The Remarkable Progress of Renewable Energy

[Cheerful Charlie]

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-...-plants-are-unprofitable-report-idUSKCN1NZ00B

LONDON (Reuters) - More than 40 percent of the world’s coal plants are operating at a loss due to high fuel costs and that proportion could to rise to nearly 75 percent by 2040, a report by environmental think-tank Carbon Tracker showed on Friday.
...
It found that 42 percent of global coal capacity is already unprofitable. From 2019 onwards, it expects falling renewable energy costs, air pollution regulations and carbon pricing to result in further cost pressures and make around 72 percent of the fleet cashflow negative by 2040.
In addition, by 2030, new wind and solar will be cheaper than continuing to operate 96 percent of today’s existing and planned coal plants, the report said.
...


King Coal is dead. Long live the king!

 

[lpetrich]

The Solar Tech Flying Under The Radar | OilPrice.com

Concentrated photovoltaics utilizes a combination of lenses and curved mirrors to focus the natural sunlight it gathers onto compact and extremely efficient multi-junction solar cells, and often comes equipped with solar trackers and a cooling system for an even more efficient and streamlined process.

Recently a research consortium called CPVMatch made public in a press release last month that its latest CPV solar module, an experimental model, achieved a conversion efficiency rate of 41.4 percent--an incredible achievement by all accounts. The innovation in this newest experimental module that has gained it such a high yield lies in the utilization of achromatic lenses which focus incoming rays of sunlight onto mini multi-junction solar cells. The efficiency is further buoyed throughout the day by a two-axis solar tracker.

Rhode Island Renewable Energy Becomes Part Of The Everyday Landscape | CleanTechnica -- on the state's wind turbines

Who Is Behind The Trump War On Fuel Economy Standards? The New York Times Says It Knows | CleanTechnica

The New York Times says it knows precisely who is behind the plot and it’s naming names. In a report dated December 13, it says, “In Congress, on Facebook and in statehouses nationwide, Marathon Petroleum, the country’s largest refiner, worked with powerful oil-industry groups and a conservative policy network financed by the billionaire industrialist Charles G. Koch to run a stealth campaign to roll back car emissions standards.”

The main thrust of the industry argument goes like this — we have so much oil and gasoline available now, there is no reason to conserve. Let the Hummers out of the barn! Fire up every SUV and pickup truck and let them burn gasoline to their heart’s content

That'll be good for their sales figures, but that will only drink up the remaining oil even faster. Then they'll wring their hands about how we have to look just about everywhere to find more oil.

 

[lpetrich]

US DOI Awards Offshore Wind Leases Worth Up To 4.1 Gigawatts Off Massachusetts | CleanTechnica That's 390,000 acres (160,000 hectares) southwest of Cape Cod and southeast of Rhode Island. Let's hope that wind-energy development there succeeds where the Cape Wind project failed -- Cape Wind was litigated to death by a coalition that included the Kennedy family and a lesser-known Koch brother with big holdings in coal.

Shell Places 1.6 Gigawatt Bet On US Offshore Wind Energy | CleanTechnica

Offshore Wind: America’s Sleeping Renewable Energy Giant

...
Well, it’s curious all right, but it’s not a one-off. It’s a piece of a much larger offshore wind pie. Atlantic coast offshore wind development is actually the only notable Obama-era program that is continuing apace under the Trump administration, without any apparent interference from the White House.

The offshore wind lease program is a major renewable energy initiative. Unfortunately it foundered soon after its launch in 2010, partly due to the efforts of Koch-funded governors and legislators in New Jersey and several other Atlantic Coast states.

... For some reason under the Trump years, the Interior Department’s lease program is going full steam ahead along with a healthy dose of support from the US Department of Energy.

Renewable Energy Is Bringing Good Jobs To The Midwest. Is Anyone In Washington Paying Attention? | CleanTechnica

Yo, Donny. You want good paying jobs for Americans? Renewable energy has sparked an employment boom in the Midwest, but your policies are trying to kill it. Why don’t you try being for something for a change instead of opposed to everything? America is not going back to some supposed golden age when the steel mills lit up the nighttime sky all across the heartland. It’s time to grow up, Donny, and embrace the future rather than peddling your pernicious myths about the past.

This is what would change his tune: financing his 2020 campaign. He will become meekly obedient, I'm sure.

