Author Archives: Frank Andorka

Solar Survives Hurricane Florence’s Wrath With Little Effect

By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent

It’s no surprise that North Carolina is the No. 2 solar state in the country. Aggressive utility-scale installation, combined with a friendly public utilities commission, have vaulted the state to the top of the list. What I’m saying is that North Carolina has earned its place among the solar elite.

Which is why those of us who have watched that growth were nervous as Hurricane Florence bore down on North Carolina. Between the wind and rain, the resiliency of the state’s solar inventory would be sorely tested – and we all hoped it would come through with flying colors.

Well, wonder no more – Hurricane Florence threw everything at North Carolina that it could, and the solar in the state survived with nearly no interruptions.

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Inside Climate News has the details:

Duke and Strata Solar, two of North Carolina’s largest owners and operators of solar farms, said they found almost no damage in initial inspections. Both companies temporarily shut down some systems in anticipation of flooding, but there were few reports of damage to solar panels.

“I know sometimes we think, ‘Oh it’s the wind, it’s the panels flying around.’ But we haven’t found that to be the case,” said Randy Wheeless, a spokesman for Duke, the largest electric utility in the state. “Our bigger worry usually is flooding.”

Duke only shut down three of its 35 solar farms, and the one that took damage only had 12 modules – less than 1% of the total number of modules at the site. And Cypress Creek took to Twitter to brag about its solar farms, which made it through Hurricane Florence in “solid shape.”

Here’s the bottom line: One of the selling points for solar has always been its resiliency during natural disasters. In the past, because of the small amount of utility-scale solar installed, it was a claim that was more true in theory than had been proven in practice.

Now, however, we have proof that solar can survive a hurricane the strength of Hurricane Florence and survive well. That should only solidify solar’s position as a leading electrical generation source in the future.

More:

Solar Energy Largely Unscathed by Hurricane Florence’s Wind and Rain

The Energy Show: The Commercial Solar Opportunity

The Energy Show: By Barry Cinnamon

There are there are three market segment for solar in the U.S.: residential, utility and commercial. Based on some rough math, in 2018 we expect to install 5 to 7 million solar panels on homes in the U.S. In areas with high residential electric rates, paybacks are usually in the range of 4-8 years. But the utility solar segment is much larger: about 20 million solar panels will be installed by utilities in 2018. Utilities realize that it is cheaper to generate power with solar compared to coal or nuclear generation. Moreover, the combination of solar and batteries is projected to be even cheaper than natural gas in a few years.

The commercial solar segment has been growing, but has been challenged by a lack of efficient financing, slow decision making, and relatively high costs. But this market segment is poised to grow much more quickly in the coming years. Standardized lease, PPA (Power Purchase Agreement) and PACE (Property Assessed Clean Energy) financing is now available. Cheaper solar panels, inverters and rooftop installation techniques are reducing up front costs. And commercial customer decision making is accelerating now that a number of national retailers (Costco, Staples, Target, Safeway), tech companies (Microsoft, Apple, Google), casinos and data centers have made rooftop solar a standard part of all their buildings.

Quite simply, the biggest advantage of rooftop solar to commercial customers is financial. As with the residential and utility segments, almost any commercial building can reduce their electricity costs by 20-40% (net of financing costs). Paybacks are in the range of 3-8 years, easy financing is available for both for-profit and non-profit businesses, and even tenant-occupied buildings with triple net leases can benefit.

As a result, the acres and acres of flat roof buildings around the country are destined to be put to work generating clean, renewable power. For more about commercial solar for businesses of all sizes, Listen Up to this week’s Energy Show.

Proterra Electric Buses Get Enormous Boost From Daimler Investment Of $155 Million

By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent

Yesterday will be remembered as a day when the United States got serious about transforming its aging fleet of buses from diesel-using dinosaurs into sleek new electric vehicles.

That’s when Proterra, a heavy duty electric transportation provider for the North American mass transit market, announced that it has closed a $155 million investment round co-led by Daimler, the world’s largest manufacturer of commercial vehicles.

In conjunction with the investment, Proterra and Daimler have entered into an agreement to explore the electrification of select Daimler heavy-duty vehicles, the first of which will be Damiler’s Thomas Built Buses for the school market, which Proterra believes is the next frontier for zero-emission, commercial fleets.

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With predictable routes per day, school buses are right in Proterra’s wheelhouse – and they expect to compete with Blue Bird (currently the only company serving the school bus market with electric vehicles, as we reported on earlier this year) in short order. What is also really cool is that energy demand for the fleets would be dense and off-peak, thereby reshaping the Duck Curve once again.

