With storage, private households can from time to time decouple themselves from the grid and use their generated solar power. This makes sense since the feed-in tariffs for solar have fallen dramatically.The funding is to be handled by the state bank KfW and €2,000 in support is to be expected per installation according to the local media.

Storage, that will be supported by the market incentive program, has high expectations to meet. “Solar power storage will relief the grid by decoupling the supply of energy into the grid at the time of generation. Storage also actively contributes towards the maintenance of uniform voltage and frequency of the grid and thereby takes over important jobs for grid management,” explained Prof. Dr. Bernd Engel, grid expert at the Technical University Braunschweig.

With battery storage that is connected to the grid, peaks in electricity production can be reduced up to 40%. Furthermore grid capacity can also be increased by 66% without the need for additional grid expansion. These figures were provided by the Fraunhofer ISE in an actual study.

BSW Solar’s Managing Director Jörg Mayer also added that with storage, the lower feed-in into the grid will also reduce the need for new electricity grids. Additionally the self-consumed solar power will not be remunerated and will thus relieve the green energy allocation funds to a considerable extent.

16. January 2013 | Storage & Smart Grids | By: Shamsiah Ali-Oettinger
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A Concept drawing of the ‘vertical farm’.

Work on a 17-storey urban greenhouse in the heart of the city began in February and it is expected to start growing its first produce by the end of next year.

Vertical farming is not a new concept. But this is its first real application. The Linkoping urban greenhouse, as designed by architectural firm Plantagon, will be a conical glass building that uses an extensive internal conveyor belt-style system to move potted plants from seeding, growing and harvesting stations.

As the plants move under the glazed walls and ceilings their pots will be rotated to give the fruit and vegetables optimal exposure to available sunlight.

It’s more than just a tall greenhouse.

Excess heat and CO2 from a nearby power plant will be funnelled into the glass dome to warm and feed crops in Sweden’s chilly winter.  Other benefits include reducing the distance the produce moves from the farm to the plate, a ready destination for suburban compostable wastes and a source of combustible methane for energy users.  Growing plants in such a controlled environment will also reduce how much water and pesticides they need.

Plantagon says to expect such “plantascrapers” to appear in a suburb near you. By 2050, about 80 per cent of the world’s ballooning population will live in cities, the architectural firm says. Feeding the 9 billion people will need as much extra farmland as the whole of Brazil.

Plantagon says the smallest of its designs is a five-storey globular greenhouse that would cost between $10 million and $20 million and feed 10,000 people per year. The tallest is 25 stories, and would cost between $280 million and $500 million, and would feed 350,000 people.

Stuttgart, Germany, and Barcelona, Spain are understood to have signed expressions of interests in the sky farms.

Perth-based Hyperion Energy is currently seeking regulatory approvals to build a 200 megawatt Solar Updraft Tower (SUT) on 127,000 hectares surrounding the township of Tuckanarra, in the Midwest region of Western Australia. Hyperion says the 1,000m high tower, if it was built today, would be the tallest structure in the world.

A spokesperson for the company says a huge advantage of the groundbreaking technology is that SUTs do not rely on the sun shining all the time to generate electricity, with the Midwest site able to produce power 24 hours a day every day of the year.

“When the sun is not shining, there is still enough heat retained under the big collector panels to keep the turbines moving,” he says.

“When most people think of solar they think of panels on a roof, whereas this is quite different. The technology uses what is effectively a very tall chimney using the principle of heat rising to create an updraft that forces the turbines to turn and generate electricity”.

Central to the project is a 1,000 metre high tower surrounded by a collector membrane and panels at the base, that uses the sun’s energy to warm the air underneath the canopy. This warm air rises through the tower, turning the blades of 32 turbines within the shaft.  During the night, heat stored in the ground during the day is released to keep the turbines in motion.

Managing Director Dallas Dempster says with an average annual horizontal solar radiation of 2300MJ/m2, the uninhabited terrain is ideally suited to the construction of SUTs and will help fuel a range of resource projects planned for the midwest.

“This plant will provide a sustainable, environmentally-friendly way to generate baseload power for Western Australia…in an area with the highest solar radiation levels in Australia,” he says.

