Bogus anti-solar claims exposed

From This is Not Cool (formerly Climate Denial Crock of the week, or as I called it, ClimateCrocks)

Great new resource from Columbia University – Rebutting Claims about Solar, Wind, and Electric Vehicles. Of course, I’ve been doing this for some time, but it’s great to have a resource like this bookmarked.

There are takedowns for 33 common claims, I’ll post a few every day or so. By all means bookmark the original document – where all the assertions of fact are footnoted.

Columbia University:

False Claim #1: Electromagnetic fields from solar farms are harmful to human health.

“The EMF (electromagnetic field) from solar farms poses serious health risks especially to those who have electromagnetic hypersensitivity.”

The electromagnetic fields generated at a solar farm are similar in strength and frequency to those of toaster ovens and other household appliances—and harmless to humans. A detailed analysis from North Carolina State University concluded that there is “no conclusive and consistent evidence” of “negative health impact[s] from the EMF [electromagnetic fields]
produced in a solar farm.”

EMF exposure levels vary according to the EMF source, proximity to the source, and duration of the exposure. On a solar farm, EMFs are highest around electrical equipment such as inverters. However, even when standing next to the very largest inverter at a utility-scale solar farm, one’s exposure level (up to 1,050 milligauss, or mG) is less than one’s exposure level while operating an electric can opener (up to 1,500 mG), and well within accepted exposure limits (up to 2,000 mG).

When standing just nine feet from a residential inverter, or 150 feet from a utility-scale inverter, one’s exposure drops to “very low levels of 0.5 mG or less, and in many cases . . . less than background levels (0.2 mG).”33 For comparison, a typical American’s average background exposure level is 1mG, reaching 6 mG when standing three feet from a refrigerator, and 50 mG when standing three feet from a microwave.

The electromagnetic fields present on a solar farm constitute “non-ionizing radiation,” which, by definition, generates “enough energy to move atoms in a molecule around (experienced as heat), but not enough energy to remove electrons from an atom or molecule (ionize) or to damage DNA.”

In addition, EMFs are extremely low in frequency, which means
they contain “less energy than other commonly encountered types of non-ionizing radiation like radio waves, infrared  radiation, and visible light.”

False Claim #2: Toxic heavy metals, such as lead and cadmium, leach out from solar panels and pose a threat to human health.

Roughly 40% of new solar panels in the United States and 5% of new solar panels in the world contain cadmium, but this cadmium is in the form of cadmium telluride, which is non-volatile, non-soluble in water, and has 1/100th the toxicity of free cadmium.

Most solar panels, like many electronics, contain small amounts of lead.40 However, the Massachusetts Department of Energy Resources (DER) has assessed that “because PV panel materials are enclosed, and don’t mix with water or vaporize into the air, there is little, if any, risk of chemical releases to the environment during normal use.”

The Massachusetts DER has further assessed that, even in the unlikely event of panel breakage, releases of chemicals used in solar panels are “not a concern.”

All materials in a solar panel are “insoluble and non-volatile at ambient conditions,” and “don’t mix with water or vaporize into air.”

Moreover, they are encased in tempered glass that not only withstands high temperatures, but is also strong enough to pass hail tests and is regularly installed in Arctic and Antarctic conditions. It is theoretically possible that, when exposed to extremely high heat exceeding that of a typical residential fire, panels “could emit vapors and particulates from PV panel components to the air.” But that risk is limited by the fact that “the silicon and other chemicals that comprise the solar panel would likely bind to the glass that covers the PV cells and be retained there.” 

When a cadmium telluride panel is exposed to fire of an intensity sufficient to melt the glass on the panel, “over 99.9% of the cadmium [is encapsulated in] the molten glass.”

Furthermore, a 2013 analysis found that, even in the worst-case scenarios of earthquakes, fires, and floods, “it is unlikely that the [cadmium] concentrations in air and sea water will exceed the environmental regulation values.”

 

The boom in Chinese solar

 From a toot by Boris Muellers

It looks more and more likely that China's emissions will peak this year.  And if the world's largest emitter can do it, what excuse do we have for not doing it?  As Moellers says:

"Wir Deutsche werden nicht alleine die Welt retten können!!! Solange China in Sachen Klimaschutz nichts macht, müssen wir auch nichts machen!!! ... OH!"

My free translation:  "We Germans will not be able to save the world by ourselves!   As long as China does nothing to protect the climate, we should also do nothing!  Oh, wait ....." 

And of course, that applies to all of us, not just Germany.  What will the next excuse of the soft denialists be?

World's renewables grew 50% in 2023

From The Guardian

Global renewable energy capacity grew by the fastest pace recorded in the last 20 years in 2023, which could put the world within reach of meeting a key climate target by the end of the decade, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA).

The world’s renewable energy grew by 50% last year to 510 gigawatts (GW) in 2023, the 22nd year in a row that renewable capacity additions set a new record, according to figures from the IEA.

The “spectacular” growth offers a “real chance” of global governments meeting a pledge agreed at the Cop28 climate talks in November to triple renewable energy capacity by 2030 to significantly reduce consumption of fossil fuels, the IEA added.

The IEA’s latest report found that solar power accounted for three-quarters of the new renewable energy capacity installed worldwide last year. Most of the world’s new solar power was built in China, which installed more solar power last year than the entire world commissioned the year before, despite cutting subsidies in 2020 and 2021.

Record rates of growth across Europe, the US and Brazil have put renewables on track to overtake coal as the largest source of global electricity generation by early 2025, the IEA said. By 2028, it forecasts renewable energy sources will account for more than 42% of global electricity generation.

