The Energy Show: Recycling Solar Panels with Sam Vanderhoof

The Energy Show: By Barry Cinnamon

Solar panels last 30 years or more. Almost all of the old panels that I have tested still crank out close to their original power output. Unfortunately, old solar panels are not compatible with the electronics of new systems – inverters, optimizers and microinverters. Sort of like that old CD-ROM software that is still good…if you could just get a computer that has a CD-ROM drive and runs Windows XP.

Some people want to upgrade their old 14% efficiency panels with new 20%+ efficiency panels equipped with a battery storage system. One big benefit of upgrading or adding panels is that the 30% tax credit applies to all new equipment — including that old inverter that may have failed. I expect that commercial customers will also start to upgrade their systems, replacing thousands of old panels with thousands of new panels.

So what do you do with these old panels? Even though they are constructed of recyclable glass, aluminum and silicon, there has not been a viable solution for recycling solar panels. Instead of dumping old solar panels in landfills, my friend and solar guru Sam Vanderhoof has a solution to this problem: his new company called Recycle PV Solar (recyclepv.solar).

Sam estimates that about 95% of solar panels are going into landfills. 15 gigawatts of solar panels were installed in the U.S. in 2016 – that represents about 6 million pounds of panels being installed every day! On a cumulative basis there are about 53 gigwatts of panels currently installed in the U.S., or about 200 million solar panels. To visualize the enormity of this recycling challenge, a train filled with containers of solar panels would be 1,500 miles long! Please Listen Up to this Week’s Energy Show to learn more about the challenges, economics and opportunities of recycling solar panels.

Canadian Solar Gets Offer For Privatization From Lions Point

By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent

pv magazine reports that Canadian Solar might be ready to go private, thanks to a $250 million bid from venture capital firm Lions Point.

If that latter name sounds familiar, it’s because it should be: SolarWakeup brought you the news earlier this year that Lions Point found itself embroiled in the Suniva bankruptcy, as fellow Suniva creditor SQN Financial accused it of trying to sell off parts of Suniva to eliminate the competition. What competition, you ask?

Right. They were arguing that though Suniva had not produced a module in more than a year, Canadian Solar was so worried about them as a competitor that they were trying to completely sabotage the remaining equipment at the plant, thereby keeping SQN from getting its investment in the now-bankrupt solar module manufacturer back.

So now the next plot point has unfolded: Lions Point is trying to take Canadian Solar private to … I don’t know what the SQN Financial lawyers will argue, but you an rest assured they are hovered over their desks right now getting ready for the next filing in the bankruptcy case.

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Still, the offer was made. pv magazine has the details:

In a 13D filing to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) this week, New York-based Lion Point Capital — which holds roughly 12.3% of the Chinese-Canadian manufacturer’s shares — said it is willing to offer as much as $250 million to back the privatization bid. Shares of Canadian Solar jumped by more than 11% on Wednesday on the NASDAQ stock exchange in response to the news.

Unclear is exactly how serious the discussion is about going private or what it would mean for those companies currently installing Canadian Solar modules (probably not much for the latter). It will be interesting to see how serious Lions Point is and whether the rumored privatization actually goes through. Stay tuned.

More:

Lion Point Capital offers $250m to support Canadian Solar’s go-private bid

Creditors Spar In Court Over Suniva Solar Cell Production Assets (Full Complaint Attached)

SB 700 Passes California Assembly – SGIP Program Extended Five Years

By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent

The final days of the California legislative session have been big ones for clean energy. First, the Assembly passed a 100% renewable portfolio standard (RPS) on Tuesday. On Wednesday, they moved on to extend the Self Generation Incentive Program (SGIP) for five years, as well as adding $700 million in additional funding.

Now the bill will go back to the Senate for a concurrence vote and then on to Governor Jerry Brown for his signature. There are not expected to be any blips in that process.

As the California Public Utilities Commission says on its website:

The CPUC’s Self-Generation Incentive Program (SGIP) provides incentives to support existing, new, and emerging distributed energy resources. SGIP provides rebates for qualifying distributed energy systems installed on the customer’s side of the utility meter.