While the project is a first for Australia, Hyperion says the technology is proven following a recent feasibility study to assess the viability of selected sites for SUTs in WA, including the topography, meteorology, soil conditions and earthquake loads.

Hyperion says the approval stage should be completed by the end of 2012 with a 24-30 month construction stage to commence in 2014.

Written by Aaron Fernandes Friday, 27 January 2012

Original source: click here

Prime Minister Julia Gillard described the legislation passed by Australia’s Senate as “historic” after years campaigning for what is hoped will create a new platform for companies to trade carbon credits and cut pollution. Australia is one of the biggest emitters of carbon per head globally due to its heavy use of coal-fired power generators, which account for about 75% of electricity output, and the new tax is intended to cut carbon pollution by 160 million tons a year by 2020.

The tax will be charged at a fixed price of 23 Australian dollars (US$23.50) per carbon ton from the country’s top 500 polluters starting from July 2012, increasing 2.5% annually until 2015 before changing to a floating-rate price with the government controlling the amount of tradable permits released annually and implementing a price floor and ceiling. At that point companies will be able to trade carbon credits and the scheme is expected to be linked with other systems in New Zealand and Europe.

Business groups have criticized the tax, which they say will add to company expenses and do little to cut global pollution because Australia exports much of its carbon in the form of coal, gas and minerals used for steel making.

“The passage of the climate change legislation with a high starting price and no flexibility to adjust the price in the initial years is deeply disappointing,” Heather Ridout, the chief executive of the Australian Industry Group, said. “This is especially so given the extremely uncertain and weak global economic conditions and the volatility of global carbon prices.”

In an effort to gain public support for the tax, the government has made weighty concessions on its original plan by offering private households generous tax breaks and pension increases to offset higher energy costs.

“The carbon price is expected to have a moderate negative (fiscal year 2013) earnings impact on some emissions-intensive companies,” Tim Jordan, a research analyst at Deutsche Bank AG said in a note to clients.

Australia wants to emulate the European Union’s emissions trading system, or ETS, set up to cut greenhouse gases that many scientists claim cause global warming. The scheme imposes pollution quotas on over 11,000 manufacturers and power companies, leading to a ceiling in 2020 that will be 21% below 2005 emission levels. The EU has lobbied hard to get a successor for the Kyoto treaty, the instrument that regulates carbon emissions internationally and expires next year.

In the U.S., the world’s largest economy, support for a federal climate policy has withered but California is planning to introduce a scheme at state level. California’s Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006 requires the state to cut greenhouse-gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020.

The International Energy Agency warned in October that as the world increasingly relies on coal to meet growing energy demand, it is headed for a “dire future” where high energy prices drag on economic growth and global temperatures rise dangerously, unless significant innovations are made to lower the cost of clean energy and carbon-capture technology.

By Enda Curran and Ray Brindal
Original source click here.

The AER is seeking rule changes to enable it to more closely scrutinise the efficiency of investment in power networks, but as Edwin O’Young of Port Jackson Partners has demonstrated, this is by no means the only area of pressure on prices.

Speaking at the ‘Powering Australia 2011’ conference in Melbourne last week, O’Young said many factors will continue to drive retail electricity prices upwards over the next six years following increases of more than 35 per cent in inflation-adjusted terms over the past four.

Many of these cost increases are unavoidable and should be reflected in consumer bills, he said, acknowledging that it is of great importance to ensure that they do not increase more than is necessary – the same point being made by AER chairman Andrew Reeves.

O’Young says that, after 15 years of relative power price stability, average electricity prices have risen from around 15 cents per kilowatt hour in 2007 to 21 cents this year. This trend applies in particular to Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane, the three main load centres.

The breakdown of the bill for New South Wales, for example, shows a marginal increase (0.3 cents) for wholesale power supply, a big rise (2.2 cents) for networks, a substantial shift (0.7 cents) in mandatory green power costs and a doubling (up 1.2 cents) of retailer operating costs and customer acquisition costs. This adds up to a rise from 16 cents per kWh in 2007 to 20.4 cents today.

What lies ahead, according to O’Young, is a very large increase in the wholesale electricity charge (rising 7.5 cents), a big jump in network charges (7.2 cents), a continuing increase in renewables costs (up another 0.1 cents) and a further rise in retailer costs and margins (up another 1.1 cents) to deliver an end-user bill of 36.3 cents per kWh in 2017.