 

[lpetrich]

Home - DeepSolar

eepSolar is a deep learning framework that analyzes satellite imagery to identify the GPS locations and sizes of solar photovoltaic (PV) panels. Leveraging its high accuracy and scalability, DeepSolar constructed a comprehensive high-fidelity solar deployment database for the contiguous U.S.

We demonstrated its value by discovering that residential solar deployment density peaks at a population density of 1000 capita/mile2, increases with annual household income asymptoting at ~$150K, and has an inverse correlation with the Gini index representing income inequality. We uncovered a solar radiation threshold (4.5 kWh/m2/day) above which the solar deployment is “triggered”. Furthermore, we built an accurate machine learning-based predictive model to estimate the solar deployment density at the census-tract level.

Published in DeepSolar: A Machine Learning Framework to Efficiently Construct a Solar Deployment Database in the United States: Joule

It was done with a "deep learning" "convolutional neural network" model. The convolutional part is what the neural network's inputs are. The NN is run on each image pixel, using that pixel and its neighboring pixels as inputs. Its output then forms a new image with its pixels corresponding to the original image's pixels.

This CNN was trained on images whose solar-panel content was known, marking out which pixels belong to solar panels and which ones do not. This CNN was then used on a database of satellite images of the entire contiguous United States, and it was used to find out how much solar-panel area per land area.

From the paper, the number of solar installations in the contiguous US is about 1.47 million.

The trigger solar flux for solar-panel deployment is about 4.0 - 4.5 kWh/m2/day. The above-trigger region in the contiguous US was a belt between western Texas and most of California.  Solar irradiance has some maps of the solar flux for all over the Earth's surface, and one can identify similar regions elsewhere in the world. Australia, for instance, is at least as good as the southwest US. The Equator is not as good as one might expect, but that's because it is an updraft zone, and rising air makes its water condense as clouds. There are two rather patchy belts with very good sunlight input, in the subtropical regions. This is where that rising air returns to the surface after traveling outward in the upper troposphere. It then returns to the Equator near the surface, completing the Hadley-cell circulation there.

 

[lpetrich]

Big Oil Claims Higher Fuel Economy Standards Hurt Poor People The Most. That's A Lie. | CleanTechnica

The big problem with the claim that higher fuel economy standards make it harder for poor people to buy new cars is that it isn’t true. According to a report by the Consumer Federation of America, poor people don’t buy new cars. 92% of low income Americans buy used cars. Those cars typically get worse fuel economy then new cars, meaning the poor pay a higher percentage of their available income for fuel than other Americans. About 9% of their weekly budget goes for gasoline, the CFA says.

“This makes preserving the nation’s fuel economy standards critically important to millions of financially challenged Americans,” says Jack Gillis, the executive director of the CFA. “Fuel economy standards that allow consumers to get the most out of a tank of gas are vital in helping keep low-income families mobile. The greater percent of one’s income needed for gasoline, the more the roll back will harm the family budget. This illogical, unfounded rollback will cost consumers regardless of their economic standing. However, what is particularly tragic is that it devastates low-income family finances.”

I don't like that kind of regulation. I'd prefer subsidizing greater fuel efficiency, so that people who want gas guzzlers can still get them. I'd prefer confining regulation to such things as safety.

I also think that that rhetorical line is a form of concern trolling that the Right is fond of. But since the Right believes that poor people are lazy bums who ought to be punished for their laziness and irresponsibility, and since the Right is a big believer in punishment, right-wingers ought to support anything that hurts poor people. If raising the minimum wage hurts poor people, then raise it to punish them more. If labor unions hurt poor people, then support them to punish poor people more. Etc.

 

[lpetrich]

Renewable Energy Opponents Turn Up The Volume | CleanTechnica about two anti-renewable-energy articles. One of them slammed the town of Georgetown, TX for using renewable energy instead of natural gas, because natgas prices vary like crazy. That one claimed that Georgetown is currently losing money because natgas is now cheap. But if it got expensive again, then what would they say?

The CleanTechnica author notes that the Koch brothers are behind the "Texas Public Policy Foundation", and suspects that for the "New American" from its rhetoric. After noting some comments like "the greenies are just commies in disquis", he continued with

Divide and conquer. The Koch Brothers and their minions have done a marvelous job of crafting a message that appeals to our innate prejudices. Renewable energy advocates are bent on stealing our freedom while they line their pockets with government grants. A bunch of wobbly kneed treehuggers swilling chablis around the fondue pot, that’s all we are. It’s surprising so few people recognize that democracy itself is a form of socialism.

