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Analyst Buzz out to be more like 50 percent than 25, the Netherlands will have reached a milestone of 1.5 million installed solar energy systems within five years, compared to the 100,000 that are already operational. “This is nothing short of a revolution. Since we’re right in the middle of it, the speed of it all isn’t that noticeable. In ten years, we will look back at this point in time and fully realize the change that has taken place,” said Edwin Koot, CEO of Solarplaza. At the end of 2012, solar panels in the Netherlands already offered a combined capacity of 280 megawatts. Last year, around 240 million kWh of solar energy was generated, corresponding to 0.22 per cent of overall national electricity consumption. And this is in addition to the growing amount of solar systems already constructed without subsidies, for which there is no detailed data. With solar photovoltaic (PV) panels becoming increasingly cheaper and energy prices continuing to rise, solar energy generated on private roofs is now cheaper than energy tapped from the grid. Furthermore, investing in a solar system can generate interest rates three times as high as those of a regular savings account. This will only contribute to the apparent growth. It’s likely that in three years’ time there will already be more than 440,000 PV systems in the country, covering 1 per cent of the national electricity consumption. In 2020, an annual production of 4,000 megawatts of solar energy could cover 3 percent of the national consumption. But if the growth of solar energy turns out to be closer to 40 percent – which is very likely – this contribution will be close to 6 percent. On sunny days, this could mean that coal and gas plants will have to be shut down. In Germany last year, a sunny month of May resulted in 50 percent the electricity demand being provided by solar panels, while the annual share amounted to 5 percent. According to Solarplaza, the Netherlands are underestimating the consequences of this phenomenon. While coal and gas plants will become less and less profitable, they will continue to be needed during periods without sun. In the summer, this could lead to these plants having to dump their electricity on the international market, as their German counterparts have already experienced. Energy utilities will also lose out on a considerable part of their revenue, when their clients generate their own electricity through solar panels. “That’s why energy utilities need to find new business models and really face the challenges head-on. They will need to focus their attention on energy storage systems, advanced energy management and smartgrid solutions,” according to Koot. The fifth consecutive edition of The Solar Future: NL ’13, which is to be held on 23rd May in the Evoluon in Eindhoven, will welcome experts such as Professor Wim Sinke, Professor Han Slootweg and the successful Australian/American entrepreneur Danny Kennedy, who will share their visions on the trends and developments in the field of solar energy. New Federal Report shows solar achieved history in March For the first time, solar energy accounted for all new utility electricity generation capacity added to the U.S. grid last month, according to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s (FERC’s) March 2013 “Energy Infrastructure Update.” More than 44 megawatts (MW) of solar electric capacity was brought online from seven projects in California, Nevada, New Jersey, Hawaii, Arizona, and North Carolina. All other energy sources combined added no new generation. Solar also had a strong showing in FERC’s quarterly generation numbers, accounting for about 30 percent of all utility-scale new capacity. The report focuses exclusively on larger facilities and does not include energy generated by net-metered installations. Net-metered systems account for more than half of all U.S. solar electric capacity. “This speaks to the extraordinary strides we have made in the past several years to bring down costs and ramp up deployment,” said Rhone Resch, president and CEO of the Solar Energy Industries Association. “Since 2008, the amount of solar powering U.S. homes, businesses and military bases has grown by more than 600 percent—from 1,100 megawatts to more than 7,700 megawatts today. As FERC’s report suggests, and many analysts predict, solar will grow to be our nation’s largest new source of energy over the next four years.” FERC’s report supports other findings which show solar power to be one of the fastest growing energy sources in the U.S., powering homes, businesses and utility grids across the nation. The Solar Market Insight annual edition shows the U.S. installed 3,313 megawatts (MW) of solar photovoltaics (PV) in 2012, a record for the industry. Some of this growth is attributed to the fact that the cost of a solar system has dropped by nearly 40 percent over the past two years, making solar more affordable than ever for utilities and consumers. “In 2012, the U.S. brought more new solar capacity online than in the three