4.6% of global electricity came from solar in 2022; 7.3% from wind.   Assuming global electricity demand grew by 3% last year (roughly the average over the last few years), the rise in new renewables capacity will cause the percentage of renewables to rise from the current ~12% to ~16%, or by 4 percentage points.  This implies that emissions from electricity generation fell by ~1% last year.  It's not nearly enough (we need total emissions to fall by 8% per annum to avoid a 2 degrees rise), but it would be the first fall in electricity emissions in a non-recession year --- ever.  And as renewables continue their headlong growth, the annual decline will accelerate.  

Emissions from electricity have peaked.   

What's more, soft denialists can no longer use the excuse that China is not doing enough to cut emissions, so why should we bother?  China is doing more than most of the rest of the world.  

Ukraine's secret weapon: solar

 From Climate Denial Crock of the week.   I highly recommend this blog.

I’ve been talking about clean, distributed energy as a national security strategy for years. See my interview with General Richard Zilmer conducted in 2019, below.

Washington Post:

Russian airstrikes on Ukraine’s power grid plunged many parts of the country into darkness last fall, but one water company was able to keep its pumps going. Its field of solar panels, installed as an environmentally friendly measure before the war, turned into a tool to resist the Kremlin’s attacks.

Now a growing number of Ukrainian hospitals, schools, police stations and other critical buildings are racing to install solar power ahead of what many expect will be another hard winter later this year.

A less carbon-intense, decentralized energy system is emerging as a key element of Ukraine’s reconstruction efforts. Seven months of Russian attacks on the energy grid have left it severely damaged. Ukrainian doctors, teachers and others have discovered that efforts to boost sustainability can also improve security by making it harder to knock power offline. Ukrainian policymakers, meanwhile, are setting ambitious clean energy goals, trying to shake off their prewar reputation as lagging on climate issues.

Ukrainian deputy energy minister Yaroslav Demchenkov said renewable energy, along with small modular nuclear reactors, are among the country’s priorities for its rebuilding effort. Both would help distribute power generation away from the heavily centralized system the country had before the war, making it more resilient in addition to lowering emissions.

 

 

Renewable advocates want solar power to be a sizable chunk of the new capacity. Although solar panels can’t easily rival the power generation of a nuclear plant, proponents say they are cheaper, faster to install and more useful as a quick solution to Ukraine’s immediate energy and security needs than nuclear power, which can take years to build and install.

If the efforts to spread renewable power are successful, advocates hope that they can speed Ukraine’s green future far faster than had been expected before the war. Some hope that installing solar panels might be the impetus for some Ukrainians to take even more actions to reduce their carbon footprint, strengthen their self-sufficiency and improve their ability to resist Russian attacks.

“It will be much more difficult to destroy this kind of decentralized system,” said Kostiantyn Krynytskyi, the head of the energy department at Ecoaction, a leading Ukrainian environmental organization. “You cannot bomb all the installations. And bringing self-sufficiency will help. We saw now what centralization in our energy system means.

Even though Ukraine recently approved resuming electricity exports to its neighboring countries — a sign that its ability to generate power has recovered, for now, from the wintertime bombardment on the energy system — the solar work still has intense urgency, officials say. Ukrainian and allied officials warn that the cold months later this yearcould be even harder than the winter that just ended, since the grid will be starting from a more damaged level than last year. Getting enough diesel to power all the backup generators is also a challenge.

“The situation in the energy sector is still very fragile,” Demchenkov said in an interview. “It’s a very important challenge for us right now, during this period of time, to have enough equipment and allow a fuel stock, because we have information that Russia will use winter as a weapon again. For us, it is really important to have the physical protection of energy facilities.”

The European Union has pledged to ship thousands of solar panels to Ukraine. Ukrainians are also hoping for help from the United States and elsewhere.

In the meantime, advocates hope the current solar installations can serve as examples that build interest in a greener future.

At a small hospital in the Kyiv suburb of Horenka, the medical staff learned the difficulty of operating without electricity in the first hours of the war last year. Horenka is next door to Hostomel, whose military airport was one of the first targets that Russian paratroopers attempted to capture. The town faced heavy Russian shelling. The hospital never closed its doors, but it lost power on the second day of the invasion and didn’t regain it for more than two months. Without power, its heating system partially failed. And then a shell landed on the street just outside the building, blowing out its windows and damaging the front facade.

Now the hospital has been rebuilt. This winter, along with much of Ukraine, it used diesel generators to keep going during blackouts. But diesel generators consume vast quantities of fuel, they are prone to breaking down, and their noise and fumes make them inconvenient for long-term use at places like hospitals. [If you are already using diesel, adding solar is a win-win: diesel becomes the back up, and you save money by installing solar]

Natalia Tsipura performs an ultrasound on a patient at a health clinic powered by solar energy in Horenka. (Ed Ram for The Washington Post)

Next winter, the medical personnel in Horenka hope to avoid them. In February, workers screwed solar panels onto its steeply pitched roof, completing a project that is expected to cover about half the hospital’s typical power needs — enough to ensure that critical equipment stays online even if the grid fails. A battery will extend the reach of the solar panels into the night. And an electric-powered heat pump can keep the hospital warm even if it gets cut again from the grid. The solar panels and battery cost $11,700 for a 12.6 kilowatt system — comparable in size to what might go on a house. [The average Ozzie house has about 7 kilowatts of solar panels]

“We need long-term solutions for such hospitals,” said Denys Tsutsaiev, who works for Greenpeace Central and Eastern Europe in Kyiv and, along with Krynytskyi, helped organize the hospital’s solar project.

