Friday, 31 October 2014

Conergy connects RWE's first UK solar farm

Conergy has connected a 37 MW solar power plant to the grid for RWE Supply & Trading, the energy trading division of German utility giant RWE.

Located on a disused airfield at Kencot Hill, close to the historic village of Burford in West Oxfordshire -- the parliamentary constituency of British Prime Minister David Cameron -- the new power plant is already producing enough electricity to supply 10,000 homes in the local area.

Conergy will continue to operate and maintain the plant after its ownership is transferred to Foresight Solar Fund Limited, a London Stock Exchange-listed fund managed by Foresight Group.

Conergy noted that the Kencot Hill site was well-screened from the area's busy neighboring roads after the company planted 15 acres of woodland and installed and reinforced two miles of hedgerows. The solar farm has planning permission for 24 years, after which the land must be returned to its original use. In that time, it is expected to avoid the release of a quarter of a million tons of greenhouse gases.

"Large solar plants in the right places, like Kencot Hill, already allow thousands of people to run their washing machines and recharge their iPhones," said Conergy UK Managing Director Robert Goss. "They don't think about where the electricity comes from, but when they're asked what kind of power they want, most say solar. There are plenty of brownfield sites left in Britain, and a temporary invisible solar farm will always be more popular with the locals than a new housing estate or giant nuclear power station."

Conergy's international projects business tripled in the 12 months to June, when Bloomberg New Energy Finance ranked the company among the top five biggest builders of solar farms in the U.K.

Inside the Enphase storage play

Last week micro inverter supplier Enphase Energy unveiled its AC storage product at the SPI trade show in Las Vegas. The announcement attracted considerable hype and pv magazine spoke to Ameet Konkar, Enphase's senior director of strategic initiatives about the move.

So Enphase is moving into storage. Why storage and why now?


I think a big part of it is if you go back to our beginnings, we are not Enphase solar, we are not Enphase microinverter, we are Enphase energy. And so the overall vision was always to participate in a broader energy ecosystem. If you think about storage it’s becoming more of an extension of what solar needs, it’s not a “are we entering into storage?” it’s more of a natural extension of where solar needs to go.In Hawaii, parts of Europe, Queensland in Australia you are getting to the point where you need storage to be coupled with a solar solution, to actually start getting solar to the point of higher penetration.

So it was a natural extension. We thought it was the right time, where it is still early in the industry days, but when we think there are use cases in all the areas like I talked about. But I think this is now when storage is starting to get more-and-more traction with our solution, where you get price competitive, you get a more modular solution, where people can put a few [AC storage units together] and then expand out.

I think now it truly starts getting into the beginning of the market truly taking off. Why storage? It is a natural extension of what we were doing with energy management and I think it’s the right time when the market, in a year or two really takes off.

What is the significance of having the Enphase 5th generation S-Series microinverter actually in the battery unit?

The way of thinking about this is if you see solutions out there on the market, there are big massive power conversion systems and you are trying to combine that with massive battery systems and our whole way of thinking was, how can we make this modular and simple, the way we did with solar? It sounds like a catch phrase, but it truly was, “can we do for storage what we did for solar?”

The true breakthrough was this bi-directional microinverter, that’s what makes this possible. With that now you have the possibility of connecting that to a very modular, scalable small pack. It’s about a 1 kWh to1.2 kWh solution. And you combine that and now you have a complete solution with which people can just plug and play.

You can now size for different needs. Let’s say you buy an EV, and you want to charge it later on with cheap solar that you have stored during the day, it’s not easy to expand a storage system today. That’s where combining those two technologies and making a fully scalable modular box is the exciting part for me.

So modularity is key, but doesn’t it add to the cost?

Storage is still new, there are early adopters who irrespective of the cost will put storage in because they think it is the right thing to do. But I think if storage is going to move into the mainstream it’s important for people to get something that they can afford on an entry level and try it out.

Modularity is a big part of the value proposition and a big part of the thinking behind making this modular is that our existing installers can go and sell one or two of these, get the customer comfortable with it, demonstrate the benefit and then without any system changes go in and put four more. You just get four units, mount them, connect them in and then you now have six instead of two. And so I think that was giving the customer the flexibility that doesn’t exist in the market today, I think that is a big part of the value proposition that we wanted to bring to the market.


The AC battery looks very much like a residential product, is this indicating that residential really is the sweet spot for Enphase?
I don’t think so at all. It definitely is an area we know really well and we do really well in. But our new C250 Microinverter System, that pushes us further into the commercial side. Just the same way that we have shown microinverters are scalable with large commercial and we are even in conversations about doing utility scale, the same thinking applies to the AC battery solution.

We can rack them up in a big telecom rack and we are starting to speak with customers of commercial solutions that are 8kWh or 10kWh that you can mount on feeders and serve different parts of the commercial segment.

So yes, we are starting with residential, but given the interest that we have seen we expect commercial to follow very closely behind that.

There is a lot of hype here at SPI about storage technologies and the effect it will have on the PV industry. Do you honestly believe that it will have a major impact?

