Vote Solar staff attended meetings last week with staff of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP), the nation’s largest publicly-owned utility, serving about 10% of California’s electrical load. California law now requires munis like LADWP to get 33% of their power mix from renewables by 2020, prompting a big increase from LADWP’s current 20 percent. The utility’s Board of Commissioners officially adopted a program for getting to 33% renewables recently, but staff noted that many of the important decisions will actually get made in the utility’s 2012 Integrated Resource Planning process.

Via the IRP, the utility will analyze a range of different 20-year planning scenarios, choose one of those scenarios as its preferred long-term plan for serving its customers, and request rate increases from the LA City Council as needed to allow funding for that path. LADWP currently gets only 1% of its renewables from solar (wind and small hydro forms the bulk of its clean energy portfolio), but staff indicated a plan to ramp up investment in utility-scale solar considerably, given solar’s ability to locate in urban areas and to provide generation at times of highest demand. In the new year, Vote Solar will work to highlight the value of solar where the rubber meets the road in LADWP’s IRP process.

In other recent LA news, the LA Business Council recently released a report showing that LADWP lags behind most other California utilities on distributed solar – for example, Southern California Edison has more than six times as much distributed solar installed per customer as LADWP. The utility made a step in the right direction this week, however, presenting a plan to implement a 75 MW feed-in tariff program by the end of 2013 and a 150 MW program by 2016, assuming it can get the necessary funding from City Council. We think the utility should move beyond that 150 MW goal, installing at least 600 MW of distributed solar in the next ten years, at the same time creating a valuable new engine for jobs.

Vote Solar is a non-profit grassroots organization working to fight climate change and foster economic opportunity by bringing solar energy into the mainstream.

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The fastest growing solar market in the world is on pause as the Ontario government invites input from stakeholders on its two-year old Feed-in-Tariff (FIT) program. Half way through the six-week FIT Program Review initiated by the new Minister of Energy, Chris Bentley, Ontario Solar Network is bringing industry stakeholders together for a special Town Hall Meeting on Monday, November 28, 7:00-9:00 PM at University of Toronto’s OISE Auditorium, 252 Bloor Street West. The event is free and advanced registration is recommended.

Ontario’s FIT and microFIT program offers “performance-based incentives” (PBIs) to developers and property owners who build solar power plants that add clean, peak power to the province’s electricity grid. As the only major PBI program in North America, the growth of the sector has overwhelmed the government’s abilitiy to manage the program efficiently. The FIT Review will recalibrate the program to ensure its stability and growth.

At the Town Hall Meeting, the Solar Network’s “FIT Review Coalition” will present key points from a preliminary draft of its “Blueprint for  Ontario’s Solar PV Market” to be published one week later on Monday, December 5, in time for Solar Canada 2011, the large industry event hosted by the Canadian Solar Industry Association (CanSIA).

The coalition’s presentation will be followed by an open-mic format where stakeholders can respond to the proposals and offer their own solutions to current problems and recommendations for ensuring a strong and sustainable solar market in Ontario.

The evening is focused on building consensus in the industry and input received will be incorporated into the final “Blueprint.” Registered participants will receive an agenda prior to the meeting. The blueprint draft will be emailed automatically after the event for comments and/or endorsement.

In the final days of the FIT Review, ending December 14, the coalition will be seeking endorsement for the “Blueprint” from hundreds of companies, organizations, community leaders, and politicians.

The “Blueprint” will then become the guiding document of the new Solar Alliance of Ontario (SAO) founded by a broad-based group of industry leaders with a single, focused mission – to advocate for the accelerated and stable growth of Ontario’s PV market, furthering the province’s global leadership in this key sector of the new energy economy.

According to SAO co-founder, Graham Fowler, “Solar power’s success depends on the ability of thousands of small independent and privately owned PV systems working in unison as part of one collective.” He continues, “A successful solar industry must mimic this with government, communities, homeowners and businesses working collaboratively and in harmony to act as one collective enterprise.”

The event is free and advanced registration is recommended at: www.solarnetwork.org/ontario/frc/townhallmeeting

Additional Information

• Ontario Solar Network
• Solar Alliance of Ontario
• Town Hall Meeting Registration

Special Discount: CleanTechies readers get $100 off any course offered by Solar Academy International. Simply use discount code ”CleanTechies100” when registering.