One of the first questions Tsutsaiev gets from foreigners, he said, is whether it makes sense to push forward with renewable projects at a time when Russia is still shelling the country. But, he said, that misunderstands the need.

“People are back,” he said. “People cannot live at the moment without hospitals. They can’t live without schools.”

Nor did he and others expect solar panels to become targets. Given the small scale of the projects, it would not make sense for Russian to use one of its expensive and scarce missiles to go after solar panels on roofs, he said.

“It’s much more expensive to hit it with a missile than for us to rebuild it if it’s damaged,” he said.

Large-scale renewable projects have proceeded despite the war, including a wind farm in the southern Mykolaiv region that just completed its first phase of construction in March.

The effort to expand solar power isn’t always straightforward. Winters in Ukraine can be long, and the country is far enough north — roughly the same latitude as southern Canada and the northern United States — that daylight hours get short in December and January. Solar advocates say the panels still generate enough electricity during those months to be useful.

Ukraine doesn’t have a net-metering law, which would allow owners of solar panels to sell their excess power back into the system, although the parliament is working on legislation and Demchenkov, the deputy energy minister, said he hoped it would be finalized by autumn.

German Vice Chancellor Robert Habeck visited the hospital in Horenka last month to announce his government would offer $1.1 million toward eight similar solar pilot projects around Ukraine, and he urged German companies and philanthropies to follow suit. Ukrainian environmental organizations have identified dozens more hospitals, schools and public buildings where administrators would like to install solar panels or find other ways to be more self-sufficient.

The community where the municipal water utility installed solar panels already proved the value of renewable energy in a time of war, said Sakalyuk, who met with Habeck during his visit. After the power went out for more than a week across much of the southern Mykolaiv region late last year [i.e., mid-winter], the utility in the town of Voznesensk was able to keep water flowing even though most other activity ground to a halt. The waterworks had installed a 50 kilowatt solar power plant in 2020 as part of a green initiative.

“People have changed how they think about solar power,” Sakalyuk said. The resilience of the pumping station inspired a wave of new inquiries from businesses and homeowners who want their own solar panels, he said.

If the solar advocates are successful, they hope to make an impact that will last long beyond the war. Solar panels on schools, for instance, could make climate-friendly practices an ordinary part of children’s lives, said Anastasiia Vereshchynska, the international development manager at Energy Act for Ukraine, a group that installed solar panels on a school in the Kyiv suburb of Irpin late last year and has lined up 15 more projects this year across Ukraine.

“Our big goal is to change the culture in this country,” she said. “We want kids to be part of the sustainable development of Ukraine in the future, especially in the postwar period.”

This chart of Ukraine's solar resources comes from SolarGis

Solar -- the fastest energy change in history

 An optimistic video from The Electric Viking.  He makes many points I've repeatedly made:

• solar is the cheapest energy source now, and is getting cheaper
• batteries are getting cheaper too, and new technologies are driving the cost curve down
• growth rates of 25% per annum will lead to 100% penetration within a decade
• There's plenty of space to put wind and solar, because of dual use, e.g., rooftops
• Most of the world is in the "sun belt", and if solar is cost-effective in Europe, imagine how cost-effective it is in Africa, SE Asia, Southern Europe, etc.
• Tony Seba got it right, even though all the naysayers said he was a lunatic.

 

Of course, it's more complicated than this, and lots of my articles cover the complexities.

Big project cost overruns

 We all know how often big projects end up costing much, much more than the original plans.  But how much more?  

This toot from Kees van der Leun  references a study which has actually measured this.   Fascinating.

Average cost overrun for new power plants:
Nuclear 120%
Hydro dams 75%
Fossil 16%
Wind 13%
Solar 1%

The table is from p. 192 in How Big Things Get Done.-done-book


Via author @bentflyvberg on the birdsite.

Click on graphic to see clearer image

 Nuclear reactors usually end up costing 2 to 3 times as much as they were supposed to, rail projects 1.4 to twice as much, and so it goes.    the book looks really interesting.

Super climate action tipping points

When I saw the headline, I thought of climate tipping points. But these are tipping points in things which will reduce and reverse emissions.

With wind and solar and batteries and EVs, there were steep learning curves. Initially, the new technologies were very expensive, and volumes produced/sold were very low. In fact, they had to be subsidised at first, with wind and solar receiving high feed-in tariffs and EVs getting tax refunds or subsidies. But the learning curve processes worked. As production expanded, costs fell, which allowed sales to increase which led to further cost declines, and so it went. Today, wind and solar are the cheapest source of bulk energy. In Australia, early and vigorous support for rooftop solar led to precipitous declines costs as everybody in the system (electricians, local councils, the grid managers, panel/inverter importers) learnt how to install solar panels, connect them to the grid, etc. Today, rooftop solar is widespread and "normal" in Australia.

I have seen the argument that if we had started the subsidies for wind and solar and EVS earlier, we'd have started moving down the learning curve earlier, and we'd be closer to a zero-carbon grid. And I think that's true. What the Guardian's piece suggests is that we can repeat this process with other sources of emissions. Which makes a lot of sense (try telling that to the Right, though)

Three “super-tipping points” for climate action could trigger a cascade of decarbonisation across the global economy, according to a report.

Relatively small policy interventions on electric cars, plant-based alternatives to meat and green fertilisers would lead to unstoppable growth in those sectors, the experts said.

