Why People Go Solar — Not For The Environment (+ Hilarious Videos)

My guess is that most people who don’t know much about the state of solar power today think that people who go solar do so in order to help the environment. That would be a very noble reason to go solar. We should all be going solar for that reason. However, the reality is that most of us are caught up with the immediate, very tangible needs and desires in our day-to-day and month-to-month lives, and we aren’t extending far beyond those in order to deal with large societal problems like global warming. And, despite what you might think, it actually is the same thing with the large majority of people who go solar. Why people go solar has more to do with making money than keeping our climate stable, our air clean, and our water clean.

One of the key statistics noted in an infographic we shared a couple weeks ago was that 74% of polled solar panel owners wouldn’t have gone solar if it weren’t for the financial benefits. In particular, the statement they agreed with was, “I care about the environment, but for a purchase this major, it had to help my wallet, too.”

Last year, Sunrun decided to turn this fact into some funny commercials. Check these out:

Join the US solar power rooftop revolution!

For the most part, this is a relatively recent trend, because the price of solar power has just recently dropped low enough that solar power saves people a lot of money within just a few years — or, thanks to the introduction of solar leasing, immediately. If you go back just to 2009, you can see that the “reason” the solar panel owners in the following Sunrun commercial went solar was “for the environment,” and the huge financial benefit was the big surprise:

Granted, it was a similar point as in the first two videos, but it is interesting that, back in 2009, the assumption was that people were going solar to help the environment.

Here’s one more excellent and funny video featuring the solar hero in that video:

Not as much to comment on with that one, just that it’s very well done and funny solar marketing — something we could use more of in the solar industry.

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Solar Panel Installation Cost — $0

What’s the price of going solar? What’s the solar panel installation cost in your area? In over a dozen states, it is now $0 or close to $0.

The “problem” with solar power is its long-term savings… or, rather, that its massive savings are generally reaped in the long term. Many people who have roofs on which they can install solar panels would save tens of thousands of dollars over 20 years if they got a solar panel installation (and even much more money over the lives of their solar panel systems). But 20 years is a long time, and many people don’t like to plan that far in advance. They also don’t like to wait several years for a “return on their investment.” So, many people who have adequate roofs for solar power decide not to have a solar panel installation.

However, to address this, companies like Sunrun, SolarCity, Sungevity, and many others have stepped in to offer $0 or close to $0 down for people who lease solar panels from these companies, or who sign PPAs (Power Purchase Agreements) — it depends on the state. (You can find out your solar leasing or PPA options by filling out the quick form on our homepage.)

They know that the 20-year savings from solar power systems are huge. So, they take the initial hit for buying a solar panel system and having it installed on your home (with the help of loans, of course) so that customers can start saving money from Day 1. Then they spread out that solar panel installation cost (plus interest on loans and some profit for themselves) over 20-year contracts with their customers. These companies are more or less guaranteed long-term profit on a relatively secure investment through such a system, and customers can go solar for $0 or close to $0 (depending on individual situations).

Very simply explained, that’s why you can go solar without any extra “cost,” seeing savings from the moment your solar panel system gets installed and starts feeding electricity into the grid. Pretty cool, eh?

In California, one of the states where solar leasing is available, about 75% of people who go solar now do so through a solar leasing agreement. I think that’s a testament to how attractive this option is for many people.

To see if you have a solar leasing option in your area, and, if so, to compare that with outright purchasing options, simply fill out the short form on our homepage.

 

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Solar Panels — Prices & More

When it comes to solar panels, prices vary considerably. However, when it comes to residential rooftop solar panels, prices are fairly easy to quote. But taking another 180-degree U-turn on this, there’s one more “however” to throw in there — when it comes to putting solar solar panels on your roof, you won’t find a set global or even national price that is likely to fit for your situation. Let me explain…

First of all, solar panels are a bit like cell phones — there are many different types that are made of different things and vary considerably in “quality.” These different types of solar panels also have varied costs. For a much more detailed run-down, check out our post on the most efficient solar panels created to date.

The bottom line is, different applications require different types of solar panels. NASA needs high-efficiency solar panels that don’t take up as much space, even they are most costly. (Think real estate in NYC is expensive? Consider how precious and expensive real estate on a satellite or rocket is.) Campers who want a clean, portable source of energy for their cell phones or such do better with lightweight and flexible solar panels, even if they are a bit less efficient and cost more per watt-hour of electricity.