prior years combined,” Resch added. “These new numbers from FERC support our forecast that solar will continue a pattern of growth in 2013, adding 5.2 GW of solar electric capacity. This sustained growth is enabling the solar industry to create thousands of good jobs and to provide clean, affordable energy for more families, businesses, utilities, and the military than ever before.” Today, America’s solar industry employs 119,000 workers throughout the country. That’s a 13.2 percent growth over 2011’s jobs numbers, making solar one of the fastest-growing job sectors in the nation. Solar Fuels: The USD3.5 trillion opportunity To maintain current standards of living in developed economies and raise them in developing ones, the world is going to need a lot more power than it is now producing. The impact of growth in world population occurring in a period of decreasing fractional use of fossil fuels for energy production, accompanied by a significant increase in affluence resulting from globalization of the world economy, will be a huge growth in the demand for energy over the 21st century. The increase of growth in world electrification over the period from 1980 through 2000 and forecast though 2030 show an estimated 2-fold increase in electric energy intensity resulting from an estimated 4-fold increase in electric energy consumption by a world population that will increase 2-fold over the 50-year period. Given a worldwide intensive effort for energy conservation, the addition of 3 billion people on Earth, coupled with additional large future applications of electric energy intensive technologies, and further coupled with the reduction of fossil fuel combustion for generation of electricity and automotive transportation raise serious concern about the sustainability of worldwide energy supply. This is according to a recent report from Amadee+Company, Solar Fuels, Artificial Photosynthesis, Hydrogen, Fuel Cells and the Future of Clean Energy: 2013-2023 Analysis and Forecasts. The scale of the energy problem is huge. In 2001, the world used 13.2 TW (1 terrawatt=10*12 watts) of energy. By 2050, it will need 28 TW. This increase need of 15 TW is not feasible using existing energy sources like oil, gas coal and nuclear. 32 – Global Solar & Alternative Energies – May/June 2013 www.globalsolartechnology.com
Analyst Buzz However, the potential of solar energy is enormous and, on a practical basis is >600 TW. Photosynthesis alone can provide 90 TW of energy resources. The sun delivers more energy to the earth in one hour than civilization currently uses from fossil fuels, nuclear power and all renewable energy sources combined in a year. This solar energy can be captured and stored directly in the chemical bonds of a material, or fuel, and then used when needed. These chemical fuels, in which energy from the sun has deliberately been stored, are called solar fuels. For more than 50 years, scientists have pursued the possibility of producing solar fuels in the laboratory. There are three approaches: • Artificial photosynthesis in which systems made by human beings mimic the natural process; • Natural photosynthesis; and • Thermochemical approaches. Significant progress has been made in producing two very important types of fuels: • Hydrogen, which can be used as a transport fuel, and is an important feedstock for industry. Hydrogen can be produced by splitting water using sunlight. • Carbon-based fuels such as methane or carbon monoxide (used with hydrogen as synthesis gas). These are key feedstocks for making a wide range of industrial products including fertilizers. The goal is to a transition to a hydrogenbased economy based on renewable energy sources, mainly solar. The main barriers to a transition to hydrogen are the lack of development of technologies for hydrogen production, storage, transport, and distribution, and high costs compared with the current system. Rather than seeing hydrogen as the exclusive fuel for the future, the specific roles to which it is uniquely suited in each major sector within an overall sustainable energy strategy need to be identified. With this approach, it is expected that hydrogen would still play a substantive and crucial role, but a role in concert rather than competition with that of electricity and technologies such as battery electric vehicles and a variety of shorter-term energy storage options for grid power. The potential resource constraints in a hydrogen economy based on renewable energy sources have been investigated. It is estimated that the primary energy requirements of a global economy in 2050 that were 2.5 times those in 2005 could be met entirely from potentially collectable solar radiation (80% of the total supply), wind power (15%) and other renewables (5%). The result would be no need for nuclear power or coal-fired power. Hundreds of organizations are currently doing scientific research on solar fuels and artificial photosynthesis. A dozen European research partners, for example, form the Solar-H network, supported by the European Union. The US Dept. of Energy (DOE) Joint