October 31, 2024 – Volume 26, Issue 10
In This Issue
- Flanigan’s Net Positive: Really Big and Really Small Solar
- Australian Rooftop Solar Hits 50% of Demand
- Heat Pumps at Scale
- Space-based Solar Power
- Bi-Directional EV Charging
- Home Depot Purging Plastics
- Climate Change Course Now Required at U.C. San Diego
- Flanigan’s Eco-Logic Podcast Updates
Flanigan’s Net Positive: Really Big and Really Small Solar
Miles of solar. Solar for as far as the eye can see. A gigawatt currently, with another gigawatt to come. EcoMotion hired to inspect remediation efforts on a multi-hundred megawatt solar system, many, many “blocks” of solar arrays.
We’re far from the residential rooftops of Santa Monica where EcoMotion began in solar. This is so big and flat that it’s hard to get your bearings in the vast fields of panels… thousands of acres of solar. An industrial sea of solar.
EcoMotion has had a five-person crew onsite in the Central Valley for nearly two weeks conducting the inspection at this massive utility-scale installation, methodically moving from row to row of trackers and panels, checking a random ten percent for new connectors and wire management. We provide thermographic imaging of findings. It’s tedious work; I am proud of the crew. And I reminisce….
It was the early 1990s. Don Osborn was in charge of Sacramento Municipal Utility District’s very exciting and pioneering solar program. He had a far-out dream for the utility, and for the solar industry. He believed that if we would just get worldwide solar production to 60 MW… we’d hit the tipping point. Then solar would take off! That was just over thirty years ago. Today there are 1.2 terrawatts of solar capacity installed… that’s 1,200 GW, or 1,200,000 MW… 20,000 times Don’s dream!
In 2008, I remember visiting the world’s largest solar system in 2008. It was in Leipzig, Germany, the site of a former East German air base. At the time, 10 MW was built and made a huge impression on us. We learned that it was so large that its operators could measure the power captured from moonlight. Another 30 MW was under construction. They built a special five kilometer transmission line to connect the system… and that seemed like a big deal too.
But last week, those memories of solar at SMUD are wiped away with the new solar reality. The “early” German solar tour’s memories of large systems are now dwarfed by our current work… our team immersed in quantum levels more solar… an unimaginable amount of solar. Endless acres of solar on single-axis trackers. It’s a slow-moving water ballet, tables of panels start facing east, then shift to the west to catch the afternoon sun. We hear the tables adjusting for maximum insolation… shifting by degrees throughout the sunlit period.
And now the Net Positive perspective radically shifts from really large… to really small. I marvel at the simplicity of balcony solar in Germany. Fascinating. For many renters, it’s a pair of panels hanging on the balcony railing, like drying laundry. The systems – or “kits” as they are called – are connected to a microinverter plugged into a wall outlet. They feed electricity directly into the home. On sunny days, the power is enough to power an apartment. This is miles away from utility-scale solar in the Central Valley.
Now hundreds of thousands of Germans have these balcony solar systems. They are mini solar systems, completely behind the meter. They can be bought online or “at the supermarket” for ~$550. Regulations limit their size to 800 watts…enough to power a fridge or charge an e-bike. No need for an electrician or permit, they are easy to install and thanks to a potent mix of government policies, more than 550,000 have been installed, half of which were installed in 2023. In the first half of 2024, Germany added 220,000 “plug-in devices,” Now there is a total of 200 MW of balcony solar, albeit a fraction of the 16 GW of residential rooftop solar, but a solar contribution where none existed before.
The technology for these plug-in microsystems has been around for a decade. They combine panels, a small inverter, and a cord to plug into the household electric socket. In 2019 the German government enacted policies to allow for plug-in solar devices.
German lawmakers continue to support balcony solar, earlier this year simplifying permitting and registration requirements. Participants are not required to pay the VAT tax when buying the systems. Lawmakers also passed a law intended to prevent landlords from arbitrarily blocking installations. Cities throughout Germany have offered millions of Euros in subsidies to install balcony solar. Berlin offers 500 Euros, about half the cost of a balcony system. Kits now come with a battery option.