More likely than not, however, you are looking for solar panels for your home or business. Am I right? In such applications, the prices are obsessively tracked and are quite easy to find. In Q1 of this year, the average cost of solar panels was $0.65/watt, according to U.S. Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) and GTM Research. In Q2 of this year, REC Solar reports that the price was $0.73/watt. On July 31, PVinsights, a global solar PV research firm, reported that the average price of silicon solar panels was $0.69/watt, with a range from $0.55/watt to $0.99/watt (even within this segment of the market, there is some variation in efficiency/quality and, thus, price).

But the fact is, most of us aren’t going to buy solar panels directly. Most of us are going to buy the installation of solar panels on our roof by a certified professional. That side of things swings the panel back in the direction of wide variation in prices.

For various reasons, the price of installed solar panels is very different in different locations. Different labor rates, different permitting requirements and costs, different levels of market competition and maturity, and different solar incentives are some of the key factors that end up making the average price of residential solar panels less than $3.00 per watt in some places in the US and almost $8.00 per watt in other places.

To actually find out what it would cost to go solar in your area, you need to get connected to local or regional solar installers. You need to get a quote or two. We can help you with that — we can hook you up with a solar panel installer in your area. Simply enter a few pieces of information on our homepage and we’ll get rolling.

Before I leave you to go do that, I’ll just add a few important notes that you may be overlooking.

Buying solar panels is actually not like buying a cell phone. With a cell phone, you want to evaluate the various things you can do with the phone and what capabilities you want or “need.” However, with solar panels, there’s basically one key goal: save as much money as possible. (Or, if you are truly altruistic, your key goal could be: reduce pollution as much as possible.)Most of you can now get a $0-down or little-money-down loan from the bank or a $0-down or little-money-down solar panel lease, which means that you don’t need to consider the price of the solar panels alone. What you need to consider is the long-term savings.In every state in the country, people are saving thousands or tens of thousands of dollars from rooftop solar panels. In other words, if you have a roof that doesn’t have serious issues, you would very likely save a ton of money by going solar, and you would be throwing away thousands or tens of thousands of dollars by not going solar. The decision is really that obvious. Credit: One Block Off The Grid

But, anyway, to find out how much solar panels would cost for you, how much you’d likely save each month from going solar, and how much you’d likely save over several years, just answer the short questions on our homepage. We’ll shoot you over some initial projections immediately, and we’ll follow that up by connecting you with a solar panel installer (or more) in your area who can give you quotes on installed solar panel prices.

 

 

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Black Metals Beat A New Path To Solar Cell Efficiency

It looks like black is the new black when it comes to solar cell efficiency. A team of researchers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) has come up with a way to increase solar cell efficiency, by creating “black  metals” etched with nanoscale structures that harvest energy from wavelengths all along the solar spectrum. The idea is to take advantage of the plasmonic effect, and if the research develops apace it could enable the prime affordability target of the solar market to expand from high-sunlight locations to just about anywhere.

Along similar lines, we’ve been following “black silicon” research that uses nanoscale etching to increase solar absorption, so let’s take a closer took at both and see what’s going on.

The LLNL solar cell efficiency project, loosely speaking, involves “roughening up” metals at the nanoscale level, which is where the concept crosses paths with its silicon-based cousin. The random, nanoscale irregularities increase the number of reflections, trapping more light.

The result is a black surface that has lower reflectivity and higher absorption than the original material, covering both the visible and infrared sections of the spectrum.

According to writer Kenneth K Ma at LLNL, existing work in gold and silver black metals has come up against a fabrication obstacle, in which it has been difficult to replicate the full solar absorption rate.

The research team worked on that angle and developed a “nanopillar” structure that can be manipulated with more predictability, enabling the team to create metals “as  black as they want.”

LLNL has some competition out there, by the way. The research made the cover of Applied Physics Letters back in May, but a team from China also published the results of its work on light harvesting nanopillar structures in the publication’s online edition in April.

Also involved in the nanopillar horserace is UC-Santa Barbara, which has been developing a high efficiency solar cell based on a “forest of gold nanorods.”

That leads us into the next question, which is how metals can generate an electrical charge from sunlight. Basically, it’s the same idea as semiconductors such as silicon, in which sunlight causes electrons to shift positions, leaving positively charged “holes.”

