Electrek Green Energy Brief: A daily technical, financial and political review/analysis of important green energy news.
The Energy Trade Action Coalition made its debut on Friday of last week – “Tariffs meant to protect one industry can, and often do, have significant damaging effects on other domestic industries,” said Tori Whiting, research associate at The Heritage Foundation. “Imposing tariffs under Section 201, as Suniva and SolarWorld request, would be a step backward by adding another layer of federal subsidies, which is something the Heritage Foundation opposes in all instances.” – Free trade is the name of their game.
Concurrently, at the American Enterprise Institute – a historically conservative business lobby – we’ve got an upcoming presentation – ‘Carbon taxes: A problem or a solution?‘ Cookies will be served. For some decent depth of this issue – check out Prospect of Trump tariff casts pall over U.S. solar industry. A steep rise in panel prices “could be huge and disastrous for large-scale solar,” said Tom Werner – it’d affect them more than any other sector of industry.
Renewables major force for San Diego economic development – An opinion piece from the Mayor, ‘California leads the country in solar jobs, and San Diego is second only to Los Angeles, with more than 11,000 solar jobs, which are growing 17 times faster than the national job average. We are number one in rooftop solar installations in the country because San Diegans see a financial benefit in powering their homes and businesses with renewable energy. San Diego has attracted $770 million in clean-tech venture capital funding in the previous two years and we have the third highest number of electric vehicles. It’s predicted that electric vehicles may account for up to 30 percent of new vehicles by 2030…San Diego’s clean tech industry contributed $6.8 billion to the regional economy and created 38,000 jobs locally.’ – If we’re going to talk about how ‘expensive’ green electricity is, we need make sure we continue to include other financial benefits.
Renewables Sector Embraces the Promise of Virtual Reality – The Fife College Immersive Hybrid Reality lab is designed to “enhance the training and development of the next generation of offshore wind turbine technicians.” It simulates the top of a nacelle on a 7-megawatt offshore wind turbine, allowing students to carry out fault-finding inspections without having to leave shore. Yeah, practicing in a lab instead of a few hundred feet up in high wind situations would be great.
Strong investor interest in Equis Energy’s renewable energy portfolio – If you own an asset producing a commodity (electricity) at a low price today, but your gut feeling is that pricing will go up tomorrow – you’re going to make a lot of money – and I’m sure you’ll hear me talking about this type of transaction in the future. Singapore-based developer Equis Energy, which has the largest renewable energy portfolio in the Asia-Pacific, has drawn a high level of interest in its restructuring plans.” We have received actually quite a lot of interest from a number of investors, some of those are consortia and some of those are individual organisations. That’s not surprising; it’s an exciting sector in a very exciting geography.” – This announcement looks like a press release pumping up demand, but it aligns with this comment on the recent NRG offering – renewables assets “might be their most highly valued assets, and their most liquid assets.”
Meyer Burger receives new equipment order worth CHF 22 million (US$23.2M) – In June, Meyer Burger announced that it would be temporarily increasing production of its MB PERC technology in order to keep up with demand. Manufacturers across the planet are upgrading their hardware to PERC hardware. Higher efficiency product coming.
Belgium: Wallonia’s PV system owners to pay grid-fee starting from 2020 – The new fee will be applied to all of the region’s PV system owners starting from Jan. 1, 2020, and not starting from 2019 as previously announced by the CWaPE. The fee will range from €330 to €560 and will be paid to Wallonias’s power providers depending on the system size and on the geographic position of the electricity suppliers. That’s enough money to pay for a new battery system in less than ten years – at today’s pricing. At what point do people begin to defect? When will this hurt us more than it helps us? I think the grid is an important tool – all of us defecting will weaken our electricity flexibility.
Scotland sets renewable energy record as wind power provides equivalent of 118% of nation’s home electricity, 57% of total electricity in 1H2017 – A 24% increase from the prior year. And everyday I’m reading about Scotland getting more offshore wind – some of it floating turbines being manufactured/assembled elsewhere and towed into place.
Does anyone know of a crowdfunding effort on the internet where you can help small business people get solar power with small amounts of cash? Or maybe – a way for me to connect directly…I earn my living from the industry – I want to give back. Especially after seeing how solar+storage can help a business like below – which feeds family members.
Cool picture to give some perspective on the size of wind turbine blades –
An elephant could fit in the root of the turbine blades that have just been #madeinhull at @SiemensGamesa >> https://t.co/6nJoMuBCTj pic.twitter.com/QbTHMdwcqv
— Ørsted UK (@OrstedUK) July 25, 2017
One last tweet because it has math in it – with an install cost of around $1/W (straight hardware plus labor, no soft costs), you would save $30/month if you included solar power in the original construction of your home and its thirty year mortgage.
4k system in South Florida would increase mortgage by $19/mo, but would produce $50/mo worth of electricity. Net positive from day 1. https://t.co/JPXGvU8r8Y
— Adam Browning (@adambrowning) July 23, 2017
Header image is of the Endesa Pavilion – with further images and architectural drawings located at Archdaily.com, props to HelloSolar.info for directing me there.
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