Source: www.rechargenews.com

Rapidly emerging harsh-climate solar markets are driving the industry to explore innovations in module materials that would boost the long-term performance of PV projects, new research from Lux Research has found.

Growth of PV build out in extreme climate regions such as Mexico, Chile, Turkey, South Africa, India, and Malaysia, the US consultancy says, is leading to an all-of-the-above technology approach to develop modules that can avoid the “widespread decrease” in output caused by  environmental factors.

Metal wrap-through modules with polyolefin encapsulation for hot and humid climates, and glass/glass technology with polyolefin encapsulation for cold and snowy locations are two of the next-generation concepts seen as key to offsetting the “degradation [that is] growing in importance because of its impact on financial models, long-term reliability, and adoption in regions with extreme climates”.

“New evidence of climate-dependent degradation is creating new opportunities for non-standard material adoption in module packaging,” says Lux Researchanalyst Tyler Ogden, who was lead author of the report, Extending Lifetime and Performance: Breaking Down the Photovoltaic Module.

 “Recently unveiled module lines from Yingli and BYD use new materials, while other new module assembly designs are likely to be offered over the next five years,” he adds.

Developers determine the financials of project based on the expectation that conventional PV systems will last 25 years – when a module output is forecast to be producing 80% of its original rated power – with the “key determinant” of a module’s degradation being how the cells are interconnected and what materials are used in their packaging.

“As PV deployment expands globally, questions have arisen around how degradation is environment-dependent and how prevalent modes of degradation can be prevented,” says Ogden. “This report looks at current trends in the research community and industry in addressing degradation and improving performance.”

Ogden points to Case Western Reserve University and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in the US, as well as Austria’s Carinthian Tech, as leading organisations in researching technologies that will address degradation of PV modules.

Source :www.renewableenergyworld.com

Tucson Electric Power (TEP) said Nov. 4 that it is seeking bids for the design and construction of large new renewable energy resources, including a community-scale solar array that could power more than 21,000 homes.

TEP issued a request for proposals (RFP) Nov. 4 that would enable it to purchase power from a solar facility with up to 100 MW of capacity under a 20-year agreement. The project, which could be built within TEP’s service territory or tied into existing transmission facilities, would boost TEP’s total community-scale solar energy resources by nearly 40 percent. The new solar facility would begin producing power in early 2019.

“We’re working to provide more solar power for more customers for less money,” said Carmine Tilghman, senior director of energy supply and renewable energy, TEP. “This new solar facility will help us achieve our renewable energy goals while preserving safe, reliable and affordable service for our community.”

TEP is working to deliver at least 30 percent of its power from renewable resources by 2030, doubling the state’s 2025 goal. TEP anticipates an additional 800 MW of new renewable capacity by the end of 2030, boosting its total renewable energy portfolio to approximately 1,200 MW.

Prices for solar power from large solar facilities purchased through long-term agreements are about one-fourth of what they were just five years ago, the utility noted. The costs of installing utility-scale solar systems fell by about 12 percent in 2015 alone, according to a recent U.S. Department of Energy study.

TEP also is evaluating proposals submitted for a new 100-MW wind facility that would be built and owned by a project partner. According to the proposal, TEP would buy power from the new facility for up to 20 years, more than doubling its current wind-powered capacity of about 80 MW.

“Although we’ll primarily rely on solar energy to expand our renewable energy resources, the addition of new, cost-effective wind-powered resources would help to ensure reliability for our customers while further diversifying our renewable generation portfolio,” Tilghman said.

In a request for proposals, TEP had stated that it was looking for projects that can tie into the company’s transmission facilities located in the Four Corners region and along the Arizona/New Mexico border from geographic areas with productive wind resources.

Both RFPs are being managed by New Hampshire-based Accion Group.

Renewable resources play an important part in TEP’s increasingly diverse generating portfolio. The company has ceased burning coal at the H. Wilson Sundt station in Tucson and will retire 170 MW of coal-fired capacity when Unit 2 at the San Juan station in New Mexico is shut down next year. TEP has options to eliminate additional coal-fired capacity over the next 15 years. TEP has approximately 330 MW of total renewable generating capacity.

TEP provides electric service to approximately 417,000 customers in southern Arizona. TEP is part of UNS Energy, which is under Fortis Inc., which owns utilities that serve more than 3 million customers across Canada and in the U.S. and Caribbean.

