Japan FIT Changes Reflect End of Residential PV Program and Delay in Non-residential Projects

Changing government policies may cast a shadow over growth of the Japanese PV market. With the strong national government-supported residential rebate and feed-in tariff (FIT) programs, the Japanese PV market has accelerated its growth and is re-emerging as one of the world's top markets. Past performance, however, is not a guarantee of future success as has often happened in the PV market.



End of the Federal Residential PV Program
The Japanese federal government is ending the national residential PV subsidy program. The program started 20 years ago and laid a strong foundation for the world's largest residential PV market. When the program closes its door in March 2014, it is expected to have solarized over 1.5 million residential roofs, or added about 6 GW-worth of PV capacity, in Japan.

Japan initiated solar technology R&D and field testing under the "Sun Shine Project" after the 1^st Oil Shock of the 1970s. The Project was to bring a safe, stable energy supply to the nation. As part of the Sun Shine Project, the government launched the Residential PV System Dissemination Program in 1994.



Between 1994 and 2005, this program funded close to 300,000 residential PV systems. During this period, Japan dominated the world PV market in terms of both installation and production. The average residential PV system cost was greatly reduced to ¥661 (US$108) per watt even with an incentive rate of just ¥20 (US$3.00) per watt (or 3 percent of the system cost). At that point, the federal government concluded that the domestic PV market became self-sufficient and discontinued the residential incentive program.

In the meantime Germany and a few other countries expanded their share of the market by infusing national FIT policies. In 2006, Japan faced its first market contraction.  The domestic market suffered not only from the lack of incentives, but also lack of modules since domestic module makers shifted their focus to Europe for greater demand and better profits.
To stop the domestic market from further decline, the federal government brought back the residential PV incentive program in January 2009 with an incentive rate of ¥70 (US$11.30) per watt.  The domestic PV market was revitalized and Japan celebrated its one million solar-roof installations in April 2012.

According to data published by the Japan Photovoltaic Expansion Center (J-PAC), the program supported 276,051 residential PV system installations during fiscal year 2012 (April 2012 to March 2013). Although the program is closing its door for good in March, the number of applications submitted for fiscal year 2013 is less than the previous year.
This can be attributed not to a reduction in consumer interest, but to a reduction in available installers. Manager of a domestic module marker said, "This reduction is partly because installers are focusing more on small non-residential systems (than residential systems)."  A national installer also commented that this represents the shift in many installers' business to more lucrative, small non-residential systems.


National FIT — Trouble with Completing Large Systems
Japan shifted its focus from the traditional residential segment to the non-residential segment with the launch of the national FIT program in July 2012. The national government believed that deploying the larger, non-residential segment was a quick way to expand the national PV market and to catch up with Germany and Italy.

The Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) approved close to 25 GW worth of PV systems under the FIT program between July 2012 and October 2013. Systems sized over 1 MW represented about 60 percent of the approved systems. While many large-scale PV projects became successfully operational, a large portion of the approved systems still remains uncompleted.

Last October, METI began investigating the causes of the low completion rate, including possible intentional delays by project developers or owners who are waiting for further reduction in cost of components and labor to improve project returns.

The agency mandated project status reports to FIT applicants who reserved the FY2012 FIT rate (¥42/kWh) between April 2013 and March 2013 for a system sized over 400 kW. Out of 13.3 GW (or 4,699 systems), METI found that only 8% of the FIT-approved PV capacity has become operational as of this January. In fact, 4.7 GW worth of the approved projects have neither selected a sit nor placed a purchase order for the equipment.

Table: METI Fiscal Year 2012 FIT PV Project Survey

Project Status		No. System	GW
Operational		1,049	1.1
Withdrawn		419	0.9
Not operational	Site decided and system purchased	1,588	3.9
	Either site decided or system purchased	784	2.6
	Neither site decided nor system purchased	758	4.7
Not responded		101	0.2
Total		4,699	13.3

METI announced that it will disqualify uncommitted projects from the FIT program.  For example, the projects that are categorized as "neither site decided nor system purchased" will be delisted if they fail to show proof of valid millstones by this March and the projects categories as "either side decided or system purchased" will be disqualified unless they commit both site selection and system purchase by the end of this August.

In a separate survey, METI found that the average installed cost of systems greater than 1 MW increased to ¥305 per watt in the fourth quarter of 2013 from ¥280 per watt in the same quarter in 2012. This increase is due partly to higher priced imported components because of the yen's devaluation and the rise of domestic installation costs.




