Not too much news in residential or commercial solar technology this week, so this seems like a wonderful opportunity to share that the Guinness world record for distance traveled in a solar car looks vulnerable after an Ontario man rode the famed Dempster Highway all the way up to the Arctic Circle, using nothing more than the power of the sun. If he can make it back to Ontario in the car it looks like he will take the record from an Australian team that had previously set it.

The idea of traveling 16,000 kilometers in a solar car that, as the article notes, “looks like a low-slung flying saucer on wheels,” is pretty incredible. And solar car projects are also a fun way of looking at an application of solar that has less of a sense of urgency to it and more of a sense of scientific creativity and freedom. People across the world are clamoring for renewable energy solutions for their homes and businesses, and solar is increasingly ready to meet their needs in affordable and efficient ways; solar’s presence on the power grid is only going to grow and grow over the next decade, even if we don’t make it to Al Gore’s benchmark. But with a car like this, as there’s less of a sense of urgency for a full-solar car – especially with electric cars and hybrids making real progress – you can enjoy the simple accomplishment without worrying about the pace of improvement or logistical issues that will pose real challenges for mainstream solar car technology.

Not that it can make for a full respite, of course, from practical concerns, with the Senate testing my optimism about renewing the solar tax credit. But for the moment, congratulations to Marcelo da Luz for his incredible trip, and I hope he makes a safe return to slightly-warmer parts of North America.

Before you start calling installers, you should be in control of some basic facts about your home, electric usage, and financial situation: solar can make a lot of sense and it’s a great technology, but it’s not right for everyone. Read the full article on GetSolar.com.

Lately, the air quality in Beijing has been astonishingly pleasant. For the past three weeks, when the skies haven’t been a sunny cerulean, they’ve been a rainy shade of gray, more cool than the usual muggy. Even when I was in the neighboring countryside two weekends ago, the difference between the rural and urban air quality didn’t feel quite so vast. Whether this change is a result of the PRC’s many Olympic measures for their gargantuan coming-out party or of divine fate, I can’t be quite sure. Yet, with all the new flowers and trees planted next to the roads and Beijing’s removing half its cars off the streets (a measure that started on July 20, and which bans cars with odd and even-numbered license plates on alternate days), it’s sometimes easy to believe that all of these changes are the results of Olympic preparations. Granted, fundamental environmental rehabilitation takes years, and bigger measures than planting several thousand pots of plants and pulling cars off the streets for two months are required, but China has also been busy constructing some fairly impressive green Olympic projects.

In view of the fact that the Beijing Olympics’ Opening Ceremony will occur in less than two weeks, now’s a good a time as ever to take a look at some of the most important solar projects China’s been developing for the world’s largest sporting event. After all, Beijing has pledged three megawatts of solar power for the Olympics, although Beijing’s total solar power investment could be even greater—six megawatts—according to the vice-president of one of the solar companies installing systems on one of the Olympic venues. With 80 to 90 percent of the streetlights around the Olympic venues and 90 percent of the water in the Olympic Village all powered by the sun, the seven main Olympic stadiums being outfitted by solar generators and the roofs of Beijing’s National Indoor Stadium (not the same as the Beijing National Olympic Stadium!) being covered with 1,100 solar panels, this number doesn’t seem entirely unrealistic.

Take the Beijing National Olympic Stadium, for instance. Dubbed the “Bird’s Nest” for its circular, latticework structure, the stadium signed a $10 million RMB (now $1.47 million USD) contract in April 2006 with Chinese solar company Suntech Power to install a 130-kilowatt photovoltaic system at 12 stadium entrances. This installation will power the venue alongside its conventional power supply.

The Beijing National Aquatics Center, or, the “Water Cube,” an oblong structure coated with 100,000 square meters of a translucent plastic called ETFE to mimic the appearance of watery bubbles, stands right next to the Bird’s Nest. The ETFE allows in solar heat effectively, which heats up the building efficiently and reduces energy costs by about 30 percent, a great energy-saving measure, considering how much heat is required to heat a pool.

The Olympic Village, too, boasts an impressive solar system—a solar thermal system covering 6,000 square meters that will be able to save 5 million kilowatt hours of electricity a year, according to a press release from the Beijing Olympics website. The installation is part of the Sino-Italian Cooperation Program for Environmental Protection, one of many cooperative projects included in a Memorandum of Understanding on Environmental Co-operation signed in 2002 between the Italian ministry and Beijing’s municipal government. The installation will not only supply hot water and electricity to 16,000 Village residents—athletes, coaches, and others—during the Olympics, it will also supply 2,000 households after the Games, as the Olympic Village will be turned into a luxurious residential complex.