This announcement represents a significant milestone in the commercialization of heavy-duty electric vehicles as both manufacturers work to bring zero-emission technology to an expanded set of vehicle segments. With a history and legacy that dates back nearly 150 years, Daimler will be able to provide Proterra with relevant experience in manufacturing commercial vehicles at scale, while Proterra will leverage its proven experience in battery-electric mass transit and provide access to its industry-leading electric vehicle technology.

“We are excited to collaborate with Daimler, and we appreciate their investment and support,” said Ryan Popple, Proterra CEO. “Daimler is a global leader in vehicles that serve almost every category and market. Over the past year, we’ve gained a great deal of respect for the engineering prowess, operational expertise, and environmental stewardship of the Daimler team. We also appreciate the continued support of our existing investors who share our vision of clean, quiet transportation for all.”

If we had to bet, we’d bet on Popple and his Proterra team. After all, as Managing Editor Yann Brandt explored with Popple in this podcast, he has an aggressive goal for the electrification of the heavy-duty trucking and bus markets – and is working hard to meet it. This partnership with Daimler moves that goal ever closer.

(Stephen) Moore’s “Law” Fails When Facts Are Fake

By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent

If you have followed conservative political thought at all over the past 30 years, you’re familiar with Stephen Moore. Currently a senior fellow at the conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation, Moore has been around since he was the president of the anti-tax group Club For Growth (which is not, as it is often mistaken for, a hair replacement club).

Now at the Heritage Foundation, his voice resonates with far greater reach and allows him to land his particular free market gospel at places like Creators.com, which is where I found his most recent screed, “How Solar and Wind Mandates Tax the Poor and Middle Class.”

As i started reading the piece, fully ready to be wowed by the intellectual rigor and argument from someone at the Heritage Foundation, what I found instead was a bunch of repackaged gobbledy gook – think my infamous “zombie lie” writ large – seasoned with a dash from Adam Smith’s Invisible Hand that exists only in the fever dreams of market absolutists and ignored inconvenient facts about what he lovingly refers to as subsidies.

Let’s dive right into to this poorly argued mess, shall we?

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Out of the gate, what Stephen Moore wants you to “know” is that solar and windpower is expensive. So central is this fake “fact” to his argument that he uses the word “expensive” explicitly twice in his second paragraph, where he begins his argument by saying the renewable portfolio standards (which he refers to as “renewable energy standards,” but are the same thing) force utilities to purchase “expensive renewable energy” and “expensive solar and wind power.”

This assertion contains no facts to back it up – it’s just baldly stated as if it were a truism. One marvels, then, at the most recent report from the Solar Energy Industries Association that insists that utility-scale solar – you know, solar built and run by utilities – has been the biggest boom segment of the industry. Moore would argue that it’s the result of RPS’s that they are building these solar farms and that, without the mandate, they’d just keep merrily building fossil fuel plants and burning through coal and oil as if there were no tomorrow.

Except that, of course, the opposite is true. They are building solar farms because they are actually the least expensive option in a lot of states and may soon be the least expensive option nationwide. Utilities are choosing solar over more expensive fossil fuel and nuclear plants – they aren’t being forced to to do it. And they’re passing those savings on to their customers.

So having set up the strawman of “expensive renewable energy,” Stephen Moore proceeds to beat it with the “zombie lie” of the cost shift, saying utilities are increasing rates on non-solar customers because of the expense of buying solar energy.

Sigh. I don’t mind having to fight with these people, but could they at least come up with some original arguments now and then. Sheesh.

As we’ve discussed ad nauseum, the solar “cost shift” doesn’t happen until at least 10% of a state’s electricity comes from solar power, something that is occurring in only five states. That leaves 45 states where Moore’s argument is a flat-out lie, and in the five remaining states, the “cost shift” is fractions of a penny per kilowatt-hour. So this idea that somehow utilities buying solar is a tax on the middle and lower classes – the heart of Moore’s brainless argument – is laughable.

Finally, and this is where I literally chuckled out loud, Stephen Moore ends his piece by talking about how is solar and wind are so good, why can’t they compete without mandates and subsidies? Let’s let the market work, people, he says.

To which I respond – you first. The day the fossil fuel industries give up their subsidies is the day solar should give up its subsidies, and not a moment before.

The bottom line is this – solar is becoming increasingly competitive with fossil fuels, and there is a day coming when solar+storage (another development Moore seems to have never heard of) is going to displace fossil fuels throughout the United States. And guys like Moore are going to be sad – but you know what? Making Moore sad is a perfectly reasonable outcome from where I’m sitting.

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How Solar and Wind Mandates Tax the Poor and Middle Class