Another reason that non-residential system costs have not decreased quickly is that system integrators, or EPCs, do not have a strong incentive to lower their prices. This is because so many PV projects with the FY2012 FIT rate (¥42/kWh) remain uncommitted and those projects are expected to provide better profit margin than the projects with FY2013 FIT rate (¥37.8/kWh).


FIT for FY2014
"There is a rumor circulating that projects can be disqualified unless a system purchase or installation order is placed within six months of the date of the FIT application approval notice," said a project developer. The agency is currently considering toughening the FIT application approval process and imposing time restrictions to weed out bad applicants.

METI is also deciding new FIT rates, effective April 1, 2014. At a recent FIT purchase price committee meeting, a few committee members requested METI to take the lack of the rebate program into consideration for the new FIT rate for residential systems to prevent the residential market from slowing down. Takeshi Wada, a committee members, suggested that the program should focus more on the distribution generation by providing better rates for residential and small, non-residential systems that can utilize available roof space.

He and other committee members also suggested METI to consider different FIT rates for such as small, medium and large-scale, non-residential systems, instead of current one rate for all non-residential systems. A project developer speculates new rates to be ¥36/kWh for systems below 50 kW and ¥32/kWh for systems above 50 kW while other developer said that the government will not change the current one-rate structure for the new fiscal year.
METI will announced the new rates sometimes in March.

Source: Renewable Energy World

Australian utilities urged to prepare for rapid storage adoption

“Batteries are a little bit like bacon. Everything is better with batteries,” quipped Michelle Taylor of Queensland utility Ergon Energy at session on energy storage at Clean Energy Week in Brisbane.

“There’s no doubt that storage linked with the appropriate interface mechanism presents fantastic opportunities for the customer and utility,” the utility’s technology development manager added more formally. Yet in Ergon’s home state of Queensland, grid-connected batteries supporting solar PV are currently unavailable to residential customers.

With opportunities under review by both Ergon and its state-owned counterpart Energex, storage proponents are concerned that energy storage will end up down the same bumpy road travelled precariously by residential solar PV over the several years.

“Utilities were caught by surprise by the uptake of PV. This time, with storage we need to have them involved,” said Bruce Leslie, R&D manager and director at Brisbane-based LC Energy.

“Government subsidies are very important if we are to have a viable system, and we need the support of the utilities and generators,” he added. A residential peak demand tariff would make grid-connected home batteries an economic proposition.

“The PV industry tends to view itself as saving the planet – the stairway to heaven – and who could possibly object [to their existence]?”

But the Energex view of PV is very different; after all it lost 14 per cent of the energy distributed for the same peak demand. The Queensland-owned utility received 14% less income for no change in costs.

Ergon’s Taylor admits many challenges stand in the way of efficient electricity network management. “We have a vast network as a distribution company and while the whole system-load may look one way, the various distribution networks may look very different,” she says, noting Ergon is one of the most dispersed distribution companies in the country with about 130,000 km of line and 65,000 km serving only 25,000 customers – equivalent to one customer every 3km.

Although the cost of storage is falling quickly, uptake of energy storage by the distributors is severely hampered by outdated policies and regulations, which Taylor expects to disperse with some of the new policy directives issued by the state government.

Ergon is looking at ways of integrating renewable energy onto its square networks.

“Renewables are great, but if you put renewables onto square alignments, it’s a disaster…. just plonking renewables doesn’t do a thing for us, in fact it causes a lot of problems for us.


Ecoult, a company spun out of the CSIRO and now owned by the US’s East Penn Manufacturing, has developed energy storage solutions which are suited to isolated grids. The company also offers a fix for power companies wanting to implement the integration of gas or diesel with renewables.

“You can pay for the storage [cost] from what you gain by running the diesel in a fuel-efficient zone rather than not running it in a fuel efficient zone. And the storage is to take care of the renewable variability,” said John Wood, CEO of energy storage company Ecoult.

Ecoult’s Ultrabattery is a completely new class of lead-acid technology, the company claims. It’s a hybrid, long-life lead-acid energy storage device containing both an Ultracapacitor and a lead-acid battery in a common electrolyte.

The company is approaching potential customers both in Australia and abroad. “The good thing in Australia is you have the chance to mature the technologies here and supply them to the international business model,” Wood said.