Walmart is one of the U.S.’s largest retailers, winning trusts from customers on basis of its services and products. In a new roadmap that announced by the president and CEO Doug McMillion on November 4, Walmart aims to become the most trusted retailer by pointing to a “new era of trust and transparency,” or an agenda for sustainability.

Walmart targets to reduce 18% greenhouse gas emission by 2025 by using more renewable energy resources such as solar power as well as by altering its operation strategies.

The new roadmap covers a wide range of aspects from energy choice, operation, product retail, job creation, education to charitable activities. The schedule is set to be at 2025, and the whole announcement is as the following:

Walmart Offers New Vision for the Company’s Role in Society

At today’s Net Impact Conference, Walmart president and CEO Doug McMillon outlined a roadmap that will guide the company’s role in society on critical issues over the next several years, pointing to a “new era of trust and transparency.” The roadmap adds fresh detail to Walmart’s sustainability agenda and contains new commitments that reflect a wider recognition of the company’s impact on communities and the planet.

Among other things, Walmart is doubling sales of locally grown produce in the U.S.; expanding and enhancing sustainable sourcing to cover 20 key commodities, including bananas, coffee and tea; and implementing a new plan designed to achieve science-based targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Walmart is the first retailer with an emissions-reduction plan approved by the Science Based Targets Initiative, in alignment with the Paris Climate Agreement in December 2015. Under the approved plan, Walmart will use a combination of energy-efficiency measures, together with a commitment to source half of the company’s energy needs from renewable sources, to achieve an 18 percent emissions reduction in its own operations by 2025. Additionally, Walmart will work with suppliers to reduce emissions by 1 Gigaton by 2030, equivalent to taking more than 211 million passenger vehicles off of U.S. roads and highways for a year.

In his remarks, McMillon will also discuss company programs that will train hundreds of thousands of U.S. associates by the end of next year, providing them with skills needed to move from entry-level positions to jobs with more responsibility and higher pay, along with a new pledge to take a leadership role in promoting ethical recruitment and treatment of workers in the global retail supply chain.

Taken together, the initiatives are designed to make good on the company’s desire to become the most trusted retailer, not just by delivering affordable goods and a time-saving shopping experience, but with trust-building transparency and actions.

“We want to make sure Walmart is a company that our associates and customers are proud of – and that we are always doing right by them and by the communities they live in,” McMillon said. “That’s really what these commitments are about. And that’s why we’re so passionate about them.”

The roadmap builds upon the three environmental sustainability goals Walmart set in 2005: to create zero waste in company operations, to operate with 100 percent renewable energy, and to sell products that sustain natural resources and the environment. Those aspirational goals have guided how Walmart engages on those vital issues and progress has been made toward them. The new roadmap builds on progress to date, but also broadens the company’s vision of its role in society.

Source: pv.energytrend.com

India needs to install more than 10GW of renewables each year between 2017 and 2022 to meet its green target.

According to a new study, total annual investments in Indian utility-scale projects crossed the $10 billion (£8.18bn) mark last year, a figure that will need to reach $14 billion (£11.45bn) to hit the country’s 175GW renewables target for 2022.

This money would pay for the necessary increase in utility-scale renewables from 39GW in 2015 to 135GW in 2022, states Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF).

Indian project developers are trying to raise this investment from a variety of financial organisations and by issuing green bonds.

The fast-growing rooftop solar sector will need another $50 billion (£40.89bn) to provide the remaining 40GW. Annual installations have increased by nearly three times (from 72MW to 227MW) in the past three years and this trend is expected to continue.

The cost of electricity from rooftop solar is falling, with prices now as cheap as $69Mwh (£56.43Mwh), with lower costs driving market growth.

Shantanu Jaiswal, Lead India Analyst at BNEF said rooftop solar power costs are “now competitive with tariffs paid by industrial and commercial consumers and often comparable to average residential electricity rates”.

Source: www.energylivenews.com

Aqua Metals has produced recycled lead at commercial scale using its water-based technology — an industry first that Aqua Metals CEO Stephen R. Clarke says has “the potential to revolutionize lead recycling and make lead-acid batteries the only truly sustainable battery technology.”

The company produced the lead at its $30 million AquaRefinery in McCarran, Nevada. Instead of smelting, the most common way to recycle lead, AquaRefining uses an electrochemical process. The room temperature, water-based recycling method produces ingots of ultrapure lead. Because it uses a water-based process, it eliminates virtually all of the toxic waste issues generated by smelting and is safe for the environment, the company says.

