Puerto Rican Community Gets Solar Microgrid, Electricity Eight Months After Maria

By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent

The Hill has an interesting article about how one community in Puerto Rico installed a community solar project and restored power to the town for the first time in eight months.

Setting aside the shame the rest of us should feel for leaving our fellow U.S. citizens in darkness for eight months, the story is inspirational and offers a window into how solar can help Puerto Rico improve the resiliency of its electrical system to build resiliency for future natural disasters.

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I’m going to quote the entire lead because it was so good:

Imagine living without electricity for 8 months. As the day turns into night, darkness overcomes the roads to your house. Hours go by, while you try to pass the time under the scant illumination of candles, gas lanterns or solar bulbs.

Unbeknownst to you, almost 3,000 of your fellow citizens will eventually die, mostly as a result of the largest power blackout in American history.

This was the situation faced by the residents of Toro Negro, a community in Ciales, Puerto Rico, after the devastation of Hurricane Maria, on September 20, 2017.

See what I mean?

And then the community solar came to the rescue. Thanks to the work of the Puerto Rico Community Foundation, Toro Negro received a donation of solar modules and battery storage, and now 28 homes are sharing a community solar array:

Twenty-eight homes in Toro Negro now share the benefits of solar power obtained from their roofs and other nearby premises, and the residents operate their microgrid. The residents of Toro Negro will now begin a process to establish their own rate. By generating its energy from 100 percent solar power, the project will also have a positive footprint in the environment.

Toro Negro will become the first fully operational community solar project in Puerto Rico, as well as the first “cooperative microgrid.”

As Puerto Rico goes through this year’s hurricane season, it could learn a lot from the small town of Toro Negro. Let’s hope that this is the first community solar installation of many in the island community.

SolarWakeup Podcast: Anthony Star, Director Of The Illinois Power Agency, Discusses The Future Of Solar In Illinois

By Yann Brandt, Managing Editor

In this episode of the Energy Wakeup podcast, we sat down with Anthony Star, director of the Illinois Power Agency, to discuss the process for developing solar under the Future Energy Jobs Act of 2016, which will increase the amount of solar produced in the state in the coming years.

Star discusses in detail the Illinois SREC procurement program, as well as what’s coming with the adjustable block grant that will inform what happens with distributed generation and community solar. He also provides background on how these developments came to be.

Listen to the whole discussion to hear Star talk about why low utility-scale SREC prices are good for community solar, how the RPS rollover timeframe could cause specific challenges moving forward and what role alternative suppliers will play in the state.

What’s The Matter With Kansas? Demand Charges, That’s What

By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent

Ah, Kansas, why did you go and have to be the exception?

The Kansas Corporation Commission (KCC) (which regulates its utilities) decided last week to grant the proposals made by the state’s two largest utilities – Westar Energy and Kansas City Power & Light to lower utility bills for everyone in their service areas except solar users.

For some reason, the KCC decided it would allow solar users to be penalized for generating their own electricity by hitting them with a demand charge that could cost solar users anywhere between $27 and $36 a month, according to calculations by the Wichita Eagle.

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When we originally wrote about this last month, we had hoped Kansas would continue the trend shown by so many other regulatory bodies, in finding demand charges to be too confusing for average customers to understand. And in the case of Westar, we were also hoping the KCC would reject the ridiculous zombie lie that solar users don’t pay their fair share of grid upkeep, which reared its ugly head again in the Westar argument.

This is the “cost shift” argument which, for those of you who have not followed our work on this before, plays out thusly:

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 the cost-shift is a flat-out lie, and in the five remaining states, the “cost shift” is fractions of a penny per kilowatt-hour.

But unfortunately, the KCC allowed the wool to be pulled over its eyes. In its ruling, it wrote (again quoting the Wichita Eagle):

“The Commission finds that, in Westar’s case, under the two-part rate design for (solar) customers currently in place, the (solar) customers are receiving a preferential rate,” the commission said in its order approving the settlement.

Ugh, for the last time, SOLAR USERS AREN’T GETTING PREFERENTIAL TREATMENT, FOR CRYING OUT LOUD. That’s a lie. It’s nonsense. And you on the KCC should have been smart enough to recognize it as such.

It’s so disappointing to see a misguided ruling such as this because it will essentially strangle Kansas’ budding solar industry before it even gets to take its first breath – and that’s a damn shame.

More:

New Westar Energy rates will benefit average customer but not solar power users

Proposed Kansas Demand Fees Could Bring Solar Installations To A Screeching Halt

Could Perovskite Solar Cells Be Close To Commercialization?

By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent

People are looking for the next big technical innovation that will revolutionize solar cells and, for the past several years, perovskites have been “the next big thing.”

Perovskite is a mineral that has been shown to have significantly higher efficiencies than polycrystalline silicon. The problems were twofold:

1) The width of the perovskite film necessary to see the efficiency jumps had yet to be determined; and

2) The cost of commercialization was still prohibitive.

But thanks to recent research out of the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology, both of those problems may be one step closer to being solved. And once they are, the commercialization of perovskite solar cells will be one step closer to reality.

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The key lies, according to researchers, in how the perovskite solar cells are made. To wit:

To make the new cells, the researchers coated transparent conductive substrates with perovskite films that absorb sunlight very efficiently. They used a gas-solid reaction-based technique in which the substrate is first coated with a layer of hydrogen lead triiodide incorporated with a small amount of chlorine ions and methylamine gas – allowing them to reproducibly make large uniform panels, each consisting of multiple solar cells.

In developing the method, the scientists realized that making the perovskite layer 1 micron thick increased the working life of the solar cell significantly.

The thicker layer improved both the stability of the solar cell – researchers claim the cells were completely unchanged even after 800 hours of use – but also allowed the cell to be reproduced more efficiently which, as they note, is critical to mass commercialization.

Everyone is wondering where the next big breakthrough in solar cell technology is going to come from, and while perovskites still aren’t there yet, this latest research suggests they’re closer than ever before. And that news should excite everyone.

Perovskite solar cells leap toward commercialization