In truth, the “government favoritism, special deals benefiting big corporations, and hidden costs,” the TPPF complains about are all on the part of fossil fuel interests. They have done a brilliant job of hiding their own evil deeds by wrapping themselves in the flag, screaming about liberty, and accusing the opposition of doing the same things they do themselves.

Full Steam Ahead For First Ever Diesel-Killing, High Speed Hydrogen Fuel Cell Ferry | CleanTechnica

Our friends over at Maritime Executive report that the plan is to start Water-Go-Round off with conventional hydrogen and transition to renewable fuel as the cost becomes more competitive.

How soon will that happen? The US Department of Energy has been bigly promoting renewable H2 with the help of private sector partners. Among recent awardees is a Florida based company called Dioxide Materials, which is working on a low cost electrolyzer that eschews platinum and other precious metals.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Big Oil Claims Higher Fuel Economy Standards Hurt Poor People The Most. That's A Lie. | CleanTechnica

The big problem with the claim that higher fuel economy standards make it harder for poor people to buy new cars is that it isn’t true. According to a report by the Consumer Federation of America, poor people don’t buy new cars. 92% of low income Americans buy used cars. Those cars typically get worse fuel economy then new cars, meaning the poor pay a higher percentage of their available income for fuel than other Americans. About 9% of their weekly budget goes for gasoline, the CFA says.

“This makes preserving the nation’s fuel economy standards critically important to millions of financially challenged Americans,” says Jack Gillis, the executive director of the CFA. “Fuel economy standards that allow consumers to get the most out of a tank of gas are vital in helping keep low-income families mobile. The greater percent of one’s income needed for gasoline, the more the roll back will harm the family budget. This illogical, unfounded rollback will cost consumers regardless of their economic standing. However, what is particularly tragic is that it devastates low-income family finances.”

I don't like that kind of regulation. I'd prefer subsidizing greater fuel efficiency, so that people who want gas guzzlers can still get them. I'd prefer confining regulation to such things as safety.

I also think that that rhetorical line is a form of concern trolling that the Right is fond of. But since the Right believes that poor people are lazy bums who ought to be punished for their laziness and irresponsibility, and since the Right is a big believer in punishment, right-wingers ought to support anything that hurts poor people. If raising the minimum wage hurts poor people, then raise it to punish them more. If labor unions hurt poor people, then support them to punish poor people more. Etc.

Seconded. I'd like to see the CAFE standards zapped and replaced with a substantial tax on gas guzzlers. And building a vehicle on a truck body shouldn't get you any reduction in the tax. A truck body type is irrelevant, a truck is identified by it's cargo capacity, not what's underneath.

 

[lpetrich]

This Is How Big Oil Will Die
Author Seth Miller has a remarkable thesis: that internal combustion engines' mechanical complexity will do them in as electric cars get better. He lists the ten most common repairs needed, and none of them exist for electric cars.

The point has been most often driven home by Tony Seba, a Stanford professor and guru of “disruption”, who revels in pointing out that an internal combustion engine drivetrain contains about 2,000 parts, while an electric vehicle drivetrain contains about 20. All other things being equal, a system with fewer moving parts will be more reliable than a system with more moving parts.

And that rule of thumb appears to hold for cars. In 2006, the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration estimated that the average vehicle, built solely on internal combustion engines, lasted 150,000 miles.

Current estimates for the lifetime today’s electric vehicles are over 500,000 miles.

There are anecdotes of Toyota Priuses lasting some 600,000 miles without a battery change.

The story for Teslas is unfolding similarly. Tesloop, a Tesla-centric ride-hailing company has already driven its first Model S for more 200,000 miles, and seen only an 6% loss in battery life. A battery lifetime of 1,000,000 miles may even be in reach.

Lasting longer means that one's purchase cost goes farther.

Better still, the cost of switching from gasoline to electricity delivers another savings of about 1/3 to 1/4 per mile. And electric vehicles do not need oil changes, air filters, or timing belt replacements; the 200,000 mile Tesloop never even had its brakes replaced. The most significant repair cost on an electric vehicle is from worn tires.

