG&E in California has agreed to buy power from up to 500MW of power tower plants in CA built by BrightSource Energy. There is an optional expansion of 400MW, with the first 100MW scheduled to go online around 2011.

Next is an interesting technology called Linear Fresnel Reflector, or Fresnel Reflectors. This is where the mirrors, either slightly curved or flat, are mounted just above the ground and then rotate along one axis to heat an elevated conveyance filled with water or some other heat transfer fluid. A company called Ausra has just opened a 700MW/yr Linear Fresnel Reflector manufacturing plant in Las Vegas. The manufacturing plant may only employ 50 people, but the resulting construction jobs, as well as the permanent Operations and Maintenance (O&M) jobs for that 700MW/yr will have a large impact.

Dish/Stirling systems are quite unique. A Stirling engine is an engine that generates energy through concentrated heat. Basically, the heat is focused on an area that contains a gas, and when its heated, it expands. That pushes a piston and generates the movement. After the gas has expanded, its allowed to cool through transfer to another piston, and from there it starts all over again. So the application of this is to use of a dish to focus tremendous amounts of energy into the Stirling engine and generate energy that way. Currently, Stirling Energy Systems should be building an array in Southern California called Solar One (not to be confused with the now-shuttered power tower-based Solar One that is also in Southern California), which is expected to eventually grow to 500MW over 4 years, and possibly 850MW. Power production was supposed to start in 2009, however no announcements have been made as to the progress of a 1MW test array or BLM environmental approval. They also were supposed to build a 300MW as well, but no announcements have been made for that either.

Finally, the MIT project is interesting, they purport that the unit cost per dish is very cheap yet it provides steam for whatever purposes – either steam for a building or turning a turbine for electricity generation. Though for the purposes of electricity generation, you’d have to set the dishes up in parallel, which would require more hardware and that can raise the per unit costs dramatically. The students involved have formed a company and are working to productize the dish.

And thats it for solar thermal.