While module prices plummet, the soft (non-hardware) costs of installing solar systems remain a stubborn barrier to affordability. The difference between the U.S. $4.44 per watt average installed cost for a typical residential rooftop system and the $2.24 per watt figure for comparable German systems, GTM recently reported, is in soft costs like customer acquisition, permitting, inspection and interconnection.

MEMC (NYSE:WFR) CEO Ahmad Chatila noted recently that the paperwork for permitting in Germany requires two pages, while U.S. permitting can require two trees’ worth of paper.

Red tape is also the likely culprit responsible for putting average U.S. system installation time at 75 days versus 7.5 days in Germany.

A solar installer in one Southern California city can take a set of plans to the proper authority and get a permit to build within 48 hours, Paramount Solar VP and twelve-year solar industry veteran Todd Lindstrom recently said. But in a virtually indistinguishable city of the same size that is immediately adjacent, “If I get it done in under three weeks, it’s a miracle.”

NREL Solar Analyst Kristen Ardani and VoteSolar’s Adam Browning previewed a forthcoming U.S. soft cost update from NREL and LBNL researchers. The final data will be published by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) later this month. And DOE’s SunShot program opened a new $10 million competition in September for “innovative, sustainable, and verifiable business practices that reduce these soft costs to $1 per watt.”

GTM asked Ardani and Browning for their observations on the two main industry-wide efforts underway to attack the complexities of permitting, inspection and interconnection that have U.S. installers tangled up in red.

One approach, led by third-party-finance leader Clean Power Finance (CPF), would create a national permitting database. The other, the Solar Freedom Now (SFN) movement co-founded by industry pioneer Barry Cinnamon, would gather political momentum to drive Congress to standardize procedures at the federal level.

In its winning bid for a $3 million DOE grant to create an online database of local permitting standards, CPF estimated it could cut the balance-of-system (BOS) soft costs of installing a five-kilowatt (DC) residential rooftop solar system by more than $0.22 per watt.

“Getting a permit is the choke point in the process,” CPF CEO Nat Kreamer said, “[and it is] driving solar companies crazy today. It’s time-consuming, it’s costly and it makes for a bad end-consumer experience.”

“We have to solve this problem,” SFN’s Cinnamon, a 30-plus-year solar veteran who has done everything from rooftop installs to running Westinghouse Solar (PINK: WEST), said. “The way we are going to solve it is on the national level because 18,000 cities, 3,000 utilities, 50 states, you’re never going to fix it everywhere.”

There is, Cinnamon said, “a quicksand of stupid regulations and requirements and we need a policy standard to bring to lawmakers in Washington, D.C., which has two million people who want it.”

“Clean Power Finance has some great efforts under way with their permitting database that will disclose different requirements across jurisdictions,” Ardani said. “What we are hearing from installers is that something like a database, where you can go on and look at all the different requirements, could be a huge time-saving measure.”

Even knowing about increased paperwork could cut soft costs, she added. “Just deciphering and investigating what each jurisdiction is asking for is a huge time and cost expense.”

A database could also generate action from the bottom up that leads to more rationalized fee structures, Ardani suggested. “A lot of times what you see are fees that seem arbitrary. Why is this fee $300 and this fee $800?”

Browning’s VoteSolar group is planning to incorporate the CPF metrics on time, process, and cost into its own web tool that will allow installers “to click on a state and drill down to local jurisdictions.”

The website will be part of a VoteSolar effort to identify “best practices on eight different data points.” The objective, Browning said, is to get jurisdictions involved in setting “that gold standard of simplified and cost rational permitting.”

SFN’s drive for federal legislation should be pursued and could be successful, Browning said, but “given Congress’s complexity, and the fact that states and local jurisdictions fiercely guard their prerogative of local control, nobody should count on it.”

The good news, Browning said, “is there will be efforts from the top down and from the bottom up,” so the group says it “will get at it one way or the other.”

“The best thing,” Ardani said, “is to have best practices and drive toward them at the local jurisdiction level.”

“I wish we could get it done in one fell swoop at the federal level,” Browning said, “but our line around the office is, ‘If your plan involves Congress, it’s a bad plan.’”