In metals, this shift creates free electrons and electromagnetic pulses similar to sound waves, called plasmons.

The nanorod approach provides one way to control and manipulate the plasmonic effect, but there are others. Over at Stanford University, for example, a team is working on a “waffle iron” plasmonic concept that involves creating nanoscale dimples in a layer of the semi-porous metal titania.

Meanwhile, a team at the University of Buffalo is testing out a low-efficiency but low-cost solar cell that incorporates the plasmonic effect into thin film organic solar cells. The idea is to create an affordable solar “paint” that could be applied to building surfaces.

On the meta-level, Duke University has been hot on the trail of an atomic-level explanation of the plasmonic effect, by studying the optical scattering that occurs when gold nanoparticles interact with a thin film of gold.

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ARPA-E Announces a Different Path for Solar Energy Innovation

Despite the House of Representative’s recent vote to cut appropriations for the Department of Energy’s breakthrough research agency, ARPA-E, by 74 percent, the agency continues to advance the development of next-generation clean energy technologies. ARPA-E recently announced a $30 million funding opportunity, Full-Spectrum Optimized Conversion and Utilization of Sunlight (FOCUS), aimed at developing new hybrid solar energy systems that include storage, at lower costs and with greater performance.

The FOCUS program is looking for projects that research and develop solar technologies beyond current photovoltaic and concentrated solar power models. Research will specifically confront the persistent and most inhibiting performance weakness of existing solar technologies and a major obstacle for improving solar cost competitiveness: providing consistent energy supply when the sun is not shining.

Like ARPA-E projects in general, these solar projects won’t look like your average commercial panels. Instead of funding incremental improvements in solar cell efficiency, ARPA-E’s investments aim to accelerate transformative changes to the way we think about harnessing and controlling solar energy. The FOCUS program recognizes that to reach cost-competitiveness, new solar technologies must not only improve efficiency, they must do so in a way that provides immediate access to solar-based electricity as well as incorporate advanced technologies that can store electricity until it is demanded.

The decision to create a program devoted specifically to addressing solar energy storage was informed by ARPA-E’s mission to identify crucial white spaces in energy technology development. Prior to releasing its FOAs, the agency holds workshops with university, national lab, and industry experts to assess the technology and research gaps and market barriers associated with contemporary technology systems. One such workshop held in April, “Solar Beyond Grid Parity: Spectrum-Efficient Solar Energy for Dispatchable Electricity or Fuels,” focused on developing the conversation around how to store and use solar energy most efficiently and effectively when it has reached parity with grid electricity prices all over the country, while keeping costs low. Identifying weaknesses of current photovoltaic (PV) and concentrated solar power (CSP) systems is necessary to sustaining, and hopefully improving, the strength of the solar industry in the United States.

As renewable energy storage and grid integration are researched extensively within the Department of Energy, these workshops serve to expose the areas where more innovation is needed, foresee future technology and cost roadblocks, and enable the development of an investment strategy uniquely suited to ARPA-E’s abilities as an agency.

The FOCUS program follows on the heels of ARPA-E’s Grid-Scale Rampable Intermittent Dispatchable Storage (GRIDS) and High Energy Advanced Thermal Storage (HEATS) programs, which aim to revolutionize cost-effective solutions to storing thermal energy on the grid. These programs, like FOCUS, support breakthrough technologies that can lower the cost of integrating renewable energy on the grid, while strengthening its reliability. ARPA-E invested a total of $71 million in these two programs.

ARPA-E’s investments in far-sighted and cutting-edge clean energy research suggest that seemingly impractical realities are not only attainable, but actually within our reach – as long as we invest in the technology innovation to get us there. The importance of ARPA-E to the acceleration of these endeavors and for the future of next-generation clean energy technologies is immeasurable.

Already this year ARPA-E has invested in a number of projects advancing vehicle technology development through manufacturing, battery chemistries, and fuel sources. If the House appropriations bill is an indication of the future of funding for ARPA-E, the agency’s ability to invest in these kinds of high-risk, high-reward technologies will effectively be terminated. The amended House FY2014 budget allocates $70 million for ARPA-E, which would likely only allow for, at most, two FOCUS-sized funding opportunities, without factoring in agency operation costs.

