Don’t you love it.

More and more good news from the solar PV movement/industry/states. Let’s all get solar hot water and PV on our roofs and avoid the need for costly and long-delayed power lines. Distributed power and smart grid controlling technology is the future. And PHEVs which can power your home with V2G, vehicle to grid or V2H to home.

California’s ambitious goal of obtaining a third of its electricity from renewable sources by 2020 has spawned a green energy boom with thousands of megawatts of solar, wind, and biomass power plants planned for … the middle of nowhere.

And therein lies the elephant in the green room: transmission. Connecting solar farms and geothermal plants in the Mojave Desert and wind farms in the Tehachapis to coastal metropolises means building a massive new transmission system. The cost for 13 major new power lines would top $15.7 billion, according to a report released in August by the state’s Renewable Energy Transmission Initiative.

The initiative, called RETI, is an attempt to build a statewide green grid in an environmentally sensitive way that will avoid the years-long legal battles that have short-circuited past transmission projects.

But the rapidly evolving solar photovoltaic market may moot the need for some of those expensive and contentious transmission lines, requiring transmission planners to rethink their long-term plans, according to Black & Veatch, the giant consulting and engineering firm that does economic analysis for RETI.

In short, solar panel prices have plummeted so much as to make viable the prospect of generating gigawatts of electricity from rooftops and photovoltaic farms built near cities.

“This has pretty significant implications in terms of transmission planning,” Ryan Pletka, Black & Veatch’s renewable energy project manager, told me last week. “What we thought would happen in a five-year time frame has happened in one year.”

That’s prompted Pletka to radically revise the potential for so-called distributed generation—solar systems that can plug into the existing grid without the construction of new transmission lines—to contribute to California’s need for 60,000 gigawatt hours of renewable electricity by 2020.

When Black & Veatch did its initial analysis last year, it predicted that photovoltaic solar could contribute 2,000 megawatt hours, given the high cost of conventional solar modules and the fact that a next-generation technology, thin-film solar, had yet to make a big commercial breakthrough.

Pletka’s new number is a bit of a shocker: Distributed generation could potentially provide up to 40,000 gigawatt hours of electricity, or two-thirds of projected demand.

“Certainly some of the new transmission lines will be needed but not as many as before,” he says.

That analysis also calls into question the need for as many large-scale solar power plants. Currently there are about 35 Big Solar projects planned for California that would generate more than 12,000 megawatts of electricity.

A game-changer has been the rapid rise of thin-film solar. Thin-film solar modules are essentially printed on glass or other materials. Although such solar panels are less efficient at converting sunlight into electricity than traditional crystalline modules—which are made from silicon wafers—they can be produced more cheaply.

In the past year, utilities like Southern California Edison have signed deals with First Solar, the thin-film powerhouse, to buy electricity from four massive megawatt thin-film solar farms. And in September, China inked an agreement with the Tucson, Ariz., company to build a 2,000-megawatt power plant, the world’s largest.

The next day, Nanosolar, a Silicon Valley startup, announced it had secured $4.1 billion in orders for its thin-film modules, which it claims will be even more efficient and cost less to produce than those made by First Solar.

Meanwhile, California’s two biggest utilities, PG&E and Southern California Edison, this year each unveiled initiatives to collectively install 1,000 megawatts of distributed solar generation. SoCal Edison will put solar arrays on warehouse roofs throughout the Southland—First Solar snagged the first big contracts—while PG&E is focusing on ground-mounted solar systems near its existing substations.

So what’s behind this rooftop revolution in solar?

Partly it’s due to a glut in the solar panel market. The global economy collapsed last year just as solar module makers ramped up production. But it’s also a result of technological innovation and economies of scale that have made thin-film solar, for instance, competitive. Strides have also been made in cutting installation costs, which typically account for half the price of photovoltaic systems.

The solar market, of course, is heavily dependent on government incentives—in the United States and overseas—and thus vulnerable to disruption. But the trajectory remains one of falling prices and thus Black & Veatch’s projections pose a conundrum for transmission planners.

Given that transmission projects can take a decade to complete, power bureaucrats make their plans based on 10-year projections of energy costs according to Pletka. That wasn’t much of a problem when planning transmission for, say, a grid supplied by natural gas-fired power plants as the technology or the market was not likely to change radically.

Not so for solar, where technological advances and fast-changing market conditions are shaking long-held views that photovoltaic power, or PV, is not ready for prime time.

“I’ve worked in renewables since the ‘90s and I myself had written off solar PV for years and years and years,” Pletka says. “That’s a firmly rooted mindset among everyone who works from a traditional utility planning perspective.”

“We present this new information on photovoltaics to people and it’s still not sinking in,” he adds. “It would cause a major shift in how we plan.”

While fewer massive transmission projects would be needed if California generates gigawatts of electricity from rooftops, the distribution network will need to be upgraded and a smart grid created to manage tens of thousands of pint-sized solar power plants.

Cities, Pletka notes, could become generators of electricity rather than consumers of power.

“It brings up questions people haven’t had to talk about before,” says Pletka.

November 5 I went to Virginia to speak to high school students from all over the DC area about Sustainable transportation, namely EVs and Junior Solar Sprint races. Here’s a shot.