Ecoult will supply the largest battery-based renewable energy storage system in Australia to Hydro Tasmania’s King Island Renewable Energy Project. The 3 MW/1.6 MWh UltraBattery storage system – to be installed later this year – will complement other elements of Hydro Tasmania’s project, which in recent weeks has managed to switch off diesel generators for up to 90 minutes, relying solely on wind power.

The King Island project came in the wake of Ecoult’s success at ‘smoothing wind’ in Hampton, where is implemented a MW scale wind power storage system using UltraBattery. It demonstrated the ability to smooth turbine’s output (turbine plus battery – orange line) using an algorithm developed by the CSIRO.

Wood went on to explain the Ultrabattery’s application in solar PV smoothing and firming at Public Service Co. of New Mexico’s (PNM) Prosperity Project, located south of Albuquerque.

The project integrates an advanced VRLA (Valve-Regulated Lead-Acid) and UltraBattery energy storage solution with a separately installed 500KW solar plant.

Few standalone opportunities for large-scale grid-connected energy storage systems exist without government incentives.

In the US, where Ecoult launched the Pennsylvania-Jersey-Maryland Interconnection Regulation Services project, the government awarded grants to get storage projects up quickly. Subsequently, government support turned to regulation and will eventually move further towards tax credits.

“There’s a lot of federal support in the US and state support in California through regulation. All of that means you can do storage and have standalone economic justification,” Wood said.

In a challenging market such as Australia, it is up to technology developers to prove their mettle, Wood believes.

“If you are representing the capabilities of a technology it is really up to you to demonstrate to the market the viability and purpose and really push your case.

LC Energy’s Bruce Leslie has taken this path, producing a study that compares ‘energy shifting’ with ‘peak shaving’ applications for a typical moderate-to-high energy-use house. He found that the peak-shaving application uses less energy from the battery, while that batter doesn’t cycle as deeply.

The peak-shaving application is set up to monitor the grid power. Whenever the grid exceeds a set point, power is taken from the batteries.

If Energex and Ergon introduce an optional residential peak demand tariff households have an incentive to switch to a peak-shaving application.

“We can shave a lot off the peak with a relatively small mount of storage. In fact, as we add storage we actually get diminishing returns, give the costs to the system is the mount of storage,” Leslie said.

“I think we can move to a peak-shaving scenario on a reasonable peak demand residential tariff,” he added.

Utilities and governments must get in front of the curve and set standards that will drive desired behaviours, Leslie said.

Talking to Renew Economy, Leslie warns Ergon and Energex are perhaps a year or two away from a flood of cheap batteries and cheap systems coming into the country that will take them out of the driving seat.

“I think they are in denial. Storage will be undeniably big in the future. Will they avoid the problems that arose with PV? So far I can’t see it.”



Source: Renew Economy

Dick Smith wrong on Energy Costs - Renewables are Cheapest

"The only thing stopping an even faster rush for rooftop solar installs on domestic residences are discriminatory policies which prevent householders subject to a previous feed-in-tariff schemes from upgrading and adding more panels to their systems, and utilities that unreasonably limit the size of new systems"

Dick Smith has got the relative costs of fossil fuels, nuclear energy and renewable power all mixed up in his latest polemic, “Ten Bucks A Litre.”

I am from Energy security think-tank Zero Emissions and I wrote the Zero Carbon Australia Stationary Energy Plan which is briefly showcased during the film.

The stationary energy plan, the first of its kind to show that Australia could run on 100% renewable energy a combination of wind power, rooftop solar photovoltaic, and solar thermal with storage (featured in the film), along with a huge “mining” effort to find energy efficiency in housing, commerce and industry. It was a landmark that helped caused the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO), the organisation that runs Australia’s electricity supply, to write and publish this year its own plan and validate much of our work.

Whether you care about climate change or not, we’re moving rapidly away from coal because domestic and international banks, including the World Bank, will no longer invest in coal fired power. And a shift to gas would involve the burning of coal seam gas, due to a massive upswing in demand in Asia especially Japan the cost of gas here is becoming prohibitive.

The anticipated three-fold increase in the cost of gas (once we’re linked to international markets) means that wind power is now already the cheapest source of new energy capacity. And it is also cheaper for householders to generate their own power during the day from rooftop solar than to buy it through the meter from the big power companies. The only thing stopping an even faster rush for rooftop solar installs on domestic residences are discriminatory policies which prevent householders subject to a previous feed-in-tariff schemes from upgrading and adding more panels to their systems, and utilities that unreasonably limit the size of new systems.

