Aaron Sebens' 4th grade class. (Photo: Sebens.)

Here’s a small story to warm the heart, via Clean Technica: At the start of March, a group of fourth graders from Central Park School in Durham, North Carolina — along with their teacher, Aaron Sebens — set up a Kickstarter campaign to raise $800 to set up a solar array to power their classroom.

“We believe in the sun,” their Kickstarter page says. “And would like to fundraise to get enough money to buy solar panels for our classroom so we do not have to use any electricity from the power plant.”

Apparently, they reached the $800 mark within a single day. Not only that, but they’ve blown so far past their initial target that they’ve set up a list of further goals:

If we can raise $3000 we’ll be able to buy 2 more 145w panels (6 total) and make more than 1kw of clean energy for our classroom. We will be able to send whatever extra electricity we make back through the grid to other classes in the school!

If we can raise $3500 we will be able to buy enough materials for every student in the class to build their own wind turbine!

As of Thursday morning, the class had raised just over $5,800.

Adam James from the Center for American Progress recently argued that this form of online crowdfunding — through sites like AngelList and Gust as well as Kickstarter — could play a big role in clean tech financing, especially now that President Obama’s recent;y-passed JOBS Act has opened up this form of financing to smaller investors.

In fact, companies like Mosaic are already stepping in to provide solar array financing at unusually low interest rates by taking advantage of crowdfunding’s potential.

Kyocera Solar and VGI Energy are teaming up to bring solar power to affordable multifamily housing units in Urban Chicago, according to an announcement flagged by SolarLove.org.

VGI Energy is a “socially and green-minded company” as SolarLove.org puts it, and Kyocera is a solar manufacturer that produces, among other things, the MyGen Pro system — a package of solar modules and mounting equipment that can be sized for the architectural specs and power requirements of most residential and light commercial buildings, according to its press release. The partnership is part of a push by VGI to bring more sustainability and energy independence, as well as more efficient appliances, infrastructure and plumbing, to residents of Chicago’s low-income urban areas:

VGI’s retrofitted buildings throughout Chicago have been outfitted with 20kW rooftop solar arrays, providing electricity from the clean, renewable energy of the sun and contributing to VGI’s goal of achieving zero-net-energy-capable buildings.

Since 2010, VGI has installed Kyocera solar modules on six Chicago buildings ranging in size from 18 to 70 units, providing more than 600 people with the opportunity to use renewable energy in their daily lives.…

“Our housing developments aim to enhance the quality of life for each resident with programs that integrate independent lifestyles with a sense of community; utilizing solar energy to reduce the environmental footprint is a key component,” said Van Vincent, CEO, VGI Energy.

The announcement is an encouraging sign for several overlapping reasons. First, low-income Americans often have less support and resources than their wealthier fellow citizens — the bulk of public housing assistance goes to homeowners and single-family units, even though most low-income Americans rent or live in multi-family residences. In fact, over half of all federal assistance in 2010 went to households making over $100,000. So any program that scales up investment in the quality and infrastructure of affordable housing is a welcome development.

Second, low-income Americans can also be vulnerable to power outages. After Hurricane Sandy, affordable and public housing projects were left without power for 11 days or more, even while power to wealthier adjacent neighborhoods was quickly restored, leaving residents to tackle dropping temperatures, health problems and disability on their own. Conceivably, outfitting affordable and mutli-family residences with solar arrays provides the opportunity for a bit more energy independence should the grid fail them.

Global solar insolation average. Notice bright red oval on lower right. (Credit Mines ParisTech/Armines 2006)

Australia is climate change’s canary in a coal mine. It has been suffering heat waves, floods, and wildfires in a climate-fueled “angry summer” that demonstrates how critical reducing carbon emissions really is.

Australians are finding ways to use the sun’s energy to reduce fossil fuel consumption. According to a new report, Australia’s solar photovoltaic market could reach 10 gigawatts in five years:

The Australian solar PV market could tip the 10,000 mewagatt (10 gigawatt) mark as early as 2017, and could reach the “saturation” levels for owner-occupied houses in many areas in coming years, according to a new report.

The five-year forecast prepared by leading market analysts Sunwiz and Solar Business Services says that the Australian solar PV market – currently at 2.5GW – will likely grow to between 6GW and 10GW by 2017.

The actual outcome will depend on the speed of the growth in the largely untapped commercial sector, the pace of large, utility-scale solar farms, and the industry’s ability to penetrate more challenging parts of the residential sector.