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The Japanese technology company announced last week that it will build a $580 million solar cell plant in Malaysia, according to Reuters report. The company has been attracted overseas by a strong yen, which has made domestic production more costly.

The numbers are quite impressive: the new plant will create 1,500 new jobs and increase by 50 per cent Panasonic’s solar output (to 900 MW). Production is slated to begin in December 2012.

“With environmental awareness increasing globally and introduction of subsidy systems and feed-in tariff schemes in Japan as well as other countries, etc., the solar cell market is predicted to grow further”, the company said in a press statement.

The company said the residential sector is its main target and it expects “robust demand” from it. Competition is fierce in the Japanese solar cell manufacturing sector. Other Japanese solar panel manufacturers include Sharp and Kyocera.

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Anyone vaguely interested in international news is probably aware of Greece’s economic crisis. But despite that, or perhaps because of that, the country’s Energy Minister has big plans for solar power.

According to a report on Bloomberg, Minister George Papaconstantinou said he expects that an agreement for a US$27bn solar power project will be finalized by the end of the year. The hope is to avert the possibility of a 5 per cent economic shrink in 2011, which will happen if government needs to default on its bonds.

The project in question is called Helios and it would see the installation of 10 GW worth of solar panels in the country. The country hopes to increase the share of alternative energy in its mix from the current 7 per cent to 18 per cent, including the introduction of feed-in tariffs.

Most of the funding will come from the EU, although the solar industry will be able to contribute 5 per cent of the total sum needed, said Solarworld CEO Frank Asbeck.

Bloomberg expects Greece may add 600 MW of solar capacity this year, or four times more than in 2010.

Article by Antonio Pasolini, a Brazilian writer and video art curator based in London, UK. He holds a BA in journalism and an MA in film and television.

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A 78 MW part of a 148 MW photovoltaic solar farm was completed on September 24. The project was developed by Saferay, which is based in Berlin, while the plant occupies a former open pit mining area near Senftenberg in Eastern Germany.

According to a Global Solar Technology magazine, the 78 MW plant took three months to complete and will supply 25,000 households with electricity. It features 330,000 crystalline solar modules and 62 central inverter stations.

The plant is annexed to another 70 MW plant that shares a common infrastructure with Saferay’s plant and a 18 MW plant, which was completed last year.

Three German banks invested €150 million (US$202.5 million) in the project. “Utility scale PV projects like this one play an important role in securing Germany’s energy supply and speed up the country’s transformation to renewable energies”, said Brandenburg’s Prime Minister Matthias Platzeck.

Saferay states on its website that its mission is “to generate solar PV power at competitive price levels without subsidies or feed-in tariffs, and accelerate the exit from fossil or nuclear energy.”

The company said the project shows how fast large-scale photovoltaic systems can be built and despite being located in a place that is not always sunny it can generate cheaper power than wind.

Saferay also stressed its concerns with preserving habitat around the farm and took care to leave large areas of land between installations so that birds and other animals would not be affected.

Article by Antonio Pasolini, a Brazilian writer and video art curator based in London, UK. He holds a BA in journalism and an MA in film and television.

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Suntech, the world’s largest producer of silicon solar modules, is looking to expand its manufacturing operations in Asia according to the Bangkok Post. Thailand is one of the key targets for Suntech, though expansion may largely depend on the Thai government’s clarification of its solar energy policy.

Thailand was Suntech’s second largest market in the Asia-Pacific region last year after Australia. In 2010, Suntech supplied Thailand’s largest solar project of 44 MW.

Thailand’s solar energy market has seen tremendous growth as a direct result of the implementation of an “adder” electricity tariff, similar to feed-in tariff schemes in other parts of the world, most notably Germany and Spain.

Thailand’s current target of 500 MW by 2022 using the current tariff rate is seen as low and may potentially limit solar energy potential in Thailand. Those close to the situation, including Anusorn Saengnimnuan, president of Bangchak Petroleum Plc. want the target to be as much as 3,000 MW.