DOE’s SunShot Initiative is subsidizing research so it can stop subsidizing solar energy generation.

Romina Boccia

November 2, 2012 at 5:30 pm

A blackout occurred in the wake of Hurricane Sandy, as more than 8 million people in the northeast were left without power. Millions could remain without power for several more days. Hurricane Sandy was a natural disaster that people could prepare for but couldn’t avoid.

Blackouts and brownouts caused by misguided energy policies, however, could be avoided. Micromanagement of the energy sector with renewable energy mandates, prohibitions, overly burdensome regulation, and subsidies are taking a heavy toll on people and on the electricity grid used to distribute power.

Germany, one of the most aggressive renewable energy adopters, is demonstrating the dark and cold path down which a government-centric approach to electricity supply leads. This winter, Germany is short 500 megawatts in electricity compared to the previous year.

Why the shortage? A premature shutdown of nuclear reactors and a slower than expected and government-directed energy transition toward renewable sources. The German government immediately shut down eight nuclear reactors in response to the Fukushima accident and determined to end all nuclear power generation in Germany by 2022.

Germany also adopted an aggressive 35 percent target of renewable energy by 2022. In the U.S., California has similar ambitions for renewables, having set a target of 33 percent by 2020.

The results of Germany’s policies are an unstable electricity grid that threatens to leave Germans in the dark and cold this winter. European grid operator Tennet reports that, during the last year, the electricity grid would have collapsed multiple times had only one more significant power plant or transmission cable become impaired. The rate of unusual measures to stabilize the grid—such as turning power plants off or taking wind farms off the grid—tripled last year, rising to 998 interventions.

Meanwhile, Vattenfall, another grid operator, is preparing for brownouts, asking large energy consumers how much electricity they could go without in the event it becomes necessary to take some users off the grid in order to avoid even worse results.

This is happening because federal policies are inhibiting electricity markets from responding to consumer demand. Government intervention is distorting prices and investment prospects in the electricity sector. Renewable energy subsidies are rendering conventional sources unprofitable, and yet the renewable sources alone cannot assure grid stability without conventional sources being available to meet electricity demand during times when the wind does not blow or the sun does not shine.

California’s ISO, which operates the region’s power grid, referred to similar challenges in integrating the state’s 33 percent renewable portfolio standard:

Among these challenges is ensuring that the ISO has sufficient flexible capacity to address the added variability and unpredictability created by intermittent resources.

Blackouts and brownouts come with huge costs. Industrialized economies such as Germany and the U.S. depend on reliable electricity to function. Hospitals need power to keep patients alive, and people freeze in their homes when electricity is their only source of heating. Electricity is the lifeblood of the economy, and without it few transactions can take place. It is mind-boggling to think that governments would impose these large risks on people for lofty policy goals.

Unlike natural disasters such as Hurricane Sandy, which caused blackouts across the American northeast, blackouts and brownouts as a result of short-sighted energy policies are avoidable. As Sandy relief efforts are underway, policymakers should look across the pond and avoid energy policies that put Americans at undue risk of power outages.

EPA to Raise Electricity Prices, Risk Blackouts

Posted in Energy and Environment

November 28, 2011, 5:04 PM 10 Comments

Will the Lights Stay On in Texas and New England?

By MATTHEW L. WALD

North American Electric Reliability CorporationThe Electric Reliability Council of Texas (yellow), ISO-NE of New England (teal) and SaskPower (in red) could face early challenges in providing enough generating capacity.

Texas and New England may soon run short of the generating capacity they need to reliably meet peak loads, largely because old plants will be retired rather than retrofitted to meet new pollution rules, the North American Electric Reliability Corporation reported on Monday.

The reliability corporation, assigned by the federal government to enforce rules on the power grid, issued a 10-year forecast that conveys a greater level of uncertainty than previous predictions. One problem is that about 600 large plants are likely to be shut for several months for the installation of pollution controls, executives said, and coordinating the shutdowns to avoid local electricity shortages will be a formidable task. The 600 are a substantial fraction of the grid’s generating resources; although there are about 15,000 plants on the grid, more than half of them are quite small.