The cost of gas being is being driven by the building of LNG export terminals in Queensland. Once we have a sizable link through these processing and port facilities to send gas including coal seam gas and shale out to the world’s markets, the gas market will mirror the oil market and always react to world pricing signals. We will never go back to having a sheltered market with gas as a cheap source of energy. What has really driven this international price up is the Nuclear disaster at Fukushima.


The Fukushima nuclear disaster two years back closed down a massive industrial manufacturing area for good, causing the abandonment of billions of dollars of factories and their robotic tooling and other plant. The cleanup bill is estimated at $60-70 billion and the country only has two out of 54 nuclear reactors operating. What’s more, it turns out that the two reactors that are operating were built atop a major earthquake fault line. So it is quite likely that they will be shut down in September, leaving Japan with no nuclear power plants at all.

Nuclear is the most expensive option when you take into account the external factors, followed by coal and coal seam gas. These external factors include devastating effects on health, agricultural output, land degradation, acid rain and the ability for us to feed ourselves, and of course in the case of the fossil fuels, climate change.

Already, in India and China renewables are either the cheapest form of new generation, wind is beating fossil fuels in Brazil and elsewhere. Even in Australia, wind and solar are considered the cheapest option for new capacity. Further price reductions are all about economies of scale, and economies of scale is what India and China have a lot of. Only renewable energy’s flagship technologies of wind power, rooftop solar and solar thermal with storage have small footprints and superior environmental performance, with innovation improving this all the time.

Dick Smith needs to revise his conclusion. If we want cheap power for the 21st century we need to invest much more in renewables, if we want to flounder, get sick and risk our economies then nuclear and fossil fuels will do the trick.

I look forward to a series of town hall debates with Dick Smith on the right way to a renewable future for Australia.


Source: Renew Economy

Wasting a lot since I am on vacation and turned OFF the ESS ... Oh well

I know it is a shame but I am wasting a lot of Solar Energy these days because I switched OFF my LiFePO4 ESS, but left the SMA inverter ON; I just did not want to leave it ON all this time while far away from home with not much usage but the fridge and small appliances

So it is producing during the day and covers my daytime small usage at least , but all the Surplus is just fed back to the grid (for free and invoiced to my neighbors by the utility company BTW)

This is the perfect time to see all the surplus energy that can be stored on a daily basis

Germany : The commercial sector discovers “own consumption”

The figures for ownership of renewables in Germany indicate a shift from private citizens, who still make up about half of investments, to the commercial sector. Craig Morris says some people saw this coming.

Photovoltaic power station in Lower Saxony

In my last post, I compared ownership statistics from 2011 and 2012 for renewables in Germany. One of the major energy policy changes in 2012 was the expiration of feed-in tariffs for new solar arrays larger than 10 megawatts. To give you an idea of how big that is, the average homeowner probably has space for 3 to 5 kilowatts – 10 megawatts is 10,000 kilowatts.

There was therefore a rush in 2012 to finish up the last systems larger than 10 megawatts, which may account for the two percent uptick in ownership among funds & banks, a likely group to own such systems. But the largest shift – five percent – went from private citizens to the commercial sector. Here, the German policy of “own consumption” (Eigenverbrauch) is probably at work.

Essentially, own consumption is a bit like net-metering with a time factor added to it. In net metering, your power meter simply runs backwards if you produce more solar power than you purchase from the grid. But in Germany’s “own consumption,” the meter never runs backwards – if you produce more than you consume at some point, you are required to store it on your side of the grid connection for later consumption.

The problem for most homeowners is that solar roofs produce most of their power in the afternoon, when most people are at work, not at home. A lot of power therefore has to be stored, and bigger battery packs make the approach less profitable. But the situation is fundamentally different for businesses, which generally have quite a large roof area and consume power during business hours. As I wrote back in 2010, this policy was thus bound to be popular among businesses.

Your average mom-and-pop shop that pays retail rates (around 27 cents) can thus benefit greatly from a solar roof, with feed-in tariffs for new systems installed in June dropping to 15 cents. But even midsize and large industry – which pays wholesale, not retail rates – is discovering the benefits of direct consumption, even of wind power. Last year, BMW put up four wind turbines at one of its plants in Germany. You see, it’s not just a question of the price of a kilowatt-hour, but also of maximum load. Power companies may charge extra if a firm consumes more than a certain amount at any time. Renewables can help keep the maximum load from the grid down.