He attributes the wholesale power rises to increasing coal prices as contracts for power stations come up for renewal, increasing gas prices as the east coast industry moves in to export mode, the impact of the Gillard government’s carbon price on the dominant fossil-fuelled generators, rising capital construction costs for new power stations and higher volatility in the competitive east market with a potential increase in the power price cap from today’s $12,500 per megawatt hour to $16,000.

O’Young points to the continuing huge rises in Chinese coal demand – forecast to increase by 60 million tonnes a year to 2020 – as well as high demand from India as important factors in new local fuel contracts. “While this is good news for our coal exporters, it is not good news for domestic power prices,” he warned.

With construction of new coal-fired power stations virtually impossible in the present environment and with gas expected to be the main fuel for new generation this decade, O’Young sees the east coast LNG developments driving domestic prices far beyond their present levels. “The current experience of independent power producers in Queensland,” he says,”is that they are simply unable to secure gas contracts for much more than 2-3 years and (seller) price expectations remain significantly above historic levels.”

A rise in gas prices of $4 per gigajoule, he points out, leads to an increase in generation costs of $28 per megawatt hour. “That is an increase in wholesale electricity costs of 45 per cent before a carbon price.”

O’Young says a $27 per tonne carbon price will add $26 per MWh to coal generation costs and around $14 to gas-fired power production.

To this he adds an increase of about 12 per cent in renewable energy charges over the next six years, but warns that if the federal government’s small-scale renewable energy scheme (promoting solar power) continues to expand at anywhere near the levels we are seeing today, the cost of retailers’ meeting their RET liabilities could be much higher.

The headache for politicians, federal and state, lies in O’Young’s summary of the situation: “Many things are unavoidable, including network costs, which are locked to 2015, and fuel costs that will rise as coal and gas prices are linked to export markets – and as the carbon price is factored in.”

Keith Orchison, director of consultancy Coolibah Pty Ltd and editor of Powering Australia yearbook, was chief executive of two national energy associations from 1980 to 2003. He was made a Member of the Order of Australia for services to the energy industry in 2004.

Original source (Business Spectator) Click here.

New data shows solar power is edging towards ”grid parity”, after which it becomes cheaper than fossil fuel-generated energy such as coal and gas, even taking into account the upfront cost of buying rooftop solar panels.

But it was one of the few bright spots for an industry suffering from a 93 per cent drop in rooftop panel installations since the boom late last year at the peak of the NSW bonus scheme.

Workers at Australia’s only commercial solar cell maker, the Silex plant at Homebush in Sydney, were told yesterday that cell production would be outsourced to China.

Nevertheless, the flow-on effects of the subsidies have helped achieve grid parity across wide areas of rural NSW. For the first time, the amount paid to households feeding power to the electricity grid passed 28¢ a kilowatt hour, which is the equivalent of buying coal-fired power from a utilities company

Andrew Blakers, the director of the centre for sustainable energy systems at the Australian National University, said: ”If you look at the prices being paid today, we have already reached grid parity in a lot of places except Melbourne and Hobart.”

In Sydney, the price paid for solar power fed back to the grid depends on the agreement between the household and the provider, and whether a household agreed to the state government’s feed-in tariff in time to take advantage of high rates of payback.

The Australian Photovoltaic Association said that while some areas had reached grid parity, it could be several years before solar electricity was worth more than coal-fired electricity in most of NSW, and that depended on state and federal policy.

”A 1.5 kilowatt system in Sydney is probably going to be cost effective next year or the year after, depending on whether we get a carbon price,” said Muriel Watt, the chairwoman of the association and a senior lecturer in renewable energy engineering at the University of NSW.

The amount of solar energy generated in NSW has surged above the cap imposed by the previous state government.

The Independent Pricing and Regulatory Tribunal said thousands of households were still waiting for their panels to be installed under the $1.9 billion solar bonus scheme, which would drive up the overall cost to the taxpayer. As of this week, up to 71 megawatts worth of solar systems had yet to be fully installed, taking the total amount of power generated under the scheme to 371 megawatts.