Sadly, I am not important enough to gain access to any of these venues before they open to the general public. The closest I can get to the Bird’s Nest or Water Cube is behind several guards and a metal gate, a position from which I can’t take any photos you can’t already find on the official Olympic website. When I return to Beijing in two weeks (I am currently in Shanghai right now) and attend a few events, I will be sure to snap as many pictures as possible! Stay tuned.

A couple of weeks ago, we discussed a hypothetical case study: the payback period of a 3.7-kW PV system for a PG&E customer in California. One of our readers pointed out that our analysis relied, perhaps too heavily, on a couple of overly optimistic averages, namely that California-based customers could count on 8.2 hours of useful sunlight each day. (Thanks for bringing this to our attention, Jernej!)

This week, I’m going to dig a bit deeper, looking beyond averages to discuss some of the more thorny issues surrounding pricing and panel performance. As it turns out, for the case in question, a pay back period of about 12 to 13 years remains appropriate for customers who use a lot of electricity, and thus pay a high per kWh rate. For customers who pay about 16 cents per kWh on average, the payback period should be in the neighborhood of 18 years. This is, admittedly, 5 years longer than what was originally put forth. But it’s far from the 36 years suggested by Jernej. Let’s take a look.

To begin, PG&E employs a tiered pricing scheme for residential customers, which penalizes big consumers. It looks something like this:

Tier 1 (baseline): 12 cents/kWh

Tier 2 (101 to 130% above baseline): 12 cents/kWh

Tier 3 (131 to 200% above baseline): 21 cents/kWh

Tier 4 (201 to 300% above baseline): 30 cents/kWh

Tier 5 (above 300% above baseline): 35 cents/kWh

As you can see, as a customer uses power above and beyond the usage baseline, the price of electricity increases. Naturally, this creates an incentive to conserve electricity, which is a good thing. Note that winter electricity rates are about 40% cheaper than summer rates. Note, too, that rates will also vary a bit depending on which PG&E schedule you’re on. (For a bit more info, see this previous post). We could literally spend a year’s worth of blog posts discussing electricity pricing, as utilities’ schemes are notoriously complicated. This would, however, be about as interesting as watching dirt. Accordingly, a few observations are relevant:

First, if you commonly find yourself creeping into tier 3 or 4, or even tier 5 territory, your PV system will pay for itself faster than it would for a customer that pays tier 1 or 2 rates. Duh, right? This is because your system will save you more money. In many instances, in fact, a properly designed system can eliminate all upper-tier charges, reducing electric rates by more than half. The second observation is that, in 2008, the average retail rate is closer to 16 cents per kWh, not the 14 cents we used a couple of weeks ago. Finally, electricity rates in California have been increasing by about 5.5% each year, for the past two decades. Our original analysis took 4%, a rate that better reflects national trends. Taking the preceding factors into account, we’ll see that the case for PV is a wee bit stronger than was assumed a few weeks ago.

Now on to our assumptions regarding panel performance. As Jernej pointed out, the assumption of 8.2 hour of “useful” sunlight each day is indeed a bit too rosy. More specifically, the chances that a 3.7-kW system could crank out more than 10,000 kWh over the course of a year are damn slim (at least with today’s technology). This time, instead of assessing expected panel performance on the basis of average sunlight per day, I’ll take an average output rate for PV in the San Francisco area. A conservative figure is 1,580 kWh per year per kilowatt of AC power, as defined by the California Energy Commission (CEC) and performance test conditions (PTC) rating. Put simply, the 187 watts listed on our example Kyocera panels means that, in optimal conditions, the panels will generate 187 watts of power. Under real-world conditions, however, the panels will generate somewhat less (about 167 watts). This second number is reflected in the panels’ PTC rating. The CEC continually conducts studies on a wide range of products, to determine how panel performance is affected by dust, weather, transmission/wiring loss, etc. (For details on CEC and PTC ratings and eligible equipment, see the Go Solar California website).

Details aside, the important point here is to figure out how much power our 3.7-kW system will likely produce. Here we go:

167 PTC watts AC x 20 panels =3340 watts = 3.34 kW

3.34 kW x 1,580 kWh/year/kW = 5,277 kWh/year

Again, thanks to Jernej for flagging our original estimate, which was almost twice as large. Plugging this revised figure into our analysis, we get a rough payback period (without accounting for time-value of money) of 16 years. Alternately, if we assume that the customer pays, on average, 21 cents per kWh, then the payback period drops to 13 years. Take a look at the spreadsheet (xls), and tinker around for yourself.

