Don't write Big Solar off yet. With the plunge in photovoltaic panel prices, US utilities that once enthusiastically signed deals for massive solar power plants to be built in the desert began to favor small installations deployed near cities that don't require the construction of a multi-billion-dollar new transmission lines. But a new report shows that...
Yale has ambitious sustainability goals and modest renewable capacity. The school purchases a significant amount of renewable energy - Yale is close to obtaining 25% of its overall energy from renewable sources, thanks to a 50MW wind farm in Maine - but physical installations on campus lag. Think solar panels on roofs. We rank 113th nationwide in solar capacity, with 171.5kW installed.
That's going to change. This week, the Office of Sustainability announced its updated Strategic Plan and included a new goal specifically for on campus renewables: by June 2016, 1% of the total electricity generated on campus should come from renewable energy (p. 7).
I'm going to break down what this goal means in three posts. First, we'll discuss how much solar capacity would be required to meet 1% of our electricity generation. Next, we'll compare this goal to our potential on campus, as well as the actions of other institutions. Finally, we'll explore the broader context of this goal and challenges facing the University in meeting it.
Because the 1% goal is an amount of energy (kWh), we want to determine how many solar panels (a capacity for energy, or kW) are needed generate that electricity.
Without further ado, let's talk kW!
Part 1: Capacity
Yale owns and operates three power plants:
Central Power Plant, powering central campus (go figure!) and science hill
Sterling Power Plant, powering the Med School campus
West Campus Power Plant, which will power the nascent efforts on West Campus
These plants provide effectively all of Yale's electricity.* In 2012, the University purchased 2% of its electricity from local utilities. The plants generated the remaining 98%. (This is a rather unusual situation for a university - Yale Facilities is essentially a utility. We'll examine the consequences of this fact in the third post, Context.)
The plants generated about 113,498,373 kWh of electricity in 2012.** To meet the 1% goal, renewable sources on campus thus need to generate 1,134,984 kWh of energy. (Note that this is a best estimate. By 2016, total generation will certainly change, but it's unclear which direction. The West Campus Power Plant was not running in 2012, indicating generation is likely to increase, but energy reduction efforts may reduce overall campus demand.)
The majority of this generation is likely to come from solar. Why? Renewable energy is dependent on location - think: some spots are sunnier/windier/steamier than others. This is why the on campus portion of the 1% goal is significant. Of the big players in renewable energy, photovoltaics work best in an urban context. We won't see a huge wind turbine on Cross Campus any time soon; hundreds of panels scattered across roofs are far more practical.
Yale needs roughly 913kW of total solar capacity to generate 1% of its electricity.*** This means we'd have to add over 4 times our current capacity (171.5kW, or ~0.19% of electricity generation).
Knowing this, you may ask...
Well, is 913kW a lot to install?
How much could we actually generate on campus?
How does this compare to other schools?
Check back next week for Part 2: Comparison for answers to these lovely questions!
In other news: hope you're pumped. This will be fun.
Footnotes:
*It's important to note that electricity is far from the whole energy story. The second major driver is space heating for buildings, provided through a network of steam tunnels on campus. The public energy viewer provided by Yale Facilities helps show the breakdown of the commodities used in this process, from gas, electricity, steam and chilled water.
** Obtained from the energy viewer from Yale Facilities. Jan 2012-Dec 2012, non-purchased electricity for buildings serviced by Central Power Plant and Sterling Power Plant. No data available for West Campus Power Plant.
***Assumes that 1kW generates 1243kWh annually. From PVWattsv1, Bridgeport, 0.8 derate factor.
Throwback from around this time last year, shooting photos for a presentation. The workers at Ashley's thought we were nuts! The panel is a spiffy 85MW Suntech, monocrystalline silicon, though I just call him Ted.
Goal - Increase the renewable energy portfolio to represent 1% of the total electricity generated on campus by June 2016. Objective - Develop alternative operating and financing mechanisms to install on-site renewable energy installations.
IKEA is giving customers in 17UK stores the opportunity to buy a solar system in addition to furniture and swedish meatballs. (I wonder - will the different sizes of systems have equally endearing names? Instead of "residential," we'll have "söt sol"?)