“Over all, the North American grid and bulk power supply continue to be adequate, and sufficient plans are in place,’’ said Gerry Cauley, president and chief executive. But two areas require extra attention, he said: the bulk of Texas, which is served by a grid isolated from the rest of the United States, and New England. “There’s some uncertainty in their resources at this point,’’ he said.

The Electric Reliability Council of Texas, the name for the grid that covers most of the state, could run short by 2013, the report said;New England could run short by 2015.

The organization, which also surveys Canada, found that Sask Power, the provincial utility of the province of Saskatchewan, which borders North Dakota and Montana, could run short next year.

Running short does not mean that the lights are certain to go out. But given the typical incidence of mechanical failures, the amount of spare capacity on hand is small enough that blackouts would be more likely, the report said.

The problem in Texas is old coal plants and natural gas plants that lack environmental controls, and the state’s relative isolation. (The rest of North America east of the Rockies is within one grid, while the region west of the Rockies is on another, with some ability for neighboring areas to help each other at peak times. Texas, however, has taken a go-it-alone approach.)

In New England, which is far better connected to neighboring areas, the problem is old natural gas plants, the group said.

Environmentalists are building a case that there is no reason to proceed slowly in enforcing the new rules because most companies are prepared for them. Michael J. Bradley, a former head of the Northeast States for Coordinated Regional Air Management, a regional organization, and Susan F. Tierney, a former energy official in Massachusetts who worked for the Energy Department during the Clinton Administration, are among the authors of a recent reportthat contends that reserve margins are still ample and that many new power plants are in development.

In addition, they note, “demand-side resources,” meaning agreements with customers to cut their load on peak days in exchange for cash, can be activated quickly.

Part of the uncertainty is that no one is sure how strictly the Environmental Protection Agency will enforce its rules or exactly what the rules will be. The agency is supposed to publish a new rule on mercury and air toxics on Dec. 16, for example.

Mark G. Lauby, vice president of the reliability corporation, said that because the air toxics standards rule will be on a short schedule, some companies could face a choice of closing some units or running them and violating pollution standards. The logical solution, he said, would be to provide more time for compliance.

But the most troublesome of the new rules for the power plants may be related not to air pollution but to water, as the E.P.A. seeks to have power plants install cooling towers, rather than draw vast amounts of water from rivers and return it a few degrees hotter, which can kill many fish or fish eggs. Texas may also face problems because of its severe drought, the group said.

Texas has added a lot of capacity recently, but much of that is wind power, which generally does not churn out much electricity on the hot days when peak demand occurs. Acting partly out of an awareness that added capacity contributes little to reliability, Texas recently raised its target level of capacity surplus to 13.75 percent from 12.5 percent.

Hundreds of thousands of people in New York City, Long Island and New Jersey may not have power restored for up to 10 more days, officials warned Thursday. Meanwhile, weather forecasters said a winter storm could hit the Northeast next week.

In New York City,  the utility ConEd said the 228,000 customers in Manhattan still without power should have it back by Saturday, but that would leave more than 400,000 elsewhere potentially in the dark beyond Saturday.

In a statement Thursday, ConEd said it hoped the vast majority of those would have power by Nov. 11.

As for the potential for a new storm, Banda said ConEd has a team dealing with weather scenarios. “We’re going to have to take that into account,” she said.

ConEd also noted that many buildings in areas with restored service will continue to be without power until they repair any flood damage to their own electrical systems. Millions remains without power, and in some places it could be weeks before the power goes back on. NBC’s Brian Williams reports.

Related: Nor’easter possible for East Coast next week

Temperatures this weekend in the New York City area were expected to dip to the mid-30s, and hover around 40 during the week.

The outage outlook was similar along the Jersey coast as well as on Long Island, where 60 percent of homes were without power.

The region also struggled with transit on Thursday, three days after Superstorm Sandy tore through.

The promise of limited restoration of transit services lured hundreds of thousands back into the nation’s largest city, but the commute was nightmarish even by New York City’s standards: Seemingly endless lines at bus stops, backups at the city’s bridges and tunnels stretched for miles, and many people simply gave up after an hour or two of frustration.

