The Energy Show

Every year I gaze into my solar crystal ball and make ten educated guesses about the rooftop solar industry. Last year I was pretty lucky, getting 9 out of 10 right. 2017 is shaping up to be a lot more uncertain with big political changes, low equipment prices, new energy storage products and higher electric rates. Unfortunately, my list doesn’t include the benefits of the CPP and 500 million solar panels (along with the EPA and half the equity in the remaining solar module companies). Nevertheless, I remain very optimistic about the future of clean technology industries simply because their economic benefits have been proven.

So here are my Ten Predictions for Rooftop Solar in 2016:

1. Module prices will stay at current low levels.

2. U.S. solar manufacturing will continue to decline.

3. Community solar will struggle to get traction.

4. State solar organizations will gain membership and influence throughout the U.S. as Net Energy Metering and rate design issues are tackled by state public utility commissions. Meanwhile, SEIA will fight a rear guard action in DC to preserve the most precious TLAs (Three Letter Acronyms): ITC, DOE and EPA.

5. The TLA for 2017 is BTM (Behind The Meter).

6. Bigger is badder in rooftop solar. Small local and medium regional rooftop solar companies will continue to thrive as large integrated companies struggle.

7. Utility deployments of battery storage system will grow rapidly in the U.S.

8. Customers will not install technology that provides services to utilities.

9. Storage equipment companies will continue to underestimate the true cost of their new products in order to generate buzz and initial sales.

10. President Trump will embrace solar because it is cheaper and continues to be a jobs engine.

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In 2016, more solar generating capacity was installed than any other fuel source. Because of the low cost of solar-generated electricity, installations of both utilities and customer owned rooftop systems (residential and commercial), are growing rapidly. Unfortunately, changes to net metering and revised electric rates (such as demand charges) are making battery storage systems more compelling for “behind the meter” applications that are not owned by utilities.

However, BTM solar and storage systems are still expensive and complicated. Inverters, charge controllers and battery subsystems are generally not factory-integrated. The software necessary to operate these components in a way that maximizes the economic benefits for homeowners requires knowledge of local electric rates, battery charge-discharge-longevity characteristics and instantaneous home electric usage -- not to mention customer energy use preferences. And National Electric Code limitations on “plug-in” power sources must be considered for safe installations.

Nevertheless, the demand for an affordable plug and play home solar and storage system is almost unlimited. My special guest on this week’s Energy Show is Chris Estes, co-founder and CEO of Solpad. Their first product, Solpad, combines a high-capacity battery pack, inverter, solar panel and software all in one easy to use portable package. To find out more about the plug and play potential of Solpad, please Listen Up to this week's Energy Show on Renewable Energy World.

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Looking for those last minute, inexpensive and romantic holiday gifts? Well, two out of three ain’t bad with the new crop of LED bulbs. You can help make a dent in the 15% of U.S. residential electrical usage that is used for lighting. Prices have declined so quickly on LED bulbs that they are no longer a novelty. Without a doubt, replacing the incandescent bulbs in your home or business is the most cost effective way to reduce your energy costs.

In year’s past LEDs were also limited to standard screw-in bulbs. Now LED bulbs are available for virtually every light fixture. Moreover, LED bulbs come in color temperatures (soft white, daylight, etc.) that match incandescents. Plus, many of the newer LEDs can be used with dimmers (although sometimes not at the lowest setting).

Not only are LEDs more efficient, but they also have a much longer lifespan than incandescents and fluorescent bulbs. But the concept of planned obsolescence has kicked in with LEDs; I’ve noticed that the lifespan of LED bulbs has declined from 22 years to 11 years — but still much longer than the typical 1-3 year lifespan of incandescents.

This combination of long life, lower costs, good color temperature, dimming and bulbs for every fixture make LEDs the light source of choice for just about every application. Except for the hazards of climbing a chair or ladder to replace your bulbs, there is almost no reason to delay changing out your incandescents for LEDs. For more about our transition to LED lighting, please Listen Up to this week’s Energy Show on Renewable Energy World.

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We used to worry about the time when the world would start running out of fossil fuels, defined as Peak Oil. The concept of Peak Oil is when the maximum rate of extraction of petroleum is reached, after which production is expected to enter terminal decline causing energy prices to skyrocket. Based on oil demand and oil field depletion, the world was on schedule to hit Peak Oil in about the year 2000. I was a believer in Peak Oil, and looked forward to a future in which renewable energy would be able to offset these high energy prices.

