EGEB: Moving a 188ft wind blade around corner/over bridge; EPA head recommends exit of Clean Power Plan; more

Electrek Green Energy Brief: A daily technical, financial and political review/analysis of important green energy news. Featured Image Source

EPA chief to sign rule on Clean Power Plan exit on Tuesday – The head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said on Monday he would sign a proposed rule on Tuesday to begin withdrawing from the Clean Power Plan. This also aligns with the US’ stated plans to withdraw from the Paris Agreement. Pruitt used a logic that the Clean Power Plan was part of a war against coal…coal’s been declining since the Clinton years. Concurrently with the CPP announcement we get – First Shoe to Drop? Vistra to Retire 3 Texas Coal Units and Washington state deals blow to plan for coal export terminal. Removing ourselves probably hurts us less than the ongoing processes across the county like this these coal closures/construction rejections.

Analysis: How well have climate models projected global warming? – You don’t even have to read much, there’s a simple image for you to watch. Climate models published since 1973 have generally been quite skillful in projecting future warming. While some were too low and some too high, they all show outcomes reasonably close to what has actually occurred, especially when discrepancies between predicted and actual CO2 concentrations and other climate forcings are taken into account. The beauty of being a species with a long memory – we can look backwards at our data and see who was telling the truth. In this case, almost every single climate model was really close.

Enel sells 80% of 1 GW large-scale solar in Mexico – This is a big business deal. 🙂 Enel has announced it has sold an 80% stake in 1.7 GW of operational renewable energy power projects. 1 GW of PV projects, which is comprised of the Villanueva I (427 MW), Villanueva III (327 MW) and Don José (238 MW) solar plants. 700 MW of wind power plants. $1.35B for 80%. That’s a sale price of $.80/W – for hardware that will produce just like any brand new hardware for decades to come. An investment group bought it because it makes good money. The market for the resale of large-scale power projects is huge.

Huawei Says the Future of Solar O&M Is Replacing, Not Repairing, Inverters – Huawei string inverters are outfitted with highly sophisticated sensors that are able to digitally monitor voltage, current and other important inverter measurements remotely, a suite of technologies the company refers to as “automatic O&M.” Third-party O&M providers have told Huawei that the data analytics Huawei is providing can reduce their costs 10 to 20 percent compared to central inverters, largely driven by less preventative maintenance and repairs being required. Instead of getting a service engineer to the project site to diagnose the problem with specialized equipment, you just get a low-end tech in the field to swap out the string inverter. I have personally dealt with this evolution toward smaller inverter in the 200-2,000kW sized project range (your house install will be 5-15kW). We use an inverter made by HiQ – looks like a metal pizza box with fins. Small, relatively light, single plugs, lots of easy pieces to work with. Key thing that interested me here – if this automated predictive technology starts working well in the field, then its going to seep into home technology. While you probably won’t have a replacement process for your home inverter – you’re still going to benefit. Instead of replacing your hardware early, you’ll know exactly when it goes bad and then call tech.

Just in case you’ve got a 57.5 meter wind turbine to move around a 90 degree turn over a bridge, call these folks –

How to get a 60 metre wind-turbine blade round a 90-degree bend on the A87 #SuperWingCarrier pic.twitter.com/9gH8YHyl6K

— Ian Fraser (@Ian_Fraser) October 7, 2017

71% of Germany’s electricity last week came from no-carbon sources – almost 38% from wind alone. That’s such an amazing number for an advanced industrial country.

Last week, Germany got
37.8% of its electricity from wind
55.7% from all renewables together
71.4% from low-carbon sources, incl. nuclear pic.twitter.com/gQooPLKfhr

— Kees van der Leun  (@Sustainable2050) October 9, 2017

Header image from the ‘Hit me with your SunShot‘ photography contest. Since I’ve shown each of the winning photographs – I’ve now moved into showing off some of the images that didn’t ‘win’ – but are beautiful nonetheless. These images are located on the flickr account page of SunShot. A View of Solar from the Sky. Photo by Will Hanley. – I like it because it shows a pair of beautiful blue solar canopies surrounded by a rough commercial/industrial plot.

Considering residential solar? Understand Solar will connect you with local contractors. Tweet me to pick apart quote.

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