Tag Archives: Colorado

Solar is now competitive with … natural gas –Crossborder Energy study

Colorado, California, North Carolina: when will Georgia catch up in solar power?
What will it take to get the Georgia legislature to realize all Georgians
will benefit economically from much more solar power than

GA PSC in July required Georgia Power to buy?
And why should we permit

a methane gas pipeline to gash through Georgia
to profit executives in Houston and Juno Beach, Florida
when we could be deploying solar everywhere in Georgia
for

local jobs, profit, lower electric bills, and clean air and water?

Here’s
the study
that showed solar benefits outweigh costs in North Carolina,

The Benefits and Costs
of Solar Generation
for Electric Ratepayers
in North Carolina,
by R. Thomas Beach and
Patrick G. McGuire for Crossborder Energy, 18 October 2013.

Wholesale solar PPA prices provide perhaps the most dramatic
evidence of the continued decline in solar PV costs. Solar PPA
prices have fallen dramatically over the past several years, to the
point that, in some regions of the U.S., solar is now competitive
with other generation resources, including wind and natural gas.
Xcel Energy in Colorado recently announced that it is proposing to
add 170 MW of utility-scale solar to its system, with its CEO
stating “[f]or the first time ever, we are adding cost
competitive utility scale solar to the system.”33
The
California electric utilities make public each year the average PPA
prices for renewable contracts approved by the CPUC in the prior
year. Figure 3 shows the trend in the prices for their solar PV
PPAs; CPUC contract approval can occur up to a year or more after
bids are received, so the figure is indicative of prices through
roughly 2011.34
2012 solicitations for solar PPAs in California in
the 3 MW to 20 MW size range through the Renewable Auction Mechanism
(RAM) have yielded market-clearing prices in the
8 to 9 cents
per
kWh range.3


The Lawrence Berkeley National Lab (LBNL) conducts and publishes
regular national surveys of the installed costs of solar PV; these
surveys include Continue reading →

57% of Colorado electricity from wind on 15 April 2012

Steve Hargreaves wrote for CNN Money 6 August 2012, Wind power hits 57% mark in Colorado

During the early morning hours of April 15, with a steady breeze blowing down Colorado's Front Range, the state's biggest utility set a U.S. record — nearly 57% of the electricity being generated was coming from wind power.

As dawn came and the 1.4 million customers in Xcel Energy's service district began turning on the lights, toasters and other appliances, the utility's coal and natural gas-fired power plants ramped up production and brought wind's contribution back closer to its 2012 average of 17%.

The article also included the usual power company quibble:

"A lot of utilities don't want to contract large amounts of wind because it's volatile," said Amy Grace, a wind analyst at Bloomberg New Energy Finance. "Anything over 25%, and utilities get nervous."

They neglected to mention that the traditional rigid grid connecting big baseload power plants failed for millions of Americans in June and failed for 600 million Indians in July. More renewable energy distributed through a smart grid would help prevent that.

In any case, 17% is a significant percentage to start with.

-jsq

WSJ on Economic Problems of Biomass Plants



Jim Carlton points out in the Wall Street Journal

some of the problems of biomass plants.

With all the plants and trees in the world, biomass energy would appear
to have boundless potential.

Or as Georgia politicians are fond of saying,
“Georgia is the Saudi Arabia of forest energy.”

Yet in the U.S., biomass power—generated mainly by burning wood and
other plant debris—has run into roadblocks that have stymied its growth.

Here at the Northern Nevada Correctional Center, officials in 2007
built a $7.7 million biomass plant to meet all the power needs of the
medium-security prison. But last month, two years after the plant opened,
prison officials closed it, citing excessive costs.

“This was a project that was well intentioned, but not well implemented,”
says Jeff Mohlenkamp, deputy director of support services for the Nevada
Department of Corrections.

Even with a captive market (pun intended), biomass was not economically
feasible.

Maybe it was an isolated case?

Continue reading →

Solar Companies Booming in Buffalo



There’s still time to lead the solar parade:

“The solar market is the fastest-growing market worldwide, bar none,” said Ryne P. Raffaelle, director of the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Center for Photovoltaics in Colorado. “For the last half-dozen years, it’s grown at about a 40 to 45 percent compound annual growth rate per year.”

That growth is expected to accelerate next year, said Raffaelle, who was a Rochester Institute of Technology faculty member for 10 years. But the vast majority of that growth, both in the manufacturing and deployment of systems, is happening outside the United States. Asia has taken a “commanding lead” in manufacturing, and Europe leads in deployment, he said.

“But the rest of the world, they’re still watching the United States. They still see us as the 800-pound gorilla,” Raffaelle said. “It’s like, ‘When are they going to do something?'”

That was from a conference held in the Buffalo area recently.

In Buffalo, New York, they’re not just talking about solar power:

Continue reading →