In order to attain clean energy technology breakthroughs – particularly with solar and wind technologies that also require accompanying and complementary innovations in manufacturing and energy storage and grid integration systems – support for ARPA-E must be sustained and expanded, rather than contracted, as the agency invests in the nation’s best opportunities to realistically achieve a cost-effective clean energy future.

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Impact of Energy Storage on Solar PV Grid Parity

Proponents of intermittent renewable energy such as solar PV and wind often claim that these energy sources will reach parity with standard grid power in the near future. As discussed in a previous article, however, this is a highly misleading claim, primarily because intermittent and non-dispatchable renewable energy is worth much less per kWh than steady and dispatchable baseline power. 

In order to illustrate the implications of this distinction, the aforementioned article valued intermittent PV similarly to unrefined coal. The central assumption underlying this way of thinking is that the costs associated with energy storage (which is required to make PV useful to society at higher penetration levels) are comparable to the costs associated with thermal power plants (which are required to make coal and gas useful to society at higher penetration levels). Under this assumption, solar PV turned out to still be about one order of magnitude more expensive than coal power. 

Naturally, this is a fairly crude assumption and accurate calculation of the real grid parity target for solar PV will be much more complex. This article will discuss the most important complexity: the fact that the costs associated with energy storage of intermittent renewables will be a strong function of the level of penetration into the local electricity grid.  

The cost of storage

Under the assumption that the costs associated with storage are similar to the costs associated with thermal power generation, storage would increase costs roughly by a factor of 4 (as is the case for coal at $100/ton and coal-fired electricity at $0.06/kWh). However, this cost increase will be a substantial over-estimate at low penetration levels where almost no storage is necessary and a substantial under-estimate at high penetration levels where most renewable energy generated will have to be cycled through some form of storage.

The graph below illustrates the price at which solar PV reaches parity with coal for five different storage cost scenarios assuming a coal price of $100/ton, a 30 year panel lifetime and a 5% discount rate on gradually released PV electricity.

 

The most important comment to be made about this graph is that we will move downwards with increased PV penetration. I am fairly confident that, for most locations, we will reach the light blue line at the bottom long before intermittent renewables come close to supplying 100% of our electricity. The exact penetrations at which each of the lines on the graph will be crossed is much more uncertain though. I will give some rough estimates in this article, but would welcome any corrections by experts on this site.

Initially, when solar contributes less than about 1% of electricity, the intermittency will be essentially negligible. As the blue line shows, current utility scale installed PV prices (~$2/Wp) are already close to parity with coal in the most ideal locations (highest PV capacity factors) under this assumption. However, this first percent of solar PV penetration is the only region where the standard grid parity mantra of renewable energy advocates is relevant. 

As we move up to a 10-20% penetration of intermittent renewables, we also move down to the red line in the graph. Under this scenario, solar PV (and wind) starts to rely significantly on the energy storage implicit in fossil fuels. Standard power plants then have to be operated at lower capacity factors and at lower efficiencies due to more ramping and more spinning reserve.

One recent study for wind power calculated that costs of keeping backup fossil plants operating at lower capacity factors and efficiency (together with some added transmission costs) would increase the real cost of wind to triple the price of new gas and 1.5 times the price of new coal in the US. This represents a doubling of the standard costs calculated when the intermittent and non-dispatchable nature of wind energy is simply ignored. 

As we move beyond a 20% penetration of intermittent renewables, specialized energy storage becomes necessary. According to EIA estimates, the most feasible option; pumped hydro storage, will cost about twice as much as a coal plant per watt. It will, however, lose only about half the energy lost by the coal plant in the energy conversion process. It can therefore be estimated that pumped hydro storage will inflate solar PV prices roughly by the same factor as a thermal power plant inflates the price of coal. 

Even though the installed PV price of roughly $0.3/Wp required by this scenario seems highly unlikely ever to materialize, it should be noted that regions with abundant natural hydro capacity could potentially achieve these penetration levels of intermittent renewables at much more affordable prices. Denmark's wind backed up by hydro from Sweden and Norway is one such example. Very few regions on earth are suited for this kind of arrangement though.

Pumped hydro is only available in certain (relatively rare) topographies. Thus, for most cases, a day or two of battery storage will be most practical. Despite lots of noise from battery optimists, the 150-year old lead-acid battery is still the cheapest option we have for this purpose, but suffers from drawbacks such as short lifetimes (especially at deeper discharge rates) and relatively low efficiencies (about 20% of energy cycled through the battery is lost).

