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SFCE Aug 17
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Chinese Firm Buys Controlling Stake in Suniva, Georgias Solar Star
Aug 14, 2015 | Global Atlanta
By Trevor Williams
A Chinese company owned by a billionaire property developer amassing a clean-energy empire has agreed to buy a controlling stake in Georgia’s homegrown solar success story. Shunfeng International Clean Energy Ltd., based in Changzhou, China, and listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange... -
Saudi Investors Join $70 Million VC Round For Solexel’s Thin Silicon Solar Technology
Aug 16, 2015 | Greentech Media
By Eric Wesoff
...Last week, Shunfeng acquired a majority state in advanced silicon solar cell builder Suniva. SolarCity acquired advanced silicon manufacturer Silevo last year. TetraSun was acquired by Firsr Solar in 2013. Solexel CFO Mark Kerstens suggested that most high-efficiency solar panel production is already spoken for by vertically... -
EU Tariffs on Chinese Solar Glass Go as High as 75%
Aug 17, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Jonathan Stearns
The European Union raised tariffs on solar glass from China, saying EU producers need extra protection from Chinese competitors. The EU increased a set of duties aimed at countering alleged below-cost—or “dumped”—imports to as high as 75.4 percent from a previous maximum of 36.1 percent. -
Commerce Decisions in Solar Reviews Challenged
Aug 17, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Rossella Brevetti
Commerce Department determinations in closely watched unfair trade cases on solar products from China are being challenged in the U.S. Court for International Trade by both SolarWorld Americas Inc. and foreign producers, according to recent court filings. Commerce on July 14 published the results of administrative... -
Air pollution in China is killing 1.6 million people a year, researchers say
Aug 14, 2015 | The Washington Post
By Sarah Kaplan
In parts of China, simply breathing can be deadly. “When I was last in Beijing, pollution was at the hazardous level; every hour of exposure reduced my life expectancy by 20 minutes,” Richard Muller, a physicist at University of California – Berkeley, said in a press release. -
USDA Droping $63 Million In Loans + Grants Across 264 Renewable Energy + Energy Efficiency Projects
Aug 17, 2015 | Clean Technica
By James Ayre
Roughly $63 million in loans + grants are being put into 264 new renewable energy + energy efficiency projects via the USDA’s Rural Energy for America Program (REAP), according to recent reports. The projects in question are projected to generate or save roughly 207.8 million kilowatt-hours (kWh) of electricity — roughly the electricity needed to... -
Energy Intensity Falls in China Provinces
Aug 17, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
Each of China's provinces, autonomous regions and state-level municipalities saw reductions in energy intensity per unit of gross domestic product in the first half of the year, the government announced. The biggest drops compared to the first half of 2014 came in the municipality of Shanghai (down 8.71 percent); in the provinces of Hebei... -
Alaska’s quest to power remote villages — and how it could spread clean energy worldwide
Aug 17, 2015 | The Washington Post
By Chris Mooney
This village of 600, an hour’s drive beyond Alaska’s northernmost city of Fairbanks, has long depended on the Tanana River. Along the banks, huge fish wheels use the river’s flow to catch salmon. On a July day, a barge was loaded up with supplies, perhaps to transport to even more remote communities — atop the stack of bulk goods ...
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Chinese Firm Buys Controlling Stake in Suniva, Georgias Solar Star
Aug 14, 2015 | Global Atlanta
By Trevor Williams
A Chinese company owned by a billionaire property developer amassing a clean-energy empire has agreed to buy a controlling stake in Georgia’s homegrown solar success story.
Shunfeng International Clean Energy Ltd., based in Changzhou, China, and listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, is set to pay $57.8 million for a 63.13 percent stake inNorcross-based Suniva Inc., which also has its flagship factory making high-efficiency solar cells and modules in Gwinnett County.
Shunfeng is owned by Zheng Jianming, a property tycoon and investor worth anestimated $1.9 billion whose Asia Pacific Resources Development holding company hasacquired billions of dollars in clean energy assets over the last two years.