This is likely because those cars have regenerative braking, a form of dynamic braking. They use their motors as electric generators, and they recover some of the car's kinetic energy as electrical energy. That way, they don't need to use their friction brakes very much.

Seth Miller than got into self-driving cars being part of an Uber-like taxi service, where one requests a vehicle with a smartphone app. That will spread the cost of purchase and maintenance very widely, reducing the cost of use by a big factor. He also suspects that the oil industry will collapse almost as quickly as the film-camera industry collapsed as digital cameras got good enough. I doubt that the oil industry will go *that* quickly, but I think that it will get a big hit over the next decade or two. Also likely emerging will be automated vans and buses, because they are more space-effective.

 

[lpetrich]

Former Tesla Staffer: Carmakers Attached To Gas "Headed For Obsolescence" | CleanTechnica

According to a former Tesla staffer, Hamish McKenzie, and author of Insane Mode: How Elon Musk’s Tesla Sparked a Revolution to End the Age of Oil, “Other car companies, from General Motors to BMW aren’t showing the same sense of urgency — and that could be their downfall.” For instance, “GM has promised 20 electric models by 2023 and has said it believes ‘the future is all-electric,’ but it hasn’t set a date by which it will make the full transition.”

Even as Tesla successfully competes with BMW.

Meanwhile, “Other automakers seem to be hoping that mild gestures and good publicity will get them through… The problem for traditional automakers is that they are too deeply wedded to an old technology headed for obsolescence — along with the way they’ve been doing business for decades.” As an example, McKenzie points to “BMW [which] has announced plans for 25 electric models by 2025, but its head of research and development has said he expects 85% of the company’s cars will still have internal combustion engines in 2030.”

Tesla Motors is currently competing at the high end. But Tesla is now going down the price scale, making it a bigger threat to existing car companies.

Electric Delivery Vans Coming From Chanje, Tesla, Workhorse, DHL, & Mercedes | CleanTechnica

Lower Costs, Incentives Drive Electric Bus Adoption | CleanTechnica

Worldwide, about 100,000 electric buses are sold annually, 95% of them in China. In the US, Navigant predicts electric buses will account for only 15% of the market by 2025. Even in China, where national policies strongly favor electric transportation, battery operated buses account for only 70% of the total bus market.

...
California has spent $25 million to incentivize school districts to replace conventional school buses with low- or zero-emissions vehicles. The California Energy Commission has also spent another $75 million. As of May of this year, 132 battery-electric and fuel cell electric buses were being operated by public transportation agencies in California. Among the 163 public transit agencies, 655 more electric buses either on order, awarded or planned, according to CARB.

EV Battery Recycling & Reuse, Electric Buses In Extreme Climates, UAE "On The Cusp Of An Electric Boom" ... #Intersolar ME Q&A | CleanTechnica

While Tesla does not see a commercially viable path for reusing batteries for stationary storage on a large scale and focuses more on recycling on a large scale, others EV manufacturers differ, he adds. Recycling is easy. 95% of the components in the battery can just be used to build another battery. Some auto companies, such as Nissan, have been more focused on potentially reusing them as stationary storage. EV batteries and stationary storage batteries are different — even though they share a lot in common. It is different to optimize for a car than to optimize for stationary storage.

 

[lpetrich]

Electric Trucks Are Coming | CleanTechnica
Natural gas? Hydrogen? Combustion or fuel cell? Electricity is more available than hydrogen.

4 More Reasons That Electric Trucks Are Better Than Diesel Trucks | CleanTechnica
Less Noise, Longer Working Hours
Regenerative Braking Boosts Efficiency
V2G Potential -- electricity storage for electricity grids
Alternate Energy Sources -- can have solar panels on its roof for recharging while inactive
Don’t Forget The Normal Benefits Of Electric Trucks -- "gobs of torque, quiet operation, lower cost of fuel, and greatly reduced routine maintenance."

 

[lpetrich]

The US Department Of Energy Roots For Floating Solar Panels. Do You? | CleanTechnica

The new study — the first of its kind in the US — comes from the Energy Department’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Colorado.

They answer the suitable site question right off the bat:

…researchers estimate that installing floating solar photovoltaics on the more than 24,000 man-made U.S. reservoirs could generate about 10 percent of the nation’s annual electricity production.