But the boost this would give to battery and hydrogen production would mean crucial knock-on benefits for other sectors including energy storage and aviation.

Urgent emissions cuts are needed to avoid irreversible climate breakdown and the experts say the super-tipping points are the fastest way to drive global action, offering “plausible hope” that a rapid transition to a green economy can happen in time.

The tipping points occur when a zero-carbon solution becomes more competitive than the existing high-carbon option. More sales lead to cheaper products, creating feedback loops that drive exponential growth and a rapid takeover. The report, launched at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, said the three super-tipping points would cut emissions in sectors covering 70% of global greenhouse gas emissions.

Speedy action is vital to help avoid triggering disastrous tipping points in the climate system. Scientists said recently that global heating had driven the world to the brink of multiple tipping points with global impacts, including the collapse of Greenland’s ice cap and a key current in the north Atlantic.

“With time running out, there is a need for action to be targeted,” said Mark Meldrum, at the consultancy Systemiq, which produced the report with partners including the University of Exeter, UK. Each super-tipping point crossed raises the chance of crossing others, he said. “That could set off a cascade to steer us away from a climate catastrophe.”

The tipping point for electric vehicles is very close with sales soaring, the report says. Setting dates around the world for the end of sales of fossil-fuel powered vehicles, such as the 2030 date set for new vehicles by the UK and 2035 in China, drives further growth, the report adds.

This scale-up means the batteries used will become cheaper and these can be deployed as storage for wind and solar power, further accelerating the growth of renewables. More green energy means lower electricity bills, in turn making heat pumps even more cost-effective.

The second super-tipping point is setting mandates for green fertilisers, to replace current fertilisers, which are produced from fossil gas. Ammonia is a key ingredient and can be made from hydrogen produced by renewable energy, combined with nitrogen from the air.

Governments requiring a growing proportion of fertiliser to be green will drive a scale-up and cost reductions in the production of green hydrogen, the report says. That then supports long-distance aviation and shipping, and steel production, which will rely on hydrogen to end their carbon emissions. Mandates are being considered with India, for example, targeting 5% green fertiliser production by 2023–24 and 20% by 2027–28.

The third super-tipping point is helping alternative proteins to beat animal-based proteins on cost, while at least matching them on taste. Meat and dairy cause about 15% of global emissions. Public procurement of plant-based meat and dairy replacements by government departments, schools and hospitals could be a powerful lever, the report says.

Increasing uptake would cut the emissions from cattle and reduce the destruction of forests for pasture land. A 20% market share by 2035 would mean 400m-800m hectares of land would no longer be needed for livestock and their fodder, equivalent to 7-15% of the world’s farmland today, the report estimated. That land could then be used for the restoration of forests and wildlife, removing CO2 from the air.

Tipping points already passed within countries include electric car sales in Norway and the plunge in coal-powered electricity in the US in the past decade.

“We need to find and trigger positive socioeconomic tipping points if we are to limit the risk from damaging climate tipping points,” said Prof Tim Lenton at the University of Exeter. “This non-linear way of thinking about the climate problem gives plausible grounds for hope: the more that gets invested in socioeconomic transformation, the faster it will unfold – getting the world to net zero greenhouse gas emissions sooner.”

The same argument potentially applies to things like small modular reactors (SMRs), electric planes, green steel production, etc.  

 

Higher crop yields --- with solar panels

From The Guardian

Solar panels are not a new way of providing cheap power across much of the African continent, where there is rarely a shortage of sunshine. But growing crops underneath the panels is, and the process has had such promising trials in Kenya that it will be deployed this week in open-field farms.

Known as agrivoltaics, the technique harvests solar energy twice: where panels have traditionally been used to harness the sun’s rays to generate energy, they are also utilised to provide shade for growing crops, helping to retain moisture in the soil and boosting growth.

An initial year-long research collaboration between the University of Sheffield, World Agroforestry and the Kajiado-based Latia Agripreneurship Institute has shown promising results in the semi-arid Kajiado county, a 90-minute drive from the Kenyan capital of Nairobi and this week the full project will be officially launched.

For example, cabbages grown under the 180, 345-watt solar panels have been a third bigger, and healthier, than those grown in control plots with the same amount of fertiliser and water.

Other crops such as aubergine and lettuce have shown similar results. Maize grown under the panels was taller and healthier, according to Judy Wairimu, an agronomist at the institute.

“We wanted to see how crops would perform if grown under these panels,” said Wairimu. But there is another pragmatic reason behind the technology: doubling up the output of the same patch of earth to generate power and cultivate food can go a long way towards helping people with limited land resources, she said.

According to Dr Richard Randle-Boggis, a researcher at the University of Sheffield’s Harvesting the Sun Twice project, the trial initiative will determine the potential of agrivoltaic systems in east Africa.

“We needed to build a test system to see if this technology will be suitable for the region,” Randle-Boggis said, reiterating that, unlike conventional solar mini-grid systems, agrivoltaics have the additional benefits of improving food and water security, while strengthening people’s resilience against the climate crisis, as well as providing low-carbon electricity.

The solar panels do not just reduce water loss from plants and the soil – their shade mitigates some of the stress experienced by plants due to high day temperatures and UV damage, Randle-Boggis said.

Agrivoltaics can have a notable impact on household income in remote locations such as Kajiado. “Women here can spend up to 300 Kenyan shillings (£2) on a bodaboda (motorcycle taxi) fare to the market just to buy vegetables worth 100 Kenyan shillings,” said Anne Macharia, head of training at Latia Agripreneurship Institute.