Lithium-ion batteries reduce these problems, but are also more expensive. One case study found that a lead acid battery and a lithium-ion battery could store energy for about $0.34 and $0.40 per KWh over their respective lifetimes. This cost (which must be added to the cost of renewables) is much greater than fossil fuel power even by itself. To better link this to the graph above, consider that most suppliers will sell you about $4 of batteries per watt of solar PV for protection against blackouts (example) where the battery warranty period is only about half that of the panels. 

It should also be mentioned that, in the hypothetical scenario of very cheap solar PV and relatively expensive storage, it could be more economical to simply build a large overcapacity of intermittent renewables and spill a large portion of the power produced. In the graph above, this will reduce the capacity factor of the installation, but could create a transfer from the purple to the green line. 

Finally, the light blue line right at the bottom comes into play when one starts thinking about longer term energy storage to compensate for longer cloudy (or wind-still) periods or even for slow seasonal variations. This line (which really is a matter of complete impossibility for intermittent renewables) is especially applicable to regions with long cloudy spells and seasonal mismatches (e.g. solar PV in Germany). On the flipside, however, it is also much less applicable to regions with very reliable renewable energy resources that are well aligned with seasonal demand (e.g. solar PV or solar thermal in desert areas).

Chemical storage is probably the only viable option for such longer-term storage requirements with hydrogen normally being the first option that comes to mind. A Spanish study found that hydrogen from combined wind and solar projects would cost about €25/kg which translates to about $0.90/kWh of hydrogen internal energy. Converting this stored energy back to electricity at a later time will inflate the price by another factor of 3 (similar to natural gas power plants), bringing the total cost up to $2.70/kWh - about 50 times more expensive than conventional power. Other forms of chemical storage might be more economical, but it will be very difficult to rise above that light blue line.

The previous article stated that current solar PV technology is still about one order of magnitude more expensive than coal. Based on the above analysis, it can be stated that this will be the case at roughly 20-40% penetration of solar and wind into our electricity networks (about 8-16% of total energy), beyond which the prospects for PV (and wind) will rapidly deteriorate. This is a good example of the law of receding horizons discussed earlier.

However, the cost of storage is not the only influential variable in determining the real grid parity target for solar PV. The next article will therefore investigate four additional factors: the coal price, the PV panel lifetime, the PV discount rate and a CO2 price.

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Love Solar Energy but Hate Paperwork? Help Is On the Way.

Peter Lehner, Executive Director, New York City

When I put up solar panels on my house several years ago, the process was, if I may speak plainly, a royal pain. In the end, it was worth it to be able to generate my own, pollution-free energy, but every step seemed designed to make my life more difficult. Even after the system was installed and paid for, I still had to wait months, for more inspections, new meters, and other painful delays, before I could officially turn it on.

If we want to get solar energy into more homes and business across the country, the process needs to be more efficient. In addition to being a headache for homeowners and solar contractors, procedural inefficiencies actually increase the price of solar power.  While the cost of solar hardware—panels and such—has come down 80 percent in recent years, Americans, on average, pay nearly twice as much for solar energy as they do in Germany. Much of this price difference is due to “soft” costs, including the inefficient, expensive permitting process.

But change is afoot. Last month, New York launched a simplified solar permit that can be adopted anywhere in the state, and momentum is building across the country to bring down the cost and hassle of solar permitting, making it easier, and as much as $600 cheaper, to install solar power in your home.

(image courtesy Green MPs, via Flickr)

For contractors, the permitting process makes it difficult to do business. Big solar contractors employ a team of people just to research and fill out permit applications, as well as “permit runners,” whose full-time job is to bring stacks of paperwork to multiple permitting authorities, stand in lines, and pay fees. Solar contractors also pay big up-front costs to buy equipment, which ties up much of their available credit. While they wait weeks or even months to install that equipment, their business is essentially paralyzed. It’s a waste of time and money, and it can keep smaller contractors, and their potential customers, out of the game.

In New York, a group of solar contractors, most of whom couldn’t afford to employ “expeditors” for their paperwork, approached the county government for a solution.