The tradeshow halls in Freiburg are covered with photovoltaics, but the system still only has a capacity of 245 kilowatts. (Photo by Craig Morris)

This trend will continue. Indeed, it is hard to see how it could be stopped. And because commercial roofs are so much bigger than residential ones, the commercial sector may continue to take up a larger piece of the pie.

Likewise, the losers are also clear to see: the Big Four. They are sitting on a large fleet of conventional power plants designed to run for decades, and there is less and less demand for this power. Their strategy will therefore not be to increase their already small investments in renewables (which would only speed up the process), but to increasingly export power to Germany’s neighbors.


Craig Morris (@PPchef) is the lead author of German Energy Transition. He directs Petite Planète and writes every workday for Renewables International.

Source : German Energy Transition

Fighting Blackouts: Japan Residential PV and Energy Storage Market Flourishing

San Diego, CA -- In the past, a PV system with battery storage was associated with the off-grid system — not connected to the utility grid. The battery stores the energy produced by the PV system and when the sun goes down, electricity is drawn from the battery. In Japan, the battery became attractive to store electricity from "the grid," to reduce electricity bills.

After the devastation of the Tsunami and nuclear meltdown in Mach 2011, Japan became painfully aware of the importance of both safety and maintaining a steady supply of electricity. The combination of a PV system and battery storage gives consumers the ability to produce, store and supply electricity throughout the day at their own home for power outages and emergencies. However, the system can bring economic benefits — electricity bill reduction — during normal days.

Like California, utilities in Japan offer Time-of Use (TOU) rates. How homeowners can reduce electricity bills can be illustrated by using Tokyo Electric Power Company’s (TEPCO) current (non-summer) TOU rates for all-electric homes with a PV system.

- Purchase and store electricity from the grid at off-peak hour (11 pm – 7 am) at ¥11.82/kWh [US $0.12]

- Sell PV-generated electricity to the utility at the FIT premium rate of ¥38.0/kWh [US $0.38]

- Use PV-generated electricity during day time, otherwise paying at ¥30.77 (10 am – 5 pm) [US $0.31] and use stored electricity between 7 and 10 am and between 5 and 11 pm, otherwise paying ¥25.2/kWh [US $0.25]

With the battery storage, PV homeowners can ultimately buy electricity at the lowest rate (¥11.82/kWh or $0.12/kWh) and sell at the highest price (¥38/kWh or $0.38/kWh).

The key domestic PV makers, Panasonic, Kyocera and Sharp, all now offer lithium-ion battery storage along with a PV home system to meet consumers’ demand. Their goal is to move beyond PV and expand into a total Home Energy Management System (HEMS3) arena.

Kyocera started offering PV plus lithium-ion battery storage to homeowners in early 2012 with a target of selling 10,000 units from April 2012 to March 2013. Panasonic also released home battery storage systems that can be connected to Sanyo’s (now Panasonic) HIT PV system. The battery has a capacity of 4.65 kWh and is priced at ¥1.218 million MSRP [US $11,984].

In April, Kyocera released the largest residential lithium-ion battery in Japan. The battery has the capacity of 14.4 kWh, which is priced at an MSRP of ¥4.45million [US $43,784]. This large capacity allows it to power a home refrigerator, TV, computers, lights and cell phone chargers for up to 24 hours.

Kyocera has teamed up with Rakuten, Inc., which operates the nation’s largest internet shopping site, to offer a PV system (poly-Si) and a lithium battery (7.2 kWh) set for homeowners at an affordable price. Rakuten provides options with different sizes of PV systems with the battery, and installed system price (after tax) varies from ¥2.94 million ($29,730) with a-2.28 kW system to ¥4.168 million ($42,153) with a 6.27-kW system. These systems are installed by one of the nation’s largest installers, Nippon Ecosystem, which is part of Itochu Corp.

Residential battery systems remain expensive to average homeowners. To solve this issue,One Energy Corp. has just begun the nation’s first residential energy storage leasing service. Like SolarCity or SunRun’s PV leasing service in the U.S., this requires zero upfront payment to homeowners. The company is a joint venture between Orix, NEC and Epco. NEC provides lithium batteries, whose technology is used for Nissan Leaf electric vehicles.

Besides the energy storage leasing service, One Energy also offers “Yanekari (PV rooftop space leasing)” service. A homeowner can lease a storage system with 5.53 kWh of capacity at between ¥3,045 ($31) to ¥5,145 ($52) a month from One Energy while offering the roof-space to One Energy, making a monthly revenue of ¥2,500 ($25). The image below illustrates how a customer could use an energy storage system to offset the high cost of purchasing energy during peak times.




