Advanced Energy Systems Coming to Bend

Apparently the solar systems installation industry of Central Oregon will get another competitor: Advanced Energy Systems.  The physical location is currently unknown but the Bend phone number is listed on the company’s website as 541-520-5590.

The above image is from an advertisement in the October 21, 2009 Cascade Business News and the following announcement was in the September Economic Development for Central Oregon Newsletter:

New Member: Advanced Energy Systems – Bronze
With a new office in Bend, AES Advanced Energy Systems has expanded from the west side of the Cascades. With 25 years of hands-on involvement in the renewable energy industry, Advanced Energy Systems is dedicated to providing the best experience possible for the business owner with the acquisition and operation of a renewable energy system. Advanced Energy Systems specializes in the design of commercial solar electric systems and commercial solar water heating systems.

Multiple Factors Drive the Price of PV Solar Down

More Sun for Less: Solar Panels Drop in Price
By Kate Galbraith – New York Times -August 26, 2009

When Greg Hare looked into putting solar panels on his ranch-style home in Magnolia, Tex., last year, he decided he could not afford it. “I had no idea solar was so expensive,” he recalled.

But the cost of solar panels has plunged lately, changing the economics for many homeowners. Mr. Hare ended up paying $77,000 for a large solar setup that he figures might have cost him $100,000 a year ago.

“I just thought, ‘Wow, this is an opportunity to do the most for the least,’ ” Mr. Hare said.

For solar shoppers these days, the price is right. Panel prices have fallen about 40 percent since the middle of last year, driven down partly by an increase in the supply of a crucial ingredient for panels, according to analysts at the investment bank Piper Jaffray.

The price drops — coupled with recently expanded federal incentives — could shrink the time it takes solar panels to pay for themselves to 16 years, from 22 years, in places with high electricity costs, according to Glenn Harris, chief executive of SunCentric, a solar consulting group. That calculation does not include state rebates, which can sometimes improve the economics considerably.

Harnessing the Heat: Active PV + Solar Thermal

PVT Solar, the company spotlighted in the article below is not the only company that combines photovoltaic technology and thermal energy to produce more energy than the PV alone.

SolarWall, an international company with headquarters in Toronto, Ontario, has developed a number of products based on its original air heating wall system including combining the thermal wall with photovoltaics to create their SolarDuct PV/T and SolarWall PV/T products.

The SolarWall PV thermal (PV/T) co-generation system was tested at the Canadian National Solar Test Facility.  The results showed that by adding a solar thermal component to a PV array to capture excess heat the total solar efficiency was boosted to over 50%, comparied with 10 to 15% efficiency that is typical of most stand-alone PV modules.

It’s clear, given the cost of PV panels, that every amount of available energy produced by the panels including thermal energy will need to be captured and put to use in order to provide economically saleable systems.

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Waste Not, Want Not: A New Approach to Solar
By Matthew L. Wald – New York Times – September 29, 2008

One of the limitations of solar photovoltaic systems is that, at the current state of the technology, no more than a quarter of the energy from the sun is converted to electric current. Most of the rest of the energy is lost as waste heat.

But Vinod Khosla, the founder of Sun Microsystems and now a technology entrepreneur and alternative-energy venture capitalist, says he’s found a solution that doubles or even triples the energy yield — a gargantuan leap in a field where engineers exult over the most incremental gains.

Mr. Khosla is funding a company called PVT Solar, of Berkeley, Calif., where engineers two years ago began trying to harness that wasted heat. In a sense, it was already being collected, either in the solar modules themselves, or underneath. (Solar arrays are often installed at an angle, to face the sun, thus creating a wedge-shaped space below for heat to collect.)

Are Small Solar Firms at Risk?

Comments coming soon.

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Amid Boom, Concerns at Small Solar Firms
Small-Scale Contractors Benefit From Interest in Solar Power
By Jan Ellen Spiegel- New York Times – September 24, 2008

Solar power is in the midst of a boom in the United States. High energy costs are one reason. But what may be more important are generous state and power company incentives and rebates, as well as tax credits that make solar systems affordable to many more people and businesses.