“There are 113 different municipalities in Long Island,” explains Sail van Nostrand, the owner of Energy by Choice, and former head of the Long Island Solar Energy Industries Association. “So there were 113 different ideas about what the requirements for a solar permit should be.  We never knew how many sets of drawings were required, or even what had to be in them. Some of them required surveys, which don’t even show the roof! The fees were astronomical. The paperwork was a nightmare. ” 

The association worked with the county government and the Long Island Power Authority to establish unified standards for solar permitting, which nine out of ten towns in Suffolk county—the vast majority of Long Island’s solar market--have since adopted.  That standardized form served as the model for New York State’s newly minted Unified Solar Permit, a simple online form that any of the state’s 1,600-plus cities, towns, and villages can adopt for residential solar installations. The streamlined permit recommends, among other things, a single fee, a single inspection, and a decision within 14 days.

Vermont has taken things a step further by eliminating the need for a permit altogether. If you want to put in a small-scale residential solar installation in Vermont, you fill out a one-page registration form. That’s it. No fees, no permit. The registration process takes only ten days, allowing customers to get their systems up and running quickly, and freeing up capital for contractors so their businesses can keep rolling. Though the state doesn’t have much by way of rebates, tax breaks, or other solar incentives, it’s not going to kill you with paperwork. And that little efficiency makes a big difference for consumers and contractors.

“We arguably have the lowest soft costs in the country,” says Andrew Savage of All Earth Renewables, in Williston, Vermont.

Making solar permitting more efficient across the country could help bring down the cost of solar energy nationwide. At SolarPermit.org, some 800 permitting authorities, covering 90 percent of the solar market, are posting their permitting requirements, making it easier for contractors to figure out what paperwork they need.

Our friends at Vote Solar, together with the Interstate Renewable Energy Council, have developed a set of 9 best practices for solar permitting that can bring down the cost of permitting by as much as 60 percent—as much as $600 per home.  At their new website, Project Permit, you can find out how easy it is to get a solar permit where you live—and if it’s not, they give you the resources you need to get the ball rolling.

We need to make clean energy an easy option for homes and business. Eliminating wasteful red tape by creating a sensible, unified permitting process will make it simpler, and less expensive, for homeowners and businesses to use solar power. The more solar power we produce, the more energy dollars stay in our communities; the more good, local jobs we create (although perhaps not for permit runners); and the faster we speed the transition to a cleaner, more efficient energy system that reduces pollution and helps stabilize the climate.

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Solar Power in China

In 2011, solar PV installations multiplied by nearly 3 times due to government’s increased commitment to industry development. This already overcrowded industry is pushing weaker firms out of the frame, whilst stronger firms are suffering from overcapacity issues, troubled technological development, international slowdown, and a general struggle for survival. Long term growth is expected to continue a rapid ascent, yet coordination and overcapacity issues need to be tackled to ensure growth can be maintained to a certain extent, in the short term.

Source: Global Wind Energy Council

Following the expansive growth of solar power in China leading up to 2011, the Chinese government is now targeting its total installed capacity to reach 21 GW by 2015 and 50 GW by 2020. This revised target demonstrates the Chinese government’s determination towards achieving their overall renewable energy targets and signals a firm belief this industry remains poised for growth, as well as being a suitable and sustainable platform for investment. Following the Fukushima disaster in Japan, China’s investment in nuclear energy has been reduced and offset by an increase in solar PV investment. The government is keen to develop the domestic solar power market swiftly through subsidies given and incentives to private manufacturers. Approximately 80% of China-manufactured PV modules and cells were exported by the end of 2011.

The domination by large SOEs in the former auction scheme which caused unintentional consequences of underbidding on large scale projects with the intent to capture market share is no longer allowed, thanks to the national Feed in Tariff (FiT), and it has stabilised the Chinese solar sector ever since – creating greater market competition and true dynamism within it. However, the FiT figures for 2012 only incentivised projects located far from demand centers where solar energy is more cheaply produced. Hence, BIPV (Building-Integrated Photovoltaics) systems which are traditionally focused near demand centers will struggle more in the near term compared to the rural-based LSPV (Large Scale PV) installations.

China is a multi-gigawatt solar PV market with newly installed solar PV capacity reaching over 2GW in 2011. The country is also the world’s fastest-growing solar PV market, with cumulative capacity to continuously ascend over the next few years. The majority of the new installations will be in grid-connected solar PV projects, such as BIPV and LSPV, to shift the market away from rural electrification.