That “saturation rate” has already been achieved in some areas of the owner-occupied residential sector — reaching 90 percent in some localities. Nationally, the average penetration rate is 20 percent. Adding apartment buildings into the mix, this share drops to 10 percent, and it is this rental market that offers the most promise for growth in solar installations.

You can see the prime driver of solar PV installation in Australia here:

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According to a new report, America broke records in terms of installed solar capacity last year, jumping to 11 percent of total global installations. [Greentech Media]

It may not compare to the German solar market. But the U.S. is definitely becoming a major force globally when it comes to new installations.

According to the 2012 Solar Market Insight report from GTM Research and the Solar Energy Industries Association, America installed 3,313 megawatts of solar capacity last year — accounting for 11 percent of total global installations. That’s up from 7 percent in 2011.

“From 2004 until 2010, America’s global share had been stuck in a tight band. The U.S. significantly broke that in 2012,” said Shayle Kann, vice president at GTM Research. “Our forecasts put us at 13 percent in 2013.”

In Nevada, federal and state officials announced the approval of the McCoy Solar Energy Project, the Desert Harvest Solar Farm, and the Searchlight Wind Energy Project. [San Jose Mercury News]

Following the worst drought in 50 years, US farmers are bracing for long-term challenges due to climate change like heat waves, droughts, and floods.[Global Post]

Supporters of a bill just introduced to the NC General Assembly that would repeal the state’s Renewable Energy Standard are unsure of its prospects for passage. [Charlotte Business Journal]

Four lawmakers who unveiled a proposal for pricing carbon are soliciting public comments for how big the tax should be and how best to rebate the money. [Washington Post]

Monarch butterfly migration plunged to its lowest level in decades, hastened by drought and record-breaking heat in North America. [New York Times]

Paul Ryan’s budget accuses two solar projects in Nevada and Arizona “ill-fated” but they’re actually success stories. [Washington Post]

President Obama asked Organizing for America to give lawmakers cover on potential action on climate change. [The Hill]

Bill McKibben makes the case that immigration reform will “help, not hurt, our environmental efforts” on climate change. [LA Times]

Last month, I was on a panel with someone who kept kept saying “current renewables” were inadequate to address the climate problem and what we needed to do is invest in ”future renewables.” By that he meant increased research and development, of course, and not continued aggressive deployment.

I began my comments with this metaphor:

“There’s no useful intellectual distinction between ‘current’ and ‘future’ renewables. It’s like saying my daughter, who’s six, is not the same person once she becomes an adult. The only way she won’t grow is if I don’t feed her.”

The point is that continuing the amazing price drops and learning curves for renewables requires that we keep feeding them and help them keep learning – by expanding production, as the International Energy Agency has explained (see “The breakthrough technology illusion“). Many other studies back this up (see “Study Confirms Optimal Climate Strategy: Deploy, Deploy, Deploy, R&D, Deploy, Deploy, Deploy“).

[In fairness to renewables, solar power is at least a junior in college, and wind power has already graduated. My daughter just happens to be six.]

Here’s a figure that shows what I’m talking about for solar power (learning curve in upper right):

Note that the price drop (and production increase) has continued since 2011 (see “Chinese Companies Projected To Make Solar Panels for 42 Cents Per Watt In 2015“). And we are also dropping the price of financing solar — see “How Crowdfunding Lowers The Cost Of Solar Energy” —  which is just what you would expect as an industry becomes larger and more mature. Indeed, it’s one reason for learning curves — most things are cheaper when you scale up (except, sadly, nukes).

Similarly, a little over a year ago, Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF) analyzed the cost curve for wind projects since the mind-1980′s and found that the cost of wind-generated electricity has fallen 14% for every doubling of installation capacity.

So while I was glad to see the excellent NY Times climate reporter Justin Gillis launch his monthly print column for Science Times, I was disappointed that he rehashed the tired myth pushed by Bill Gates and a few others in his article, “In Search of Energy Miracles.”

First, though, the good news. Gillis doesn’t fall into the trap of most of the miracle mavens and breakthrough bunch — the trap of advocating an R&D-centered policy:

Two approaches to the issue — spending money on the technologies we have now, or investing in future breakthroughs — are sometimes portrayed as conflicting. In reality, that is a false dichotomy. The smartest experts say we have to pursue both tracks at once, and much more aggressively than we have been doing.

An ambitious national climate policy, anchored by a stiff price on carbon dioxide emissions, would serve both goals at once. In the short run, it would hasten a trend of supplanting coal-burning power plants with natural gas plants, which emit less carbon dioxide. It would drive investment into current low-carbon technologies like wind and solar power that, while not efficient enough, are steadily improving.