When the former government halted new applications last October, it received 38,000 applications on the final day, the tribunal said.

This year, the government was forced to abandon moves to cut retrospectively the tariff applied under the bonus scheme, to limit profiteering.

As a result, the state government is seeking the tribunal’s assistance in setting tariffs for household systems.

Yesterday the solar industry called on the government to introduce interim measures to pay households at market rates for the power they produced until the tribunal’s review of subsidies is completed next year.

The Australian Solar Energy Society said 416 jobs had been lost since the industry spiked in November, and a quarter of the state’s solar installation businesses had closed.

At the Silex plant yesterday, about 30 people were told they would be made redundant and others would be redeployed because the company could no longer afford to compete with cheaper, imported solar cells. The panels will still be made at the plant.

The chief executive, Michael Goldsworthy, said: “This type of silicon flat panel technology was actually invented here in Sydney at the University of NSW … that’s the sad thing. Now it’s all gone offshore.”

The Australian Manufacturing Workers Union said many of the workers had previously worked in the same plant with BP Solar, and were being made redundant for the second time.

By Ben Cubby, Brian Robins, Melissa Lahoud.
Click here for the original source

The first major meeting of the clean energy industry since the announcement of the Federal Government’s carbon pricing plan will take place at EcoGen 2011, to be held at the Brisbane Convention and Exhibition Centre from 5–7 September.

Approximately 500 Australian businesses will be required to pay for their carbon emissions under the plan, and much of the revenue collected will support investment in research, project development and employment growth in the solar sector.

Elements of the new legislation package of particular relevance to the sector include:

• The establishment of an Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) with responsibility for managing $3.2 billion in existing Federal Government funding for solar power technologies and initiatives to bring them to market, including the Solar Flagships Program and the Australian Solar Institute
• The commencement of a Clean Energy Finance Corporation (CEFC) to invest $10 billion in businesses launching clean energy projects, and in transforming existing manufacturers to meet demand for photovoltaic (PV) panels and other solar inputs
• A $40 million Remote Indigenous Power Program to connect remote Indigenous communities to solar power
• The expansion of the Australian Energy Market Operator’s future development of the electricity grid to prepare for greater integration with solar power.

The Australian Photovoltaic Association has said that the CEFC and ARENA will be of particular assistance for large‐scale PV project deployment, and that theRemote Indigenous Power Program among other initiatives will assist the off‐grid PV market.

Australian Solar Energy Society Chief Executive John Grimes said “While the details [of the plan] are still being worked out, it is likely big solar companies will be able to access loan guarantees and equity investments from the CEFC.”

“Big solar is a big winner in the Clean Energy Future Plan,” Mr Grimes said.

14 July 2011

Original source click here.

Companies that make everything from solar panels to renewable-crude oil continue to be big draws for funding from the venture-capital community. But a company that rewards consumers for recycling led The Wall Street Journal’s second-annual ranking of venture-backed clean-tech companies.

Recyclebank, which provides recycling-rewards programs in 29 states and the U.K., has had a growth spurt since its 2004 launch. In October, the New York-based company brought on Jonathan Hsu, former head of onliine ad firm 24/7 Real Media, as its chief executive.

Two solar-power firms, Suniva Inc. of Norcross, Ga., and eSolar Inc. of Burbank, Calif., came in second and third, respectively.

The Top 10 Clean-Tech ranking, announced Wednesday at the Journal’s ECO:nomics Executive Conference in Santa Barbara, Calif., seeks to identify green companies with the greatest potential to succeed in an increasingly competitive sector.

A team from venture-industry tracker VentureSource calculated the rankings based on a strict set of criteria applied to 516 U.S.-based venture-backed businesses in clean technology. On March 10, the Journal plans to publish its 2011 Next Big Thing ranking of the top 50 US venture-backed companies across all industries, drawn from more than 5,700 firms. (VentureSource is owned by News Corp., which also owns Dow Jones & Co., publisher of the Wall Street Journal.)

Candidates were analyzed on the amount of capital raised in the past three years; the track records of each company’s founders, managers and investors; and the percentage change in its valuation in the 12 months ended Nov. 30.