One Energy currently offers this leasing service in the TEPCO region only and is planning to expand to the Kansai region by the second half of this fiscal year and eventually expand nationwide.

NEC started mass production of residential storage systems in February. Besides partnering with One Energy, the company sells home batteries directly to homebuilders and building material distributors with the goal of selling 15,000 units during this fiscal year.

The company stated that PV homeowners will start storing PV electricity in batteries even more as the FIT rate gets lower in the future, creating a more self-sufficient and less grid-dependent environment.

It is declining, but the national government provides upfront, capacity-based rebates (¥15-20/kW) and a net FIT of ¥38/kWh on excess electricity generation for 10 years) for PV home systems. The government also currently provides a subsidy for lithium-ion battery storage for homeowners. The subsidy is one third of the installed system cost or up to ¥1 million ($10,823).

The hot and humid summer is approaching in Japan. Some of the nation’s utilities have just raised electricity rates and many of them will request that consumers limit and/or shift electricity consumption from peak to off-peak to control raising fossil fuel cost caused by the shutdown of nuclear power plants. With PV + battery systems, homeowners are moving to take energy matters into their own hands in defense against rolling blackouts and rising electricity bills.

Source: Renewable Energy World

Why Is Net Metering Under Attack?

The utilities’ net metering math doesn’t add up.

Customer-sited (or "rooftop") solar provides less than 0.01 percent of the U.S. energy supply -- but the market is growing rapidly, and as costs continue to decline, solar is reaching homeowners of all incomes. This is cause for alarm among utilities that have been providing electric service in essentially the same way for over a century.

A total of 5.9 gigawatts of PV is now in operation in the U.S. That’s more than 271,000 installations, many of which are on customers’ rooftops. GTM Research forecasted that 3.2 gigawatts of PV solar was installed nationwide in 2012, up from 1.9 gigawatts installed in 2011. If new solar capacity added in the fourth quarter of 2012 matches GTM Research predictions, solar PV will see a 70 percent increase in installation growth in 2012 compared with 2011.

Key to solar’s growth is an arrangement known as net metering. Currently in place in 43 states and the District of Columbia, net metering allows a solar customer’s electric meter to “spin backwards” when she generates more solar energy than she uses, ensuring fair credit for the clean power delivered to the grid.

But net metering is coming under increasing attack from utilities. Here’s our perspective on what’s really going on.

Utilities across the country are experiencing major shifts in the way customers use energy, and that’s making them nervous. Growth in electricity demand is slowing across the country: the U.S. Energy Information Administration projects electricity use will increase at the anemic rate of 0.7 percent per year through 2035 -- down from the usual 2 percent to 3 percent growth per year. Beyond a reduction in sales, utilities are worried about retaining customers as solar costs drop like a rock, a situation that could be further exacerbated now that cost-effective micro-storage is predicted to be only a few years away.

The writing is on the wall: clean and reliable rooftop solar, energy efficiency, and smart grid technologies are here to revolutionize the grid. But instead of looking to get ahead of these trends, many utilities are digging in and defending their business-as-usual approach. These utilities make a guaranteed rate of return on infrastructure, including power plants and transmission lines. As a result, utilities continue to invest in conventional dirty energy resources that may become obsolete well before the plants will be retired.

Some utilities are looking to slow the growth of rooftop solar by claiming that net metering shifts big costs onto non-solar ratepayers. In a recent one-sided article in Bloomberg, for example, the three big California utilities alleged net metering is costing non-solar ratepayers $1.3 billion, but gave no details on how they arrived at that staggeringly high number.

The fact is, the utilities’ net metering math doesn’t add up. The calculations inflate the cost side of the equation, while leaving a rather important piece out of the cost-benefit analysis: the benefits. By using fuzzy math to put net metering on trial in the press, these utilities hope to convince policymakers to put a halt to common-sense solar policies.

What’s needed is a rational dialogue among the stakeholders, and an accurate and comprehensive look at the economic impacts of net metering, considering all the costs and benefits. To that end, Vote Solar commissioned Crossborder Energy, a consulting firm, to conduct a new analysis for ratepayers of the three big California utilities. The results show that net metering actually provides a system-wide net financial benefit to non-solar ratepayers, not a cost as the utilities assert.

In total, the non-solar ratepayers of all three IOUs will save more as more net metered systems are installed, up to about $92 million per year once we reach the current 5 percent net metering cap.