And it would also raise the economic rewards for developing new technologies that could disrupt and displace the ones of today. These might be new-age nuclear reactors, vastly improved solar cells, or something entirely unforeseen.

In effect, our national policy now is to sit on our hands hoping for energy miracles, without doing much to call them forth.

Actually, coal is being supplanted by gas and wind (see “Wind Beats Out Natural Gas To Become Top Source Of New Electricity Capacity For 2012“). And efficiency and demand response have slowed electricity demand growth to under 1% a year.

A stiff price for CO2 would tip the balance even more toward sources like wind that are carbon-free and hence don’t destroy a livable climate. After all, BNEF concluded its wind study:

Assuming specific learning rates for these components, we expect wind to become fully competitive with energy produced from combined-cycle gas turbines by 2016 in most regions offering fair wind conditions.… Any increase in the cost of gas, which will consequently raise the cost of energy of gas-fired turbines, would bring forward the timing of grid parity for wind.

And yes, I’ll get to the so-called intermittency problem.

Where Gillis goes astray is when he buys into Bill Gates’ energy miracles nonsense:

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By Jesse Morris, via Rocky Mountain Institute.

From Forbes to Fortune, Bloomberg to the Wall Street Journal, a young company named Mosaic has been getting a lot of attention of late. Why? Because Mosaic is bringing crowd-sourced funding to the world of solar PV.

Crowdfunding is nothing new. Companies such as Kickstarter have allowed individuals to fund everything from their next indie film to extensive out of pocket medical bills with pooled donations from family, friends, and other supporters. But thanks to last year’s JOBS Act, debt-based crowdfunding is now an option as well, in which investors come together to fund startups and small businesses in return for repayment plus interest from a company like Mosaic.

It’s inclusive, meaning that investors of all shapes and sizes can get into the game. And it currently makes for a good, low-risk investment. Mosaic — with more than $1.1 million invested in solar projects to date — boasts 4.5 to 6.5 percent risk-adjusted annual returns, besting the latest interest rates on 30-year Treasury bonds.

But much of the crowdfunding solar coverage under-emphasizes a key point: funds raised from the crowd — in addition to providing attractive returns for investors and enabling more solar installation period — also have the potential to lower the cost of electricity from solar PV systems in the here and now.

Solar Finance: Credit Card Vs. Mortgage Rates

Imagine for a moment that a credit card company issues a card with a $200,000 limit. Next, let’s imagine a homeowner taking that card and buying a new home for $200,000 with a thirty-year term, just like most home mortgages. This lucky homeowner just bought a new home for $0 down!

There’s a problem, though. Financing a home purchase with this hypothetical credit card is a seriously bad deal for the homeowner since the annual interest rate would be 13 to 15 percent, according to Bankrate.com, which translates into extremely high monthly payments. Instead, most homeowners finance homes on thirty-year terms with more reasonable interest rates in the 3 to5 percent range. Such inexpensive single-digit bank debt is a key to making the financing work, since the cost of the debt is a huge factor in the overall cost of the purchase over the term of the deal.

Just as financing solutions like credit cards and home mortgages help families buy new appliances and homes, several different finance solutions are helping solar energy systems be deployed on homes and businesses throughout the U.S. today. In fact, about 75 percent of residential solar photovoltaic projects and 40 percent of commercial ones are financed with different “third-party ownership” models, where electricity users install a solar system with little to no money down and start saving money from day one.

But the capital used to deploy these third-party-owned solar projects has an effective interest rate that looks more like that of a credit card than a mortgage. This translates into high monthly payments for electricity from solar systems — just like a homeowner making steep payments on a credit card in the home purchase example. Although it’s not the only factor at play, high interest rates (closely related to “costs of capital”) are one of the big reasons we only see lots of solar in places like Hawaii (where residents pay the highest electricity rates in the nation), but not Kentucky: solar developers can only produce savings for customers in areas with a combination of high electricity rates, good sunlight, and attractive local incentives. Think California and Arizona, two leading states nationwide for total installed solar capacity.

For folks interested in deploying as much solar in the U.S. as quickly as possible, this is a problem. Right now, the capital structure behind most solar projects in the U.S. is prohibitively expensive for the economics of solar to pencil out in most of the country. So, we’ve got to help make capital for solar projects look more like home mortgage loans than credit card debt.