Noting News Release: NREL Details Great Potential for Floating PV Systems | News | NREL

o buttress its argument, NREL notes that in many of the identified areas, water scarcity is an issue and evaporation rates are high. If you can reduce the evaporation rate by covering all or part of a water body with floating solar panels, you get a significant co-benefit.

As another side benefit, floating solar panels could also reduce algae growth in ponds needed for irrigation or livestock.

...
NREL actually seems a little peeved that the US is not already a floating solar powerhouse. Here’s a sample from the agency’s press release announcing the new study:

While the United States was the first to demonstrate floating PV panels—with the first installation occurring 10 years ago on pontoons on an irrigation pond in Napa Valley, California—the idea has not received widespread national acceptance…Floating PV sites are being deployed more overseas, however, with more than 100 sites as of the end of last year. Japan, for example, is home to 56 of the 70 largest floating PV installations.

There is a possibility of conflict with recreational boaters, however.

 

[lpetrich]

EVs Or Not, We'll Always Have Petrochemicals -- Or Not! | CleanTechnica
Described how some oil companies are considering expanding their petrochemicals production as a way of staying in business.

Also mentions the ocean-plastic-pollution problem.

One commenter stated

Only 4% of oil production goes into plastics, so these are marginal to the future of the oil industry.

Single-use plastic packaging is an abomination in today's form. But many uses of plastics demand durability - PVC drainpipes and other plumbing, electrical insulation, thermal insulation, small boat hulls, furniture, solar panel encapsulation. It makes no sense to demonise the entire category.

So petrochemicals will not help them very much.

Bioplastic Breakthrough Promises Polymers Without Using Precious Land Or Water Resources | CleanTechnica

Researchers have been trying for decades to make plastics from plant-based materials. Hydrocarbons are hydrocarbons after all, and don’t much care whether they come from fossil fuels or vegetable matter. But plants require arable land and fresh water to grow — two commodities that are in short supply in many parts of the world. It hardly makes any sense to chop down the Amazon rain forest to grow crops to make biodegradable plastics, does it?

Researchers at Tel Aviv University say they have the solution — a polymer derived from microorganisms that feed on seaweed. The process produces no toxic waste. Better still, the resulting plastic is biodegradable and creates nothing but organic waste when recycled, according to a report in Science Daily.

The polymer was developed jointly by professor Alexander Golberg of the School of Environmental and Earth Sciences and professor Michael Gozin of the School of Chemistry. Their research appears in the January edition of the journal Bioresource Technology.

Their solution: seaweed: multicellular algae.

Growing algae is a good way of getting around the farmland problem, and some biofuels research also involves algae.

 

[lpetrich]

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez On 60 Minutes: "Push Our Technological Capacities To The Furthest Extent Possible" | CleanTechnica

Zero carbon emissions. No use of fossil fuels. All within 12 years. It was politics and climate change action that Anderson Cooper used to frame his interview with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) on a January 6, 2019 segment of 60 Minutes. “That is the goal,” she responded. “It is ambitious.”

...
Cooper in voiceover: “She paid a visit to climate change activists who were occupying her party leader Nancy Pelosi’s office. She was the only newly elected member of Congress who decided to drop by during the sit-in, and she called on Pelosi to create a select committee on climate change without any members of Congress who accept money from the fossil fuel industry.”

The “climate change activists” were making visible the importance of the Green New Deal to soon-to-be House majority leader Pelosi and others in the Democratic party. Cooper positions Ocasio-Cortez in this segment as a bit of a revolutionary, stepping up to “create a select committee on climate change.” He notes that members of such a committee must not be indebted to “the fossil fuel industry,” letting us know that many members of Congress continue to be pawns for the fossil fuel industry, but Ocasio-Cortez has not accepted those campaign donations.

Cooper in voiceover: “Ocasio-Cortez and her allies managed to get more than 40 members of Congress to support the climate committee. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi agreed to create it, but it’s not nearly what Ocasio-Cortez had in mind. Pelosi granted the committee limited powers and did not ban members who take money from the fossil fuel industry.”

Here, Cooper puts Pelosi as veteran in juxtaposition to Ocasio-Cortez, the political neophyte. The latter achieves some success, in that the select committee to promote a Green New Deal will convene, but it will not have the reach or power that Ocasio-Cortez envisioned. Pelosi and the old guard Democratic party will retain jurisdiction on how politicians get to office and how climate change legislation is enacted in the House.

Meaning that AOC had only limited success there.

