solar updates reflective and PV for the world

REM
Recently, Northwest Engineering Corporation Limited announced that the 200MW solar tower CSP project officially started construction in Delingha. It is being undertaken by POWERCHINA NORTHWEST as EPC contractor with investment from CGN New Energy.
World
Courtesy of Northwest Engineering Corporation Limited
CGN New Energy’s Delingha solar hybrid project has a total capacity of 200MW with a planned area of about 3529.8 million square meters. It will be constructed in two phases and each phase consists of 800 MW of PV and 200 MW CSP. At present, it’s the CSP part of the first phase of the project that started the construction, which is also the world's largest solar tower CSP project in single-unit capacity under construction.

The project adopts the hybrid form of photovoltaic and molten salt solar thermal power generation, using the heat from the solar field and the residual electricity of curtailment wind and solar power in the area to heat the molten salt in the thermal energy storage tank, and then generate high-temperature steam through the salt-water heat exchanger to drive the steam turbine generator to generate electricity.

The total design annual utilization hours of this 200MW CSP plant is 1,319 hours, an annual power generation of 263.88 million kWh. After the whole project is completed and put into operation, the annual on-grid electricity can reach 3.65 billion kWh.

The project will be built into the first new energy hybrid demonstration project in the western part of the Haixi region with a molten salt CSP plant as the peak shaving power supply, helping the construction of a national clean energy industry in Qinghai Province and contributing to the achievement of the carbon neutral goal.

Southeast Asia wants to create more waste-to-energy facilities, and European companies are eager to corner the market. However, there are concerns over environmental damage brought on by burning trash.European firms are beginning to invest heavily in waste-to-energy (WtE) markets in Southeast Asia, as the region's electricity demands are expected to soar in the coming decades and Europe's own demand for burning waste is drying up.

European companies want to help build waste-to-energy power plants in Southeast Asia like this one in Germany.

Rudy Fessel/Zoonar/picture alliance
European and Japanese companies have long dominated the WtE industry, which at the simplest level sees power plants incinerate landfilled waste that cannot be recycled to produce electricity.

Energymonitor.ai, a clean energy news website, recently estimated that there are more than 100 waste-to-energy projects recently completed or underway in the Philippines, Indonesia and Thailand.

This includes a plant in Pangasinan, in the Philippines, financed by UK-based Allied Project Services, and a Danish government-backed project for a plant in Semarang, an Indonesian city. A project in Chonburi, Thailand, is backed by French firms ENGIE and Suez Environment.

BP and Chevron have led a US$40 million investment round for a Canadian startup that claims to have developed a unique way to extract energy from geothermal heat on demand, using an unpowered looping fluid design that's already prototyped in Alberta.

Solar and wind are scalable renewable resources, but only produce energy when the sun and wind are up, not when the grid needs it. Hydro can respond well to demand, but it's not really scalable; the geometry of your dam dictates the size of your operation. Regular geothermal needs volcanic levels of heat, which restricts it to certain locations, the same way hydro needs mountain reservoirs.

There are lower-temperature, low-enthalpy geothermal projects out there that can generate energy from hot rock in a flexible, scalable, on-demand fashion, but according to Eavor CEO John Redfern, these haven't taken off because they lose between 50-80 percent of the power they generate in the task of pumping the water up and down.

Which makes this Eavor-Loop technology a bit of a unicorn. Essentially it's a low-enthalpy geothermal station that sends fluid through a sealed loop in a way that self-perpetuates without adding any extra energy at all once it's running.

The idea is devilishly simple: hot water wants to rise, cool water wants to fall. So the Eavor-Loop tunnels way down, miles deep into the Earth where the rock is hot, then runs a series of parallel tunnels out horizontally through the rock, where the water can get nice and hot. These tunnels themselves run for several miles deep beneath the surface, then join back together and rise up vertically again.

A two-station implementation with send and return loops
A two-station implementation with send and return loopsEavor
The heat is harvested at the surface, and used either directly as commercial heating or by using a traditional heat engine to convert it into electricity. This cools the water, after which it gets sent back down underground into another similar set of underground radiator tunnels that heat it back up and send the hot water back up to the surface at the original site, where the heat can be harvested again.

The fact that this all happens in a sealed loop, says Eavor, means that once the fluid is in motion, the higher density of cooler water will push it downward, and the lower density of the hot water will make it easier to push upwards. Kick-start the loop with a pump, and the water will begin to circulate itself, with no energy losses.

It can run in a number of configurations, not all of which require multiple spaced-out ground stations. You can scale it as much as the Earth allows by adding extra loops to your facility. Eavor says a single loop can generate "industrial-scale electricity or produce enough heat for the equivalent of 16,000 homes with a single installation." The target cost of energy production is $50 per megawatt-hour.

The company has a full-scale prototype running at a site near Rocky Mountain House in Alberta. The Eavor-Lite site started construction in August 2019, and was up and running circulating fluid by early December. A simpler design than the one described above, it burrows some 2.4 km (1.5 mi) deep into the crust, runs along 2 km (1.2 miles) laterally, rises back up and then returns to the original site via a pipe along the ground, completing the loop that way instead of going back under.

The Eavor-Lite prototype station has been up and running for more than a year in Alberta, Canada
The Eavor-Lite prototype station has been up and running for more than a year in Alberta, CanadaEavor
The prototype was built to prove that the "thermo-siphon" effect can keep fluid circulating by itself, as well as testing the process of drilling intersecting wellbores way underground and prove that Eavor's RockPipe designs can maintain the necessary pressure levels to keep things running with a negligible leak rate.

The company says the fluid has been circulating by itself for more than a year now. It's not harvesting heat; indeed it's basically venting it skyward in an aerial cooler at the surface. But the company's happy that the prototype has proven the technology and the premise, and it's now bringing more investors on board as it moves to commercialize. Yesterday, Eavor announced the closing of a $40 million funding round led by BP Ventures and Chevron Technology Ventures, among others.

The first commercial-scale project is likely to be built in Germany at a site in Geretstried owned by Enex Power Company, which was attempting to create its own geothermal energy project, but found there wasn't enough heat for the type of installation it was planning.

There is, however, enough heat to run an Eavor-Loop. And the geothermal permits are already in place, as well as a deal with the German government to buy the power produced for about $270 per megawatt-hour. And there's a couple of wells already drilled. An ideal first project.

Eavor CEO John Redfern told Recharge News this first project is likely to start out as a 10-MW station, with construction starting next January if it gets the green light. But there's ample space at the site to ramp it up to 200 MW simply by adding more underground loops. Scaling up to this degree would cost around $2.9 billion.

