Industry Update: Power Generation
When you are talking about power generation, there is one kind that truly, and literally, outshines all others – solar
February 1, 2010
Solar power is one of the least understood means of generating electricity, and for good reason. Solar power collection is relatively easy, but storage is difficult. Also, at night the entire system is reduced to a collection of parts, batteries, and wires.
However, for one Canadian company, the future of solar looks very bright.
Canadian Solar Solutions Inc., Kitchener, Ont., provides solar systems for residential, commercial, and solar farm markets in Canada, and is dedicated to the Canadian solar market.
“We believe the future for solar generation is extremely bright in Ontario due to the launch of the Ontario government’s feed-in tariff (FIT) [program],” said Milfred Hammerbacher, president of Canadian Solar Solutions.
The company, which produces solar cells, solar modules, and custom-designed solar application products, will soon establish a 200-MW module manufacturing facility in Ontario.
The company recently submitted a number of FIT applications to Ontario Power Authority and says it also has received considerable customer interest for “Made in Ontario” solar systems. Definitive decisions about the plant site, cost, and size will be decided very soon.
The new facility is expected to result in 500 new manufacturing jobs for the province.
The estimated cost of the plant is $24 million, and once completed, it will be one of the largest solar panel manufacturing facilities in North America.
“The new expansion means a great deal to Canadian Solar,” said Hammerbacher. “It will create a new investment, jobs, and further support Ontario’s growing solar industry. The new facility will help expand 'green' skilled jobs and investment in Ontario, as well as the rest of Canada. Additionally, with this facility, Canadian Solar’s leading-edge photovoltaic (PV) technology will be manufactured and readily available in Ontario to provide solar solutions for the residential, commercial, and solar farm markets.”
When considering Ontario for Canadian Solar’s next investment in manufacturing, the company looked at the strength of R&D and the government’s commitment to investing in a low-carbon economy.
“Canadian Solar is looking forward to working with government representatives in creating jobs and a viable solar market in Ontario and across Canada to provide turnkey solar solutions,” said Hammerbacher.
The new module manufacturing facility in Ontario will be Canadian Solar's first outside of China. The solar cells that will go into the modules, however, will still be manufactured in China.
Understanding microFIT Program
The FIT program, which launched this past fall, pays between 80.2 cents and 44.3 cents per kilowatt-hour for electricity that is produced by a solar PV system. The way it works is that the larger the system, the lower the tariff rate will be.
Also, for projects less than 10 kW in size, new local content rules demand that any developer wanting to take advantage of the FIT program in Ontario has to show that 40 percent of the equipment and labor used to install the system was created in that province.
If the project is larger than 10 kW in size, the amount of local content rises to 50 percent.
Production and R&D
Canadian Solar’s customer base includes municipalities, governments, businesses, homeowners, as well as installers, dealers, electrical contractors, HVAC companies, PV manufacturers, roofing companies, real estate developers, and farmers.
Because of this customer diversity, the company also provides a range of products.
Canadian Solar’s production facilities manufacture ingots, wafers, solar cells, solar PV modules, solar power systems, and specialized solar products. The company established seven wholly owned manufacturing subsidiaries in China and is currently one of the largest solar companies in the world.
R&D is so important to Canadian Solar that it recently built a PV research center in the Suzhou district of China.
“Our research and development of high-efficiency solar cell structures include enhanced selective emitter, N-type, and wrap-through black contact cells,” said Hammerbacher. “We partner with academic and business leaders such as DuPont, ECN, University of Toronto, and Shanghai Jiao Tong University. Our research center is the only provincially accredited PV cell research center in Jiangsu Province, China, the heart of China’s PV industry.”
For more information, visit www.canadian-solar.ca.
Solar Energy Storage
A new area of energy research called artificial photosynthesis aims to overcome one of the biggest obstacles in solar power: energy storage.
Artificial photosynthesis uses sunlight to create potential fuel sources, such as oxygen and hydrogen from wastewater or even hydrocarbons like methane, from water and carbon dioxide.
Tom Meyer, the Arey Distinguished Professor of Chemistry at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, said if the approach is successful, we can create a new form of solar fuel production.
“The main problem with current solar power technology is that if the sun’s not shining, you’re out of luck,” Meyer said. “Solar fuels give us the ability to collect and stockpile that energy.”
The goal of researchers is to advance the nuts-and-bolts research that will take solar power to the next level and beyond, said John Papanikolas, associate professor of chemistry and co-principal investigator of UNC’s new Energy Frontier Research Center.
“Basic science is the key,” said Papanikolas. “In terms of the technology currently available, many people think that if we all put solar panels on our roofs, we’ll be fine. But that’s so far from the truth it’s not funny. We really need technology that we haven’t even thought of yet.”