Aqua Metals says it has verified that the lead produced in the AquaRefining module (pictured) is over 99.99 percent pure. The company will send its initial production samples to several US battery manufacturing companies, which collectively represent over 50 percent of US battery production, to allow them to conduct their own analysis.

Clarke said the production of lead with a commercial-scale AquaRefining module is “the most critical” piece of the AquaRefinery’s commissioning process. He added that the company plans to integrate the front-end battery-breaking portion of the facility in the weeks ahead.

The company manufactures AquaRefining modules at its headquarters in Alameda, California. It has built and delivered five modules to its Nevada AquaRefinery thus far and plans to install and commission a total of 16 modules for initial production capacity of 80 metric tons of lead per day.

Aqua Metals expects that the Nevada AquaRefinery will reach its initial production capacity within the coming months.

Earlier this year Aqua Metals signed an agreement with Interstate Batteries that will see the automotive battery distributor send more than 1 million automotive and other lead-acid batteries to be recycled at Aqua Metals’ AquaRefineries. Interstate Batteries also invested about $10 million into Aqua Metals.

Aqua Metals also has a strategic partnership with Battery Systems International and says it is in discussions with “nearly every major US based battery manufacturer and recycler, as well as data center operators and household Internet brands (which use lead-acid batteries for backup power).”

Source:www.environmentalleader.com

Source: planetsave.com

Like most colleges, Keene State College (KSC) in New Hampshire has depended on No. 6 fuel oil for decades to heat most campus buildings. Times, they are a-changing.  Last August, KSC met the demand for heat and hot water entirely through the use of purified waste vegetable oil. Since then, about 36% of the KSC campus, which is situated east of the Green Mountains and experiences all four seasons quite distinctly, has been heated by biofuel, a carbon neutral product.

In fact, KSC is the first higher education institution in the U.S. to heat with 100% purified waste vegetable oil, which burns at a similar temperature as No. 6 fuel oil but is much cleaner. “By choosing to replace polluting No. 6 heating fuel oil with an innovative new fuel derived entirely from waste cooking oil, we are taking bold steps to demonstrate our values by significantly reducing our greenhouse gas footprint and improving the wellbeing of the people on our campus and the surrounding community,” said KSC Director of Campus Sustainability, Cary Gaunt.

There are two general categories of waste oil and grease. The cleanest and easiest to work with is used cooking oil, also called waste vegetable oil or used fryer oil. This is edible oil that has been used multiple times in a deep-fat fryer. KSC incurred only a nominal upfront cost for minor adaptations to heating equipment as part of the conversion.

The KSC announcement about their partial switch to biofuel came as part of Campus Sustainability Month (CSM), an international celebration of sustainability in higher education held every October. CSM takes place on- and off-campuses and engages and inspires students and others affiliated with a campus to become sustainability change agents. Events include teach-in’s, sustainability pledge-drives, zero energy concerts, waste audits, green sporting events, letter writing campaigns, and service projects, among others. CSM offers campuses the platform to raise visibility of their efforts to bring more decentralized renewable energy sources to their community. The October CSM festivities serve as a reinforcement to April’s Earth Day and was a poignant moment for KSC to reveal its recent environmental successes with biofuel.

By experimenting with an environmentally-friendly alternative, KSC is at the forefront of a movement to withdraw from dependency on polluting fossil fuels. “Sustainability is a core value at KSC,” Gaunt added. The move to biofuels is part of a long history of KSC environmental activism, as the college was one of the original signatories of the American College and University President’s Climate Commitment, now titled the Carbon Commitment.

The College continues to develop projects and an overall plan to significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions campus-wide. It intends to expand biofuel use over the next few years so more campus spaces can benefit. While the college currently receives its shipments of purified waste vegetable oil biofuel from a Boston-based firm that manufactures the product, KSC also plans to recycle its own used cooking oil as heating oil in the near future.  Each step helps KSC cultivate a more diversified and resilient heating fuel portfolio.

KSC environmental studies major and Eco-Rep, Victoria Drake, summed it up.  “I feel a great sense of pride being a part of a community that is actively searching for ways to reduce their carbon footprint. The progress that is being made shows the dedication and concern that KSC has for our planet.”