But then you'd have a highly reliable, completely green energy source with which to augment your solar and wind and hydro projects. Eavor is looking to BP and Chevron not just as investors, but as partners who can run these kinds of giant projects effectively. So if the initial German project goes ahead, the relationships are being put in place to see this tech rolled out globally across many markets.

Check out a short video below.

To get off the grid with home solar, you need to be able to generate energy when the Sun's out, and store it for when it's not. Normally, people do this with lithium battery systems – Tesla's Powerwall 2 is an example. But Australian company Lavo has built a rather spunky (if chunky) cabinet that can sit on the side of your house and store your excess energy as hydrogen.


The Lavo Green Energy Storage System measures 1,680 x 1,240 x 400 mm (66 x 49 x 15.7 inches) and weighs a meaty 324 kg (714 lb), making it very unlikely to be pocketed by a thief. You connect it to your solar inverter (it has to be a hybrid one) and the mains water (through a purification unit), and sit back as it uses excess energy to electrolyze the water, releasing oxygen and storing the hydrogen in a patented metal hydride "sponge" at a pressure of 30 bar, or 435 psi.

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It stores some 40 kilowatt-hours worth of energy, three times as much as Tesla's current Powerwall 2 and enough to run an average home for two days. And when that energy is needed, it uses a fuel cell to deliver energy into the home, adding a small 5-kWh lithium buffer battery for instantaneous response. There's Wi-Fi connectivity, and a phone app for monitoring and control, and businesses with higher power needs can run several in parallel to form an "intelligent virtual power plant."

At AU$34,750 (US$26,900), it costs more than what you'd pay for three Powerwalls in Australia, but not by a huge amount, and that price is set to drop to AU$29,450 (US$22,800) in the last quarter of 2022, by which point Lavo says it'll be available internationally.

NuScale Power has released the results of a new evaluation that indicates that a single small nuclear NuScale Power Module (NPM) could economically produce almost 50 tonnes of hydrogen fuel per day. The study, originally conducted by the Idaho National Laboratory, says that the improved power output of the NPM allows it to produce 20 percent more hydrogen from water than previously.

The prospect of a hydrogen economy suggests a promising alternative to conventional power sources based on fossil fuels. For example, a hydrogen-powered motor car that burns the gas in a fuel cell to create electricity would have the eco-friendly, zero-emissions footprint of an electric car, but without the need for the eco-unfriendly battery banks, the slow charging times, and limited range.

ENERGY
Concentrated solar viable for industrial uses after exceeding 1,000°C
By Darren Quick
November 21, 2019

Heliogen's concentrating solar system in California has reached temperatures in excess of 1,000° C
Heliogen's concentrating solar system in California has reached temperatures in excess of 1,000° C Heliogen
VIEW 6 IMAGES

As their name suggests, concentrated solar power (CSP) systems concentrate light from the sun onto a small area, where it is converted to heat. Although this heat is sufficient for electricity generation – usually via a steam turbine – the temperatures they reach aren't sufficient for various industrial processes. But now a California-based company says it has broken that barrier by reaching temperatures of more than 1,000° C (1,832° F) with its concentrating solar thermal system.


Heliogen is a clean energy company backed by Bill Gates that has a commercial facility located in Lancaster, California. It is there that the company managed to exceed temperatures of 1,000° C using its patented concentrating solar technology – something it claims is a first for a commercial system.

Rather than just electricity generation, which can be achieved at much lower temperatures, this makes concentrated solar an option for a variety of industrial applications, such as producing petrochemicals, cement, and steel – processes that traditionally rely on the burning of fossil fuels. This has the potential to drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions from such processes – Heliogen points out that cement production alone accounts for over 7 percent of global CO2 emissions.

But the company has even higher hopes for its concentrating solar technology, saying that it plans to work towards reaching temperatures of up to 1,500° C (2,732° F), which would make it suitable for CO2-splitting and water-splitting to make clean fuels such as hydrogen and syngas.


The heliostats of Heliogen's concentrating solar system are computer controlled
The heliostats of Heliogen's concentrating solar system are computer controlledHeliogen
The secret sauce of Heliogen's technology is advanced computer vision software that allows a large array of computer-controlled mirrors (known as heliostats) to focus their reflected sunlight onto a target with ultra-high accuracy, resulting in ultra-high temperatures.

"The world has a limited window to dramatically reduce greenhouse gas emissions," says Bill Gross, Heliogen CEO and Founder. "We’ve made great strides in deploying clean energy in our electricity system. But electricity accounts for less than a quarter of global energy demand. Heliogen represents a technological leap forward in addressing the other 75 percent of energy demand: the use of fossil fuels for industrial processes and transportation. With low-cost, ultra-high temperature process heat, we have an opportunity to make meaningful contributions to solving the climate crisis."


Source: Heliogen

Located in the town of La Paz, in Baja California Sur, the Aura Solar III plant has a generation capacity of 32 MW and includes a lithium-ion battery storage system with a capacity of 10.5 MW/7.0 MWh.
May 2, 2019 Pilar Sánchez Molina



The Aura III Solar Plant, built by Elmya for Gauss Energía in La Paz, Mexico.

Image: Elmya/Gauss
From PV Magazine Spain.

Spanish company Elmya has completed construction of the Aura Solar III PV plant for Mexican developer Gauss Energía.

Located in the western part of northern Mexico that benefits from one of the nation’s highest irradiation rates, Aura Solar III is near the town of La Paz, in Baja California Sur and benefits from a sunlight level of 5.8 kWh/m²/day.

The 50-hectare project incorporates 94,080 panels, each generating 340 Wp of power. With a generation capacity of 32 MW, the site produces enough electricity to supply half of La Paz’ residential users, according to Elmya.

The new facility is Latin America’s first large scale solar power project to be combined with a lithium-ion battery system. The storage aspect of the $45 million project has a 10.5 MW/7 MWh capacity and string inverters.

Local-price linked PPA

Aura Solar III has a generation permit granted by Mexico’s Energy Regulatory Commission under a distributed generation regime. The energy produced by the plant – an estimated 65 GWh per year – is being sold exclusively to the Federal Electricity Commission (CFE) through a 20-year power purchase agreement. The CFE pays for the energy according to the local marginal price of power in La Paz.

Aura Solar III, which is owned by Mexican investment group Corporación Aura Solar, interconnects with the Olas Altas substation through a new 1km, 115 kV transmission line, and has been supplying power to the CFE since October.

More than 250 workers took part in the plant’s construction with almost all of them recruited locally.