Homeowners have 5 – 8 year paybacks depending on the location and shading. The systems are popular, a tangible way to take action. Owners know to use power during sunshine hours to ensure that washing clothes or charging is generated onsite and is renewable. Balcony solar kits feature an app that tracks daily use. It presents a scorecard… something of a game. The systems are increasingly popular in Austria, the Netherlands, and France.
From big solar to really small solar… In my view we need it all!
Quote of the Month
“We’re phasing out coal-fired heat and replacing it with carbon-neutral district heating produced from wind and seawater. The switch will save around 120,000 tonnes of CO2 emissions per year and support Denmark’s effort to integrate electric renewables into the grid.”
Kenneth Jørgensen, Project Director
DIN Forsyning, Esbjerg, Denmark
Australian Rooftop Solar Hits 50% of Demand
Image Courtesy of CSIRO
For the first time, Australian rooftop solar has provided 50% of demand on the country’s main grid. Rooftop solar reached 50.4% of the country’s kW demand at 1:00 pm on a Saturday. The record set was the aggregate output of solar on millions of Australian households, eclipsing a 49.3% record set six days earlier.
This moment in time is known as “instantaneous demand,” any one moment in time that power being used, the load supplied. In terms of actual energy delivered (kWh), rooftop solar in Australia provided 11.2% of the country’s power supply in 2023, climbing above 10% for the first time.
There is now a whopping 22.58 GW of rooftop solar in Australia… some 3.7 million installations… and this is expected to grow four-fold in the coming decades. Households and businesses are going solar to offset “soaring” electricity prices. Inversely, utilities are selling less power, setting new record lows of coal and gas use. The same week as solar soared, the average coal share over a seven-day period fell to below 50% for the first time. The result of the rooftop solar boom is a new phenomenon called “operational demand.” It’s what’s left for utilities and system operators to provide, net of solar generation.
There are reports that low levels of operational demand are alarming system operators. They face a new reality called “minimum system load,” minimum amounts of power they deliver given their power plant operations and power purchase contracts. One utility CEO there noted that baseload coal and gas peaker plants “no longer fit” the modern grid. This might result in using batteries to suck up power in the middle of the day. There has been discussion of curtailing solar. In cases, and at last, baseload plant operating procedures are changing, now ramping down their output 20%, and then up again. This was never done before.
The speed of solar development in Australia is “breathtaking.” The instantaneous share of solar generation was just 38% three years ago. Six years ago it was 12.6%. Today it is over 50% and rising. Utilities there are struggling with the death spiral as their higher and higher costs drive more and more consumers away to find their own rooftop power solutions.
Heat Pumps at Scale
It’s been years since I visited Stockholm for the first time. It was the early 1990s and the European efficiency ethic was on full display in that Swedish city. Massive heat pumps were extracting heat from the City’s wastewater system, and using the heat. Coolants in the machines sucked away degrees of warmth, that free heat feeding into Stockholm’s district heating system.
The Atlantic reports on that facility: Stockholm’s Hammarbyverket plant remains the world’s largest heat pump. The plant is made up of seven electric-powered heat pumps each the size of a two-story house. It was installed in 1986… I was there in 1988. The impetus for the facility was to wean Sweden off fossil fuels and the volatility of their supply.
Stockholm Energi reports that its first heat pumps were pulling heat from IBM mainframe computers. Modern data centers use huge amounts of energy to run and cool their servers. Other energy-intensive industries also produce heat that can be captured by heat pumps. But generally, and even in Europe, heat pump adoption has been held back by the low cost of burning natural gas… the traditional form of heating. Now climate commitments, and the closure of many coal and gas-fired plants that provide waste heat to district heating systems, is bringing heat pump technology to the forefront.