Jason DeCrow / AP

Motorists sit in heavy traffic while crossing the Robert F. Kennedy Triboro Bridge Thursday in the Queens borough of New York.

The scene was “pure mayhem,” Lanisha Harris, who was trying to get to work in Manhattan from Canarsie, Brooklyn, told NBCNewYork.com.

The order that all vehicles entering Manhattan must have at least three occupants appeared to cut down on traffic in the city, but enforcement of the directive caused problems elsewhere.

At the approach to the Lincoln Tunnel, traffic from New Jersey was restricted to a single lane and cars with fewer than three people were being diverted, causing a backup that jammed the state’s northern highways.

“Safety is our paramount concern, not convenience,” Mayor Michael Bloomberg said Thursday in defending his order.

In downtown Brooklyn, ”easily a thousand people, possibly more” were in line at the Barclay’s Center Thursday morning waiting for public buses, NBC 4 New York reporter Kai Simonsen said from his helicopter viewpoint.

That led some people to try to hitchhike their way into Manhattan, with drivers eager to pick them up to make the three-person-per-car quota.

“Some folks offered me a ride,” said Melanie Bower, 30, who lives in Fort Greene. “I was touched by their kindness at first. But then I realized they just needed me so they could have three in their car.”

Bower walked into Manhattan instead, and then caught a bus uptown.

Related: Photoblog of the commuter chaos

Wednesday evening’s commute out of the city was bad as well, leading Gov. Andrew Cuomo to declare that subway, bus and commuter rail services would be free Thursday and Friday.

After suffering the worst disaster in its 108-year-old history, subway services resumed at 6 a.m. ET Thursday on more than a dozen lines, supplemented by three bus shuttles.

“There will be no subway service between 34th St. in Midtown and Downtown Brooklyn,” the MTA website said.

Across the city, the scene remained chaotic:

• LaGuardia Airport reopened but several hundred flights at the region’s airports were canceled Thursday.
• Taxi companies pulled vehicles off the road as the fuel crunch deepened, with the vast majority of storm-hit gas stations in the greater New York area out of gasoline or power to run pumps. Open stations have lines with several hundred cars as well as individuals toting jugs to refuel generators.
• Downtown Manhattan was filthy – from fish guts flowing down a street to untreated sewage in the Hudson River.
• Two brothers were found dead Thursday on Staten Island, where 19 deaths have been reported.
• Liberty and Ellis islands sustained serious damage, a source at the National Park Service told NBCNewYork.com. ”The infrastructure is shot,” the source said, adding that the docks and grounds were in “bad shape.” While the Statue of Liberty and the museum at its base were OK, the source said, it would likely be “quite a while” before the islands reopen.

In Jersey City, across the Hudson River from New York, drivers negotiated intersections without the aid of traffic lights. Lines formed outside pharmacies, while people piled sodden mattresses and furniture on sidewalks. The city has issued a curfew on people as well as a driving ban from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m.

But what if more switched to Solar;

Rule 21

Electric Rule 21 is a tariff that describes the interconnection, operating and metering requirements for generation facilities to be connected to a utility’s distribution system, over which the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) has jurisdiction.  The Rule 21 tariff for each of California’s large investor owned utilities (IOUs) is available on each IOU’s website. Note that the posted Rule 21 may not reflect updates to the tariff that may be pending before the CPUC:

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After struggle, Ohio has shown growth in solar energy in the past year

6:56 AM, Sep 8, 2012   

                               The question weather state’s or the government should still help Green Energy is going to get harder and harder as the US budget issues comes to a head next year in congress. The Oil and gas energy industry sector has enjoyed government subsidies for some time now, 20 plus years. Green Energy has been under a different program of support do to the RD and then further manufacturing development required to get each of the varies different types of Green Energy industrialized. The good news that has happened and as well has producing a lot of of green jobs, now for the evolution of Green Energy becoming a real long term answer to our energy needs will be up to (us) pushing our local representatives to support the Green Energy. We will keep your eyes on this issue, Renewable Energy should a major part of the US energy plan!

Eric Luttio

Jobs vs. green energy debate splits Dems at Michigan convention

• By Chad Livengood
• Detroit News Lansing Bureau