What do you do when you have too much garbage but not enough energy? Convert one into the other. That's the thinking behind the waste-to-energy plants that are beginning to pop up around the globe, and now the Government of Dubai has announced plans to build the world's largest.

When it's up and running, the waste-to-energy (WET) plant is expected to treat up to two million tons of solid waste every year, which is about 60 percent of Dubai's annual garbage production. That will give the plant a capacity of 185 MW, which is roughly two percent of Dubai's annual energy consumption and will enable it to provide power to 120,000 homes.

The Shenzhen East Waste-to-Energy Plant in China is currently on track to be the world's largest, but if the Dubai project can meet its goals, it should be able to swipe the title before Shenzhen is even finished. Both are due to be completed in 2020, and while they can both process over 5,500 tons of waste per day, Dubai's output is 20 MW higher than Shenzhen's. Still, it's not really a competition, and it's important that more of these sustainable systems are built.

The directors of partner companies Hitachi Zosen Inova, Dubai Municipality and Besix Group, signing the agreement...
The Dubai plant will be built on a 2-hectare (5-acre) plot of land in the Warsan area, and electricity will be fed into the local grid by way of HV 132 kV cables. The Dubai Municipality is partnering with the Dubai Electricity and Water Authority, Swiss company Hitachi Zosen Inova and Belgian construction company Besix Group on the project.

It will cost around AED2.5 billion (US$680 million), with construction set to kick off in the next few months. If all goes to plan, the plant should be up and running before Dubai hosts Expo 2020.

A reliable and renewable energy source is right under our feet – literally – in the form of geothermal energy. After funding a study a few years back to map underground hotspots, Google's parent company, Alphabet, has now spawned Dandelion, a new startup that aims to tap into that resource. The company's signature technology is a geothermal heating and cooling system that pumps heat from the ground into the home in winter, or out of it during summer.

The roots of the Dandelion system are what the company calls ground loops. These U-shaped plastic pipes are buried a few hundred feet under the yard, and water is pumped through them to provide the heating or cooling effects. In winter, water running through the loops will absorb heat from the ground and pipe it into the home, while the system will run in the opposite direction to keep things cool during the scorching summer months. The pipes are connected to a heat pump and water heater inside the house, and users can control the indoor climate through a smart thermostat.

Dandelion says that installation is relatively painless. To put in the ground loops, the company's own "clean drilling technology" will be used to dig a few small holes in the yard, each only a few inches wide. Then a technician will install the other components inside the house, and the system should be up and running in two to three days. After that, the only regular maintenance is an air filter change every six to 12 months.

The system reportedly costs US$20,000, but Dandelion is making it available to homeowners on a monthly payment plan with no upfront costs. If the system is as efficient as the company says it is, a user should be able to make some of those repayments through the savings it cuts off the household energy bill.

Dandelion was spun out of X, Alphabet's incubator for ambitious "moonshot" ideas. After securing $2 million in seed funding, Dandelion is currently rolling out the technology to viable homes in upstate New York.

Imagine having a fridge-sized box in your home that not only generates and stores electricity on-site, but heats and cools the house, provides hot water and even churns out oxygen and hydrogen to use or sell. That's the vision a team from the University of Newcastle and Australian company Infratech Industries is working towards, and New Atlas spoke to two of the minds behind this potentially game-changing "Swiss army knife" of energy production.

Dr Rajesh Nellore (left), CEO of Infratech Industries, and Behdad Moghtaderi (right), Professor at the University of Newcastle As well as electricity, the CLES produces oxygen as part of its normal operation, and can be set to also produce hydrogen The CLES is built on a reduction-oxidation reaction, which creates heat to spin a turbine, generating electricity A full-scale reference plant of the CLES is up and running in Newcastle, Australia, and is currently capable of producing 30 kW of energy
The team calls the device a Chemical Looping Energy-on-Demand System (CLES), and it's based on an original invention by Professor Behdad Moghtaderi of the University of Newcastle. Infratech, spearheaded by CEO Rajesh Nellore, has been involved almost from the start, helping out with the technical development of the system as well as plans to commercialize it.

An industrial-scale reference plant was unveiled in Newcastle, Australia in early April, designed for a hospital, retirement village or a similar-sized commercial building. The CLES wouldn't just supply the facility with electricity, but also help out with the heating, cooling and hot water, and produce oxygen and hydrogen that can either be used on-site or sold.

Australian scientists are no strangers to world records for solar power. Back in 2014, the CSIRO created supercritical steam at the highest temperature and pressure, and in May this year, engineers at UNSW achieved 34.5 percent efficiency in directly converting sunlight to electricity. Now, scientists at the Australian National University (ANU) have managed a new record of 97 percent efficiency for converting sunlight into steam.

Unlike photovoltaic solar panels, which absorb sunlight and directly convert it into electricity, concentrating solar power (CSP) systems reflect sunlight from a wide area and focus it in on a small receiver. As that receiver heats up, water inside turns into steam, which drives a turbine to generate electricity. Rather than storing that power in potentially costly batteries, the thermal energy is stored in molten salts, so that water can be added to create steam (and subsequently electricity) long after the sun's gone down.

The so-called Big Dish at ANU is made up of a concave surface of reflectors, directing sunlight to a receiver suspended at the focal point. A new receiver for the dish, designed and built by the team, was responsible for halving previous losses and achieving the 97 percent conversion.

"When our computer model told us the efficiency that our design was going to achieve, we thought it was alarmingly high," says Dr John Pye, from the ANU Research School of Engineering. "But when we built it and tested it, sure enough, the performance was amazing."

The team describes its receiver design as resembling a top hat, with a wide brim running around the bottom of a narrower cavity that extends upwards. The dish reflects sunlight onto water pipes that wrap around the bottom of the receiver's brim and up into the cavity, heating the water to 500º C (932º F) and turning it into steam. To minimize heat loss, the steam hits that peak temperature at the deepest part of the cavity, so that any heat that is lost can feed back into the pipes around the brim.

California's central coast could become the site of the world's largest working offshore wind farm, a 765-megawatt producer surpassing the 630-megawatt London Array off the coast of Kent. If built, the Trident Winds energy project would include around 100 wind turbines set on floating platforms 33 miles (53 km) from shore and power more than 200,000 homes.

Each of the 100 turbines would produce more than 6 megawatts of electricity, powered by average wind speeds of 8.5 meters/sec (19 mph) for a nameplate capacity of 765 MW and a net capacity of 650 MW. The turbines would be anchored in 2,600 to 3,300 ft (800 to 1,000 m) of deep water using vertical load, drag embedded or torpedo anchors, depending on the seabed conditions. No pilings are required and the installation is reversible, meaning nothing would be left on the seabed if or when the project is decommissioned.