As we’re all still learning, we welcome questions, comments and suggestions. Next week I’ll continue exploring PV as an investment. Thanks, and good luck.

The wizards at MIT have come up with yet another project that is nifty, cool, and eminently practical, with the invention of a simple, homemade $17 solar cooker designed for use in rural areas. The only materials are Mylar coating, yak wool, and bamboo ribs. In many countries across the world people cook with materials that are unhealthy both for themselves and to the environment, and this cooker aims to provide a cheap solution to that widespread problem with clean energy. And for an additional cost it will also be able to provide heat to homes. If they can get it into widespread production and find some funding, a huge amount of humanitarian benefit could come from this device.

The great sums of money going into research and development for solar technologies is an obvious reminder that the problems of the world are not only going to be solved in a low-tech manner, but it’s nice to have a reminder from time to time that innovations can come outside of a laboratory. The central premise of solar energy is so strong and adaptable that there are ways to apply (and improve) it across a wide spectrum.

Meanwhile, as always, solar technology writ large is improving, getting more powerful and more cheap. NASA is even ready to test out a solar sail to propel satellites and deep-space missions. With all of these creative solar solutions to difficult problems, the straightforwardness of the vast majority of solar projects is becoming more evident. Solar professionals are going to be able to handle powering vast portions of this country, sooner than people think. All that’s necessary is the money and the will to fulfill the potential for all of this ingenuity.

If you live in California and have wondered how you could afford to install photovoltaics but have been stopped by either a scanty bank account or fear of re-mortgaging your home, you might have just run out of excuses. The state has just enacted legislation that now makes it possible for homeowners to obtain low-interest loans from local government for the express purpose of installing renewable energy or energy efficiency measures. What is really innovative about this, though, is how you pay for it: you can pay the loan back through your property taxes over time.

One question we often hear at Getsolar.com is, “What happens to my solar system if I decide to sell my house?” You can’t take it with you, of course. The idea is that the system adds so much value to your home that you recoup your investment with a much higher sale price than you could otherwise ask. Under California’s new law, though, the solution is simpler–you just pass the outstanding balance on the loan over to the next homeowner. Technically it amounts to the same thing for the person buying your home (whether it’s an additional $15k built into their new mortgage or attached as separate state loan, they’re still taking on that money), but for you, it means you’re pretty much installing solar with no strings attached. Your home will still look competitively priced on the market if you ever need to sell, and you don’t have to quietly seethe about how you didn’t get your “money’s worth” out of your system before you moved. It’s like pro-rating your system for the time you’ve actually used it. How cool is that?

Perhaps I jumped the gun in saying “if you live in California…” While I have no doubt that other municipalities will follow suit, the two that are blazing this trail are San Francisco and Palm Desert, two very different communities (demographically and politically). The bill that the Governator just signed into law simply allows local governments to make this sort of funding available, rather than mandating them to do so. I hope the trail being blazed is less of a Route 1 and more of a Route 66 phenomenon–that is, nation-wide. This sort of loan is exactly what many homeowners need to make the jump to solar energy: it lowers the risk of the investment and makes something that seems, for some people, desperately out of range, suddenly a lot closer than they thought.

For more information:

Los Angeles Times

San Francisco Chronicle

Having just returned from the countryside, I already miss its bitingly cold, naturally clean water, its lush vegetation, its air free from the brown dust that characterizes Beijing. To be fair, Beijing hasn’t been so terrible lately—the past several days have been a striking blue—although every time a car passes by me on the street I still have to close my eyes for fear of dust or dirt blowing into them. However, Beijing’s neighboring villages still feel a world removed, and not just because horses roam the uneven dirt paths and roosters signal the advent of morning. The air even smells different: when it doesn’t reek of manure, rural air smells like mountain water and moist vegetation. For these reasons, I am especially glad that Beijing’s countryside has gone solar, and that its inhabitants have electricity and hot water without the polluting side effects of fossil fuel usage.