A notable and recent heat pump installation is in Esbjerg, Denmark. At that port, the new heat pump system will draw heat from seawater using supercritical CO2 as a refrigerant, pressurized and heated above its critical point. The plant will heat 25,000 households, replacing the heat from the coal plant that will be retired, cutting 120,000 metric tones of annual CO2 emissions.
Helsinki, Finland is building a new plant to provide for as much as 40% of its heating requirement. In Vienna, a new system is in place to heat 56,000 households, with plans to double its size in the coming years. These are sizable heat pump systems, aligned with shutting down the coal plants that have provided the waste heat for district heating systems. Coal-fired heat is being replaced with heat pumps running on renewable electricity.
In the United States, there is a resurgence of interest in heat pump systems in the university sector as schools look for tools to help them follow through on climate commitments. Princeton University is building a large geo-exchange system with ground-source heat pumps that will heat and cool its campus. The system uses hundreds of 850-foot bore holes and a 13-mile distribution network of pipes to transfer heat among 180 buildings. With savings of millions of dollars each year, Princeton plans to phase out natural gas and to achieve net zero emissions by 2046, the school’s 300th anniversary.
Solar-based Solar Power
Image Courtesy of American Foreign Policy Council (AFPC) Publication
Space-based Solar Power (SSP) “could prove transformative” says an October article in Power Magazine. It references a paper presented by the American Foreign Policy Council written by Cody Retherford. He claims that SSP could provide efficient, continuous clean energy from orbit. “Recent developments including low-cost space access, mass-produced satellites, robotics, and other commercial-led innovations will unlock this capability within the next 10 to 20 years.”
SSP broadens our horizons. We think solar through a terrestrial lens. Imagine collecting power from space. Then energy will be wirelessly sent to Earth using microwaves or laser beams. Space generated power will be collected at ground receiving stations. Just as satellite technologies have revolutionized communications and global navigation systems, SSP has the potential to revolutionize power… using satellites that collect power 24 hours a day.
China has a SSP program and wants to become a global space power by 2045. Retherford describes electricity applications, industrial applications, transportation applications, and military applications for SSP.
Bi-Directional EV Charging
Imagine if every car sitting in a garage or parking lot was connected to the grid. Imagine subscription plans that allow your electric utility to draw energy from your EV and pay you handsomely for it.
Imagine… EVs and their onboard power supplies could be used to avoid utilities having to build billions of dollars of power plants that will only be used 30 – 40 hours a year. There may well be a win-win for this integration at significant scale.
Imagine that the grid fails – a power outage, planned or unplanned – and your plugged in EV powers your home. That’s VGI… Vehicle Grid Integration. For most of us… that’s in the future… our cars supporting home microgrids and virtual power plants (VPPs).
The Ford Lightning has received lots of deserved attention. America’s number one selling pickup, the F150, is now sold in an electric model. It has 150 kWh of energy storage on board. And, it is bidirectional… meaning that it can be charged from the grid, and – in theory – it can return power to your home.
In the future, your F150 may well be part of a utility program. Enough F150s connected, and willing to discharge all at once, and the capacity savings can be rather large. That’s the good news. The bad news is the cost. Ford does offer a system for the Lightning. It cost one driver $18,000… combining SunRun’s Home Integration System with Ford’s Intelligent Backup Power… what the owner called “hideously expensive.” Nearly $10,000 of that was for the Home Integration System.
For the rest of EV drivers… those in Teslas, Chevrolets, etc. we are not quite there. For the vehicle to power your home, you need to “think wiring.” You’ll need a power inlet socket backed by a critical loads subpanel, which can be isolated with an automatic transfer switch. Most older and smaller homes, which typically have 100 amp panels, need new electrical panels too. The Lightning draws 80 amps when charging. Thankfully, plug and play systems are on the horizon.