That’s where solar fuels come in, as well as another focus of the center’s work—developing next-generation photovoltaics, a technology and research field related to converting sunlight directly into electricity, using devices such as solar panels and solar cells.
Papanikolas estimates that generating enough solar power to meet the country’s current electricity needs would require a solar panel 10,000 square miles in size and cost $10 trillion.
The UNC team and their colleagues are exploring avenues that could result in the creation of inexpensive “solar shingles” on roofs and other such applications.
“The energy future will be driven by a shift to new energy sources that minimize environmental impacts. Hydrocarbons such as coal and oil currently provide about 85 percent of the country’s energy, but they’re a finite source,” said Papanikolas.
Pulling the Plug on Hybrid Myths
The energy sector’s buzz around hybrids is growing despite the fact very few of these vehicles are actually recharged via the electrical grid
Misinformation abounds in the marketplace regarding plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs), but sources say these vehicles hold great promise as the key to weaning the world from its dependence on oil.
The U.S. Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory has taken a lead role in developing and testing plug-in hybrid technologies. At the lab’s Center for Transportation Research (CTR), Vehicle Systems Engineer Forrest Jehlik and his colleagues work to bring these cars to market quickly and cheaply. Here, he dispels some common myths about plug-in hybrids.
Myth No. 1: A significant number of plug-in hybrids are currently for sale.
Although several major auto manufacturers — including General Motors, Toyota, Ford, Volkswagen, and Volvo — have plug-in vehicles currently in the development pipeline, the first wave of these cars is still at least a year away from officially hitting the market, Jehlik said.
The first plug-in hybrid for sale likely will be the Chevrolet Volt®, which is scheduled to launch in November. General Motors claims that this PHEV will be able to travel up to 65 km on a single charge. The Toyota Prius® and other hybrids currently on the roads are not plug-ins — their batteries are charged by kinetic energy transferred from the brakes and wheels.
Myth No. 2: Researchers can measure the fuel economy for a plug-in hybrid just as easily as they can for gasoline-powered cars.
Establishing fuel economy standards — how many kilometers a plug-in hybrid vehicle can travel per liter of gasoline burned — is a complicated question. The answer, according to Jehlik, depends entirely on the driving and charging habits of the vehicle’s owner.
If a particular plug-in hybrid gets 65 km on a single charge, then a driver who has a 25-km commute each way to work and does 15 km of additional driving each day before charging the battery overnight would, theoretically, use no gasoline at all. If the same driver had a slightly longer commute, only a few liters of gasoline would be burned per week, despite driving many kilometers.
Myth No. 3: Prices for plug-in hybrid vehicles are currently so high because manufacturers are trying to make a killing on them.
The truth of the matter is that the components required to build a viable plug-in hybrid are still quite expensive, Jehlik said. In many cases, the battery for a plug-in vehicle alone costs nearly $10,000.
Myth No. 4: The batteries in plug-in hybrid vehicles are unreliable, possibly unsafe, and require frequent replacement.
Most plug-in hybrids currently under development use lithium-ion batteries in their battery packs. Although complex chemical processes produce energy within the battery, vehicle system engineers have built in advanced control systems to prevent fires or other safety hazards.
Researchers have devoted just as much time and effort to developing inner-pack safety systems as they have to the batteries themselves, Jehlik said. Consumers don't need to worry about battery malfunction.
Jehlik and his colleagues in the CTR have also tested the current generation of lithium-ion batteries in what are known as life cycle vehicle tests, which take the car through its paces for more than 200,000 km. Even at the end of the car’s life, the vast majority of batteries still function quite well, Jehlik said.
Myth No. 5: Scientists have identified lithium-ion batteries as the only battery technology that could work in plug-in hybrid cars.
Although lithium-ion technology came to replace nickel-metal hydride (NiMH) batteries as the preeminent focus of electric vehicle development efforts, scientists at Argonne and around the world are currently investigating several different approaches for energy storage that could help to bring down the cost of plug-in hybrids.
Myth No. 6: Electrical grids can’t handle the increased load from charging millions of electric vehicles.
According to Jehlik, the U.S. electric grid has the capacity to accommodate the imminent rollout of plug-in hybrids onto the roads.
If everyone were somehow able to buy a plug-in hybrid tomorrow, that would probably present a problem as far as the supply of electricity is concerned, Jehlik said. However, the pace that they are likely to enter the market will not cause a systemwide failure.
However, Jehlik noted that the electric infrastructure will need to change eventually—not only to keep up with added demand, but to ensure the smarter transmission, distribution, and consumption of electricity.
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