To reduce or eliminate wind shadow effects, the turbines would be placed 3,300 ft (1,000 m) apart, and connected electrically with inter-array cables. The produced energy would be sent to a floating substation which then delivers the combined payload to shore through a redundant system of export cables.

Most of the world's offshore wind farms are in waters less than 200 ft (61 m) deep, and sit on platforms attached to the seabed with concrete or steel pilings. Floating wind turbines use cables attached to their anchors, and to date are only found in test projects, such as Statoil's Hywind pilot park off the coast of Scotland.

But more than 60 percent of the best wind sources in the US, as determined by wind speed, duration and timing, are within 50 nautical miles (92.6 km) of the coasts, in waters typically too deep for traditional wind energy systems. And while it's cheaper and easier to install floating wind turbines – just tow and anchor – they're more expensive than fixed-platform turbines because their anchoring systems require more steel and need longer power cables to run electricity to shore. It's estimated that by 2020, floating wind turbines will cost around $9 million per megawatt compared to $4 million per megawatt for conventional, fixed-platform turbines. The hope is that as floating wind turbine technology matures, its costs will eventually come down.

Besides the issue of turbulent seas and harsh deep water conditions that could damage the turbines, the proposed location for the Trident Winds energy project is also prime migration ground for a number of whale species, so the platform cables could become an entanglement risk for the animals.

But the Trident group is so far undeterred, and is aiming for construction to begin in 2021 with a completion target of 2025. It also times well with the state's new law requiring half its energy to come from renewable sources by 2030.

A 30-megawatt wind farm is currently being constructed off Rhode Island to serve the needs of energy-challenged Block Island, but this would be the first major offshore wind farm in the US. It would be especially significant for California, which has some of the most stringent coastal development regulations in the world. Trident would work with the coastal city of Morro Bay, which closed its conventional 650-watt power plant in 2013.

Solar-concentrating thermal technology is being used to power the air-conditioning system of an entire shopping center in Australia solely from the rays of the sun. With around 60 percent of all energy used in shopping centers being consumed by heating and cooling needs, the new system could lead the way to significant power and cost savings in a range of large commercial spaces.

Installed in the Stockland Wendouree Shopping Centre in Ballarat, Victoria, the prototype system was developed by the CSIRO and partly funded by the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) program, which aims to increase the supply and competitiveness of renewable energy in Australia. The same program helped support the CSIRO's world-record breaking solar-powered supercritical steam generator.

The new solar-powered system is a "closed-loop" air-conditioner, meaning it heats and cools air within the building without introducing any external air into the system, with a pair of "desiccant" (drying) wheels acting as dehumidifiers to remove moisture from the air. These operate at separate temperatures; the high-temperature wheel uses the captured solar energy for regeneration of the low temperature wheel, which operates without any external heat at all.

"CSIRO's energy research is driving down costs of renewable technologies, accelerating the transition to a lower-emissions future," said CSIRO Energy Director Peter Mayfield. "We are pioneering new technologies and this project is a world-first demonstration of a desiccant air-conditioning system using roof mounted concentrating solar thermal collectors."

The air conditioning system uses trough collectors to capture solar heat of around 150 to 200° C (302 to 392° F) and then store it in a 2,000-liter (528-US gal) thermal oil tank. Utilizing a heat cascading design, heat from the tank is used to heat the center's ambient air in the winter and power an indirect evaporative cooler to cool the center in summer. So compact is the system, that the whole solar air-conditioning unit is some 40 percent smaller than a comparable standard single-stage desiccant system.

The researchers believe that solar heat-driven desiccant air conditioning systems have the potential to significantly reduce the electric power requirements and costs related to supplying humidity controlled fresh air in large commercial spaces.

The team at the CSIRO intend to spend the next 12 months monitoring and assessing the new system and gauge its capabilities in a commercial environment. These observations will add to the long-term goal of the CSIRO to help contribute to a low- emissions future. ARENA contributed AUD$520,000 (US$386,000) to the project, with the remainder of the AUD$1.2 million (US$890,000) being provided jointly by the CSIRO and the Stockland Group using technology from NEP Solar.

Solar-concentrating thermal technology is being used to power the air-conditioning system of an entire shopping center in Australia solely from the rays of the sun. With around 60 percent of all energy used in shopping centers being consumed by heating and cooling needs, the new system could lead the way to significant power and cost savings in a range of large commercial spaces.

Installed in the Stockland Wendouree Shopping Centre in Ballarat, Victoria, the prototype system was developed by the CSIRO and partly funded by the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) program, which aims to increase the supply and competitiveness of renewable energy in Australia. The same program helped support the CSIRO's world-record breaking solar-powered supercritical steam generator.

The new solar-powered system is a "closed-loop" air-conditioner, meaning it heats and cools air within the building without introducing any external air into the system, with a pair of "desiccant" (drying) wheels acting as dehumidifiers to remove moisture from the air. These operate at separate temperatures; the high-temperature wheel uses the captured solar energy for regeneration of the low temperature wheel, which operates without any external heat at all.

"CSIRO's energy research is driving down costs of renewable technologies, accelerating the transition to a lower-emissions future," said CSIRO Energy Director Peter Mayfield. "We are pioneering new technologies and this project is a world-first demonstration of a desiccant air-conditioning system using roof mounted concentrating solar thermal collectors."

The air conditioning system uses trough collectors to capture solar heat of around 150 to 200° C (302 to 392° F) and then store it in a 2,000-liter (528-US gal) thermal oil tank. Utilizing a heat cascading design, heat from the tank is used to heat the center's ambient air in the winter and power an indirect evaporative cooler to cool the center in summer. So compact is the system, that the whole solar air-conditioning unit is some 40 percent smaller than a comparable standard single-stage desiccant system.

The researchers believe that solar heat-driven desiccant air conditioning systems have the potential to significantly reduce the electric power requirements and costs related to supplying humidity controlled fresh air in large commercial spaces.

The team at the CSIRO intend to spend the next 12 months monitoring and assessing the new system and gauge its capabilities in a commercial environment. These observations will add to the long-term goal of the CSIRO to help contribute to a low- emissions future. ARENA contributed AUD$520,000 (US$386,000) to the project, with the remainder of the AUD$1.2 million (US$890,000) being provided jointly by the CSIRO and the Stockland Group using technology from NEP Solar.

This work, considered the largest and most important in the energy sector of the country and Latin America, was inaugurated by President Enrique Peña Nieto , on March 26, 2014; and which it belongs to the Spanish company Energy Gauss: Solar Aura , made ​​with the integration of 132,000 polycrystalline modules with followers shaft and a useful life of 30 years will generate 82 gigawatt hours (GWh) per year.