In September, California took one step forward in preparing and promoting the VGI scenario presented above. SB 39 has passed and has been signed by the Governor. It requires that all EVs sold in the State have bidirectional charging capability. A predecessor bill that failed, SB 233, called for all vehicles to have VGI by 2030. SB 59 does not have a specific date, leaving the regulation up to the California Energy Commission, Air Resources Board, and Public Utilities Commission.
Utilities, by many accounts, are not embracing VGI. But there are interesting pilot programs. Southern California Edison has proposed a tariff that would pay EV drivers 58 cents per kilowatt-hour for power from their EVs between 6 – 9 PM, June through September.
Home Depot Purging Plastics
Home Deport is the world’s largest home improvement retailer. Now it is taking steps to eliminate expanded polystyrene foam and polyvinyl chloride plastic film from packaging used for its private-labeled products. Both are listed as “problemmatic” by the U.S. Plastics Pact, an organization that guides corporate commitments to phase-out plastic packaging.
The Home Depot initiative involves the redesign of packaging for 1,300 products for its own brands, from ceiling fans to light bulbs and bathroom vanity counters. In 2023, the initiative reduced polystyrene foam by six million cubic feet, enough to fill 67 Olympic-sized pools, and 39 million square feet of plastic films, enough to cover 513 soccer fields.
Home Depot has not characterized the packaging change in terms of climate protection. The packaging is lighter, allowing for more product on its shelves and more product packed into its trucks. It is tapping a win-win between the environment and the economy. The company’s next goal is to transition by January 2028 to fiber-based packaging that is compostable, recyclable, or made of recycled contents. That will mean a shift to molded pulp, paper and paperboard. Home Depot’s goal is to improve the protection it provides, for instance using corrugated cardboard corners that keep items from sliding around in boxes with minimal material.
Climate Change Course Now Required at U.C. San Diego
University of California at San Diego has implemented a new graduation requirement. All students enrolled this fall and from here on, are now required to take a course on climate change. Eligible courses must have at least 30% climate-related content and address two of four areas: scientific foundations, human impacts, mitigation strategies, and project-based learning. About 7,000 students from the Class of 2028 are affected. According to a Scripps Institute of Oceanography professor, the goal is “preparing students for the future that they will really encounter.”
Fully 41 courses meet the requirement including the Astronomy of Climate Change, Gender and Climate Justice, Indigenous Approaches to Climate Change, and Environmentalism in Arts and Media. Students reportedly support the requirement. For some, it will introduce them to new career paths… perhaps opportunities in climate-adjacent fields such as carbon accounting and civil engineering. Fully 85% of Gen Z is very or somewhat concerned about the climate crisis, and they, more than any other generation, believe it is mostly caused by human activity.
Similarly, California and New Jersey and other states are requiring that their young students learn about the climate crisis in grade school. Arizona State University implemented a sustainability requirement for graduation this year. Columbia, Harvard, and Stanford have created entire schools devoted to climate change and our response to the crisis at hand.
Flanigan’s Ego-Logic Podcast Updates
Use the links below to check out our recent podcasts. And you can always go to Spotify and type in “Ted Flanigan” to find our library of podcasts.
Recently Released:
In EcoNet News, Volume 26, Issue #10, Ted highlights EcoMotion’s solar work onsite in the Central Valley conducting an inspection at a massive utility-scale installation. He compares the really large with the really small, marveling at the simplicity of balcony solar in Germany.
He also highlights Australian rooftop solar providing 50% of demand on the country’s main grid, Scandinavian heat pumps at scale, solar-based solar power, bi-directional EV charging, Home Depot purging plastics, and U.C. San Diego’s requiring all students enrolled this fall and from here on to take a course on climate change.
In this episode of Flanigan’s Eco-Logic, Ted speaks with Enrique Huerta, Legislative Director at Climate Resolve. Enrique brings strong skills in policy analysis and collaboration-building to the organization, focusing on climate change, adaptation, and resilience to champion equitable climate solutions.