Why are these numbers so different from the utility claims? Well, not only did Crossborder Energy analysts look accurately at the costs side of the ledger, but they also counted all the well-documented benefits that net-metered generation brings to the grid. Those benefits include avoiding the cost of purchasing expensive conventional plants and fuel, reducing the need for investments in wires, reducing the power lost over those wires, and avoiding costs associated with meeting carbon and renewable energy requirements.

Net Metering's benefits to the grid outweigh the lost revenue from net metering bill credits. It’s actually solar customers as a group that are subsidizing non-solar customers as a group.

For many utilities, rooftop solar represents a threat to traditional business models. But the people want it, the grid needs it, and it’s helping us take on some of our greatest challenges.

Utilities will have to adapt to a 21st-century energy landscape with new regulatory structures and initiatives, innovative business models, and modernized practices making way for ubiquitous distributed energy.


Graphic from Vote Solar (View fullsize here) 

Source: GreenTech Media , Susannah CHURCHILL

France launches rescue plan for solar power industry

France has doubled its capacity target for photovoltaic power generation and offered more financial support to small solar power farms that use European-made panels in a bid to rescue the country's ailing solar industry.

Energy Minister Delphine Batho announced the measures, which are expected to spur investments worth more than 2 billion euros ($2.6 billion), during a visit to a solar panel factory in Western France.

The Socialist government is seeking to rescue an industry which has lost about 15,000 jobs in the last two years, after the previous conservative government tried to dampen a speculative bubble in new solar power installations. In 2012 the industry employed 18,000 people, down from 32,500 in 2010.

The production capacity growth target will double to 1,000 megawatts (MW) per year, the equivalent of a small nuclear power reactor, Batho said.

France will also add a bonus of up to 10 percent on the subsidy for feed-in-tariffs paid to generators of solar power through consumers' power bills for small solar farms using panels made in the 30 countries of the European Economic Area (EEA).

"Many jobs were lost because of the (former) government's yo-yo policies. But we will fight ... to develop the ecological competitiveness of France," Batho told reporters on the sidelines of the visit to MPO Energy, a CD and DVD maker that diversified into solar panel production.

"We finally feel supported," said MPO Energy's managing director Jean-Francois Perrin.

These emergency measures, which are due to take effect when a decree is published later this year, are being sought to support the solar industry until a wider energy law is drawn up after the government's so-called "energy transition debate".

The government estimated the annual cost at between 90 and 170 million euros, to be levied on consumers through the existing CSPE tax on power bills.

Jean-Louis Bal, the head of France's main renewable energy sector lobby SER, said the measures would allow the sector to survive in the short term but did not offer long-term visibility for the industry.

"However it's the first positive message from the government in over three years," Bal told reporters.

LEGAL RISK

France is slowly embracing heavily-subsidized renewable energy, such as wind and sun power, which accounts for 13 percent of energy consumption, well below the 23 percent target set by former President Nicolas Sarkozy for 2020.


French feed-in tariffs are reduced by about 10 percent every year to match falling production costs.

The French energy regulator CRE adjusts the cut every quarter, to either attract or deter more investments, depending on the volume of installed plants compared with the government's target.

Across the Rhine in Germany, the installed capacity for wind and solar electricity production is already equivalent in output to France's 58 nuclear reactors, even though the output is highly variable.

France is also trying to reduce its reliance on foreign-made solar panels, after cheap Chinese modules flooded the French market, prompting cries of unfair competition and creating a 1.35 billion euro trade deficit for the sector in 2011.

However, Batho acknowledged the government was taking the risk of having its "Made in Europe" bonus challenged by foreign competitors in international trade courts.

"In terms of legal risk, I don't think there is one at the European level. But at the World Trade Organisation (WTO) level, it would take years (to challenge it), so the government did well," Bal said.

China announced last month it had added a further $1.1 billion in subsidies to its solar power industry, more than doubling its support in 2012.

In September China raised its 2015 target for solar power capacity by 40 percent to about 21 GW, the third rise in just over a year.

(Writing by Muriel Boselli; Editing by Mike Nesbit and Greg Mahlich)



Source: Reuters

Solar Projects in France - A New Auto Consumption Era

Production costs of photovoltaic electricity getting closer to those of conventional electricity, auto consumption projects, independent of any feed-in tariff, develop. André Joffre, President of the DERBI competitiveness pole, explains the emergence of this new model.