Meanwhile, Suntech keeps on rolling with the expectation to ship at least 2.2 GW of solar products by the end of 2011.

Walter Wang is Managing Editor of CleanTechies. You can follow Walter on twitter: @energytaxprof.

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Yesterday morning Paula Mints from Navigant Consulting shared her insights on the latest global solar PV market trends with us – a timely webinar topic given the highly publicized fallout from those very global market dynamics. Paula put a firm kibosh on assertions that the aforementioned Solyndra failure heralds the end of solar: “We have started something in this industry, and it will move forward.” Given the magnitude of what we’re undertaking, that path forward won’t be without its challenges. It’s the nature of revolutionizing the global power industry.

We’re in a time of high PV module inventory levels, particularly in Europe where generous incentive programs have been trimmed. Continued incentive reductions and abrupt changes on many major programs around the world are driving continued downward pressure on solar prices. As a result, module costs have come down. Way down. Those aggressive market dynamics are particularly painful for some – most notably for a series of high-profile recent bankruptcies: Solyndra, Evergreen and Spectawatt. For all the hubub around Solyndra’s closure, the reality is they supplied 50 MW – that’s not even a statistically relevant blip on the gigawatts-sized global PV landscape. The price dynamics that caused its failure, however, are not to be overlooked. It’s tough for many manufacturers to make a buck these days. Those challenging dynamics will settle out to more sustainable levels as solar continues to grow and policy certainty is re-established. And in the meantime, solar’s new price point has been good for consumers and market expansion here in the U.S.

Diving deeper into the various countries that comprise that global picture – it’s important to note just how much feed-in tariff driven European markets have dominated demand. The EU claims a whopping 80% of the global market. But with European incentive programs on the decline, the industry needs to open new markets in order to continue to grow. That includes the U.S., still a relatively small player on the global solar stage.

We can expect to see continued volatility on the supply side until the market comes to terms with the new reality of lower incentive levels. Paula reminds us that this is actually the old reality. For much of the solar industry’s history it has functioned without the order of magnitude of incentives its experienced over the past few years. And of course here in the U.S. we’ve continued to function without those sizable incentives. As such she asserts that U.S. companies are well-positioned for continued success. Anyone succeeding in the U.S. market has already had plenty of experience making innovative use of a relatively small incentive pool to deliver real value to customers. In short, we can’t miss what we didn’t have. Combine that know-how with what remains a huge potential solar power market, and the U.S. remains on her list of healthy markets.

So what do we need to keep driving this global PV market of tomorrow forward? We need business model and BOS innovation to keep solar costs coming down while providing healthier manufacturing margins. We need continued private and public investment in next-generation technologies. And first and foremost, we need to help utilities, investors and policymakers better understand solar power. That includes a reality check about the true costs of conventional and nuclear energy – subsidies included – so we can have a fact-based conversation about solar’s economic competitiveness.

Educate, educate, educate. Solar has strong facts to back up its claims of value, ROI and success (here’s our own set of favorite factoids). There’s no need to be anything but accurate. We hope you’ll consider it your task as solar industry participants, solar advocates and solar supporters of all shapes and sizes to spread the word: solar is ready and able to play a growing role in our nation’s energy economy.

Vote Solar is a non-profit grassroots organization working to fight climate change and foster economic opportunity by bringing solar energy into the mainstream.

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The Mitsubishi Group is a large Japanese conglomerate that contains a number of businesses sharing the Mitsubishi brand, legacy and trademark. Probably most well known are the Mitsubishi manufactured vehicles. Mitsubishi Motors Corporation is a multinational automobile manufacturer with headquarters in Tokyo, Japan. It is the fifth largest automaker in Japan and the seventeenth largest around the world. Other members include Mitsubishi Plastics, Mitsubishi Paper Mills, Mitsubishi Research Institute, Nikon Corporation, and Asahi Glass Co. Mitsubishi has been very active within the clean technology sector, with a number of highlights showcasing Mitsubishi’s commitment to sustainability and the environment. Here are just a few of them.