The solar panels can be placed three metres from the ground, providing ample room for a farmer to work below, or higher in bigger systems to allow access for agricultural machinary.

Randle-Boggis acknowledged the technology has limitations, but says that in “areas of Kenya which are not currently suitable for horticulture, it may be possible to grow other crops under the improved environmental conditions under the panels”.

In other countries including France, the US and Germany, the technology has been employed successfully.

I talked about sheep doing better under solar panels, here. And about parking lots can be covered with solar, here.  Soft denialists complain that there won't be enough land for all the solar panels needed to provide our electricity.  This is nonsense, but in any event, the land can be dual use: over grazing, crops, parking lots and on the roofs of buildings.

A research collaboration between the University of Sheffield and the Latia Agripreneurship Institute in the semi-arid Kajiado county had promising results. Photograph: Christine Lamanna/Icraf

10,000 times more sunlight than needed

 From a tweet by Arik Ring

Earth Receives Enough Sunlight Every Day to Meet All of Humanity's #Energy Needs 10,000 Times Over.

The tropics could be powered by solar, and high latitudes by solar in low latitude countries --- for example, solar from Morocco for Europe.   And that's just sunlight; concentrated solar power (CSP) uses the infra-red spectrum as well as the visible spectrum.   We could run continent-wide electricity grids using a mix of wind, solar, CSP and batteries.  Easily.

France legislates for solar panels over car parks

 From a Tweet by Assaad Razzouk

France just legislated that every parking lot for 80 cars or more must be covered by solar panels

That’s 11GW of new solar (same as 10 new nuclear reactors) powering millions of home - zero new land needed

Climate action is happening, just not at #COP27

Ovine wisdom

 I often think of sheep in Australia's excessive summer heat, often kept in fields where there is no shade, no way to escape.  In a recent piece, I talked about how sheep like solar panels because of the shade and better feed underneath them.

In this image from Tom Osborne, you can see sheep sheltering from the sun in the shade cast by a wind turbine.

So much for wind turbines and solar panels using all the agricultural land.  

I wonder if these sheep get cancer, as the denialists assert wind turbines cause?

Top 5 solar energy myths

 

A mind-bending amount of solar in the US pipeline

From Bloomberg

At the end of 2021, the US had 1,144 gigawatts of utility-scale electricity generation capacity. That includes everything from 130-year-old hydro dams to brand-new wind farms and solar projects with batteries attached. It took over a century to install all of it, and today, companies want to build almost that much capacity, all over again.

In its annual review of utility-scale solar, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory analyzed data from seven independent system operators and 35 utilities, which together represent about 85% of the nation’s electricity load, to see what’s awaiting connection. It found more than 1 terawatt [=1,000 gigawatts, or 1,000,000 megawatts] of potential new power generation or storage capacity that has requested connection to transmission networks. To put that in perspective, the whole world hit 1 terawatt of installed solar capacity earlier this year.

The Berkeley Lab data tells the story of US solar power — from its growth to its technological sophistication to its growing maturity as a sector.

Firstly, most new power generation planned in the US is renewable. In 2014, the total of all resources in all combined interconnection queues was about 325 gigawatts, of which 14% was solar. Today, it is 1,450 gigawatts (including energy storage projects), 46% of which is solar.

Now an important qualification in the lab’s own words: “Not all of these projects will ultimately be built!” Even a massive expansion of continent-wide transmission would not create enough space for all of these assets to be connected to the grid. Nevertheless, the scale of ambition is important. Every asset in the queue represents dollars invested and time spent.

Secondly, solar project developers are clearly interested in batteries, though that interest varies greatly by region. More than 95% of solar capacity planned for California includes batteries. Storage is prevalent in the far West and in the sunny Southeast; less so in the Mid-Atlantic and Midwest. Still, with the exception of New York state and the Plains states, every major region plans to have batteries integrated with at least 20% of the solar in its interconnection queue.

In other words: In sunny markets where there is already a high penetration of renewable power generation, storage is more or less expected with a new solar project. It is not quite so automatic a decision in the southeast or Texas, but I would wager that it will be.

Underneath the raw capacity numbers, Berkeley Lab also observes some trends that show how the market is maturing and continuing to innovate.

One important trend is the movement of new projects to areas with less intense sun. Global horizontal irradiance (a technical way of measuring how much sun an area receives) peaked for US solar projects in 2013. This is not really a surprise. Project sites with the very best solar resources were snapped up years ago and many have already been developed. And as the market moves from high-irradiance sites such as the desert Southwest and California into the Southeast, Mid-Atlantic, Midwest and Northeast, solar intensity necessarily declines.

Yet at the same time, the amount of solar power generated by US projects has not significantly declined since its peak. The average capacity factor (a measure of how much energy is produced compared with maximum potential annual output) for projects that began operation in 2013 was 25.1%; in 2020, it was 24.8%.

The reasons for this (very good!) plateau are worth noting. The first is that today, nearly every large solar project includes tracking systems that follow the sun across the sky, increasing capacity factor.

The second is that project owners have increased their “inverter loading ratio” — basically, they build more capacity than specified for the hardware that turns the variable direct current of solar panels into the alternating current of the grid. This is a feature, not a bug, as it allows for more output and less variability.