Claudia Aviles

La Paz, Baja California Sur (BCS).  In the parking lot of the Plaza Paseo La Paz, a steel frame is constructed with 792 solar panels, which will help save 8,000 trees per year and save 90% of energy consumed in the place where bill currently about 2 million pesos a year for this concept; managing to be the first sustainable State Plaza; and he was announced Errejón Francisco Bulnes , director of World Durable in  BCS , company that won the tender for this project.

"The company, Arco Group , who owns the place, did not skimp on investing to build this structure consisting of 792 solar panels 1 by 1.70 meters each brand Solar World , which is the best and the most expensive world; which will represent a saving of 90% of energy consumed, as are paid monthly average of 120 to 140,000 pesos , and year are almost 2 million pesos.

The money for this project is estimated to recover in eight years, and which had an investment of nearly 10 million, to which only 7.5 million were spent on panels and 2 million in the steel structure, which is anti hurricanes ensuring that any panel is apparent with these natural phenomena. "

World Durable director, said that the energy you save will only used in public areas such as parking, lighting, air conditioners, and all electricity is part of the property, and will not be the they spend the tenants of the place.
Francisco Bulnes Errejón explained that each solar panel will produce 250 watts per hour, in an approximately 7 hours per day, which is the average time that can capture solar radiation, and in total will be 200 kilowatts of power per hour for the 792 panels ; Solar energy is converted into electricity by means of investors, which goes to the property, and that is not consumed, it is protected by the CFE .

"With these amounts, in addition to cost savings, it was able to reduce the pollution generated by the production of energy by burning fuel oil; and also to save 8,000 trees a year that are used for this process. "
Errejón Bulnes said that this system "is guaranteed for 25 years and 40 years of life," and that will be the first green or sustainable place in the state, since there are none in BCS that produces clean energy or generate their own electricity .

Moreover, the company had the option of placing the system on the roof of the square, but "decided to risk and invest more with a double purpose, saving energy and provide users more convenience with the shadows cast by the structure" he stressed.

Finally, for this project, with a duration of 3 months, 30 direct jobs were offered, all of the workers from La Paz; He added that it will be in early December, when the Governor of BCS , Carlos Mendoza Davis, along with the delegate of the Federal Electricity Commission (CFE) in BCS, executives of Arco Group and World Durable officially inaugurate that work.

The intermittent nature of renewable energy sources is a huge burden on the power grid, making flexible and economical energy storage an essential step to a greener future. Researchers at Oregon State University (OSU) and the University of Florida have now devised a way to conveniently store and release energy harvested through concentrated solar power (CSP) plants, improving on the cost and energy density of previous systems and preparing this technology for the smart grid.

We recently covered SimpliPhi Power’s history, levelized cost of energy (LCOE) figures, and the exciting automated home it enabled in New York. We ran into the company again at Solar Power International last month and arranged for a visit to its corporate HQ in Ojai, California, to sit down with CEO Catherine Von Burg and CTO Stuart Lennox for a deeper dive.
For those unfamiliar with SimpliPhi, what sets its solutions apart vs other residential storage units is that they not only raise the performance bar in almost every category but their battery chemistry is also better for the environment. Specifically, SimpliPhi Power products use a lithium-ferro-phosphate (LFP) chemistry that brings the benefits and energy density of conventional lithium-ion batteries without the cobalt. SimpliPhi’s proprietary architecture and battery management pulls this chemistry together in a unit that’s 98% efficient — setting the performance bar for the residential storage market.
What’s even better is that the modules run at this efficiency while offering a full depth of discharge (up to 100%!) without the thermal runaway issues of most lithium-ion packs. Why do Teslas need a titanium shield on the underbody and a complex heat management system? To protect the precious battery cells from physical damage, which could trigger thermal runaway. Conversely, SimpliPhi’s units are stuffed into sealed boxes and shipped all around the world by the military for (ab)use in some of the world’s harshest and hottest climates. What’s fantastic is that they do this without a perceptible heat signature.

The analyst in question is basing this prediction around an estimation that current Model S battery-pack costs hover somewhere around $250/kWh (kilowatt-hour) — and that the company “can bring the cost of the battery cells down to ~$88/kWh and the pack-level cost to ~$38/kWh.”
Here’s a clip from that:
We believe that Tesla’s use of an efficient nickel cobalt aluminum (NCA) cathode (ie the positive electrode), use of a silicon synthetic graphene anode (ie the negative electrode) that has 2-6x the lithium-ion storage capacity of today’s standard graphite anode, and a possible use of water-based anode solvent, are key advantages. […] Our analysis details a potential path to a 30% cell-level cost reduction to ~$88/kWh by using a more efficient lithium-rich nickel cobalt manganese cathode (vs. NCA), doubling the percentage of silicon in the synthetic graphene anode, replacing the liquid electrolyte with an ionic gel electrolyte which eliminates the need for a separator, and using a water-based electrode solvent for the cathode. The Gigafactory, which is expected to begin production in early ’16, should drive down pack-level costs by 70% to ~$38/kWh via economies of scale, supply chain optimization, increased automation, and production domestication.
As noted by Electrek, that puts things in the sorts of ranges that would probably allow for a very affordable electric vehicle (EV) with a 200–300 mile plus range.
With regard to the estimation that Tesla Model S battery packs cost around $250/kWh at the moment, it should probably be noted here that the company’s Powerpacks are currently selling for around that price — so, presumably it’s a bit lower, but that’s just a guess. Other estimates put Tesla’s battery packs at a cost of ~$200/kWh right now. 

What a difference a month makes. Back in June, the California Farm Bureau Federation reported that local officials were still a bit iffy over the prospects for scaling up a relatively small, demonstration-scale solar desalination plant for the water-starved San Joaquin Valley. We have no idea what changed their minds, but just last week the desalination plant’s developer, WaterFX, announced plans for bouncing the project up to a commercial-scale facility capable of producing 1.6 billion gallons of fresh water per year.

Declining wind energy costs aren’t limited to Michigan, even if the state is seeing better-than-average cost reductions. A 2014 report from the Department of Energy found certain power purchase agreements (PPAs) for wind energy were clocking in at $25 per megawatt-hour (MWh), and the US Energy Information Administration just projected wind power would be cheaper (on average) than any other type of generation except the most efficient natural gas technology by 2020. (Of course, that doesn’t take into account the extra costs of natural gas known as “externalities.”)