In announcing the deal, Suniva revealed plans to create 300 new jobs by boosting manufacturing capacity in U.S. to 400 megawatts, up about 8 percent from 370 MW today,according to PV Magazine. Suniva currently employs about 350 people. The company didn’t say whether the new jobs would be located in Georgia, in its newer, larger plant inSaginaw Township, Mich., or spread across both. The partners are planning an eventual ramp-up to 1 gigawatt of capacity, they said. Suniva executives weren’t immediately available for comment.
Suniva moved all panel production back to the U.S. from Asia over the past few years, partly to qualify for government contracts with “Buy America” provisions that are driving much of the industry’s expansion in the U.S. A recent Suniva deal included the sale of modules to the Michigan Army National Guard’s Ft. Custer, and last year, the seven-year-old firm received a $2.3 million grant from the federal government to develop even higher-efficiency cells.
Shunfeng saw the acquisition as attractive for gaining a foothold in the U.S., according to documents filed in Hong Kong.
The merger "could further strengthen the Company’s global position in high-efficiency cells manufacturing at affordable costs, and more importantly enable the Company to reap the huge potential of the solar market in the United States,” according to the filing.
Shunfeng, which operates subsidiaries in clean energy around the world, also hinted that Suniva’s know-how would become part of its global manufacturing system. Suniva has long said its cells boast the highest rates of photovoltaic energy conversion while being relatively inexpensive to manufacture. The company claims its 19 percent conversion rate is a record in the industry.
Shunfeng last February purchased Wuxi Suntech Power Co., which was once reportedly the largest solar cell manufacturer in the world. Bloomberg reported in June that Shunfeng was seeking acquisitions in the U.S. and Asia to support a plan to boost Suntech’s production by 1 gigawatt.
At today’s (recently devalued) Chinese yuan rates, Shunfeng made $203 million in profit on $891 million in sales in 2014, according to its annual report.
According to Shunfeng’s filing, Suniva cut its losses from $44 million in 2013 to $15.5 million last year, at which point it had assets valued at $74.5 million. Shunfeng will pay for the 63 percent stake with a combination of $12 million in cash and 71 million newly issued shares in Hong Kong.
In an interview last year with Global Atlanta, Suniva pointed to the strength of the market in the U.S., rather than tariffs slapped on Chinese-assembled panels by the U.S., as its main reason for moving production back to the states. Using Suniva’s factories, Shunfeng would avoid that added cost in tapping the U.S. market. Suniva will keep its brand in the U.S., CEO Eric Luo told Bloomberg in an interview.
More Chinese Acquisitions to Come?
The Suniva deal illustrates a growing trend of Chinese investors acquiring U.S. firms for their manufacturing capabilities and market access.
Global Atlanta recently spoke with John Ling, new director of Georgia’s China office, about the potential of attracting more merger-and-acquisition activity from China.
Link: http://www.globalatlanta.com/article/27769/chinese-firm-buys-controlling-stake-in-suniva-georgias-solar-star/
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Saudi Investors Join $70 Million VC Round For Solexel’s Thin Silicon Solar Technology
Aug 16, 2015 | Greentech Media
By Eric Wesoff
Solexel, one of the few remaining stand-alone solar silicon startups, has completed a long-in-the-making $70 million round of funding and added Riyadh Valley Company, the VC investment arm of King Saud University of Saudi Arabia, to its list of investors. According to an SEC form, Solexel closed the D round in June.
Last year, Solexel added new investor GAF, a large roofing materials manufacturer, to its roster of investors, which includes SunPower, KPCB, Technology Partners, DAG Ventures, Gentry Ventures, Northgate Capital, GSV Capital, Jasper Ridge Partners, and Spirox. The firm's board of directors includes Mehrdad Moslehi and Michael Wingert of Solexel, as well as Ira Ehrenpreis of Technology Partners, Les Vadasz, Jan van Dokkum of KPCB, and Greg Williams of DAG Ventures. SunPower did not reinvest in last year's D round first close. Earlier this year Solexel picked up $25 million in senior debt financing from Opus Bank.
The startup hit an NREL-certified cell efficiency of 21.2 percent in 2014 with its back contact cell and looks to produce PV modules at 20 percent efficiency.