In our country and around the world, we use water to make energy and then we use energy to make water. What? Most nuclear and coal power plants use a steam turbine which is cooled by water. Remember the drought in Georgia last year? The water in the river got so low and hot that it wouldn’t cool the nuke and coal power plants, so they had to turn them down or off. The largest user of water in the U.S. is the thermoelectric power sector, accounting for 48% of the total water withdrawal and 39% of freshwater withdrawals.

Then we use energy to clean up dirty water at water treatment plants. 10% of electricity in the U.S. is used for waste and wastewater, including end uses. But in denser, larger states the energy load can be much higher. According to a 2005 study by the California Energy Commission, fully 19% of the state’s energy use is related to pumping, treating, transporting, heating, cooling, and recycling water.
The Middle East is investing heavily in the desalination of seawater to provide adequate fresh water for its burgeoning population (and of course, its indoor ski slopes). Desalination requires over 9,800 kWh per million gallons of fresh water.

But how about oil? Shale oil and tar sands oil in Canada and the West use gobs of water to fracture the rock. The West is very dry and so we will probably never develop that oil because of lack of water.
How about ethanol? Requires lots of water, much more than oil. The EROWI (energy returned on water invested) is 228 for petroleum diesel, but only 0.024 for corn ethanol, because making it requires massive amounts of water.
So, water conservation and energy conservation are both key. To save water while making energy, we need to use water-thrifty energy sources, like solar and wind, and wave power.energypicture

Sure, some environmentalists are saying, throw some more money at nuclear if that’s what it takes to get the climate bill passed. But nuclear already has gobs of subsidies. Aren’t they going to choke on the welfare money that we keep throwing at them? They already have loan guarantees out the wazoo. More, more, they’re never satisfied.
Let’s look at the scene this way. Democrats are saying, pass the cap and trade bill and let the market decide which technologies win: efficiency, nuclear, solar, wind, etc. They sound like raving capitalist free-marketers. The Republicans are similarly standing on their heads by wanting to foist state socialism on our country. To heck with the market, we Senators know what is best and we decree that 100 nuclear power plants will be built. The Chinese Communist Party likes that kind of state interference in the free market. Yuck.
So, look at nuclear. Cost overruns. Delays. Bondholders losing their shirts. No wonder there were no nuclear plants built in this country the last 30 years. Oh, but the future is different. Nuclear people have learned their lesson. Now, they will be cheaper, faster, safer. Really? Check out the recent news from the Finnish nuclear plant. $4.3 billion was the original price tag. Now they are behind schedule and predict it will take and extra $3.3 billion to finish the Finnish [bad joke] plant, according to a Sept 09 news item. No completion date is offered. Finnish people are not known for being big spend thrifts, chomping cigars and burning money for the fun of it.
So, it wasn’t the nuclear protesters waving signs that stopped the nuclear power plants in the US. It was Wall St investors who didn’t want to lose their shirts on another losing venture. Same here.
Why waste our money on nuclear when the money should be spent on energy efficiency first. Let the market decide.

You may have read the news that Senator Barbara Boxer’s Environment and Public Works Committee passed the Boxer-Kerry bill out of committee by 11- 1. Some say that this means the death of this bill and the beginning of a bill that has a chance of passing. What’s with that? Republicans on the committee boycotted the Senate EPW markup for several days, playing hooky from school. Why ? Because they said that they needed more time to study the economic impacts of the bill. Get this. The nearly-identical Waxman-Markey bill was analyzed by the EPA, at a cost of $350,000 in computer runs, and the Senate Boxer-Kerry bill was analyzed from the perspective of what differences were made to the Waxman bill, and adjusted the Waxman bill’s economic impact based on those differences. So, by putting those two together, ouila [waa-laa], you have the Boxer-Kerry bill economic analysis. Oh, no, the Republicans are so upset that EPA didn’t spend another $350,000 and 6 weeks in re-running the whole computer run again. I thought Republicans were into saving money for the gov’t and not running up the debt. I guess not.
So, it’s all a ruse. They whine that they don’t have the study, but they do. They want to run out the clock so Obama can’t go to Copenhagen with a victory in the Senate. They want to do nothing about climate change and they are using the study as their ruse.
So, now Kerry-Lieberman=Graham want to put together a new bill, which apparently will have more of what conservatives want, namely nuclear power and offshore oil drilling. Ugh. This is how politics works.

Two guys on electric motorcycles with lithium ion batteries drive from Detroit to DC, following the infamous path that the Big Auto guys drove when they came to DC to ask for welfare, er, stimulus bail out money. Remember the big jets? Then the limos? Tone deaf.
So, our young bikers drove to town in the cold to give President Obama one of their new Brammo electric motorcycles. Turns out the President can’t accept gifts. Hmm. What to do? Hang around DC and talk to the media. Then they met people in the White House. See www.shockingbarak.com for details.
Oh, and they stayed at my house for one night. We took them out to Fajita Coast for burritos and margaritas. Hey, it’s tough be a climate/solar/electric vehicle activist !

It is hard to convince climate change skeptics of the reality of the pickle we are in. I’ve heard it said that we don’t know for sure what will happen with climate change, but it is a bit like driving your car off a cliff. You never know what parts will break, how much you will be squished, but you can count on the results being PRETTY UGLY (my favorite oxymoron).