That trend is clear in Michigan. Earlier this year, the state PSC reported the cost of wind power in Michigan had fallen by half since 2008 to half the price of coal at $47–$53 per MWh of generation. North American Windpower cites recent in-state wind contracts at $43 per MWh, both significantly lower than coal and nuclear, which range between $108–$133 per MWh.

But best of all, wind power has been an economic driver in the state. The American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) reported 1.5 gigawatts (GW) total capacity installed in Michigan at the end of 2014. DTE noted the economic impact of its 1 GW wind capacity in the regulatory filing, saying “these projects have created about 1,400 jobs across Michigan, primarily in the construction sector.”

In Japan, residential solar power production costs have more than halved since 2010 to under 30 yen ($0.25) per kilowatt-hour (kWh), making it comparable to average household electricity prices.

Small wind turbines scaled to the right size for residential and urban areas have so far lived in the shadows of their larger wind-farm-sized counterparts. The power output has been too low for a reasonable return on investment through energy savings and the noise they produce is louder than most homeowners can deal with.
A Dutch renewable energy start-up called The Archimedes is working to solve both of those problems in a new class of small-scale wind turbine -- one that is almost silent and is far more efficient at converting wind into energy. The company states that the Liam F1 turbine could generate 1,500 kWh of energy per year at wind speeds of 5m/s, enough to cover half of an average household's energy use.
When used in combination with rooftop solar panels, a house could run off grid. "When there is wind you use the energy produced by the wind turbine; when the sun is shining you use the solar cells to produce the energy," The Archimedes CEO Richard Ruijtenbeek said.
The Liam's blades are shaped like a Nautilus shell. The design allows it to point into the wind to capture the most amount of energy, while also producing very little sound. The inventor of the turbine Marinus Mieremet says that the power output is 80 percent of the theoretical maximum energy that could be harnessed from the wind.
“Generally speaking, there is a difference in pressure in front and behind of the rotor blades of a windmill. However, this is not the case with the Liam F1. The difference in pressure is created by the spatial figure in the spiral blade. This results in a much better performance. Even when the wind is blowing at an angle of 60 degrees into the rotor, it will start to spin. We do not require expensive software: because of its conical shape, the wind turbine yaws itself automatically into the optimal wind direction. Just like a wind vane. And because the wind turbine encounters minimal resistance, he is virtually silent," said Mieremet.
The company is also working on even smaller wind turbine designs that could fit on LED lampposts to power them, on boats or in smaller bodies of water.
You can watch a video about the history of the Liam turbine from invention to field tests below.

America’s second solar power tower, the 110 MW Crescent Dunes project, the first US power tower to include storage, has been undergoing final commissioning (testing) at Tonopah in Nevada, where it will supply power for Las Vegas till midnight.

So SolarReserve is putting the thousands of heliostats (mirrors) through their paces to make sure everything works.

One of the tests is of standby position. (Standby is when the heliostats are waiting to go to work making electricity by focusing on the tower receiver. During standby they are not aimed at the tower receiver, but somewhere in the air.)

How not to focus heliostats

Originally, the standby position was to create a tight circle of solar flux you can actually see above the tower.

But when the engineers focused 3,000 heliostats there on January 14th, 115 birds were killed as they flew through the concentrated solar flux at the focal point where all the reflections met.

According to the compliance report filed by Stantec with regulators as required by the BLM:

“Approximately 3,000 heliostats were staged in a position which reflected light and heat to a concentrated point above the central tower. A halo above the tower was visible from the ground (Figure 1). The heat was so intense that birds flying into the halo were immediately burned and smoke was clearly evident. Approximately 115 mortalities were noted between 11:15 AM and 3:30 PM. Appropriate agencies, including BLM, were notified of the situation around 12:27 PM when bird mortalities associated with the halo were confirmed.”

SolarReserve shut down the test and brainstormed how to solve the problem to reduce solar flux in standby position. The engineering team recalibrated the standby algorithm and the next day they put this into effect. Their new algorithm was designed so that no more than four ‘suns’ would hit any one focal point during standby.

“The difficulty is that that was a concentrated solar energy in that area above the tower,” SolarReserve CEO Kevin Smith told me this week.

“So what we did is we spread them over a several hundred meters of a  sort of ‘pancake’ shape so any one point is safe for birds — it’s 4 suns or less.”

There's a lot of water constantly moving through the municipal pipelines of most major cities. While the water itself is already destined for various uses, why not harness its flow to produce hydroelectric power? Well, that's exactly what Lucid Energy's LucidPipe Power System does, and Portland, Oregon has just become the latest city to adopt it.

LucidPipe simply replaces a stretch of existing gravity-fed conventional pipeline, that's used for transporting potable water. As the water flows through, it spins four 42-inch (107-cm) turbines, each one of which is hooked up to a generator on the outside of the pipe. The presence of the turbines reportedly doesn't slow the water's flow rate significantly, so there's virtually no impact on pipeline efficiency.

A diagram of the system (Image: Lucid Energy)
The 200-kW Portland system was privately financed by Harbourton Alternative Energy, and its installation was completed late last December. It's now undergoing reliability and efficiency testing, which includes checking that its sensors and smart control system are working properly. It's scheduled to begin full capacity power generation by March.

Once up and running, it's expected to generate an average of 1,100 megawatt hours of energy per year, which is enough to power approximately 150 homes. Over the next 20 years, it should also generate about US$2 million in energy sales to Portland General Electric, which Harbourton plans on sharing with the City of Portland and the Portland Water Bureau in order to offset operational costs. At the end of that period, the Portland Water Bureau will have the right to purchase the system outright, along with all the energy it produces.

For now, the new LucidPipe Power System is the only one in Portland. If it proves successful, however, others may follow. A previously-installed system has been providing power in Riverside, California since 2012.

If you like the basic idea behind the technology, there are smaller similar systems that can be installed within your own home. The Pluvia generates electricity from the flow of rainwater off of rooftops, while the H2O Power radio runs on electricity generated by the flow of shower water.

The Southern California desert is now home to the world's largest solar power plant.


U.S. Interior Secretary Sally Jewell joined state officials on Monday to open the 550-megawatt Desert Sunlight solar project in the town of Desert Center, Calif., near Joshua Tree National Park. Built by First Solar, the project generates enough electricity to power 160,000 average California homes.

Desert Sunlight received a federal loan of nearly $1.5 billion, and Jewell called its completion an example of the loan guarantee program's tremendous importance.

"When you are stepping out with new technology, when you are trying something that has been untested before, a loan guarantee program from an organization like the Department of Energy is what provides you, as a lender, that certainty that you can step up and support the project," Jewell told The Desert Sun.