As we reported previously, Solexel looks to partner in Malaysia to build the modules and cells. The firm has a megawatt-scale pilot line in Milpitas, which it intends to "copy-exact in Malaysia," according to CFO Mark Kerstens.
Solexel is hoping to mass produce 35-micron-thick, high-performance, low-cost monocrystalline solar cells using a lift-off technology based on a reusable template and a porous silicon substrate.
According to the company's claims, the process ensures that the thin silicon is supported during handling and processing, while the back-contact, n-type cell dispenses with the need for expensive silver, using aluminum instead. The process uses no wet steps, according to CEO Michael Wingert, and employs CVD on trichlorosilane gas at atmospheric pressure, with silicon deposited at a rate of 2.5 microns per minute. The cell uses nearly ten times less silicon than conventional c-Si cells, at about 0.5 grams per watt.
Solexel claims that its cells don't need the support of glass, and it envisions using lightweight, non-glass sandwich panels in future product offerings. A resin and fiber carrier, akin to circuit board material, supports the thin cell and allows a diode to be added for module shading tolerance.
Board member Ira Ehrenpreis notes, "Solexel’s recent fundraise is one of the most successful capital raises in recent history for private solar cell and module manufacturing companies. Investors understand the extraordinary potential of combining a high efficiency, lightweight product with fully integrated electronics for shade management along with superior aesthetics for the rooftop segment of the market. Other companies have attempted to build a product with one of these elements, but no company has created a product that combined them all – until Solexel." He added, "While some still look in the rear view mirror and see the Darwinian process of several failed attempts by other solar companies, today most instead see the extraordinary growth of the solar market in recent years and an opportunity that’s still in its nascency. Innovative companies that produce differentiated products that can compete on cost, value, and aesthetics will be inevitable winners in the industry."
According to naseba, "The Middle East is the most liquid region in the world today and investors based there are keen to adopt innovation, as well as foster entrepreneurship." The D round included a sales commissions cost of $4.6 million paid to naseba, Harbor Light Securities and National Securities Corporation, according to the SEC document.
Last week, Shunfeng acquired a majority state in advanced silicon solar cell builder Suniva. SolarCity acquired advanced silicon manufacturer Silevo last year. TetraSun was acquired by Firsr Solar in 2013. Solexel CFO Mark Kerstens suggested that most high-efficiency solar panel production is already spoken for by vertically integrated firms, leaving few high-efficiency PV module choices.
Other firms in the thin silicon business include 1366 Technologies with its "direct wafer" technology using molten silicon directly converted into wafers, and Crystal Solar using a vapor deposition process for making thin crystalline silicon wafers.
Last year, Saudi investors acquired Solar Junction, a triple junction solar cell developer. Last month, Glasspoint, a CSP developer focused on enhanced oil recovery, closed a $600 million deal for the largest solar plant on the planet with Petroleum Development Oman (PDO), the largest producer of oil and gas in Oman.
Lightweight, attractive, high-efficiency modules can command a premium in certain residential and commercial markets. Meanwhile, First Solar, the thin-film solar leader, recently announced that its manufacturing lines in Malaysia are producing panels at $0.40 per watt at more than 15 percent efficiency. That cost seems to be in line with many of China's polysilcon module manufacturers.
It's taken Solexel close to $250 million to move this differentiated solar technology to the multi-megawatt pilot production line stage. Given the diminished state of cleantech VC, raising that scale of funding is remarkable and required some creativity on part of the team. As did solving what must have been immense materials, scale-up and automation issues for a new branch of solar manufacturing.
It's going to take even more creativity to access the capital required to reach true volume production in a solar market replete with multi-gigawatt-scale global vendors continuing to drive down cost and improve performance.
Link: http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/Saudi-Investors-Join-70-Million-VC-Round-For-Solexels-Thin-Silicon-Solar
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EU Tariffs on Chinese Solar Glass Go as High as 75%
Aug 17, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Jonathan Stearns
The European Union raised tariffs on solar glass from China, saying EU producers need extra protection from Chinese competitors.
The EU increased a set of duties aimed at countering alleged below-cost—or “dumped”—imports to as high as 75.4 percent from a previous maximum of 36.1 percent. The bloc imposed the anti-dumping protection against China in May 2014 for five years.