Prior to joining Climate Resolve, Enrique advocated for historically marginalized communities through his work as a community green space organizer. As the Legislative Director at Climate Resolve, Enrique forms strategic partnerships with other statewide organizations, cultivating relationships to move legislation. He is a master of building collaborations, doing the work on the ground, knocking on legislators’ doors, often with parties who have different agendae, bringing in potential coalition partners to the state capitol to advocate on behalf of extreme heat and the need to adapt to this rising threat.
He and Ted discuss Climate Resolve’s extreme heat bill, which is one of the few that actually looks to help marginalized communities adapt today and focuses on societal fixes. Enrique shares how his experience of community organizing opened his eyes to the resilience that lots of these communities have, and how community cohesion is already in place – and often women led.
In this episode of Flanigan’s Eco-Logic, Ted speaks with Dr. Robert Kay, Founder of 319Climate, a boutique consulting and innovation firm dedicated to accelerating the transition to a low carbon, climate resilient and equitable future. Robert is an international climate expert with a mission to spearhead initiatives that foster a climate resilient, low-carbon future.
He offers 33 years of experience in climate change, sustainability, and resilience planning, demonstrating throughout his career that he has brought people together to solve complex problems. He is a sought-after facilitator and engagement specialist, specializing in topics such as greenhouse gas emissions, sea level rise adaptation, and sustainable facilities management. Robert has worked in a variety of roles in the government, consulting, and academic sectors providing advice on sustainability for various energy resilience projects throughout California.
Since the late 1980s, he has either led or participated in climate change projects globally, ranging from local-scale projects worldwide (including for local, state, national, and multilateral agencies) to global analysis for the United Nations. He shares highlights from providing expert guidance to Pacific Island delegations to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP) including COP15 (Copenhagen), COP21 (Paris), COP22 (Marrakesh), COP23 (Bonn), and COP25 in Madrid.
In this episode of Flanigan’s Eco-Logic, Ted speaks with Richard Hansen, Senior Consultant and President of both Soluz, Inc & Soluz Honduras. Richard founded Soluz Inc., a Massachusetts corporation in 1993, and then established Soluz in Honduras in 1994 to commercialize solar for rural electrification. He is a pioneer in the application of solar technology combined with micro-finance to increase energy access in rural areas of Honduras, having introduced solar technology in the country starting in 1989 under a contract with the U.S. Department of Energy.
Richard has provided advisory services for major institutions including USAID, the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank in Bangladesh, Bolivia, the Dominican Republic, Ethiopia, Haiti, India, Nepal, Nicaragua, the Philippines, and elsewhere. He has also been an invited speaker in countries ranging from Argentina and Honduras to Senegal and the Philippines.
He and Ted dig into his early works, pioneering the use of solar for rural electrification in the Dominican Republic with small systems installed by local solar companies combined with microfinance, a breakthrough that made solar systems affordable for rural families. This led to him introducing solar for rural electrification in Honduras, where he continues to lead efforts as President of Soluz Honduras. Soluz continues to work to advance the global transition to sustainable energy, with a special commitment to increasing access to electricity using solar photovoltaic technology. He highlights his focus on universal access, and not leaving anyone in the dark.
In this episode of Flanigan’s Eco-Logic, Ted speaks with Barry Cinnamon, CEO of Cinnamon Energy Systems, a leading residential and commercial contractor providing solar, storage, heat pumps, and electrification services, and host of the Energy Show Podcast. He is a long-time advocate of renewable energy and is widely recognized as a solar power and battery system industry leader.
His Podcast, The Energy Show, delves into a wide range of energy-related subjects. These topics encompass the evolving political landscape influencing the future of energy generation and consumption, as well as valuable money-saving advice for trimming energy use in both residential and commercial settings.
He and Ted dive right into the politics behind the state of distributed solar in California. They discuss the role that the utilities have played in the change in regulations and stripping down incentives, grid defection, and the path forward for all of California’s electricity customers.