 

Solar half of new capacity installed in 2021

 From a tweet by Professor Stefan Rahmstorf

Click on chart to see a clearer image

1. This is *gross* installed capacity, i.e., it doesn't include retired capacity.  That implies that total coal capacity  prolly *fell* in 2021.  
2. A grid heavily dependent on solar will require more than 4 hours of storage ― in principle, a grid in the tropics consisting entirely of solar would need ±12 hours of storage, and that ignores seasonal storage.  A blend of wind and solar reduces the amount of storage required. 
3. However, one must also take into account capacity factors: wind 35-41%, solar less, at 20-25%.   Given this, the *output* from new wind and new solar would be similar, despite the difference in new capacity built out.
4. The probable decline in actual capacity in coal, after taking retirements into account, means that emissions from electricity generation may have fallen in 2021, and may fall again in 2022, though the capacity factor in coal has been low because of overbuilding in China, so that is likely to pick up, and might offset the total decline.  Moreover, the pause in shuttering coal power stations in Europe in response to the Ukraine war will also delay the peak for a year or so.
5. Gas will still be needed for periods when it's still, cold and cloudy (dunkelflaute) but that would make up about 10% of total electricity generation, which is about where investment in gas is.  

In other words, cautious optimism is allowable.  Emissions from electricity may be peaking.  And they make up ±30% of global emissions.  One final point:  anybody investing in new coal capacity now is likely to lose their money.

Improved fleece on sheep grazed under solar panels

From The ABC

Sheep grazing under solar panels at farms in NSW's Central West have produced better wool and more of it in the four years since the projects began, according to growers.

Local graziers have labelled the set-up a "complete win-win", with the sheep helping to keep grass and weeds down so as not to obscure the panels.

In turn, the panels provided shade for the sheep and grass, and helped prevent the soil from drying out.

Wool broker Graeme Ostini, who has been grazing merino wethers at a solar farm near Parkes in a trial with the Parkes Show Society, said he had seen the benefits of running the animals under panels.

He said his sheep were slightly lighter stocked than the average in the district but were cutting an "amazing" amount of wool.

"It is actually quite astonishing. Some of the sheep look fantastic. They're growing exponentially and the wool cuts are in the top 5 per cent in the district."

He said he credited the good season and the solar panels for the improvement.

While Mr Ostini's sheep were lighter stocked than average, Dubbo farmer and grazier Tom Warren's were slightly higher.

Mr Warren leases part of his land to a solar farm and runs about 250 merino ewes and wethers on 54 hectares among the panels.

Like Mr Ostini, Mr Warren also reported impressive results.

He has not noticed an increase in wool quantity but said the quality had improved.

"It'll be because of the conditions the sheep are living in," he said.

"It's relatively clean, without burrs, without dust. There's very, very little contamination of the wool and they're protected from the sun as well."

Mr Warren said the carrying capacity of the land had also increased by about 25 per cent.

During the drought, water condensed on the solar panels in the mornings. The trickling of the water to the grass below keep strips of pasture green.

In all, he said by leasing his land to the solar farm and grazing his sheep there, his income had increased.

Mr Warren's sheep were able to graze almost all through the drought years thanks to condensation from the panels.(Supplied: Tom Warren)

China doubles new solar

 From IEEFA

China built nearly 31 gigawatts (GW) of new solar power capacity from January to June, up 137% from a year earlier, with full-year installations on course to hit a record high, an industry group said on Thursday.

Total solar power capacity now stands at 340 GW, up 25.8% compared to last year, Wang Bohua, the honorary chairman of the China Photovoltaic Industry Association, said in a presentation.

Total installations over the year are expected to stand at between 75 GW and 90 GW over 2022, Wang said, breaking last year's record of 54.9 GW.

China's solar power equipment exports also surged over the period, with the total value more than doubling to 25.9 billion yuan ($3.83 billion), despite tariffs and trade sanctions from the United States, India and Europe.

China is aiming to bring total wind and solar capacity to 1,200 GW by the end of the decade, up from 635 GW at the end of last year, and is currently developing large-scale renewable energy bases in desert regions.

[David Stanway]

Puerto Ricans power their own solar boom

 From Canary Media

A bright yellow building with bold green trim hums with activity in Caguas, a city sprawled across a mountain valley south of San Juan, Puerto Rico. In a spacious kitchen, volunteers chop vegetables and cook rice for community meals. Down the hall, visitors browse racks of free and discounted produce, canned beans and bottles of oil. Outside, beneath a large metal awning, retirees soak in calming music as they take part in a stress-relief workshop.

The community services on offer here at the Centro de Apoyo Mutuo, or Mutual Support Center, are made possible by the 24 solar panels mounted on the rooftop. Two lithium-ion batteries the size of suitcases are kept in a windowless storage room, allowing the center to stay open on cloudy days and in the evenings. The building doesn’t use any electricity from the utility grid.

Nearly five years ago, after Hurricane Maria tore a path of devastation across the U.S. territory and all but destroyed Puerto Rico’s electricity system, residents in Caguas reclaimed what had for decades been an abandoned Social Security office. They ripped out moldy carpet, scrubbed the walls and began providing food and supplies to neighbors.

“This was a space that wasn’t serving the people, and now the community has taken it over,” Marisel Robles, one of the center’s organizers, says on a muggy day in early May, just weeks before the start of the next Atlantic hurricane season.

Robles guides me up a thin metal ladder to the rooftop of the one-story building, pushing aside tree branches sagging with brown seed pods. Saúl González, a volunteer and local solar installer, joins our expedition. The three rows of solar panels form a ​“mosaic” of different makes and models, all of them donated by nonprofit organizations, he explains.