Chinese “exporting producers absorbed the anti-dumping duty in force,” the European Commission, the 28-nation EU's executive arm in Brussels, said Aug. 14 in the Official Journal. “Hence, anti-dumping measures imposed on imports of solar glass from glass originating in the People's Republic of China should be amended.”
The higher duties range from 17.5 percent to 75.4 percent, depending on the Chinese exporter. The previous minimum rate was 0.4 percent. The new levels were to take effect Aug. 15.
The EU decision to boost anti-dumping protection against solar glass from China is the outcome of a probe opened in December 2014. The verdict leaves unchanged a separate set of EU duties on Chinese solar glass aimed at countering alleged subsidies by China.
Solar glass is used in solar panels, which are themselves the target of European anti-dumping and anti-subsidy levies against China.
The EU solar-glass market is valued at less than 200 million euros ($223 million), the commission said when it opened a dumping inquiry in February 2013 that led to the five-year anti-dumping levies against China.
Link (subscription needed): http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=74400913&vname=dennotallissues&fn=74400913&jd=74400913
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Commerce Decisions in Solar Reviews Challenged
Aug 17, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Rossella Brevetti
Commerce Department determinations in closely watched unfair trade cases on solar products from China are being challenged in the U.S. Court for International Trade by both SolarWorld Americas Inc. and foreign producers, according to recent court filings.
Commerce on July 14 published the results of administrative reviews on the duties it placed on Chinese solar manufacturers in 2012 in cases brought by SolarWorld. Administrative reviews, which may be requested each year, determine whether the extent of dumping or subsidization has changed since the order went into effect or since the prior review period.
Domestic producer SolarWorld is challenging portions of the administrative review on the countervailing duty order and the dumping order (SolarWorld Americas Inc. v. United States; No. 15-00232, No. 15-00231). Plaintiffs Changzhou Trina Solar Energy Co., Ltd. and Trina Solar (Changzhou) Science and Technology Co., Ltd., foreign producers and exporters of crystalline silicon photovoltaic cells, are challenging Commerce's final results in the countervailing duty administrative review (Changzhou Trina Solar Energy Co., Ltd. v. United States, No. 15-00233).
In another filing, Yingli Green Energy Holding Co. Ltd. (Yingli) and affiliates, including Yingli Green Energy Americas, Inc., a U.S. importer of crystalline silicon photovoltaic cells, are challenging Commerce's determination in the antidumping administrative review (Yingli Green Energy Holding Co. Ltd. v. United States; No. 15-00222). The trade court has granted the plaintiffs' motion for a preliminary injunction to delay implementation of the Commerce decision pending resolution of the litigation, including possible appeals, in the Yingli suit.
In the countervailing duty review, Commerce put most anti-subsidy rates at 21 percent. The administrative review of the dumping order resulted in margins averaging 9.67 percent for most Chinese firms reviewed. The antidumping duty rate for firms not named on the list of companies reviewed was 238 percent.
The merchandise covered by the orders is crystalline silicon photovoltaic cells, and modules, laminates and panels, consisting of crystalline silicon photovoltaic cells, whether or not partially or fully assembled into other products, including, but not limited to, modules, laminates, panels and building integrated materials.
Link (subscription needed): http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=74400937&vname=dennotallissues&fn=74400937&jd=74400937
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Air pollution in China is killing 1.6 million people a year, researchers say
Aug 14, 2015 | The Washington Post
By Sarah Kaplan
In parts of China, simply breathing can be deadly.
“When I was last in Beijing, pollution was at the hazardous level; every hour of exposure reduced my life expectancy by 20 minutes,” Richard Muller, a physicist at University of California – Berkeley, said in a press release. “It’s as if every man, woman, and child smoked 1.5 cigarettes each hour.”
Muller is a co-author of a new paper in the journal PLOS One that takes an issue we’ve all heard of — the pollution that clogs the air over much of China — and examines its eventual consequences for human health.
[PHOTOS: China is disappearing]
The results were striking: According to the study, air pollution is responsible for killing 1.6 million Chinese a year, about one sixth of all the premature deaths in the country.
