Tag Archives: Google

What Corporation Buys The Most On Solar? Bloomberg Has The Stats

By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent

Corporations are driving clean energy adoption globally, and they have procured more than ever before so far in 2018 – at least according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance.

Through July, global corporations have already shattered the 2017 full-year record by more than 2 GW through July, having already purchased 7.2 GW through July vs 5.4 GW in all of 2017. It’s being driven by sustainability plans and the incentives to build clean energy projects.

And solar is making up an ever-increasing portion of the purchases, thanks to plummeting PV prices – though wind still makes up the majority of purchases globally.

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Corporate PPAs are driving the growth, particularly in the United States, BNEF reports:

As a result, we’re seeing corporations locking into fixed, long-term clean energy contracts, hedging against volatile prices in the wholesale market. This is known as the virtual PPA model, and remains the most common corporate procurement mechanism.In the U.S., companies have grown more comfortable with the virtual PPA model, serving as the offtaker on several projects, but smaller companies are also increasingly pooling their electricity demand together to access the economies of scale achieved through larger solar and wind projects, known as aggregation.

BNEF reports the top five companies with solar installations – are Facebook, Microsoft, Walmart, MGM Resorts and Google. The company expects the growth to continue because companies have already committed to purchasing a certain amount of clean energy.

Bloomberg NEF forecasts that the current 140 signatories of the RE100 (a pledge to offset 100% of electricity demand with renewables) will need to purchase an additional 197 TWh of clean energy in 2030 to reach their targets. Were this shortfall to be met with long-term contracts for new solar and wind projects, it would lead to an additional 100GW of build – for context, this is slightly larger than California’s entire electricity grid today.

In other words, the future of clean energy continues to be bright on a global level – and solar continues to increase its hold on the international clean-energy market. It’s nice to see something we all feel instinctually borne out by research and statistics from BNEF.

OhmHome Introduces New Solar Mapping Project To Facilitate Solar Adoption

OhmHome

By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent

OhmHome, a website devoted to educating consumers about the Solar Revolution and other energy issues, has decided it wants to one-up Google’s Project Sunroof with its new solar mapping service called NextDoor Solar.

In addition to showing consumers what other homes in the neighborhood have solar, it will also tell them which companies have done the installations – a feature OhmHome says is important because of its long-term financial implications.

In its release, the company cites NREL research that shows local installers can offer consumers 10% more savings than large national companies. It also cites Yale research that purchasing solar is contagious, meaning the more people in a neighborhood purchase solar, the more likely it is that others will also purchase solar. As a result, OhmHome believes its mapping program can provide the final nudge for a lot of potential solar owners currently sitting on the fence.

“The problem for consumers is that it’s often hard to research local companies and know anything about their quality,” Ohmhome said in a release. “We want to make doing that research easier.”

The website based its product launch on its database of more than 500,000 residential solar projects in the United States.

According to the annual Gallup Environment poll findings, 73% of Americans want the United States to wean itself of traditional fossil fuels and pour more research into alternative energy sources like solar and wind. And more than 50% prefer to protect the environment over more fossil fuel exploration.

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Sam Arons from Google talks about going 100% renewable energy and how corporate PPAs work for them

In this episode of EnergyWakeup, we speak with Sam Arons from Google. Sam is the Lead, Tech and Infrastructure at Google. In short, he is responsible with bringing renewable energy to Google operations and behind the ability for Google to say that they power their operations with 100% renewable energy.

In December of 2016, Google shocked the energy world by announcing that they bought 2.6GW worth of renewable energy, almost all of it wind and matched their total operation’s energy usage with renewables.

Sam and I get into the details of where they are now and where they want to be. We dig into out this works using their FERC regulated subsidiary, Google Energy LLC as the offtaker of the energy in the RTOs across the globe. With the growth of corporate PPAs, we discuss how this market can expand using financial products available in the wholesale markets.

Google is also getting into policy and pushing investor owned utilities that have monopolies on providing renewable energy to corporate clients. One case was the green rider program that allowed Google to get over 60MW of solar from Duke Energy in North Carolina.

Sam sends a message to utility CEOs on what Google is looking for. I also ask him why Google is so far ahead of the other tech companies and what it will take to get more corporates into the market. Don’t miss this episode of EnergyWakeup.

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This is your SolarWakeup for November 18th, 2013

This morning’s Wakeup coming from the skies as I make my way to the Distributed Solar Summit in San Diego.  Speaking on a panel later today to discuss how PACE markets are changing the solar industry for the better.  While credit issues keep good solar projects from moving forward, financing innovation like Demeter’s PACE3P products will help advance solar investment in commercial markets.  Stay tuned for more insight from this conference all week!

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Yann