Conservative lawmakers have derided the loan guarantee program, arguing that it's wasted billions of taxpayer dollars. Critics have pointed to the program's $535 million loan guarantee for Solyndra, a Fremont-based solar panel manufacturer that filed for bankruptcy in 2011.

But the Department of Energy reported last year that it expects to make a profit of $5 billion to $6 billion from the program. The department funded five traditional, large-scale solar farms, and Desert Sunlight marks the last of those projects to go online.

"They're all rock-solid, money is good, living up to every kind of condition we put in the loan documents in terms of performance, in terms of commercial operation," Peter Davidson, executive director of the Department of Energy's loan programs office, said in an interview last week.

The loan guarantee program did more than fund five solar photovoltaic projects, Davidson added: It helped launch the large-scale solar industry. In 2009, there were no traditional solar farms in the United States larger than 100 megawatts. Now, 17 such projects have been financed, according to a Department of Energy report released Monday.

Solar panels "existed before as a technology, but that technology hadn't been deployed at a large scale," Davidson said. "Once we've done that, the government steps aside to let the private markets take over."

Desert Sunlight employed an average of 440 people during more than three years of construction, and it now has about 15 full-time employees. Money provided by the project's owners — as part of an agreement negotiated with Riverside County — is also being used to fund $400,000 in improvements to the community center in nearby Desert Center.

"The debate's over — we're going to be moving to more renewable energy," Riverside County Supervisor John Benoit said.

Power from the plant will go to Southern California Edison and Pacific Gas & Electric Co.

CALIFORNIA BEAMIN'

Desert Sunlight is the world's largest solar power plant, although only by a hair.

The Topaz solar project in San Luis Obispo County, Calif. — which, like Desert Sunlight, was built by Arizona-based First Solar — also has a capacity of 550 megawatts. But the desert has more abundant sunlight than San Luis Obispo County, so Desert Sunlight will actually generate more electricity than Topaz, said Georges Antoun, First Solar's chief operating officer.

"It's a beautiful sun here, year-round," he said.

California as a whole has installed more renewable energy than any other state, noted David Hochschild, a member of the California Energy Commission.

"There were a lot of skeptics who actually didn't believe that renewables could scale, that this cost reduction could happen, that we could introduce it to the grid," Hochschild said. "They've been proven wrong."

desert sunlight solar farm 4.JPG
U.S. Department of Interior Secretary Sally Jewell, right, and Georges Antoun, COO of First Solar, tour the 550-megawatt Desert Sunlight Solar Farm near Desert Center on Monday. (Photo: Jay Calderon/The Desert Sun)
There's little doubt that California will get more electricity from clean energy in the coming years. The state's three major utilities are on track to meet or exceed a 33% renewable energy mandate by 2020, and Gov. Jerry Brown is calling for policymakers to increase that target to 50% by 2030.

It's an open question, though, whether future solar projects will be anywhere near as big as Desert Sunlight.

Developers have been gravitating toward smaller solar farms, which are easier to build and usually have a smaller impact on species and ecosystems in California's deserts. Desert Sunlight spans 3,800 acres near Joshua Tree National Park, and it faced vehement opposition from environmental activists during its permitting process.

If legislators adopt a 50% renewable energy mandate, it could incentivize massive projects like Desert Sunlight. But Antoun said he'd be surprised to see many more projects 550 megawatts or larger, in California or elsewhere.

"Can we create a bigger project? Of course," he said. "But it all has to do with how much appetite (states) have for how much land to utilize, and to be committed for 20-25 years."

Utilities faced with renewable energy mandates, Antoun said, will more likely turn to projects in the 100-megawatt range, located closer to energy consumers. Projects built near cities require far less transmission infrastructure, which is expensive to build and poses a host of environmental concerns.

Households and Families: 2010
2010 Census Briefs

The 2010 Census enumerated 308.7
million people in the United States,
a 9.7 percent increase from 281.4
million in Census 2000. Of the total
population in 2010, 300.8 million
lived in 116.7 million households
for an average of 2.58 people per
household. This was down from an
average of 2.59 in 2000 when 273.6
million people lived in 105.5 million
households. The remaining 8.0 million
people in 2010 lived in group-quarters
arrangements such as school dormitories,
nursing homes, or military barracks.
This report presents information on the
number and types of living arrangements
of American households in 2010 derived
from the relations

SAN FRANCISCO — Solar is sizzling hot, and it's all thanks to Apple CEO Tim Cook.

Cook on Tuesday announced Apple's "biggest and boldest project ever," a partnership with First Solar to build an $848 million, 1,300-acre solar plant in Monterey County.

The plant will power Apple's new headquarters in Cupertino, Calif., its data center in Newark, Calif., and all Apple offices and 52 Apple stores in California, resulting in significant energy cost savings for Apple, Cook said in remarks at the Goldman Sachs Technology and Internet Conference in San Francisco.

"We know at Apple that climate change is real. Our view is that the time for talk is past, and the time for action is now," Cook said.

The solar project is part of the California Flats project on Hearst's 73,000-acre Jack Ranch in Monterey County and may be one of the largest ever built for a commercial user. It will add 130 megawatts of new solar power to California, enough to power about 50,000 California homes.​

First Solar FSLR shares rallied on the news that came on the heels of the opening of the world's largest solar power plant in Southern California. First Solar closed up nearly 5% to $48.54 and rose again after-hours trading.

U.S. Interior Secretary Sally Jewell joined state officials on Monday to open the 550-megawatt Desert Sunlight solar project in the town of Desert Center, Calif., near Joshua Tree National Park. Built by First Solar, the project generates enough electricity to power 160,000 average California homes.

Apple's announcement was praised by Greenpeace.

"It's one thing to talk about being 100% renewably powered, but it's quite another thing to make good on that commitment with the incredible speed and integrity that Apple has shown in the past two years," Greenpeace Senior IT Sector Analyst Gary Cook said in a statement.

For five years now, a Tulip concentrating solar power plant has been operating at a kibbutz in Israel. In January 2012, a second one sprouted in Spain. While both plants have been successfully pumping out electricity ever since, they were also both built as research and development exercises. Soon, however, the world's first commercial Tulip plant will be built for a paying client, in Ethiopia.

Created by Israeli company AORA, the Tulip system is certainly unique. It incorporates a central tulip-like tower, surrounded by an array of sun-tracking mirrors on the ground. Those mirrors turn to track with the sun, reflecting and concentrating its rays onto the tower’s top-mounted "bulb" throughout the day. This causes the air inside the bulb to heat to temperatures as high as 1,000ºC (1,832ºF). That ultra-hot air is then used to run a turbine generator, thus creating electricity.