There are a number of ways to do this, but many of the most popular solutions, such as master limited partnerships and solar-specific real estate investment trusts, require regulatory and/or federal legislative changes and aren’t likely to become large-scale solutions in the near term. However, there’s one solution that’s already upon us — crowdfunding.
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Deutsche Bank just released new analyses concluding that global solar market will become sustainable on its own terms by the end of 2014, no longer needing subsidies to continue performing.

The German-based bank said that rooftop solar is looking especially robust, and sees strong demand in solar markets in India, China, Britain, Germany, India, and the United States. As a result, Deutsche Bank actually increased its forecast for solar demand in 2013 to 30 gigawatts — a 20 percent increase over 2012.

Here’s Renew Economy with a summary of Deutsche Banks’s logic:

The key for Deutsche is the emergence of unsubsidised markets in many key countries. It points, for instance, to India, where despite delays in the national solar program, huge demand for state based schemes has produced very competitive tenders, in the [12 cents per kilowatt hour] range. Given the country’s high solar radiation profile and high electricity prices paid by industrial customers, it says several conglomerates are considering large scale implementation of solar for self consumption.

“Grid parity has been reached in India even despite the high cost of capital of around 10-12 percent,” Deutsche Bank notes, and also despite a slight rise  in module prices of [3 to 5 cents per kilowatt] in recent months (good for manufacturers).

Italy is another country that appears to be at grid parity, where several developers are under advanced discussions to develop unsubsidized projects in Southern Italy. Deutsche Bank says that for small commercial enterprises that can achieve 50 percent or more self consumption, solar is competitive with grid electricity in most parts of Italy, and commercial businesses in Germany that have the load profile to achieve up to 90 percent self consumption are also finding solar as an attractive source of power generation.

Deutsche bank says demand expected in subsidised markets such as Japan and the UK, including Northern Ireland, is expected to be strong, the US is likely to introduce favourable legislation, including giving solar installations the same status as real estate investment trusts, strong pipelines in Africa and the Middle east, and unexpectedly strong demand in countries such as Mexico and Caribbean nations means that its forecasts for the year are likely to rise.

As Renew Economy also points out, this is the third report in the past month anticipating a bright future for the global solar market: UBS released a report that concluded an “unsubsidized solar revolution” was in the works, “Thanks to significant cost reductions and rising retail tariffs, households and commercial users are set to install solar systems to reduce electricity bills – without any subsidies.” And Macquarie Group argued that costs for rooftop solar in Germany have fallen so far that even with subsidy cuts “solar installations could continue at a torrid pace.”

Here in America, solar power installations boomed over the course of 2011 and 2012, even as the price of solar power systems continued to plunge. To a large extent, the American solar boom has been driven by third party leasing agreements — which are heavily involved in rooftop installation.

Meanwhile, on the international scene, the cost of manufacturing solar panels in China is expected to drop to an all-new low of 42 cents per watt in 2015, and power generated from solar is predicted to undercut that produced by both coal and most forms of natural gas within a decade.

John Farrell via ILSR

Suddenly everyone knows about Germany’s solar power dominance because Fox News made asses of themselves, suggesting that the country is a sunny, tropical paradise. Most media folks have figured out that there are some monster differences in policy (e.g. a feed-in tariff), but then latch on to the “Germans pay a lot extra” meme. Germans do, and are perfectly happy with it, but that’s still not the story.

The real reason Germany dominates in solar (and wind) is their commitment to democratizing energy.

Half of their renewable power is owned by ordinary Germans, because that wonky sounding feed-in tariff (often known as a CLEAN Contract Program in America) makes it ridiculously simple and safe for someone to park their money in generating solar electricity on their roof instead of making pennies in interest at the bank.

It also makes their “energy change” movement politically bulletproof. Germans aren’t tree-hugging wackos giving up double mochas for wind turbines. They are investing by the tens of thousand in a clean energy future that is putting money back in their pockets and creating well over 300,000 new jobs (at last count). Their policy makes solar cost half as much to install as it does in America, where the free market’s red tape can’t compete with their “socialist” efficiency.

Fox News’ gaffe about sunshine helps others paper over the real tragedy of American energy policy. In a country founded on the concept of self-reliance (goodbye, tea imports!), we finance clean energy with tax credits that make wind and solar reliant on Wall Street instead of Main Street. We largely preclude participation by the ordinary citizen unless they give up ownership of their renewable energy system to a leasing company. We make clean energy a complicated alternative to business as usual, while the cloudy, windless Germans make the energy system of the future by making it stupid easy and financially rewarding.