With 6 kilowatts of solar capacity and 30 kilowatt-hours of battery storage, the system can typically meet the center’s power needs. Occasionally, members cut the lights and fans during the day to save electricity for an evening dance class. Still, Robles says it’s better than running expensive, polluting diesel generators or depending on the island’s electric grid — which, despite years of post-hurricane repairs, remains prone to routine outages, sweeping blackouts and frequent voltage surges that fry people’s appliances. In early April, the entire island lost grid power for three days after an aging electric breaker caught fire on the southern coast.

“Sometimes, we hear the ​‘boom’ of people turning on their diesel generators, and that’s how we know the power went out in town, because here we still have power,” Robles says, looking out over the tops of neighboring buildings. ​“For us, it’s like a victory every day this happens, because we feel like we did something right.”

The Mutual Support Center is not unique in its ability to produce its own clean energy. A rising number of Puerto Ricans are installing solar panels and batteries on their homes and businesses, fed up with the unstable electric grid, high electricity bills and the state-owned utility’s reliance on fossil fuels. As of January 2022, some 42,000 rooftop solar systems were enrolled in the island’s net-metering program — more than eight times the number at the end of 2016, the year before Hurricane Maria struck the island, according to utility data. Thousands more systems are operating but are not officially counted because, like the center’s unit, they aren’t connected to the grid.

Spearheaded largely by residents, business owners and philanthropies, the grassroots solar movement sweeping the island is happening despite headwinds from the territory’s centralized utility — which claims it’s working to advance the island’s clean energy goals but continues investing in fossil fuels. Solar proponents say that, for the technology to reach most of Puerto Rico’s 3.2 million people, the government and its utility will need to more fully participate in what has largely been a bottom-up energy transformation. With billions of federal recovery dollars set to flow to Puerto Rico, they argue that now is the time for public policies and investments that shift the island away from an outdated model of large, far-flung power plants to one that supplies clean electricity close to where people need it.

Saúl González, left, and Marisel Robles help maintain the solar system on the Mutual Support Center’s rooftop in Caguas, Puerto Rico. (Maria Gallucci/Canary Media)

De-carbonising electricity generation

1. We'll need both wind and solar, plus hydro, tidal, small hydro, and wave power, and any legacy nuclear.   The reason we'll need both wind and solar is that the wind blows at night, when the sun isn't shining, and also that they are negatively correlated.  In summer in high latitudes, the wind drops off, but solar is surprisingly strong.  In winter, the sun in high latitudes is dim, but the winds tend to be strong.  Together, wind and solar can produce much less variable output than either on its own, except in the tropics.
2. We'll need 4 hours of storage.  4 hours will be enough to handle the morning and evening peaks in demand, and to do some short-term smoothing of the random fluctuations in wind, though geographically diversified wind farms will help with this.  But 4 hours will not be enough to take wind and solar to more than 90% of total generation.  We'll need long-term storage for that.
3. We'll have built-in generation overcapacity.  Remember, that wind and solar variability can mean not just too little generation but also too much.  Up to now, when it's potentially too much, the grid operators curtail output of wind and commercial solar farms.  They're also getting the ability to curtail output of rooftop solar too, in many locations.  In future, this output will not be lost but used to generate green hydrogen.
4.  Storing hydrogen is hard.  Its atoms are very small and easily escape through the interstices between larger atoms, meaning the using hydrogen for seasonal storage will be much less effective than using methane.  It also makes pipelines brittle.  Green methane can be made from hydrogen using the Sabatier method, with a small additional loss of energy.  Methane is already routinely stored for months with minimal losses; there are already methane (natural gas) grids in most mid- to high-latitude developed countries, where seasonal storage will be needed; gas peaking plants will not need to be retro-fitted to handle hydrogen; methane is much easier to store and transport than hydrogen; and it can be used for heating, though electric heat pumps may be cheaper and more efficient.
5. It's possible, though I am not convinced, that we will need some small percentage (10- 20%) of nuclear in the grid.  But we are a long way from 80% wind and solar penetration in most global grids--the most recent data have the global average at 10%.  Setting aside legacy nuclear, new nuclear, if it happens, will tend to be smaller plants, because the giants are just so expensive.  I've talked about SMRs, micro nuclear and the great potential for hydrogen-boron fusion reactors, but these are all at least 5 to 10 years away from them being successfully deployed.
6. Micro-hydro, tidal power, wave power and electricity generated from incinerating/gasifying rubbish will all be handy additions to the grid, because they  are uncorrelated with wind and solar.  Even waves, which are driven by wind, can be created by winds hundreds of kilometres away.

OK, how does the actual transition happen?

1. We could leave it to the market.  Wind and solar are much cheaper than new coal and gas, and comparable to existing coal and gas in most places on the globe.  As existing fossil fuel power stations age, they will be replaced by renewables plus storage.  This will take decades, however, so, since we want to substantially reduce emissions from power generations as quickly as possible, we'll need to give this process a nudge.
2. We could set targets for renewables.  Each utility/electricity producer will be required to achieve an annual/quarterly percentage from renewables, rising steadily over time, aiming for 100% within a decade.   Those utilities which exceed this target will earn carbon credits, those utilities which don't reach this target will have to buy credits.  This carbon penalty will encourage utilities to build out more wind and solar farms, as well as other renewable supply, including nuclear.
3. We could run a reverse auction where individual power stations would offer to close down for a fee.  Let's say a decline of 10% a year in emissions from electricity generation is required.  Each year, the government would offer a lump sum payment to the power stations which would close down, choosing those with the lowest offers until the total reaches 10% for that year.  Conditions could be applied to any deals: redundancy payments to workers; requiring the output of the power station to be replaced with new "firmed" output from renewables; making sure the new wind and solar farms are located close to the communities where coal power stations are ceasing to operate.