1) Mitsubishi Creates New Partnerships for Bio-Based Feedstocks. In April of 2011, Mitsubishi started working on formal partnerships with two United States bio-based chemical intermediate firms – BioAmber and Genomatica. BioAmber is a bio-based succinic acid firm and is agreeing to supply chemicals for Mitsubishi’s renewable, biodegradable polymer. Genomatic is a startup company manufacturing bio-based butanediol and has signed on for a number of joint ventures to build a plant in Asia. Hiroaki Ishizuka, Representative Director of Mitsubishi Chemical Corporation said, “Asia is the fastest-growing chemicals market in the world and we see great potential to deliver bio-based chemicals to this market as a growing complement to our current conventionally-sourced chemicals. We believe that a strategic partnership with Genomatica will provide market-leading economics and quality which will benefit both parties.”

2) Mitsubishi Builds Solar Power Plant in Brunei. In May of 2011, Mitsubishi finished construction on a solar power plant that was built in the southeast Asian country of Brunei – it is the very first one for the country. It is on the site of a former natural gas power plant and has an output capacity of 1,200 kilowatts. This is enough generated power for 200 households. It has six types of different solar cells with varying characteristics to determine which is best fit for the weather conditions in the country. “We would be delighted if the new power station will be of some assistance to the sultan’s vision of industrial diversification and environmental preservation,” said Mitsubishi President Ken Kobayashi.

3) Mitsubishi Looks into Japan Based Solar Projects. In June of 2011, Mitsubishi started to look into building large scale solar power plants throughout Japan due to recent anticipation of a national feed-in tariff program. The proposed feed-in tariff program would establish a guaranteed demand for output coming from renewable energy projects.

4) Mitsubishi Puts $76 Million into Smart Grids. In May of 2010, Mitsubishi Electric made the announcement that it is looking to invest $76 million into the creation and experimentation of smart grid pilot projects that will span over the next couple of years. This announcement came after a number of investments made by the company into renewable power. Mitsubishi has stated that it is looking to install smart grid technology and clean energy, including batteries, solar photovoltaics, smart meters, communications networks, and electric vehicle and changing stations throughout the three facilities in Japan.

5) Mitsubishi Creates Smart Chargers for Residential Apartments. Mitsubishi has been working with Japan Delivery System Corp to provide a solution for convenient electric vehicle charging for apartments. Known as the i-Charger system, it uses a personal login verification code to use the station. It provides a system to retrieve electricity and allow building supervisors to bill the individual tenant based on the quantity of electricity they use for their electric vehicle in a shared parking area. The personal login information ensures that apartment dwellers are charged accurately and fairly. This new system holds massive importance especially with the acceleration of electric vehicles being purchased on the market.

6) Mitsubishi Provides Ozone Water Treatment System. Mitsubishi Electric announced in 2010 that is supplied one of their ozone water treatment systems to the Hanshin Water Supply Authority’s Amagasaki Waterworks. The system disinfects, deodorizes, decolorizes and removes all organic matter with more power than chlorine but is a lot safer as it only produces oxygen as a byproduct and uses less power than other systems.

7) Mitsubishi Looks to Quadruple their Solar Cell Production by the Year 2012. In August of 2008, Mitsubishi Electric invested $455 million in its photovoltaic product capacity to reach a total of 600 megawatts by the year 2012, from the 2008 level, which was 150 megawatts. Mitsubishi constructed a new fabrication plant and further plans to expand its solar cell production.

8 ) Mitsubishi Starts Rolling Out their Electric Cars in 2009. Mitsubishi, in 2009, was racing alongside fellow automobile maker, Subaru, to launch early plug-in vehicles ready for consumers. Mitsubishi made the plans to start leasing out their electric cars in Japan by July 2009, mainly to government and corporate customers. The electric vehicles will cost around 4.59 million Yen, or $47,560 and provide drivers with a 99 mile range. Mitsubishi expected to sell over 5,000 electric vehicles by March 2011.