In the village where we lodged, as well as the neighboring gorge (both places quite popular tourist sites) and the surrounding villages, all of the street lights are powered by small solar panels. There are no traffic lights, but the lights signaling the arrival of trains are solar-powered. Solar hot water heaters cover at least half of the village rooftops. We stayed in a farmer-run inn—a number of the families in the village run their own inns out of their homes, and serve traditional home-cooked meals with the organic fruits and vegetables from their own gardens (this weekend, I had some of the best cucumbers and plums I’ve ever had in my life). At the first place we stayed, the owners proudly informed us that the hot water was solar-powered, so we would have hot water whenever we liked (the sun is quite merciless out in rural China). We eventually moved to a different inn, since one of our rooms didn’t have running water. But the fact that solar is such an ordinary way of life in this village, as commonplace as a television set or an air conditioner, feels simultaneously anachronistic and heartening. Not everyone may have gone solar, but it’s accessible to most.

Living in Beijing right now has made me rather ambivalent toward China’s environmental policies. It doesn’t come as a surprise to anyone that the PRC isn’t the poster country for eco-consciousness. Almost everybody drinks their water either boiled or from a bottle, and a blue sky day in Shanghai or Beijing is a rare day indeed. To its credit, however, the planet’s largest consumer of energy is attempting to clean up its act through measures such as a nationwide plastic bag ban or putting on a Green Olympics, and, most inspiring—or paradoxical—of all, being home to several solar cities. And no, these solar oases are not showpieces, developed solely for admiration during the Olympics. Here are but a few of the most well-known.

Kunming, the capital of southwestern Yunnan province, has been referred to as China’s “Solar City,” although it is not by any means The solar city. But with more than half of the city’s 4.7 million inhabitants all using solar hot water systems, and nearly every single apartment complex sporting at least a few on their rooftops, it’s not an undeserved title. Yunnan Normal University’s Solar Energy Research Institute, founded in 1971, houses laboratories focusing on solar thermal, solar photovoltaic, biomass energy and environmental engineering. Yunnan Normal is also home to one of China’s three National Solar Water Heating Testing Centers, which provide free testing services to the solar industry in order to facilitate product certification. Thanks to government incentive programs encouraging technology development, updated building codes and product certification centers over the past thirty years, the solar thermal industry has matured as nicely as it has up to this point. Thanks to a ruthlessly competitive domestic market, low manufacturing costs and China’s abundant sunlight (even Beijing receives lots of sun, for all its smog!), the price of a typical solar hot water heater—not including installation fees—fell to 1,600 rmb (~$235 US now) by 2007. There are clothes that cost more than that.

In more recent developments, there’s also the northeastern city of Weihai, in Shandong province, which hopes to become the largest solar city in the world. With help from Australia’s BP Solar, China seeks to emulate Australia’s Solar Cities initiative, which was responsible for the solar development of a Sydney suburb and the city of Adelaide, among others. There’s a lot of official hoo-hah in BP’s press release, but the figure that stands out most from it is the deployment goal of 100MW of solar PV, solar thermal and “energy efficiency applications.” Announced in April, the project is apparently still in the fuzzy planning stages—as evidenced by a lack of online information—but we’ll keep our eyes peeled for more details as they surface.

And now, the best for last. Behold, the pride and joy of China’s State Environmental and Protection Agency (SEPA): Rizhao, a coastal city of three million in Shandong province whose name means “sunshine.” Both Renewable Energy World and Inhabit profiled it last year, but a city in which 99 percent of its inhabitants use solar water heaters and whose traffic, street and park lights are all powered by PV cells deserves a second (or third) look. What originally first came as a shock to me is the fact that Rizhao incomes are not high. Considering that America’s model “green” cities—San Francisco, for one—are hardly the playgrounds of the poor, I was surprised when I read that per capita incomes in Rizhao are lower than the Chinese national average and even lower than neighboring Shandong cities. But then it made sense: Rizhao’s mayor, Li Zhaoqian, wanted to increase the city’s efficiency and save on energy costs, and save he did—as of 2007, the city reduced 52,860 tons of CO2 emissions from solar water heaters alone and saved about 9,333 rmb ($1,807 US in 2007, $1,372 now) annually.

The city now stipulates that all new buildings must incorporate solar panels, and strongly encourages government buildings and officials’ homes to be the earliest adopters. Although the municipal government played a large role in Rizhao’s successful solar development by raising public awareness of the benefits of solar through campaigns and education, Rizhao’s going solar was also a consequence of provincial governmental policy and the growth of its local solar industries. Because the local government lacks the financial power to provide the costly subsidies required to subsidize solar panel end users, Shandong’s provincial government subsidizes instead the research and development of the solar hot water industry in order to lower unit costs. In Rizhao, a solar water heater now costs roughly 4 to 5 percent of an urban household’s annual income and 8 to 10 percent of a rural household’s income. The provincial government works with local solar panel companies to lower costs, as well. Not bad, considering how China’s environmental disaster is in large part due to provincial officials’ refusal to comply with national environmental laws in order to turn a profit.