Disappointed by the roadmap published this weekend in the wake of the Environmental Conference, the industry professionals have reported a statement by their union, the SER SOLER.

Apart from launching a tender reserved for large roofs, President François Hollande announced himself the "emergency measures" promised a few weeks ago by Delphine Batho (Minister of Ecology, Sustainable Development and Energy) confined mainly to the 20% cap the annual decline in tariffs (professionals requested 10% and a revaluation of the feed-in tariff for installations of less than 100 kW) and a maximum bonus of 10% of the tariff for BIPV, depending on the origin of the components used in solar panels.

Competitiveness promotes auto consumption

André Joffre, who chairs the cluster of Languedoc Roussillon specializes in renewable energy DERBI, holds a more measured speech. "The roadmap is in line with what was expected. The announcements were less positive than expected, and the measures will not bear fruit until mid-2013, which is late for a fragile industry, "he says. "But if we take a step back, there is an evolution of the market towards more independent projects in tariffs," says he. "We are entering an area of ​​competitiveness that fosters the development of projects of auto consumption. '

Installers establish more and more quotes for individuals and small firms for projects sized according to their energy needs. Therefore no surplus production to sell to EDF (Electricite de France) and no more need for boosted feed-in tariff requested by professionals for years.

Another advantage of this new "German thinking": Reducing tensions that cause massive and intermittent renewable electricity, the work to strengthen the network and the corresponding investments become less necessary

The profession must change model

"The whole profession was organized to create many energy producers, but now, the profitability of these projects does not exceed 5%," says André Joffre. Hence the need to "change software".

The development of this new model based on auto consumption, which can become a growth owes much to "Chinese dumping has earned us 10 years," since the collapse of the price of the panels has allowed the production cost to get closer to the price at which EDF sells its electricity. "Do not forget that the Chinese panels are manufactured on machine tools, coming from Europe," he adds.

On feed-in tariffs in effect, "They should not be suppressed recognizes André Joffre, but there is a real problem because of the weight it puts on the CSPE (Contribution to  Electricity Public Service, paid by consumers), at a time when the price of electricity increases. '


Source: La Tribune (French), Tranlated with Google Translate & Myself

Solar in the UK : Feed-in tariff dives from 21p per kWh to just 16p

One of the key incentives for private individuals and businesses considering cutting down on their energy usage by adopting solar power was the promise of government subsidies for those who took the step of installing panels in their homes or places of work. As of 1 August, however, the money given to anyone who installs solar panels – called a 'feed-in tariff' is set to be cut from the existing rate of 21p per kWh to just 16p – a reduction of around a quarter. In addition, the feed-in tariff will now only last for 20 years instead of the previous 25 years.

Not all bad news
The announcement that the subsidy is set to be dramatically lowered may sound like a death knell for the future of solar power, but it's rather more complex an issue than it may at first appear. The falling subsidy rate reflects the decreasing costs of installing the solar panels into homes and businesses – the prices were initially set to reflect the costs when the scheme began back in 2010. The Department of Energy and Climate Change have calculated that at the altered rates the subsidy should still amount to a return of around six per cent for those who opt for solar power – previous figures at the old rates worked out at seven to 10 per cent.

Rather than being up in arms about the changes to the scheme, green campaigners have been waxing positive about the improved clarity and openness which this announcement means for people considering solar energy, arguing that one of the main barriers to a wider-scale adoption of the clean energy was the cloud of uncertainty surrounding the future of subsidies. This sentiment has been backed up by the statement from the Department of Energy and Climate Change who were quick to hail the deal as a new era of certainty for solar power.

Some clouds on the horizon
Despite the positive noises being made by both sides, and the fact that the reduction is mostly indicative of the fact that solar energy is now cheaper to implement, there are a still a few worrying signs for solar fans. Since the initial announcement in April that the subsidy was to be cut, installations have dropped by a pretty hard-to-ignore 90 per cent, but admittedly that was immediately following a controversial and 'illegal' halving of subsidies from 43p per kWh to 21p per kWh.

It's been far from simple getting to the current figure either, with the government having initially planned to halve the subsidy rates only to be hauled before the courts by solar companies and other eco-groups, losing three cases before arriving at this new deal. Whether this new certainty will prove attractive to those on the fence remains to be seen, but the end of high-profile legal wranglings are surely to be celebrated, and the eventual clarity over the payments greeted with relief.

Would the reduced rates put you off installing solar panels, or does the new certainty over payments make it a more attractive option? Let us know your thoughts.


Source: Alertme.com