9) Mitsubishi to Release Electric Vehicle in November 2011. The new Mitsubishi i.Electric Car will utilize Mitsubishi’s very own electric car technology, known as MiEV technology – Mitsubishi innovative Electric Vehicle. After decades of research and development into the electric car technology, the cars are now ready for consumers and very environmentally friendly. The car is said to retail around $28,000. There will be three different charging options associated with the car, providing drivers with much more convenience when it is time to fuel up. It will also come equipped with a regenerative braking system, providing the battery with the ability to charge when the car begins to slow down. The car will be able to hit top speeds of 80 miles-per-hour and have a range of approximately 85 miles.

10) Mitsubishi Electric Partners with Shanghai Electric for New Energy Saving Ventures. In February of 2011, Mitsubishi Electric partnered with Shanghai Electric to design, develop and manufacture industrial systems that will provide users with energy saving capabilities. This joint venture is looking to capitalize on the Chinese governments regulations concerning environmental protection and their energy saving initiatives, which feature heavily in the new 2011 to 2015 plan.

Article by Shawn Lesser, Co-founder & Managing Partner of Atlanta-based Watershed Capital Group – an investment bank assisting sustainable fund and companies raise capital, perform acquisitions, and in other strategic financial decisions. He is also a Co-founder of the GCCA Global Cleantech Cluster Association ”The Global Voice of Cleantech”. He writes for various cleantech publications and is known as the David Letterman of Cleantech for his “Top 10″ series. He can be reached at shawn@watershedcapital.com

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As the CSP industry expands across the globe, so too are the incentive mechanisms on offer by countries grabbing a slice of the action. The recently published CSP Today feed-in tariff guide provides information regarding regulators, types of incentive and the tariffs offered by the USA, Spain, South Africa, India, Morocco, Italy, Portugal and Greece.

Spain is one of the most interesting case studies for feed-in tariffs (FiTs). With a deeply established CSP market that has been in structured operation since the 1980’s, Spain recently found it’s lauded model (which kick started the successful renewable energy market we see today), in jeopardy. Dr Luis Crespo, Secretary General at Protermosolar, explains how, after explosive growth came 6 months of regulatory uncertainty.

The government resolved to select a number of highly mature projects with a combined capacity of 2400MW to be rolled out in annual phases until 2013 (maintaining the fixed rates of the 2007 Royal Decree). As Dr Crespo points out, for those who have already invested, the situation is favorable. With elections coming up this year however, what happens with regard to tariffs for the remaining capacity of 5000MW post 2014 remains uncertain.

Similarly for other countries in Europe, changes are underway. In Portugal for example, a regime has been established which offers 26.3 – 27.3 on projects less than 10MW, which is valid for 15 years. This came after the Decree Law 33A in February 2005, which established a new calculation system with maximum and minimum tariffs.

In the US however, tariffs vary from state-to-state, (this is also the case in India). The Loan Guarantee Program of the US department of Energy has $10bn in total sums available for renewable energy systems. There are various mechanisms in the USA such as investment and electricity tax credits.

Competitive opportunities: MENA

Not included in the guide but a region to watch as a hotspot of future activity is MENA (Middle East and North Africa). Countries such as Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, the Emirates, Egypt and Saudi Arabia are all on the verge of making concrete decisions. Developers currently consider them the most attractive in the world for CSP industry because of the potential long-term growth.

The area is experiencing systemic growth in electricity demand coupled with a need to move away from oil which exhibits high price volatility and is a limited resource. Added to this, the area has good DNI and access to the grid. Countries like Saudi Arabia have a solid industry foundation meaning that CSP plants could be relatively quickly installed. They would also be supported by the willingness of the local industry to integrate and the potential to export.

Reda El Chaar, Business Development Manager at ACWA Power, Saudi Arabia notes that Saudi Arabia has experienced policy delays due to a lack of renewable energy targets and a tariff framework. The Kingdom is expected to announce these by the end of 2011. According to El Chaar, new rates for the region need to “move away from the Feed-in tariff mentality towards a competitive bidding system”.

He suggested that Morocco, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia have an excellent framework for procuring fossil fuel generated electricity through competitive bidding. This could be easily adapted for electricity generated from solar power. He explains that while FiTs provide an excellent way of growing an industry, market dynamics are now so different that it would be “economic suicide to implement them [in the MENA region]”.