But two lucky things happened to delay this Peak Oil economic disaster. First, horizontal drilling and fracking allowed drilling companies to pump oil and natural gas out of hard to reach areas. As a result, the supply of oil (and its substitute natural gas) went up, with a commensurate reduction in oil and gas prices. Second, the availability of less expensive alternative forms of energy (particularly wind and solar) -- combined with concerns about global warming -- have reduced demand for fossil fuels.

This double whammy of increasing supply and decreasing demand has reduced the price of fossil fuels. Energy consumers win, as do energy-intensive industries and businesses that depend on fossil fuel feedstocks (one word: plastics). Luckily, the continued reduction in solar and wind energy costs have kept up with the decline in fossil fuel prices. Please Listen Up to this week’s Energy Show on Renewable Energy World for more about Peak Oil, and the increasing irrelevance of this concept as wind, solar and storage continue to be more cost effective than fossil fuels.

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As technology advances, our favorite science-fiction and spy-thrillers become both laughably more unrealistic and eerily based on truth. Harnessing the power of the sun is no longer a figment of Ian Fleming’s imagination, but nor is it the latest evil-plot to destroy the world (for more details, watch “The Man with the Golden Gun”). Which brings me to concentrating solar power (CSP), a clean energy hybrid that uses concentrating solar and traditional steam turbines to turn sunlight into electricity.

This three step process -- from solar radiation to steam to electricity -- is more complicated than traditional PV systems (ironic that we call PV “traditional” now). But there is a significant advantage to CSP: heat can be stored during peak generation times (when there is plenty of PV power on the grid), and then when the sun goes down CSP generation can be ramped up as needed. As a result, many utilities prefer CSP systems because they operate in ways that are similar to conventional power plants.

When it comes to explaining CSP there is no better expert than Fred Morse, President of Morse Associates, Inc. Fred started work in solar under the Nixon administration, worked for the DOE for many years, and served as Senior Adviser of U.S. Operations at Abengoa Solar as he helped implement two of the largest solar plants in the world (Solana and Mojave Concentrating Power). Please Listen Up to this week’s Energy Show on Renewable Energy World as our guest Fred Morse explains the advantages and challenges of CSP.

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Our country had a surprise when Trump was elected as our next President. He takes office in fewer than two months. Compared to his predecessors, President Elect Trump has very different views about energy, manufacturing and business in general. Many of these views are troubling to the solar industry. But many of these views have the potential to be very good for our industry and economy as a whole.

On this week’s Energy Show on Renewable Energy World we will talk about the formal Republican platform as it relates to energy, indications of what President Trump will implement based on his comments and attitudes, and the impact of his policies on solar deployment. Finally, we will talk about what the solar industry can do to maximize solar installations, job creation and the positive impacts — both economic and environmental — of solar power.

I’m cautiously optimistic.

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About 50% of U.S. residents are not great candidates for rooftop solar. They may live in an apartment, they may have a very shaded roof, or they may have a very small electric bill. The best option for these people may be some kind of shared solar power system. Community Solar, or Solar Gardens, is a great solution for this segment of the population.

Community Solar installations must be fairly large in order to support the electrical needs of dozens or even thousands of customers. With Utility Owned installations, the energy is sold by the local utility, usually at a markup so the utility can make a profit; nevertheless, customers benefit from clean energy. With Private or Special Purpose Entity installations, an independent private company is created to develop and manage the project. Owners of the company may get a share of energy from system, or just profit from the energy sales. With Non-Profit installations, the system is developed and owned by a non-profit entity in which all the costs and benefits are shared.

Virtual Net Metering is an innovation that has the potential to accelerate the deployment of Community Solar systems. With VNM a group of people share the output of the system, getting bill credits equal to their share of ownership.

25 states already have operating Community Solar installations -- with many more projects in the pipeline. As the complexity with Virtual Net Metering and ownership structures are standardized, costs for electricity delivered from Community Solar will no doubt be reduced. So Listen Up to this week’s Energy Show on Renewable Energy World to learn about the advantages, limitations and challenges of deploying Community Solar throughout the U.S.

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Tesla’s recently announced solar shingles are a great looking and potentially ground-breaking Building Integrated Photovoltaic (BIPV) product. But we don’t know much at all about the cost or performance of a Tesla solar roof. Not to worry…on this week’s Energy Show on Renewable Energy World I’ve made some educated guesses about Tesla shingles so we can understand how they will appeal to homeowners.