I think it will. I think there is a factor of timing, maybe that will be two years from now or four years from now, that is the crystal ball question everyone is asking. But I think it has to be. We’ve seen places like Hawaii, Queensland, Germany, where people simply connect solar to the grid and in a high penetration area it does create a lot of issues for grid stability.

As the industry matures and it continues to integrate with the solar industry, I think it just makes a lot of sense for managing intermittency, providing some peak shifting, I think in a lot of cases it will soon get to a point where to have a high penetration of solar, you are going to need to have some level of storage. It’s not an if, it’s more a question of when that that will become a reality.

What sort payback period are you talking about with the AB battery?

I think battery storage makes more sense in some areas than in others, that is the overall story with storage. We hope that making it an overall, modular product makes it easier from a price perspective and installation perspective.

The areas where the AC battery makes sense are the ones I keep repeating, Hawaii, Queensland, etc. But I think that as net metering keeps going away, where FITs keep going away, then it starts becoming a bigger financial case. The other part that is exciting is that we are talking to utilities about using our batteries not just for demand response but now the same new microinverter have on the rooftop, it actually provides reactive power. That becomes interesting because the utility can give the homeowner an incentive to provide them with grid stability, rather than paying big rate-based systems that they actually need to buy and put on the feeder.

Like peaking gas plants and the like?

Exactly. So I think that is where the financials will get to a breakthrough phase when the utilities begin to participate to the whole equation. It might be behind the meter, but the utilities can benefit from it and actually give some of the economics back to the homeowner. That’s where storage really takes off.

How are you planning to roll out the AC battery?

We are beta testing it next year, in the U.S., Europe and Australia. Then the full launch will be in all of those places, one after the other. We are trying to go global on this really fast. That’s because the use cases for the AC battery are not only in the U.S., it is in California, Hawaii, maybe the north east. So to capture the whole market you have to go to different places.

The beauty of that is that our microinverters are used everywhwere today, and so we understand those markets, the technical requirements etc. and so it’s the exact same requirements that we are putting inside. Yes there are some regulatory differences with storage between markets, but they are not new markets for us, so we are prepared to enter all of those pretty quickly.

The AC battery has a storage capacity of 1.2 kWh with an estimated lifetime of 10 years. Enphase plans to begin rolling it out in the second half of 2015.

Thursday, 30 October 2014

How to choose solar power batteries

Battery is one of the main components of photovoltaic power plants for energy storage, the upcoming solar energy batteries supplied into chemical energy stored in them. Usually during the day to charge the battery by the solar cell matrix, nighttime power to the load from the battery, solar battery charging in a semi-floating state.

To make the battery system has high reliability, we must first correct choice of batteries, UPS batteries and communication in the design there are different: Some batteries have better cycle characteristics; some battery suitable for start-up; some battery suitable for low-temperature environment; Some battery suitable for low current discharge and so on.

In the selection of batteries, battery on understanding the various differences between the process and the use is necessary, we must first fully understand the needs of users of the product itself. Such as back-up power system capacity requirements, frequency of use, the use of the environment, the main purpose, service life, reliability, instantaneous discharge rate, rectifiers battery specifications and other relevant performance requirements.

Second, we must understand the electrical performance of the battery, including product design parameters (battery model, the appearance of size, rated capacity, rated voltage, the weight, the weight ratio of the energy, the volume ratio of energy, design life, the number of positive and negative plates sheet, positive and negative plates thickness ratio, the electrolyte density, type plates, plate gate materials, etc.), the product electrical performance parameters, the actual life of the product, installation environment, different types of performance and price, different types of product warranty period, etc.

IKEA to offer residential solar panels in the Netherlands

Swedish furniture store IKEA is to offer residential solar panels in the Netherlands.

In partnership with thin-film module manufacturer and installer Hanergy, IKEA will offer residential solar panels in its Haarlem, Netherlands store.

Dutch customers can buy solar panels from IKEA with prices starting from €3200, and an average installation price for a 2.5kW system €4400. IKEA said it is also to offer a 15% discount to its ‘IKEA Family’ members.

IKEA plans to extend the availability for solar panels in its Utrecht, Netherlands store next month, Switzerland in December and six other countries in the future.

The expansion to the Netherlands is after a successful pilot in the UK which saw 1,500 systems sold. The pilot began in Southampton, UK in October last year – and was available from all UK stores by May 2014.

Hanergy and IKEA claim an installation could save €463 (54%) in electricity costs a year for customers from The Netherlands – a 10.5% return on the initial investment in the first year.

IKEA said the Netherlands has a growing solar industry with high public awareness of solar energy; 88% are aware that solar panels reduce energy bills and 70% are aware that solar panels still generate electricity when it is cloudy.

IKEA’s Netherlands sustainability manager, Lisen Wirén, said residential systems would suit customers “who want to live sustainably and save energy at the same time, without too high an investment".

Hanergy Solar UK CEO, Toby Ferenczi, said: “Residential solar panels are one of the best ways to reduce electricity bills and can provide significant annual savings.”