Source: Our World in Data

How Solar Power is Reducing Maternal Mortality in Zimbabwe

 From IRENA

A renewable energy innovation has improved obstetric care to last-mile communities across Zimbabwe, successfully supporting over 180,000 deliveries per year since its introduction.

“Night-time deliveries and emergencies were no longer fraught with candle-lit uncertainty.”

Tendai Matimbe starts his day at 7:30 am every morning, but as Nurse-in-Charge at the Kamabarami Health Clinic, Zimbabwe, he is never sure when it will end. Tendai’s patients include pregnant mothers, children, and HIV positive people in need of anti-retroviral therapy (ART). While he and his colleagues conduct consultations in the morning and outpatient visits until 4 pm, they are on standby 24/7 in case there is an emergency, or someone goes into labour.

Providing health services at night can be tricky. The facility lacks electricity and clinicians struggle in near darkness to provide lifesaving care to patients. According to Tendai: “At night, we faced many challenges because we relied on candles to conduct medical services. It was scary, especially during complications.”

Without a source of light, health workers faced issues such as difficulty in administering Nevirapine (a medication to reduce the likelihood of maternal HIV transmission) to newborn babies. Healthcare workers across the sub-Saharan Africa region face similar challenges every day. Medical facilities in Zimbabwe feature among the 70 per cent of facilities across the region without reliable access to electricity, according to a joint report by IRENA and other SDG 7 custodian organisations.

As a result, health workers like Tendai and his colleagues found themselves forced to ask pregnant women from the poor communities to bring extra money to buy enough candles to last through the night – something many could ill afford.

To combat this, We Care Solar, a non-profit organisation, started introducing the Solar Suitcase to health centres in Zimbabwe in 2015. It is an easy-to-use solar electric system that provides last-mile health facilities with highly efficient medical lighting and power for mobile communication and small medical devices.

While the Suitcase was designed to support timely and efficient emergency obstetric care, it can be used in a range of humanitarian settings. The water-and-dust tight yellow case becomes a cabinet that mounts to the wall and is connected to the solar panels secured on the roof. The system includes rechargeable LED lights, USB ports, a fetal doppler, and an infrared thermometer.

The Kamabarami Clinic received the suitcase in 2019. Overnight, Tendai and his team found their work transformed. The practical and portable source of clean, steady electricity ensured that night-time deliveries and emergencies were no longer fraught with candle-lit uncertainty. Tendai says: “Attending to patients has become easier now, even at night. With the fetal doppler, we can listen to the fetal heart rate easily. With the lights, we can detect fetal abnormalities on the baby, especially when there is birth asphyxia.”

It is also helping to prevent maternal deaths. “One day a pregnant mother came while in labour,” Tendai recalls. “Out of fear about the costs of transport and the money for a caesarean section she lied, telling me that she’d had a normal birth from the previous pregnancy. But with the new, adequate lighting, l noticed that she had a big scar on her lower abdomen which l suspected to be from a prior caesarean section.”

Tendai was able to use the fetal doppler to listen to the baby’s heart rate, allowing him to detect the presence of any abnormalities. The baby’s heart rate was too slow. “I transferred the patient to the hospital at once, where the doctor informed me that her condition would only allow her to deliver by caesarean procedure. The doctor said that if l had not identified the abnormality and immediately transferred the patient, there were chances that we could have lost both the mother and the baby. Thanks to the new source of light, l was able to detect the physical abnormality and the fetal bradycardia.”

The clinic has seen an increase in productivity and lower maternal mortality rates since the introduction of solar power. The Solar Suitcases are now operational across 759 health centres in Zimbabwe, supporting more than 180,000 deliveries each year.

While this progress is encouraging, much more can be done. At present, Zimbabwe is tapping only a fraction of its full solar potential, estimated to be more than four gigawatts. In 2020, the country installed just 6 MW of new solar energy and now has a total installed capacity of 17 MW.

Despite this, renewable-based systems used to power rural health clinics are already having a transformative impact on the quality of life of rural communities, like the case of Tendai and the Kamabarami Health Clinic. Tendai feels that all clinics should enjoy the benefits of renewable energy solutions like solar power. “This is the best thing that has happened to our clinic. From the first day we used solar power to improve our working condition, we have not had any maternal death. It’s now easier to attend to our patients because we can see what we are doing and where we are going. We are no longer lost in the dark,” he said.

California battery storage is greening the grid

 A fascinating chart from Brian Bartholomew

Explanation of the chart:

The black line ("emissions intensity") shows how many tonnes of CO2 are emitted for each MWh of production during the course of the day.  Notice how it drops during daylight hours because of solar.

The blue bar chart shows battery charging and discharging.  The batteries charge up during the solar surplus, i.e., while emissions intensity is low, and discharge during peak demand, from 4 to 9 p.m.  There is some charging during the night, when emissions intensity is high, but much less than during the day, when it is low.

The implication is that, even if there is still coal/gas in the grid, the mixture of solar and batteries will still reduce emissions.  In fact, it will allow coal power stations to continue to operate while we move to 100% renewables, because they won't have to throttle output down during the solar peak as batteries will be taking any solar surplus up.  At the same time, emissions intensity will be reduced.  The goal must be to progressively reduce emissions intensity to zero.  And expanding solar plus battery storage will do that.