Both Muller and his co-author, physicist Robert Rohde, are researchers at Berkeley Earth, a non-profit devoted to analyzing global climate data.
Using data from China’s national air quality reporting system and two third-party sources, the scientists mapped the concentrations of six major pollutants across eastern China, where 97 percent of the country lives. Earlier studies have also put the annual death toll between 1 and 2 million, according to the Associated Press, but this is the first to use real data from the Chinese monitoring system.
Though air quality varies month by month and day by day, Muller and Rohde found that 92 percent of the country’s population experience 120 hours or more of pollution levels considered “unhealthy” by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. For more than a third of Chinese citizens, the air they breath averages “unhealthy” levels full time.
In the U.S., the region with the highest level of particle pollution is Fresno-Madera, Calif., according to the American Lung Association. The area sees an average of 47 days a year when air quality hits “unhealthy” levels.
But 99.9 percent of the eastern half of China has a higher annual average for small particle haze than Madera, Rohde told the AP.
“In other words, nearly everyone in China experiences air that is worse for particulates than the worst air in the U.S.,” he said.
The worst of the pollutants was particulate matter — tiny bits and pieces like soot, dust and smoke that hang in the air and infiltrate the lungs. Much of it comes from the burning of fossil fuels, but not always in the expected places. For example, despite the often intense focus on Beijing’s air quality problem (the U.S. Department of State runs a Twitter account that posts hourly reports on air quality in the city) much of the city’s pollution actually comes from areas to the southwest.
The researchers then plugged the Chinese and third-party data into a modeling framework from the World Health Organization that links pollution levels to deaths from fatal health problems like lung disease and stroke. That gave them the 1.6 million number, the equivalent of 4,000 deaths a day.
“It’s a very big number,” Rohde told the AP. “It’s a little hard to wrap your mind around the numbers.”
In the U.S., roughly 200,000 early deaths are caused by air pollution every year, according to a 2013 study from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
But according to the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington, air pollution is only the 10th most problematic risk factor for early death in the U.S., far behind diet, smoking, high body mass index and several others.
In China, the IHME found, ambient and household air pollution are the fourth and fifth most common risk factors for death, after only diet, high blood pressure and smoking.
The study comes as Chinese officials boast of progress on pollution ahead of the 2022 Winter Olympics, which will be held in Beijing. Old vehicles are being taken off the streets of Beijing, and two coal-fired power plants have been closed.
But because Beijing’s major sources of pollution are outside the city, those efforts might not be enough to clean things up before the winter games,Rohde warned.
According to the AP, the research was praised by outside scientists. Jason West, an environmental scientist at the University of North Carolina, said he expects “it will be widely influential.”
Link: http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/08/14/air-pollution-in-china-is-killing-1-6-million-people-a-year-researchers-say/
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USDA Droping $63 Million In Loans + Grants Across 264 Renewable Energy + Energy Efficiency Projects
Aug 17, 2015 | Clean Technica
By James Ayre
Roughly $63 million in loans + grants are being put into 264 new renewable energy + energy efficiency projects via the USDA’s Rural Energy for America Program (REAP), according to recent reports.
The projects in question are projected to generate or save roughly 207.8 million kilowatt-hours (kWh) of electricity — roughly the electricity needed to provide for the needs of 13,600 US households a year.
The Agriculture Secretary, Tom Vilsack, commented: “This funding will have far-reaching economic and environmental impacts nationwide, particularly in rural communities. Investing in renewable energy and energy efficiency projects supports home-grown energy sources, creates jobs, reduces greenhouse gas pollution and helps usher in a more secure energy future for the nation.”
Augusta Free Press provides some examples of the projects in question:Bradley Phillips, owner of AB Phillips & Sons Fruit Farm, is receiving an $18,000 grant to install a photovoltaic solar system on his farm in the village of Berlin Heights, Ohio. The system will generate nearly 13,000 kilowatt hours of electricity annually. Phillips grows apples, peaches, pears, plums, raspberries, cherries and grapes on a farm that has been in his family for more than a century.Blue Sky Poultry, of Bainbridge, Georgia, has been selected for a $16,094 grant to install a solar array on the roof of the poultry houses. The array is expected to generate 36,300 kWh of electricity per year.Stokes Farms, of Chatfield, Minnesota, is receiving a $19,750 grant to install a 10 kW wind turbine. When operational, the project is expected to generate 30,000 kWh of electricity per year.Lakeview Biodiesel, will use a $3.3 million loan guarantee to help acquire a Missouri biodiesel plant and make improvements to bring it online to produce enough biodiesel to run approximately 16,500 vehicles annually.In North Carolina, South Winston Farm, is receiving a $4 million loan guarantee to finance a 7 megawatt solar array system that is expected to generate enough energy to power 994 households per year.