At one point, AC stated that AOC's tax agenda was "radical". She embraced the word and stated that Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation and FDR's New Deal stuff were also "radical".

Not surprisingly, Fox News dismissed her "socialist vision for America".

 

[lpetrich]

Rooftop Solar Curtailment To Ease With Refocused Hawaii Energy Contracts | CleanTechnica

The issue is that the Hawaiian grid was not ready for the massive Hawaiian solar installation wave that now totals over 11% of the entire state electricity demand and about 57% of the demand by the main island of Hawaii. Since the excess rooftop solar energy can cause grid management problems, including excessively high voltage levels, Hawaii Electric, for example, has been requiring a utility-operated shut-off for home solar energy exports to the grid since 2015.

A 2015 Hawaii utility report estimates that “curtailment levels on Oahu may be at 10 percent (of a given generator’s output potential) or greater, and 20 percent possibly up to as much as 50 percent on Maui and Hawai’i Island.” These double digit levels should drop to single-digit levels in the future as smarter solar gear is installed by both utilities and solar owners.

Turning Solar Energy Into Liquid Fuel | CleanTechnica
Macroscopic heat release in a molecular solar thermal energy storage system - Energy & Environmental Science (RSC Publishing) DOI:10.1039/C8EE01011K

The development of solar energy can potentially meet the growing requirements for a global energy system beyond fossil fuels, but necessitates new scalable technologies for solar energy storage. One approach is the development of energy storage systems based on molecular photoswitches, so-called molecular solar thermal energy storage (MOST). Here we present a novel norbornadiene derivative for this purpose, with a good solar spectral match, high robustness and an energy density of 0.4 MJ kg−1. By the use of heterogeneous catalyst cobalt phthalocyanine on a carbon support, we demonstrate a record high macroscopic heat release in a flow system using a fixed bed catalytic reactor, leading to a temperature increase of up to 63.4 °C (83.2 °C measured temperature). Successful outdoor testing shows proof of concept and illustrates that future implementation is feasible. The mechanism of the catalytic back reaction is modelled using density functional theory (DFT) calculations rationalizing the experimental observations.

This is a substance whose molecules get rearranged when they absorb sunlight. They can then be made to revert to their original shape by exposing them to a catalyst. That releases that energy again.

Not synfuels, but still interesting.

Renewables Outpace Coal In Germany In 2018 | CleanTechnica
notes
Renewables overtake coal as Germany's main energy source | Reuters

Renewables overtook coal as Germany’s main source of energy for the first time last year, accounting for just over 40 percent of electricity production, research showed on Thursday.

The shift marks progress as Europe’s biggest economy aims for renewables to provide 65 percent of its energy by 2030 in a costly transition as it abandons nuclear power by 2022 and is devising plans for an orderly long-term exit from coal.

The research from the Fraunhofer organization of applied science showed that output of solar, wind, biomass and hydroelectric generation units rose 4.3 percent last year to produce 219 terawatt hours (TWh) of electricity. That was out of a total national power production of 542 TWh derived from both green and fossil fuels, of which coal burning accounted for 38 percent.

 

[bilby]

4.3% in a year is pathetic. It's barely enough to keep up with growth in energy use.

It's an impressive achievement, but it's just not even close to being sufficient to stall, much less reverse, the increasing CO₂ level in the atmosphere.

And of course, that's just Germany. We need the whole world to do at least ten times better than that, starting right now.

That's actually achievable. But only by building massive amounts of nuclear power.

 

[steve_bank]

The govt incentive for solar has been guaranteeing a rate for energy put into the grid. It has upset rate structures for utilities. It affects profit.

One possible energy storage solution I heard about was super heated water. Release the water to atmospheric pressure and it will flash to steam. Ina heat engine efficiency is proportional to the defense in temperature between source and sink.

 

[steve_bank]

You do not have to go to the trouble of creating AX power and feeding it back to the grid, that is an incentive to use solar.

You can wire a home for DC with the trouble of converting to AC.

A technique that has been used is to run mains voltage through a step down transformer. Equipment can be designed to run off of 48vdc or 48vac. A simple matter. At night or when its raining run off the grid.

If I was building a house in good solar location I might take that approach.