We saw mockups of the shingles that suggest each shingle has a 6” cell, maybe up to 6 watts. But 1,000 little solar shingles (each with two wiring connections) are too many. To make the product more cost effective and installable there will be shingle assemblies composed of 24 6” cells for a total of 132 watts/assembly. A roof will have about 45 shingle assemblies and 2,000 dummy shingles for setbacks, shaded and sub-optimal roof areas. Installation costs will be higher with thousands of dummy shingles, small shingle assemblies, tricky and specialized wiring, expensive wire penetrations in attic to conceal cables, etc.

Tesla said the cost of their new system is the cost of an ordinary roof plus the cost of electricity. We can estimate the cost of an ordinary roof from new roof or re-roofing costs, and the cost of electricity from that of a regular solar system or 10 years of electric bills. Including the ITC (and several other assumptions), paybacks for a regular solar system and three Tesla options are:

- Regular solar system, simple payback 6.5 years

- Tesla retrofit, simple payback 11 years

- Tesla new production home, simple payback 8.2 years

- Tesla custom home construction, simple payback 11 years

These paybacks for a Tesla roof are slightly longer, but will still be compelling for new construction and homeowners willing to pay extra for superior aesthetics. The combination of Tesla and SolarCity also has the potential for a different roofing business model to further reduce costs. So Listen Up to this week’s Energy Show on Renewable Energy World for my crystal ball look into the Tesla solar roof.

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With so many solar inverter options, choosing the right one for your home or business can get a little overwhelming. In the way of background, inverters convert the DC power from rooftop solar panels into the AC power used in your home. High Voltage! For cost, performance and reliability reasons, most solar installers have strong preferences for inverter manufacturers and types. And for good reasons, as discussed below.

Standard string Inverters are the most common inverters for homes, I’ve been installing them since 2001, and they remain the most cost effective option. String Inverters are ideal for roofs without much shading (trees, vent pipes and chimneys). String inverters are usually installed outside the house near your electric meter; in my experience they have been among the most reliable designs. But string inverters have a more difficult time meeting some of the new rapid shutdown electrical code requirements. And they don’t offer panel-by-panel monitoring (which can be a mixed blessing).

Microinverters, introduced about eight years ago, are essentially miniature DC-AC inverters that are installed on the back of each solar panel, or on the racking below the panel. They are inherently safer than string inverters because there is no high voltage DC in the system. However, they are more expensive to purchase and install.

String inverters with optimizers started hitting the market about five years ago. A small electronics package (an optimizer) is installed on the back of each panel (or integrated with the panel’s junction box). This optimizer maximizes the power output from each panel, provides monitoring, and limits the DC voltage to safe levels. Optimizers are installed in conjunction with a string inverter. Typically, the string inverter with optimizer design is cheaper than microinverters but more expensive than a string inverter alone.

From an efficiency standpoint, string inverters, microinverters and string inverters with optimizers are all about the same -- on an unshaded roof. In my experience, reliability of inverters from major manufacturers are similar, once the manufacturer releases their V3 product. The key differentiating factors are cost, monitoring (ease and reliability) and storage upgradability. For more about your best choice for solar inverters, please Listen Up to the Energy Show on Renewable Energy World.

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Scientists at Bell Labs made the first solar cell in 1954. A dozen years later entrepreneurs started installing solar panels on rooftops. Now we have over one million homes and businesses powered by solar panels. We owe much of this success to the thousands of men and women who pioneered the solar industry. They are the ones who had visions of solar panels on every sunny rooftop.

Jeff Spies, now with Quick Mount PV, had the idea to get these solar pioneers together. “In October 2015, a group of dedicated solar professionals gathered in southern Humboldt County for the first-ever Solar Pioneers Party,” said Jeff. “These incredible people assembled to celebrate the birth of the solar industry and recognize the contributions of those intrepid backwoods solar engineers and mad scientists that made solar home power possible.”

The second Solar Pioneers gathering is coming up in the middle of October. And it’s not just a gathering of solar old-timers, or an opportunity to test that solar powered defibrillator. The strategies, tactics and sheer force of will that got our industry off the ground is in just as much need today. So please join me on this week’s Energy Show on Renewable Energy World as my special guest, Jeff Spies, talks about the next Solar Pioneers Gathering.

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