Those eligible to make use of the REAP program are free to use the funds for: energy efficiency improvements, the installation of solar energy, wind energy, geothermal, biomass, hydroelectric, hydrogen, or oceanic energy systems.
For those interested, the next application deadline for grants is November 12, 2015.
Link: http://cleantechnica.com/2015/08/17/usda-droping-63-million-loans-grants-across-264-renewable-energy-energy-efficiency-projects/
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Energy Intensity Falls in China Provinces
Aug 17, 2015 | BNA Daily Environment Report
Each of China's provinces, autonomous regions and state-level municipalities saw reductions in energy intensity per unit of gross domestic product in the first half of the year, the government announced. The biggest drops compared to the first half of 2014 came in the municipality of Shanghai (down 8.71 percent); in the provinces of Hebei (down 7.19 percent ), Jilin (down 7.05 percent ) and Zhejiang (down 6.11 percent); and in the municipality of Tianjin (down 6.04 percent). The Aug. 13 announcement from the State Council came two days after China noted a similar trend for the country as a whole (155 DEN A-2, 8/12/15). Electricity consumption dropped in all areas except Xinjiang, which saw an 11.85 percent increase as more heavy industry and petrochemical facilities relocated there; the autonomous region of Inner Mongolia, where it rose 2.75 percent; and Guangdong province, where it was up 0.59 percent. The largest drops in electricity consumption came in Shanghai, down 9.3 percent, Hunan, down 8.22 percent, and Henan, down 7.53 percent. The State Council announcement is available in Chinese at https://tinyurl.com/qbhap2m.
Link (subscription needed): http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=74400911&vname=dennotallissues&fn=74400911&jd=74400911
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Alaska’s quest to power remote villages — and how it could spread clean energy worldwide
Aug 17, 2015 | The Washington Post
By Chris Mooney
This village of 600, an hour’s drive beyond Alaska’s northernmost city of Fairbanks, has long depended on the Tanana River. Along the banks, huge fish wheels use the river’s flow to catch salmon. On a July day, a barge was loaded up with supplies, perhaps to transport to even more remote communities — atop the stack of bulk goods was an all-terrain vehicle.
Even when it’s frozen, the residents use the river to hunt, traveling by dog sled or snowmobile. “I have to use the river to trap beaver in the wintertime,” says Victor Lord, the second chief of the Nenana tribe, which runs the town alongside a city government. “It’s a third highway for us.”
And one day, maybe, the river will serve as a kind of power line, too. This summer, researchers with the Alaska Center for Energy and Power, a research institute at the University of Alaska at Fairbanks, have come here with Oceana Energy, a small private energy firm, to test a “hydrokinetic” turbine that draws energy from the flow of the river. From a barge held in the water by a three-ton anchor, they lower the white, doughnut-shaped device (with short blades on the inside and out) through a moon door — and it starts to turn when water hits it. It kicks up a spray — at least until the turbine is submerged.
Anticipation is high — renewable energy from rivers holds promise beyond traditional sources such as wind and solar, even if it’s far from clear whether the current technology will rise above competition or succeed in the marketplace.
“Everybody uses the analogy of where wind was 15 years ago,” the university’s Jeremy Kasper, who is leading the research at Nenana, says of river power. “Everybody’s trying to come up with a good design and drive down the cost of production.”
Alaska, a vast landmass with harsh winters and many remote native towns and villages facing dramatic electricity costs, has become an important and unique innovator in renewable energy. The implications extend far beyond the state. From Africa to small Pacific island chains, successfully powering grid-less, remote or underdeveloped communities with renewable energy, and easing their reliance on fossil fuels, is one of the biggest energy challenges of the century.