China progressing

Another region that is rapidly gaining traction is China, which recently announced it’s first nationwide FiT of Rmb1/kWh. The national energy policy aims to increase solar power capacity to ten times its current amount. Nathaniel Bullard, analyst at Bloomberg New Energy Finance sees this as a “slow methodical process” that blends some elements of the European system (e.g. 50MW plant size) with an emerging competitive bidding system.

He points out that China intends to localize the process, to create a supply network of receiver tubes, mirrors and control systems. Already there is no need to import steam turbine equipment in China. Although it may appear to be in early stages, Bullard notes that there is already an immense solar thermal network that exists in China currently used for hot water. With higher heat pressures China is poised to change this to electricity and export the model.

To harness ‘least cost, best fit’ opportunities, parties interested in new CSP developments should now expect fierce bidding. It remains to be seen whether moving away from the European model of established Feed-in tariffs will cause the “mess” predicted by Dr Crespo or the “growth through competition” foreseen by El Chaar.

More than likely, there will be a blend of both. The MENA region has every chance to retain its attractiveness over the next phase of CSP development, learning from the experiences of Spain and growing alongside China.

Article by Francesca Boothby, appearing courtesy CSP Today.

To respond to this article, please write to the Editor:

Rikki Stancich: rstancich@csptoday.com

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One of the most important factors in moving the United States over from conventional to solar energy is making it financially enticing for the average user, as well as for producers. Currently, this enticement comes in the form of rebates, most notably sustainable renewable energy credits (SRECs) and feed-in tariffs (FiTs).

Of course, all business decisions come with pros and cons; choosing which rebate to go after is no different. Each type of rebate has benefits and detractors. Understanding your own companies’ needs will help determine which rebate is a better choice for you and, ultimately, more sustainable in the long term.

A renewable energy credit is accrued when one megawatt-hour (MWh) of electricity has been generated with a renewable resource, such as solar power. Once the energy generated by the renewable resource has been fed into the grid, the certificate can be purchased by energy consumers (such as corporations).

The renewable energy credit helps to create incentive for using green energy because it offsets the costs for producing the energy. However, on the down side, some label this system “ineffective” since it’s based largely on quotas and offers no long-term economic guarantee.

The FiT system offers long-term contracts (up to 25 years) and financial incentive to renewable electricity producers. Anyone who is producing renewable energy, whether a homeowner or a business, is offered the premium rate for the electricity they produce. The most cost effective types of renewable electricity production are valued over others. The feed-in tariff system doesn’t deal with quotas or minor goals.

These two systems, in their effort to spur the adoption of sustainable solar energy initiatives, both help to reduce costs and pave the way for additional market interest.

Some industry followers look to feed-in tariffs as the preferred method for stimulating solar adoption because it has consistently offered financially enticing motivations to both investors and producers, thereby promoting consistent market growth. Detractors take, obviously, an opposing stance – challenging the view that feed-in tariffs are better for the industry long-term. They say FiTs are more expensive for everyone involved — since the price paid for any renewable energy in the feed-in tariff system is full value. Worldwide, the feed-in tariff system is far more common than the renewable energy credit system; 63 countries around the world use the feed-in-tariff system.

In the U.S., however, the renewable energy credit system is favored. And, perhaps, that’s with good reason. In the U.S., it is widely believed that the SREC program is far more capable of creating a healthier and more sustainable solar market.

The SREC system is based upon incentives; those who produce more energy are able to benefit far more than those who don’t. Seems fair, right? On the other hand, the FiT plan is subscription-based and, at the end of the day, subject to government decisions, politics and available funding.

Without a doubt, the SREC concept of “reap what you sow” is quite American. Add to that another red, white and blue favorite – the law of supply and demand. It’s true that the SREC system is based on free market trade and that increased supply of energy credits produced will satisfy demand – at least temporarily — and push down the value of SRECs.

However, for that to truly be an issue, that would mean that widespread adoption of solar development is actually happening. In the event a solar market experiences such exponential growth in solar development causing SREC supply to outpace demand (and forcing the value of SRECs down), that might just be a problem worth having.

Article by Bari Faye Siegel, a technology writer and marketing consultant at Noveda Technologies, an innovative leader in real-time, web-based energy and water monitoring.

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