At night or in cloudy weather, the plant's generator can also run on fuels such as diesel or natural gas, allowing it to supply electricity 24 hours a day.

The system incorporates a central tulip-like tower, surrounded by an array of sun-tracking...
The new plant is being built for the Ministry of Water, Irrigation and Energy of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, as part of that country's Climate-Resilient Green Economy Strategy. It will have an output capacity of 100kW of electricity along with 170kW of thermal power, while occupying less than 3,500 sq m (37,673 sq ft) of space.

Additionally, unlike some other concentrating solar power systems, Tulips don't require water as a heat-carrying medium or for cooling. This is an important consideration for a partially-arid country such as Ethiopia.

Construction on the new Tulip is scheduled to begin next year. Assuming it performs well during its trial period, plans call for a series of other plants to then be built in underserved off-grid locations across the country. All of them will be run by local people, who have been trained by AORA staff.

US independent power producer, Sustainable Power Group (sPower) has completed a 34MW solar power plant in California.
The plant was developed in partnership with Chinese module supplier, JinkoSolar.
The 34MW solar power plant is located in Antelope Valley, California – the leading US solar state.
“The abundance of solar energy in California makes PV modules the ideal solution to fulfill local electricity needs,” said Nigel Cockroft, general manager, JinkoSolar.
The 34MW of generation capacity from the solar plant will be sold by sPower to the predominant electricity supplier for the south of California, Southern California Edison, via a 20 year Power Purchase Agreement.
Engineering, procurement and construction was carried out by commercial construction services, Swinerton builders.
George Hershman, Swinerton Renewable Energy vice president and division manager said the companies share a “commitment to delivering economical and responsible clean energy to rate payers".
The plant is scheduled to begin operations on 30 November this year with 115,000 of JinkoSolar’s 305W panels.
The 34MW plant is split into four projects across Lancaster and Victorville in California and will power more than 4,000 homes a year in the state.  
“The development of these projects has brought jobs and economic benefits to the Antelope Valley, while providing a sustainable future in the area," said sPower CEO, Ryan Creamer.

Looking rather like a 10-meter (33 ft) tall sunflower, IBM's High Concentration PhotoVoltaic Thermal (HCPVT) system concentrates the sun’s radiation over 2,000 times on a single point and then transforms 80 percent of that into usable energy. Using a number of liquid-cooled microchannel receivers, each equipped with an array of multi-junction photovoltaic chips, each HCPVT can produce enough power, water, and cooling to supply several homes.

"The direct cooling technology with very small pumping power used to cool the photovoltaic chips with water is inspired by the hierarchical branched blood supply system of the human body," said Dr. Bruno Michel, manager, advanced thermal packaging at IBM Research.
The HCPVT system can also be adapted to use the cooling system to provide drinkable water and air conditioning from the hot water output produced. Salt water is passed through the heating conduits before being run through a permeable membrane distillation system, where it is then evaporated and desalinated. To produce cool air for the home, the waste heat can be run through an adsorption chiller, which is an evaporator/condenser heat exchanger that uses water, rather than other chemicals, as the refrigerant medium.

•  
  "Solar energy is at a transformational moment in time and innovative technology is what will power that transformation," said Ahmad Chatila, Chief Executive Officer of SunEdison. "Our latest advance is a leap forward in solar technology and will enable solar power to become the lowest cost energy solution - not just an alternative to other renewables, but the cost-winner over fossil fuels as well."
  
  

Electric power generator NextEra Energy Resources and PV systems provider First Solar have begun construction on a 250MW PV plant on the border of California and Nevada.
The Silver State South Solar Project –- which will be built in Primm, Nevada -- will be located about 40 miles south of Las Vegas and will be placed next to an existing power plant and transmission line corridor.
Armando Pimentel, president and chief executive officer of NextEra Energy Resources, said: “Renewable energy sources such as solar power play an important role in the future energy mix in this county. We look forward to working with First Solar and Southern California Edison to make this project a reality.”
A NextEra subsidiary will own and operate the plant, which will generate power that will be given to state utility Southern California Edison as part of a long-term agreement.

Once completed in early 2016, the plant is expected to create enough clean solar energy to power 80,000 homes annually while displacing around 150,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide per year.

The Philippines’ secretary of energy, Carlos Jericho Petilla said 5 September that rooftop solar is cheaper than coal in the island state.
The country relies on importing most of its energy from expensive fossil fuels, subject to price fluctuations. Electricity from a coal plant cost up to PHP5.50 per kWh (US$0.13) plus PHP6.50 (US$0.15) for distribution and transmission, totalling PHP12.00 (US$0.28). Whereas, rooftop solar costs PHP9.00 per kWh (US$0.21) for generation. There are no costs for distribution or transmission, said Petilla.
“This already saves you up to PHP3 per kWh (US$0.07),” Petilla said.

Jacobson’s team calculated that their California plan would create hundreds of thousands more jobs than it would sacrifice, and it would annually save more than 10,000 lives and $100 billion in health care costs (expenses which are now generated by pollution). The 603 gigawatts of new renewable energy facilities would cost $1.1 trillion, but those costs would be more than offset through climate benefits and fuel savings.

Researchers at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) have conducted a study to examine the potential for solar power to provide reliable electricity around the clock, every day of the year. The team found that a large, distributed network of concentrated solar power (CSP) plants in the Mediterranean basin or the Kalahari desert in southern Africa would be able to consistently run at 80 percent of maximum capacity or more throughout the year regardless of time of day, season, or weather conditions.
The potential to generate solar power in the Earth's deserts is essentially unlimited: there is more than enough land area to generate far more electricity than the whole world currently demands.
And yet, generating such vast amounts of power using photovoltaic (PV) cells would be unpractical, mainly because PV panels can't produce electricity at night, and are also subject to changing seasons and weather conditions. A power grid relying mostly on PV panels would need a very large number of batteries, which would drive electricity costs up.

This is the first detailed study of its kind to establish that it is indeed possible to build a power grid which relies primarily on solar energy and still provides reliable electricity around the clock, day at night, and throughout the year. Moreover, the costs per kWh might start dropping dramatically over the next few years.

"The costs of CSP, even in their least cost configuration, are currently higher than gas (roughly 10 cents per kWh, compared to about 5 cents)," Patt told us. "But that will almost certainly change if CSP becomes more mainstream, and it is reasonable to imagine that it will be as cheap as gas within the next 10 to 15 years. In a sense, our latest results provide a reason for energy system planners to push CSP to the point where this [cost reduction] will happen."