“We prove up the technology, we prove up the economics, and then maybe it has application in Africa or the Canadian Arctic,” says Gene Therriault, director of policy and outreach at the Alaska Energy Authority, the state agency that has put over $1 million into the testing of the Oceana Energy turbine at the Tanana River test site.
President Obama will visit Alaska this month. And while his full itinerary hasn’t been disclosed, the president has said that he’ll “be the first American president to visit the Alaskan Arctic, where our fellow Americans have already seen their communities devastated by melting ice and rising oceans.”
In Kivalina, for instance, far to the northwest of Nenana and vastly more remote, 400 people live on a Chukchi Sea barrier island that is hammered by storms and intense erosion, threats accelerated by declining sea ice offshore.
But as the president may see if he visits one of these communities, a changing climate isn’t their only challenge. Additional problems include sanitation (Kivalina lacks running water in most of its buildings) and what’s primarily driving energy innovation in the state: dramatically high energy costs.
For a long time, Alaska’s rural communities, living off the grid and in many cases not accessible by road, have overwhelmingly turned to diesel generators for power — and, when temperatures drop well below zero, simply to ensure safety. But transporting their fuel — by barge like the one moored at Nenana or by plane — is very expensive.
Diesel fuel and heating fuel costs in remote villages can be as much as $10 per gallon, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. Alaskans overall paid an average price of 18.12 cents per kilowatt hour of electricity in 2013, according to federal data — second only to New York and Hawaii. In some remote villages, costs can be more than 40 cents per kilowatt hour — and that’s after contributions from a state program designed to equalize energy costs.
Even though Alaska is traditionally known as an oil state, “remember that we’re paying more for hydrocarbon energy than anybody,” says Mead Treadwell, a former lieutenant governor. “The last thing people who live in a place known for cold, dark and distance need is higher energy prices.”
Clearly, renewable energy would be a great benefit to Alaska’s small villages — but there are also unique hurdles to deploying it. For one thing, renewable power solutions that are coming on strong in the lower 48 states don’t necessarily work as well up here.
Solar, for instance, is less useful in the long dark night of the northern winter. And that’s when electricity costs, due to home heating, are highest. Large batteries are also problematic, says Brent Sheets, of the university’s Alaska Center for Energy and Power, which is operating the Tanana River test site. When they are past their working life, they can become a form of bulk waste, difficult and expensive to transport back and dispose of safely.
[On Tesla and the coming revolution in energy storage]
But Alaska has experimented successfully with microgrids — small electric distribution systems that can operate connected to or apart from a larger grid. A microgrid, for example, could be set up to provide power to a small community, an island or a military installation. Precisely because of its many remote villages and its weather extremes, Alaska hosts more than 200 of them, more than any other state, according to Navigant Research.
For now, diesel remains the dominant provider of energy to these remote grids. Of over 200 microgrids, just over 70 have integrated renewable power into the mix, according to the Alaska Center for Energy and Power.
The next step lies in microgrids that integrate multiple power sources, piling diverse renewables on top of diesel. After all, the latter isn’t just pricey. It has many negative environmental consequences. It has been tied to emissions of black carbon, or soot, which can increase the warming of the Arctic by darkening ice when it falls upon it — thus decreasing its ability to bounce sunlight back into space and accelerating melt.
So what can displace diesel? It turns out the Alaskan landscape offers several potential energy sources — wind, tidal or river power, and geothermal energy. The trick, though, is making sure they work, getting the costs down, and then successfully integrating them into remote energy systems, where every time you add a power source to the mix, you also add complexity.
Alaska has 17.1 percent of the United States’ total hydrokinetic energy potential, according to a recent estimate, and 200 off-the-grid villages, many of which are located near rivers or other bodies of water. And that’s just Alaska.
“With 7.2 billion people in the world, a lot of them are not on the grid, a lot of them tend to live near water, and so we think that there’s a tremendous potential all around the world for a river turbine,” says Dan Power, president of Oceana Energy, which holds the patent on the turbine system.