Since Rizhao went solar in the early 1990s, it has not only been designated by SEPA as China’s Environmental Protection Model City, but has also attracted increasing amounts of foreign investment and tourism. It has also played host to several international and domestic sporting events and has attracted several high-profile Chinese universities and professors to build campuses, complexes and homes on its soil.

Of course, a similar success story occurring in the U.S. would be difficult to come by in the same manner. Labor and materials, after all, aren’t quite as cheap here. Yet, with the right support in the appropriate industries and development of low-cost, high-efficiency daily appliances, perhaps an otherwise unremarkable little city in the U.S. can undergo a similar transformation as well.

Researchers are finding a lot of promise in a technology that uses glass coated with dye to generate solar power. A pane of glass is coated with a special dye, which shunts sunlight to photovoltaic cells in the frame. Very cool.

The best news about this, though, isn’t just that it’s cool, but that this could mark a potential paradigm shift in the way people view solar, if this technology were ever to hit mass production. And that’s because, as I’ve gone on about in previous posts, solar has the challenge of integrating itself into people’s daily routines, and this technology completely addresses that challenge. There’s a psychological obstacle to putting photovoltaic panels on the roof, or anything else that in some way changes (and therefore has the danger of screwing up) the way someone’s home or living space looks. It’s not an impassable obstacle, and the legitimate aesthetic appeal, financial benefits, and environmental value of solar are why many people choose to make such a change. But with something like this, the threshold for adoption becomes much lower. No longer is the family in danger of being those strange people on the block with the big panels. They won’t have to compromise their careful decision-making regarding how the space around them looks and feels. It will be simple; the addition is literally transparent.

That’s why I’m excited about this in more than just a technical way. This could be a real game-changer, in the residential zone particularly. And if we think about dedicated structures, then glittering, beautiful buildings that are both aesthetic marvels and substantial power plants doesn’t sound to bad, either. Here’s hoping these guys can make it work.

There’s no more silicon shortage. Plenty of governments (even if our own is an exception currently) are heavily funding solar R&D. So why, in the year 2008, is solar still not cost-competitive with traditional energy sources? This question has riddled a major solar convention, held for the first time in North America this year and wrapping up tomorrow. Intersolar North America, like most of these events, offers both a trade show and industry conference to reach everyone from passers-by who might wander into the exhibitor hall, to industry veterans looking to attend in-depth workshops and network with their international peers. The opening remarks of the show, held in San Francisco, addressed the cost issue immediately. Unfortunately, no one had answers. As one well-informed attendee pointed out, as quoted in the San Francisco chronicle, “That’s the $64,000 question…The entire industry understands we need to get competitive with the cost of fossil fuels.”

We could use some international inspiration. The 209 exhibitors registered for the San Francisco show can sure fill an exhibition hall; but at this past June’s Intersolar Europe, held in Munich, a staggering 1,050 exhibitors participated. This was more than double the number that registered for the same show last year, but the San Francisco attendees would have to quintuple to match those kinds of numbers by next year. It’s true that the European show hosted members of over 40 nations, and perhaps that’s a bit extreme to expect on our side of the pond. But the gaping difference does point, I think, to what remains the basic problem with solar in America: no one’s doing it. If Americans started demanding solar as an option to the same extent Europeans have, maybe that would give the industry the push it seems to need to go from “building momentum” to “has so much momentum it kind of can’t stop and will just have to go over rather than around the pesky coal plant in its way.”

Yes, folks on the two coasts–primarily California and New England residents–are pursuing residential solar, and utility-scale solar is becoming increasingly popular in the Southwest despite legislative setbacks. And of course there are the lone wolves looking for solar who happen to live in Michigan or Texas, and with the cost of fuel, it’s no wonder. But solar still has not achieved the kind of momentum that it has in Europe, either large scale or small. We’re still pushing every step of the way, fighting for government assists and recognition, educating on very small levels–in communities where a solar plant is going up, neighbors asking Joe Solar what those strange things are on his roof–and while this is excellent in its own way, it doesn’t achieve the kind of large-scale dissemination of information that would help more Americans realize how possible it is for them to incorporate solar into their homes. Even if photovoltaics is out of the price range for many middle class families, solar hot water shouldn’t be. We’ve had national campaigns to raise water conservation awareness, forest fire safety awareness, Energy Star ratings awareness, ozone hole awareness, tap water safety awareness. Maybe it’s time we had one for renewable energy awareness.