I’m all for pounding the faithless fools of Fox, but let’s learn the real secret to German energy engineering and start making democratic energy in America.

– John Farrell directs the Energy Self-Reliant States and Communities program at the Institute for Local Self-Reliance. This was reprinted with permission.

A new research initiative is designed to lead to unprecedented 36-hour forecasts of incoming energy from the Sun, thereby helping utilities obtain energy more efficiently from solar energy power plants. Credit: NCAR.

National Center for Atmospheric Research News Release

BOULDER—Applying its atmospheric expertise to solar energy, the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) is spearheading a three-year, nationwide project to create unprecedented, 36-hour forecasts of incoming energy from the Sun for solar energy power plants.

The research team is designing a prototype system to forecast sunlight and resulting power every 15 minutes over specific solar facilities, thereby enabling utilities to continuously anticipate the amount of available solar energy. The work, funded primarily with a $4.1 million U.S. Department of Energy grant, will draw on cutting-edge research techniques at leading government labs and universities across the country, in partnership with utilities, other energy companies, and commercial forecast providers.

Much of the focus will be on generating detailed predictions of clouds and atmospheric particles that can reduce incoming energy from the Sun.

“It’s critical for utility managers to know how much sunlight will be reaching solar energy plants in order to have confidence that they can supply sufficient power when their customers need it,” says Sue Ellen Haupt, director of NCAR’s Weather Systems and Assessment Program and the lead researcher on the solar energy project. “These detailed cloud and irradiance forecasts are a vital step in using more energy from the Sun.”

The project takes aim at one of the greatest challenges in meteorology: accurately predicting cloud cover over specific areas. In addition to helping utilities tap solar energy more effectively, detailed cloud predictions can also improve the accuracy of shorter-term weather forecasts.

The project expands NCAR’s focus on renewable energy. NCAR designed a highly detailed wind energy forecasting system with Xcel Energy that saved Xcel ratepayers an estimated $6 million in a single year. The center is also creating advanced prediction capabilities to enable wind farm developers to anticipate wind energy potential anywhere in the world.

“Improving forecasts for renewable energy from the Sun produces a major return on investment for society,” says Thomas Bogdan, president of the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research, which manages NCAR on behalf of the National Science Foundation. “By helping utilities produce energy more efficiently from the Sun, we can make this market more cost competitive.”

Clouded forecasts

More than half of all states in the U.S. have mandated that utilities increase their use of renewable energy as a way to reduce dependence on fossil fuels such as coal, oil, and natural gas, which affect air quality and release greenhouse gases associated with climate change. But the shift to energy sources such as solar or wind means relying on resources that are difficult to predict.

Because large amounts of electricity cannot be stored in a cost-effective manner, power generated by a solar panel or any other source must be promptly consumed. If an electric utility powers down a coal- or natural gas-fired facility in anticipation of solar energy, those plants may not be able to power up fast enough if clouds roll in. The only option in such a scenario is to buy energy on the spot market, which can be very costly.

Conversely, if more sunshine reaches a solar farm than expected, the extra energy can go to waste.

But predicting clouds, which form out of microscopic droplets of water or ice, is also notoriously difficult. Clouds are affected by a myriad of factors, including winds, humidity, sunlight, surface heat, and tiny airborne particles, as well as chemicals and gases in the atmosphere.

Solar energy output is affected not just by when and where clouds form, but also by the types of clouds present. The thickness and elevation of clouds have greatly differing effects on the amount of sunlight reaching the ground. Wispy cirrus clouds several miles above the surface, for example, block far less sunlight than thick, low-lying stratus clouds.

To design a system that can generate such detailed forecasts, NCAR and its partners will marshal an array of observing instruments, including lidars (which use laser-based technology to take measurements in the atmosphere); specialized computer models; and mathematical and artificial intelligence techniques. Central to the effort will be three total sky imagers in each of several locations, which will observe the entire sky, triangulate the height and depth of clouds, and trace their paths across the sky.

The team will test these advanced capabilities during different seasons in several geographically diverse U.S. locations: the Northeast, Florida, Colorado/New Mexico, and California. The goal is to ensure that the system works year round in different types of weather patterns.

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By Kenneth Bossong

According to the latest “Energy Infrastructure Update” report from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s Office of Energy Projects, 1,231 MW of new in-service electrical generating capacity came on line in the United States in January 2013 — all from wind, solar, and biomass sources.

– SUN DAY Campaign News Release via RenewableEnergyWorld.com