Despite its impressive investment volumes and consistent growth, China’s solar PV market is currently dwarfed by Europe’s significant market control of over 75% of the globe’s total capacity in the global solar PV market. However, given the hard times that are now befalling Europe, China is positioning itself to fill a distinct niche in this particular sector as the EU shifts its attention to fixing their domestic financial crisis. The EU domestic financial crisis also means that its demand for PV is decreasing, thus paving the way for China to sustain growth in this industry.

Manufacturing market is now facing an increased competition and consolidation as the global value chain for solar PV is suffering from serious overcapacity. Components that are exceeded from the value chain are domestically reinstalled – hence increasing newly-installed capacity, yet setting up a confinement for foreign investment opportunities.

Despite a high expectation towards China’s continued growth in installed solar PV capacity, the manufacturing industry has in fact been suffering from overcapacity and profit decrease. As for a result, a Solar Technology Developer of 3M stated that around half of the domestic module companies have disappeared in 2011, and what’s left and managed to survive in the battlefield were large companies with stronger technological capabilities.

Industry consolidation is rampant, but combined with the Chinese government’s push for increased solar installation, SOEs are vigorously entering the market which, historically, have been dominated by private firms. Moreover, as the price of silicon is decreasing at a consistent rate, (70% in Q3 2012 according to the Solar PV Committee of the Renewable Energy Society in China) smaller manufacturers initially focused purely on assembly functions are being squeezed out of the consolidation taking place in the market. This is believed to intensify the competitive atmosphere driving this market, however the longer term impacts remain uncertain.

Chinese companies are focusing on domestic orders to survive in response to the global financial crisis. According to a Solar Technology Developer at 3M, survival during this hard time seems to be the key goal and while the multi-national solar module manufacturers were focused on global markets which were more severely impacted by the global financial crisis, it was the local Chinese firms that made an aggressive push on developing domestic demand who are poised to come out of this phase of consolidation with a newly formed dominant position in the Chinese market.

Potential for growth in the Chinese solar PV industry maintains a relatively bullish outlook for the strong who survive its ongoing consolidation. According to Solidiance’s analysis, the 3 main opportunities in this industry lie in the domestic development, new technology R & D (research and development), and cost reduction.

An opportunity to reinvest excessive capacity into the domestic market surely exists given the fact of the change in EU subsidies for solar PV, and this causes an abundant potential that China has for solar PV installations. For instance, Qinghai province alone possesses 1GW of installations, a figure exceeding the UK’s total solar installations and more than half of France’s in 2011. Qinghai is also where the world’s largest PV plant of 200 MW capacity is located, and it is equal to 6 times that of Brazil’s cumulative installed capacity in the same period. Moreover, 50% of the world’s supply of PV originates in China, indicating the technical capability is quickly achieving globally acceptable standards, making the local producers of solar PV well positioned to supply the anticipated domestic installation demand in the very short term.

Opportunities for technological innovation in the solar sector are continuously emerging. Lu Fang, the Secretary for the Solar PV Committee of the China Renewable Energy Society remarked that Chinese firms are now developing technologies and efficiencies of their solar cells on a ‘world class scale’. For example, Suntech Power, a Chinese firm and the world’s largest producer of solar panels, is researching technology to improve their mono and poly crystalline solar cells; Trina Solar, a Chinese manufacturer of photovoltaic modules, is also increasing their solar cells’ efficiency at impressively rapid rates. A Senior Electricity Analyst of the US Energy Information Administration even mentioned that an innovation of inexpensive and cost-competitive solar cells that are comparable with other electricity generation technologies would become a game changer in the global solar industry. It seems that Chinese companies are likely to be the first to access such technological opportunities.

Manufacturers are producing solar modules in greater volumes as the price of solar module components continue to drop due to the falling cost of silicon cells. They are also putting vendors under pressure to lower costs. It is then safe to say that the lower cost and higher efficiency modules are becoming one of the main opportunities in the Chinese solar PV market.

It is almost obvious that overcapacity issues faced by the solar PV industry in China present a short-term challenge for its future development. It creates an unfriendly and difficult environment to operate in for smaller, assembly-focused plants so they’re either falling out of the market or being bought up by larger, traditionally State Owned Enterprises despite their uncertain role within the market, resulting in higher competitiveness among chief solar module manufacturers.