Hanergy is planning to “continue to work with IKEA in rolling out our offer in Europe following a successful UK pilot, and are looking forward to enabling as many families as possible to save on energy costs while living more sustainably” added Ferenczi.

Friday, 24 October 2014

Let PV share haze governance

Governance haze, from the production of clean energy start

Governance long-term "haze", not "put his head to see" so simple, Beijing long wanted to govern in 2017, is simply to take his own life in a joke. Los Angeles smog control with over half a century, the London cast off the "fog" hat with a 28-year, Beijing governance haze never be able to bear fruit in the short term.

Nor is it the responsibility of governance haze individual departments, but everyone should jointly undertake. I think Mao Daqing, executive vice president of Vanke Group, wrote in his "My 2014 Beijing Marathon of Shame" in an article well: Every runner should ponder, every individual we should change what they do, but our previous What did it? all issues are pushed to the "relevant" head, is tantamount to shouting "individualism," the slogan of "collectivism" to shirk their own responsibility!

Governance haze must start from the beginning now, everyone from the start, rather than the people of the world together to suck the fog. China Science and Technology Information Institute published an article, "London fog and haze control measures and enlightenment", where the second lesson is "the use of clean energy technologies, to develop a low-carbon economy." Do not think that the development of low-carbon economy seems to point to the level of national development strategies, individuals can not participate. In fact, everyone can become a clean energy producers, rather than spending on the environment can only harm the tradition of great energy. Photovoltaic, is making every ordinary residents to become clean energy producers as possible.

It is understood that, in Europe, especially Germany, collaborative community, community power cooperation, Consumers Union together, every household to install solar panels on the roof power, together forming cooperatives to sell electricity. This year, a large number of power generation companies no longer grow, but face competition from a number of small-scale power generation community. And the next 15 years, the United States will reduce the total installed generating a quarter of the fossil fuel generators, and renewable energy power generation capacity will be four times the current distributed photovoltaic power generation capacity may turn as much as twenty-fold.

"Third industrial revolution" in rice Rifkin author in a recent interview said: "I visited China last September during the National Grid issued a plan to invest $ 82 billion fund to Construction of distributed power grid and the Internet, as well as the construction of the smart grid, which means that China will be the country's strength and behavior so many people in their own homes in distributed generation, change the energy landscape. "Since 2013, the state issued a document frequently encourage and support the development of distributed PV industry, especially this year September release of "further implementation of distributed PV notice of the policy," and proposed 15 measures to strengthen the implementation of photovoltaic power generation policy, attaches great importance to the development of distributed PV.

More importantly, more and more individuals begin to understand and try to install photovoltaic systems. 2012 onwards, the country start to appear, "Photovoltaic first person", their personal stories of photovoltaic power generation process is reprinted reported , not only to promote and guide to some extent regulate the development of distributed photovoltaic power generation, but also allow more people to see the PV charm. PV solar power, is no longer a novelty, but also not as expensive a few years ago, it became a kind everyone can try, everyone can participate in lifestyle.

Thursday, 23 October 2014

PV Gangster turned upside down?

China's PV future leader should come from three phalanx: 2007 years ago overseas listed companies, 2011 years ago domestic listed companies, in 2013 after entering the industry's capital heavyweights. Now it seems that the possibility of the third phalanx seems greater because the world's largest PV terminal market day from China, the industry has entered the era of emphasis on capital operation ability from an emphasis on processing capacity.

When big brother is brilliant, it must be the most tired, at this time when the photovoltaic industry heavyweights more tired. Because, in terms of human and China PV industry as a new, industry uncertainty determines the constant innovation of enterprise adaptability and leading enterprises. This is not the time, high discipline Where Trina has not yet formed a strategic development under the new situation, and now have to take up the task of promoting the industry. Any healthy person of high discipline, the nature of the energy industry, it is a suitable business, industry leaders, but in terms of the current era of industry big change, this leader was whether a seat easily, only high discipline where they know. Look around, or willing, or able aspirations to the world are: New Energy Chamber of Commerce president Jun Li River, the Asian Photovoltaic Industry Association chairman Zhu Gong Shan, Zheng Jianming tailwind original thought is representative of the power of capital, who thought of a night and popped Dong Wenbiao investment in China this whistle troops.

From the industrial capital of thinking to thinking, from upstream to downstream processing simple pursuit of new business models, need only shipped from Europe to the global industrial chain layout, compared to 2004, PV bigwigs much more difficult. Then as long as you can buy more equipment, buried production on the line, you big capacity than others, you're the boss. Today, China has become the world's most competitive PV industry, according to boss others have inadvertently standards to you. At a time when the Chinese PV entrepreneurs, on the industrial environment, since the reform and opening up, Chinese entrepreneurs are most familiar with export-oriented processing environment has become in the past, the new world's most competitive business environment to support the development has not yet formed ; theory entrepreneurial thinking, currently China's international status has changed, even the Chinese are learning how to be your own boss, asked the Chinese PV entrepreneurs beyond this reality is even harder.