Center for Artificial Photosynthesis (JCAP), led by the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, has $122 million over 5 years to build a solar fuel system. Caltech and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have a large National Science Foundation (NSF) grant to improve photon capture and catalyst efficiency, while several Energy Frontier Research Centers funded by the US DOE are focused on Global Artificial Photosynthesis (GAP)-related endeavors. Japan has established an Artificial Photosynthesis Group, based on the Catalysis Research Centre, Hokkaido University. Hydrogen currently is produced via steam methane reforming (SMR), which is the commercial process of choice, since it has the lowest production costs of around $1.00/kg H2. The ultimate goal is to produce hydrogen without SMR. The hydrogen market today is estimated at approximately USD35.9 billion. By 2023, it will be worth over USD55.2 billion. Making cleaner petroleum fuels in refineries is currently the biggest application for hydrogen, followed by steel and chemicals. However, large-scale production of hydrogen via solar fuels would increase the available market into the trillions of dollars and could result in a large-scale reduction in the use of petroleum fuels. Global petroleum production in 2012 is estimated at approximately 4.5 billion tonnes, worth USD3.5 trillion. The world vehicle fleet in 2000 was 700 million and may possibly reach 1500 million by 2050. Replacement of fossil fuels by hydrogen would require production of about 260 billion kg/year. Four companies now control the global, outsourced hydrogen market. Air Liquide is estimated to be the leading supplier in 2012 with a 37% market share. It was followed by Air Products (23%), Linde (19%) and Praxair (16%). Another 190 companies have been identified as participants in the hydrogen industry. 220 GW of new distributed solar generation will be added by 2018, forecasts Navigant Research The global electric power industry is evolving from a financial and engineering model that relies on large centralized power plants owned by utilities to one that is more diverse, in terms of both the sources of generation and the ownership of the generation assets. Distributed solar photovoltaic (PV) systems offer the benefit of producing electricity onsite, thereby reducing the need to build new transmission capacity and avoiding line losses. According to a new report from Navigant Research, 220 gigawatts of distributed solar PV capacity will be installed between 2013 and 2018, representing $540 billion in revenue during this time. “Used in applications ranging from residential to small commercial to industrial settings, distributed solar generation offers significant benefits to consumers while adding resiliency to an electric grid evolving beyond the traditional centralized model,” said Dexter Gauntlett, research analyst with Navigant Research. “Though this market is still primarily driven by government incentives, distributed solar PV will continue its steady march toward grid parity in major markets over the next few years.” Even as distributed solar technologies have become more cost-effective, many governments are reining in popular feed-in tariffs in leading markets. The industry is fully aware that lucrative financial incentives will not be around forever. As a result, many companies are looking at 2017 (the year after solar PV investment tax credits expire in the United States) as the year that solar PV will be able to stand on its own, without government support. The report, “Distributed Solar Energy Generation”, analyzes the global market for distributed solar PV systems less than 1 megawatt in capacity and provides an assessment of the most important market drivers, technology trends, and challenges faced by the growing distributed solar PV industry. Forecasts for average installed prices and annual installations, segmented by region, extend through 2018. An Executive Summary of the report is available for free download on the Navigant Research website: navigantresearch.com. www.globalsolartechnology.com Global Solar & Alternative Energies – May/June 2013 – 33
Page 1 and 2: The Global Journal for Solar and Al
Page 3 and 4: Contents Global Solar & Alternative
Page 5 and 6: Leadership through R&D. Breakthroug
Page 7 and 8: Industry news on an agreement to di
Page 9 and 10: Demonstration of first ever metal-i
Page 11 and 12: America’s real problem with solar
Page 13 and 14: Why backsheet standards are anythin
Page 15 and 16: Trading places: Emerging markets mo
Page 21 and 22: Make Your Marketing Dollars Go Furt
Page 23 and 24: New products AEG Power Solutions in
Page 25 and 26: Overcoming the structural challenge
Page 27 and 28: Spice Village Resort, India, gets o
Page 29 and 30: Events Solar Industry Association (
Page 31 and 32: Events Upcoming Event Int’l confe
Page 33: Analyst Buzz Analyst Buzz Title Sol
Page 37 and 38: Made up of operators, research inst
Page 39 and 40: & SOLAR ALTERNATIVE ENERGIES Specia

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