Solar PV technology is comparatively more costly than hydro or wind power, with many technologies depending on subsidies and FiT. In order to witness sustainable growth, this industry will likely have to consider a rapid decrease in prices and a matching to grid parity. As silicon is expected to increase its market share within the thin film technologies by 10% in the next 2 to 3 years, this cost challenge is easing, according to the National Renewable Energy Centre.

In other well developed markets, demand for solar PV solutions is on the decline as has been witnessed in the USA and Europe. The USA is now focusing their financial incentives towards end consumers instead of sustaining the volume of imported product from other countries. Similarly, Spain and Germany reduced their incentives for solar installations overall due to the EU’s financial crisis. These given conditions pose additional challenges for Chinese producers of PV solar technologies from their traditional export model requiring them to prioritize domestic installation demand and further technological advancement in their solutions. Another challenge to face is that the LSPV systems installed in western deserts with the highest solar radiation levels will continue to struggle to be connected to the grid. However, when the solar power generated is at its highest and supply is high, the electricity demand on the grid is equally high, which enables more power to be accepted by the grid in cases where connectivity is not a constraint.

Solar PV market in China clearly shows future growth potential and is targeted for government investment. But the sector is facing a short term development issue as Chinese domestic module manufacturers are struggling to survive within the increasingly tight competition and decreasing international demand. Moreover, grid capacity and transmission problems also have their own impact to solar development and installation.
However, despite the existing challenges, China’s solar PV sector will likely grow due to its increasing technological capabilities and determination to develop the domestic market, although the regulatory system and proper coordination must remain top priorities to ensure the solar PV industry does not experience any further slowdown like what is being observed in China’s wind power sector.

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UCLA scientists double efficiency of novel solar cell

UCLA researchers have developed photovoltaic cells with twice the energy harvesting capacity of cells developed in 2012. The cells, which can be processed to be transparent or in shades ranging from light green to brown, could be used to make building windows, smartphone screens, car sunroofs and other surfaces into sources of sustainable energy.

Nearly doubling the efficiency of a breakthrough photovoltaic cell they created last year, UCLA researchers have developed a two-layer, see-through solar film that could be placed on windows, sunroofs, smartphone displays and other surfaces to harvest energy from the sun.

The new device is composed of two thin polymer solar cells that collect sunlight and convert it to power. It's more efficient than previous devices, the researchers say, because its two cells absorb more light than single-layer solar devices, because it uses light from a wider portion of the solar spectrum, and because it incorporates a layer of novel materials between the two cells to reduce energy loss.

While a tandem-structure transparent organic photovoltaic (TOPV) device developed at UCLA in 2012 converts about 4 percent of the energy it receives from the sun into electric power (its "conversion rate"), the new tandem device—which uses a combination of transparent and semi-transparent cells—achieves a conversion rate of 7.3 percent.

Researchers led by Yang Yang, the Carol and Lawrence E. Tannas, Jr., Professor of Engineering at the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science, said the new cells could serve as a power-generating layer on windows and smartphone displays without compromising users' ability to see through the surface. The cells can be produced so that they appear light gray, green or brown, and so can blend with the color and design features of buildings and surfaces.

The research was published online July 26 by Energy & Environmental Science, a Royal Society of Chemistry journal, and it will appear later in a published edition of the journal.

"Using two solar cells with the new interfacial materials in between produces close to two times the energy we originally observed," said Yang, who is also director of the Nano Renewable Energy Center at the California NanoSystems Institute at UCLA. "We anticipate this device will offer new directions for solar cells, including the creation of solar windows on homes and office buildings."

The tandem polymer solar cells are made of a photoactive plastic. A single-cell device absorbs only about 40 percent of the infrared light that passes through. The tandem device—which includes a cell composed of a new infrared-sensitive polymer developed by UCLA researchers—absorbs up to 80 percent of infrared light plus a small amount of visible light.

Chun-Chao Chen, a graduate student in the UCLA materials science and engineering department who is the paper's primary author, said using transparent and semi-transparent cells together increases the device's efficiency, and that the materials were processed at low temperatures, making them relatively easy to manufacture.

Explore further: Transparent solar cells for windows that generate electricity

More information: xlink.rsc.org/?doi=10.1039/c3ee40860d

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