The innovation here concerns marketing. IKEA has partnered with Hanergy, a China-based panel manufacturer. Hanergy will have a booth in the IKEA store; customers can choose to buy a system; and Hanergy will then design, finance and install their panels. The middle-man - an installer desperately trying to reach homeowners - is cut out.
Within the past five years, an increasing number of large companies have installed solar on their stores. (See SEIA's recent report, "Solar Means Business 2013.") IKEA ranks 5th by total capacity with 41MW. But there is an important distinction between installing panels on stores and choosing to sell systems within stores.
In the first case, IKEA benefits through lowered electricity bills and lowered taxes. (The US federal government provides a direct tax credit equal to 30% of the cost of the solar installation.) In the second case, IKEA benefits based on the number of systems sold. They become a proponent of solar as a product.
As the first big-box retailer to take such a step, it'll be interesting to see if other home-goods stores in the US - Lowe's, Home Depot, etc. - begin to follow suit.
For further reading:
IKEA's press release (note the "[insert region here]" typo in the first line)
Washington Post Article (note the author mistakenly assumes the customer builds the system themselves, similar to IKEA furniture. Can you imagine building your own grid interconnect? C'mon now, Wash-Po...)
Top utilities petition to end solar rebates in Missouri
Ameren, the dominant utility in eastern Missouri, petitioned the Public Service Commission this week to stop paying their small-scale solar rebate ($2/W for systems up to 25kW). The request follows a similar request by Kansas City Power & Light, who dominates western Missouri, earlier in this month.
The petition hinges on a unique provision within Missouri's binding Renewable Portfolio Standard ("Proposition C"): a utility only needs to meet RPS requirements as long as the cost of doing so does not exceed a 1% rate increase. After a dramatic jump in applications for solar rebates (see chart below), Ameren claims they are going to pass that cost threshold by year end.
Overall solar penetration in Missouri is low. Distributed* solar systems represent less than 1% of Ameren's and Kansas City Light & Power's peak demand (0.15% and 0.11%, respectively). It's key, then, to note that the motivation of Ameren and Kansas Power is fundamentally different from utilities in states with a lot of solar. For example, in California or Hawaii, generation from distributed solar systems can be over 3% or 10% of the total peak electricity flowing through the grid - contributing to a major cost for the utilities.
This case highlights three interesting themes within utility resistance to solar:
Who bears the burden of paying incentives?
Many states allow utilities to add an RPS surcharge to electricity rates to cover the cost of meeting the standard. This money is either managed by the individual utility, or pooled into a statewide fund for incentives. Utility resistance in these states, if present, is based on the cost of managing increased solar generation, once a large number of systems have already been installed.
Missouri is different. Ameren bears the entire cost of the solar incentives, and they can only spend up to 1% of rates on the program. Though Missouri has a relatively small total solar capacity, the utilities could simply not have enough money to pay for the increase in demand. Their opposition is based on an immediate need.
How is a limit within the policy calculated?
Utility petitions to end solar programs tend to capitalize on ambiguity in policy. Often, this pops up in the context of net metering limits (meaning, how much total solar capacity is a utility required to connect into the electricity grid?). Here, Ameren essentially asks the PSC to clarify the method to decide they've spent the equivalent of a 1% rate increase.
Conflicts between policy.
Missouri's RPS requires Ameren to have an estimated 84MW of solar capacity by 2021.** Current net-metered capacity is a mere 12.8MW.*** Yet Ameren may have reached the total amount they're allowed to spend on solar, based on the same RPS standard. If that's true, how will the remaining 71MW of solar be procured?
In the end, the more interesting question is, "What the heck is driving this dramatic increase in demand?" Alas, a question not quite answerable from a computer in CT...
For further reading:
St. Louis Today article
Missouri Public Service Commission, Docket ET-2014-0085
Definitions:
*Distributed means the solar system is installed by customers of the utility, such as homeowners or businesses. The opposite is a system that the utility owns and operates.
**The RPS requires 15% of electricity generation come from renewable sources by 2021, and 2% of this amount must come from solar. Ameren sold 36,745,908MWh in 2012, according to the EIA-861 2012 preliminary data. Thus, 0.15*0.02*36745908 = 110,238MWh of solar generation. Using that 1kW in St. Louis will generate around 1316kWh annually, from PV Watts, this generation is roughly equivalent to 84MW.
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