Humans have drawn power from rivers, going back to ancient water mills that used the energy of flowing water to grind grain or perform other tasks. Huge hydroelectric dams operate on the same basic principle – drawing on the energy of flowing water to turn a turbine and generate electricity. So do Nenana’s fish wheels — they use the river’s flow to turn a wheel that’s attached to nets that catch fish.
But dams are controversial because of their environmental consequences — so a new generation of water-based research focuses on tapping the energy of tides, waves and undammed river flows. Oceana is a contender in the final space — trying to capture the kinetic energy of a free-flowing river through turbines. And it’s also bucking a trend toward devices that resemble underwater windmills — Oceana thinks they’re too fragile in an environment in which water is hundreds of times denser than air — in favor of a more compact, doughnut-shaped turbine with relatively short and thin blades.
But other companies such as Ocean Renewable Power Company of Portland, Maine, have a different technological approach. Its RivGen Power System, which has two turbines, has also been tested in Alaska.
River power has its advantages — a steady flow, able to provide a reliable form of baseline power — but also unique challenges.
Perhaps the biggest one is that riverine debris, especially floating logs and tree branches, can clog or damage turbines. Indeed, debris problems arose quickly at attempted river power installations at the Alaska towns of Eagle and Ruby.
“Surviving in any water-based environment for a 20-year design life is very difficult,” says Jose Zayas, who heads the Energy Department’s Wind and Water Power Technologies Office, which has supported hydrokinetic research through a partnership with several universities, including the University of Alaska at Fairbanks.
To deal with debris at the site on the Tanana River near Nenana, Kasper’s team built a device — essentially, a large V-shaped structure with a rotating cylinder at the front — to shunt debris around the barge.
A critical factor in generating river power involves the speed of the water – anything less than 1 1/2 knots can’t get the turbine running, and to generate significant power, you need speeds of at least 3 knots. At 7-knot flow speeds, the turbine can power about 10 homes, says Ned Hansen, the chief technology officer at Oceana Energy. For greater energy loads, larger turbines might be deployed or rows of turbines might be used.
Another problem involves getting the power to shore — without running cables underwater in such a way that they could also be damaged by debris. For now, researchers are running tests to measure how much power is generated and how much that varies, and are working to ensure that fish are not harmed. (Nets at the back of the barge sample whether any fish have come through and been injured.)
And then comes the problem of integrating a new power source into a small village grid or microgrid. Recently, the Alaska Center for Energy and Power took the turbine out of the river to run it at a tank at the university in Fairbanks, where its power output will be studied as part of a “test bed” that closely emulates the power demands of an actual village — a key step toward merging a new energy source with a system that has, as its backbone, a fleet of diesel generators.
“In small power grids, the changes in demand from second to second are much greater relative to total demand than they are in larger grids,” says Marc Mueller-Stoffels, a professor at the University of Alaska at Fairbanks who heads the Power Systems Integration Lab at ACEP, which is studying how to safely and reliably add new sources of energy to these small grids.
So when you add more sources to these grids, “the complexity of the control task does not simply increase linearly with the number of new devices added,” he says.
But if all of these challenges are met, Sheets says, river energy holds great potential. For three months of the summer when rivers are flowing, he says, his team’s research suggests that turbines could fully power villages.
“That three months, there’s enough density in the water coming through, that that could equal or be greater than 12 months of wind power,” he says. So when the technology is fully developed, “we ought to be able to go diesels off in the summer.”
Back in Nenana, the village seems to welcome the experiment. While Nenana does get power from the grid — it is close enough to Fairbanks for that — the research project has extended transmission lines along a new stretch of the river, says Victor Lord, the Nenana tribe’s second chief.
“That was one big benefit to get that power line put in, so I can subdivide the land out to people,” Lord said. The village has also benefited from research on the river’s fishery, which has been conducted to make sure the turbine isn’t having any ecological costs, Lord says.
So would Nenana ever want to be powered by the very river that lies just outside people’s doors? Lord thinks so. The town could “maybe put it into our power grid, and lower our prices to run our offices up here, and our council, where we run our celebration,” he says.
“Yeah, I’m sure down the line it could help out a lot.”
Link: http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2015/08/14/how-alaskas-quest-to-power-remote-villages-could-help-the-rest-of-the-planet/
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