The list also reflects the difficulties in identifying companies with the best odds for success. Last year, Solyndra Inc. of Fremont, Calif., ranked No. 1, in part because it had secured a $535 million government loan on top of $286 million in venture capital. But amid heavy competition, Solyndra had a difficult 2010 and in June scrapped plans for an initial public offering.

Getty Images
But another company on last year’s list, Tesla Motors Inc., moved off this year’s ranking after an IPO in June. The electric-car maker had ranked No. 10 in 2010.

Recyclebank, a unit of Recycle Rewards Inc., Suniva and eSolar also appeared on last year’s list. RecycleBank jumped three spots from last year’s No. 4 rank, while Suniva and eSolar remained steady at No. 2 and No. 3.

The remaining companies on the 2011 list are: No. 4 MiaSolé of Santa Clara, Calif., a maker of thin-film solar cells; No. 5 Opower Inc. of Arlington, Va., a developer of software for utility companies that helps consumers boost energy efficiency; No. 6 GreatPoint Energy Inc. of Cambridge, Mass., which makes technology that converts coal, petroleum coke and biomass into natural gas; No. 7 SeaMicro Inc. of Santa Clara, a provider of low-power servers for data centers; No. 8 Boston-Power Inc. of Westborough, Mass., a maker of lithium-ion batteries; No. 9 Luxim Corp. of Sunnyvale, Calif., a provider of energy-efficient lighting technology; and No. 10 Sapphire Energy Inc. of San Diego, a producer of “green crude” from algae, sunlight and carbon dioxide.

By Colleen Debaise
Original article click here

To be eligible for the 47cents feed in tariff you must sign up before the 30th of June 2011. Your system must then be installed before September 30th 2011.  For that reason we can only take so many installs and positions are filling fast.  At the rate that things are moving we are likely to be full before the June 30th deadline.  The time to enquire about a system is now before you miss out!  We look forward to being about to fit you a quality system before the deadline and look forward to hearing from you soon.

The Energy Farm team.

If Kan really means it, the government will have to abandon the plans for expanding nuclear power it adopted only last year. To make up the energy shortfall, Kan has set the ambitious goal of using renewables.

That is most likely to mean wind, according to a report released last month by the Ministry of the Environment. There is “an extremely large introduction potential of wind power generation”, it says, especially in the tsunami-hit north-east of the country.

“The potential of wind is huge because of the contribution from offshore generation with Japan’s long coastline,” agrees Tetsunari Iida, founder of the Institute for Sustainable Energy Policies in Tokyo, who advocates a 100 per cent switch to renewable energy by 2050. At present, Japan produces just 3 per cent of its electricity from renewables: solar, wind and geothermal. Nuclear contributes 30 per cent.

Taking into account wind strength, available land and the potential for offshore farms, the report estimates that Japan could install wind turbines with a capacity of up to 1500 gigawatts. More realistic estimates in the report suggest that with appropriate financial incentives, turbines with a capacity of 24 to 140 GW could be installed. Assuming the turbines operate a quarter of the time, this would provide up to 35 GW of electricity on average, matching the combined output of about 40 of Japan’s existing 54 nuclear reactors.

Next in line is solar energy, which the report estimates could provide between 69 and 100 GW without taking up any productive agricultural land.

Perhaps surprisingly, given Japan’s 120 active volcanoes and the 28,000 hot springs associated with them,geothermal energy scarcely figures in the ministry’s report. At best, it says, only 14 GW is available, but much of that is inaccessible because of restrictions on development in national parks. At other sites, exploiting geothermal energy would disrupt springs currently used as spas.

A switch to renewables will require huge amounts of new infrastructure. This will need to be paid for by offering special tariffs as incentives for providers to feed energy from renewable sources into the grid. By coincidence, on the morning of 11 March – the day of the earthquake – the Japanese cabinet approved proposals that would achieve this. “It’s under review by the parliament, and could provide a really big push for renewables if it’s passed,” says Iida.

The contribution from renewables to Japan’s electricity supply is currently almost static, having increased from 3.1 to 3.3 per cent between 2008 and 2009. Iida blames “poor policy support” for this lack of growth. So it is possible that as the shock of Fukushima fades, support for renewables will go the same way. However, polls reported this week suggest that two-thirds of Japanese back a shift away from nuclear power.

by Andy Coghlan

Original source: click here