This surge has, in turn, created hundreds, if not thousands, of small businesses, mostly contractors and installers.

They are people like Glenn Barresi, an electrician in South Windsor, Conn., who got into the solar installation business in 2005, about a year after Connecticut instituted one of the most generous rebate programs in the country. His company, Solarbrite, has grown from two employees — Mr. Barresi and his father — to more than a half dozen. But, he said, if the rebates go away, “I’m out of business.”

While industry groups and experts are not predicting a bust, they are raising concerns that growth is about to be tempered. The solar power industry is experiencing growing pains over how power is financed and distributed. In the end, larger companies may gain the upper hand, and the incentives could decrease or even disappear.

“I think probably what we’re going to see is the gradual disappearance of the very small one-, two-, three-person company that does everything,” said Dave Ljungquist, associate director of project development at the Connecticut Clean Energy Fund.

Ashland Expands Solar Power Policy

Ashland changes solar power policy
The Ashland Daily Tidings – September 21, 2008
 
The city of Ashland has expanded its landmark policy on selling excess power from residential solar panels in order to encourage large-scale projects.

People could receive credit on their electric bills for systems up to 25 kilowatts by feeding the extra electricity back into the city electric grid.

Now the Ashland City Council has raised the level to 50 kilowatts because more homeowners and businesses may be taking advantage of federal and state tax incentives to install bigger systems, said Ashland Electric Department Director Dick Wanderscheid.

Building Integrated Photovoltaics: Active + Passive Energy Synergy

There is no argument that conservation is the most effective way to reduce energy consumption.  But, just as we cannot drill our way out of the constant demand for oil, we cannot conserve or build our way out of the constant demand for the energy to heat and cool our homes and buildings.  By using green building techniques we can have a substantial effect on reducing energy consumption but it appears that no matter how much energy we conserve there will always be the demand for more and more energy.

By combining energy conservation, green building (and remodeling) techniques plus active and passive energy generation we can have the best of all worlds. 

One way to accomplish combining active and passive energy generation is to utilize Building Integrated Photovoltaics (BIPV).  These are building materials that are capable of actively generating electical energy via built-in photovoltaics.  An example of a BIPV application are the skylights of the Boulder, Colorado REI store.

SolarWall, an international company with headquarters in Toronto, Ontario, has developed a number of products based on its original air heating wall system including combining the thermal wall with photovoltaics to create their SolarDuct PV/T and SolarWall PV/T products.

The SolarWall PV thermal (PV/T) co-generation system was tested at the Canadian National Solar Test Facility.  The results showed that by adding a solar thermal component to a PV array to capture excess heat the total solar efficiency was boosted to over 50%, comparied with 10 to 15% efficiency that is typical of most stand-alone PV modules.

Residential Solar Systems Can Make Financial Sense

The following article is an excellent primer for any homeowner considering installing solar panels. It was especially interesting to note the understandable difference between household incomes and solar panel installations.  It makes common sense that people with higher than average incomes would own higher than average valued homes and would be those homeowners who would most likely be in the market for value-added enhancements like in-ground swimming pools AND rooftop solar electice systems.

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Home solar energy systems in (Central) Oregon become more cost-efficient
Gail Kinsey Hill – The Oregonian Staff – August 8, 2008

Rooftop solar electric systems often are associated with the rich or zealous — a green privilege.

But sky-high energy prices, a degraded environment and new aggressive government policies are changing the who and the why — so much that the field is getting level.

The incentives that come with installing solar-electric panels have never been greater. With tax breaks and cash grants, (Central) Oregon homeowners can slash the cost of a photovoltaic system by about 60 percent.

Still, a lot of numbers are in the price tag, and it’s a close call. Consumers need to know why they’d take the plunge before deciding whether a purchase makes economic as well as ideologic sense.

A 2-kilowatt rooftop system — the typical size for a Central Oregon family — carries a total cost of about $20,000. But state and federal incentives now can cut the out-of-pocket expense to $7,500.

Cost/Benefits of Residential PV Panels Questioned

Just as residential wood-burning stoves are inefficient compared to modern, utility-scale woody biomass burning power plants, residential-scale photovoltaic panel energy production compared to community-scale sized solar power plants will be less efficient and therefore most likely have an inferior cost/benefit relationship.  No surprise here.