 

[lpetrich]

How Low Cost Wind & Solar Push The Market For Renewable Hydrogen | CleanTechnica

Natural gas gets a lot of credit for toppling coal out of first place for power generation in the US, but gas stakeholders might want to put that celebratory champagne back on ice for a while. Wind and solar already beat natural gas on price in some parts of the US grid, a trend that is likely to spread. On top of that, renewable hydrogen could quickly replace natural gas in two other major markets, fuel and fertilizer production — with an assist from wind and solar power.

Linking to All Chemicals Renewably - Alchemr, which offers a water electrolyzer, and Anion Exchange Membrane Suppliers | Aem Membrane Price | Anion Ionomer - Dioxide Materials which offers some electrode materials for electrolysis that do not contain precious metals like platinum.

Back to the article.

CleanTechnica: What is the market for renewable hydrogen?

Masel: There is a big market for hydrogen, but not for cars. That’s going to take a long time. The big market is in ammonia plants.

Ammonia is typically made from natural gas. Until two years ago that was cheapest way to make it. Now that is slowly changing in some areas.

That will allow us to continue making nitrogen fertilizer for our crops.

Dioxide Materials also offers a carbon-dioxide electrolyzer. It makes carbon monoxide (CO) or formic acid (HCOOH). I'm guessing that it does so at the anion end, the end that supplies electrons. It thus works much like biological carbon fixation, something in plant photosynthesis. It may also make Fischer-Tropsch synthesis at least somewhat easier.

 

[steve_bank]

It takes energy to create hydrogen. Back in the 80s a Hydrogen Economy was tossed around for a while, but in the end you still have to get the energy from somewhere.

The DOE had an idea to use hydrogen as storage at a wind turbine site. It would work but as a backup you could need multiple e turbines to create enough hydrogen.

 

[lpetrich]

New York Governor Cuomo Announces Mammoth Offshore Wind & Distributed Solar Increases | CleanTechnica

In his annual State of the State address, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo announced on Tuesday plans to significantly upgrade the state’s renewable energy targets, including quadrupling its offshore wind target to 9 gigawatts (GW) by 2035 and doubling distributed solar to 6 GW by 2025.

Chinese Government Plans Large-Scale Subsidy-Free Wind & Solar | CleanTechnica
EDF Renewables & Masdar To Build Saudi Arabia's First Wind Farm | CleanTechnica to be built 560 mi north of Riyadh.

Partially responsible for the sudden interest in Saudi Arabia by the renewable energy industry is the country’s National Renewable Energy Program (NREP) which, according to Sohaib Malik, Market Analyst with Wood Mackenzie, “targets 9.5 GW of renewable energy capacity by 2023.” Specifically, “In Phase 1, the county will award 3.5 GW and 1.2 GW of capacity for solar PV and wind, respectively.”

Australia's Largest Wind Farm Receives Planning Approval | CleanTechnica around a gigawatt of capacity -- should produce 3500 GWh/year (400 megawatts on average).

US Coal Retirements In 2018 Could Be As High As 15.4 Gigawatts | CleanTechnica The pResident won't like this news about his favorite fuel.

Hawaiian Electric Announces Seven Solar Plus Storage Projects | CleanTechnica - 262 megawatts and 1048 MW-hr of storage, enough for 4 hours. On the Big Island, Maui, and Oahu.

Specifically, current renewable energy development which was spurred on by the Hawaii Clean Energy Initiative has led to fossil fuel reduction of 26%, which means the island is importing approximately 48 million fewer gallons of oil annually to generate electricity. The new solar-plus-storage projects are expected to increase that figure to 100 million gallons each year.

A reduction by a factor of 2. Very good.

Indian State Plans 5 Gigawatts Of Solar-Wind Hybrid Capacity | CleanTechnica

Global Wind Turbine Manufacturers Score Big Orders In India | CleanTechnica 1.2 gigawatts last month (December 2018)

India Plans 40 Gigawatts Of Solar & Wind Auctions Every Year Till 2028 | CleanTechnica -- a total of 400 gigawatts

A high-ranking official at the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE) recently stated that India will target an installed capacity of 500 gigawatts across all renewable energy technologies by 2030. The installed capacity target for the overall power sector is 850 gigawatts by the same year. This translates in a share of around 59% for renewable energy technologies in the installed capacity base, up from the current 22%.

Researchers Create A 3D Printing Process That Is 100 Times Faster Than Normal | CleanTechnica -- seems rather out-of-place, but still interesting.