For consumer-sited solar, that typically means batteries.

Bill sponsor. Senator Scott Wiener, had this to say to SolarWakeup after the bill passed:

“We are one step closer to meeting our aggressive renewable energy goals,” said Senator Wiener. “By expanding our use of energy storage we will be able to use solar power every hour of the day, not just when the sun is shining. This bill will also help to expand solar use in every city and neighborhood in California, not just those that can afford it. SB 700 will ensure that all communities benefit from these rebates and from an increase in renewable energy.”

“We are making the sun shine at night!” said Bernadette Del Chiaro, executive director of the California Solar and Storage Association, the 500-member clean energy business group that has championed SB 700 for the past two years. ”SB 700 will do for storage what SB 1 did for solar over a decade ago, namely create a mainstream market by driving up demand and driving down costs all while creating jobs and clean energy choices for consumers.”

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Reaction from across the California solar industry was positive.

“Today’s Assembly vote to pass Senate Bill 700 is a win for clean energy and for all Californians,” said Alex McDonough, Vice President of Public Policy at Sunrun. “Sunrun has seen demand for home solar paired with batteries grow rapidly in recent years, as homeowners seek increased control over their energy bills and security for their families during power outages. We now look forward to the Senate’s concurrence on this important legislation that will unlock the incredible value that home batteries can provide for all Californians and our electricity grid.”

“Storage is an essential piece of building a carbon-free electric sector, and we applaud the Assembly for recognizing its role in our clean energy economy and passing SB700,” said Susannah Churchill, Vote Solar’s California Director. “Solar and storage are like peanut butter and chocolate: great on their own and even better together. We’re inspired by the last two days of forward-thinking among our California lawmakers and encourage continued momentum toward a fully decarbonized power sector. That means passing AB 893 and AB 813, which are both critical pieces of legislation to move the state and the country forward on clean energy and climate.”

“We are thrilled to see SB700 pass the Assembly,” said Rick Umoff, SEIA’s California state director. “This is a measure that we were proud to support because it will grow customer-sited energy storage, create local jobs and offer more tools to stabilize the grid. Our members and their customers will have an easier time deploying critical storage technology to the betterment of low income and disadvantaged communities, schools, hospitals and homes among others. We applaud CALSSA for the work it did to get this measure through the Assembly and we urge speedy passage in the Senate and enactment by Governor Brown.”

The Coming Battle: FERC Rules Storage Consumers Can’t Be Treated Differently Than Others By Utilities

By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent

The new battle lines are being drawn, and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) gave consumers a victory yesterday as utilities struggle to come to grips with customer-sited energy storage.

For years, utilities have tried, using various methods, to treat solar consumers as a separate class of customer, giving them the right to charge extra fees (among other mechanisms) that they charge to no other customer in their ratepayer base. These efforts, by and large, have been met with appropriate scorn by public utilities commissions around the country and have been rejected.

Now, however, a new front is opening, and it concerns energy storage consumers and curtailment, and the utilities are at it again.

In this specific case, Southern California Edison (SCE) brought its curtailment plan to FERC and asked if it could treat storage consumers differently than other consumers by charging an additional fee for “wholesale distribution access.” FERC, appropriately, said, “Greedy utilities say what now?”

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Through our invaluable friends at Utility Dive, we get this from FERC:

SoCal Edison has failed to demonstrate why it is just and reasonable and not unduly discriminatory or preferential to curtail one class of interconnection customer’s load (in this case, an energy storage device’s Charging Demand) without providing an opportunity to have the energy storage device’s load studied and to pay for the system upgrades needed to allow its load to have the same curtailment priority as other wholesale loads.”

In other words, get the heck out of here with that weak nonsense.

Of course, SCE has 30 days to get its ducks in a row and try again (say, by doing the study that FERC says is necessary), but the initial finding protects energy storage customers from being targeted by utilities looking to recoup losses from other investments, and it protects distributed-generation options for the moment. Kudos to FERC for doing the right thing.

More:

FERC says SCE can’t treat storage customers differently in service