What the study reported on below does suggest is that more efforts should be put into creating solar power farms (called “central station solar” and “Big Solar” in the article below) much like Germany, Japan and Spain have been successfully doing for the last decade.

What is missed by many proponents of renewable power generated from large wind farms is the fact that the electricity generated from wind typically is not produced in the heat of the day when the greatest demand for electricity occurs but during the morning and evening hours.  Solar, on the other hand, is most productive during the middle of the day and afternoon hours – during “peak power” time when the cost of electricity is typically substantially higher.  A better mouse trap would be to partner wind and solar as complimentary renewable energy technologies.

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     The following are excerpts from a report from OPB News:

Benefits Of Solar Panels Questioned In Study
Kristian Foden-Vencil - OPB News - February 21, 2008

Scientists in California  released a study this week saying the cost of residential solar panels outweighs their benefits.

The findings appear to be a public relations setback for Oregon’s blooming photovoltaics industry. But many of those businesses say the financial cost isn’t the only important aspect of generating power — carbon emissions and pollution also need to be considered.

Over the last few years, Oregon has attracted over a billion dollars worth of investments in solar energy.

If Schnectady, NY why not Bend, OR?

 

Even in the winter, the sun warms the panels, helping a light snow to melt and slide off the panels. When we have a heavy snowfall, we use a “roof rake” to gently pull the snow off of the roof.  Visit: Our Photovoltaic System

Solar panels need sunshine to generate power whether located in Schnectady, NY or Bend, OR. With shorter daylight hours and a lower sun angle in winter, solar panels produce proportionately less power. In cloudy weather, solar modules work, although they produce less electricity than on a sunny day. Under a light overcast, the modules might produce about half as much as under full sun, ranging down to as little as five to ten percent under a dark overcast day.

While some sun does make it through several inches of snow, little electricity is generated when the panels are covered with anything. If the modules become covered with snow, they stop producing power, but snow generally melts quickly when the sun strikes the modules; if you brush the snow off, they resume operation immediately.

During Central Oregon winters snow can form on PV panels. However, since photovoltaic panels are dark colored they generate a small amount of surface heat because of their dark color so snow usually slides off their tempered glass covering or melts very quickly.

With Bend and much of Central Oregon currently blanketed with a covering of snow – including existing PV panels -  it begs the question: if folks can put up photovoltaic panels in upstate New York north of Schnectady and south of Adirondack Park where annual solar radiation is much less than Central Oregon, why not much more solar PV here?

Bend Solar Work Group Goes on Winter Solstice Field Trip

During a the midday hours of Friday, December 21st members of the Bend Solar Work Group met in northwest Bend to observe the “solar shading” effect various newly constructed homes have on each other.  This field trip is part of the ongoing and partially volunteer effort to draft a new solar building code for the City of Bend.

The group chose this particular day because it was a workday closest to Winter Solstice; the day the sun rises to its lowest point during the year.  This is the most commonly used benchmark day that many cities use for the “solar fence” or “solar setback” approach to their building codes as it relates to active and passive solar construction and solar access rights.  Cities choose this day because it has the least amount of solar radiation that can potentially be produced by the sun and it’s the day that nearby buildings and natural features (typically trees) can block the most solar radiation with their shadows.

The group was blessed with a beautiful but cold day for this field trip.  The sky was virtually without clouds so it was easy to observe firsthand the sun shadows that the houses and trees cast upon nearby homes and vacant building lots.  The bright sunlight allowed the group to easily see the detrimental effects solar ignorant design and construction – especially of rooflines – had on neighboring houses. In addition to the simple visual appraisal a “Solar Pathfinder” was utilized to add to the data collection.  This relatively small, totally manual device has been used to provide solar site analysis since it was originally invented over 30 years ago.
Almost all of the homes viewed were fairly closely spaced together in an attempt to create “urban density” but were too often oriented in a north-south direction and of varying heights that created massive solar energy shadowing.  Unfortunately, most of the houses observed would not be able to qualify for State of Oregon passive solar credit even with major remodeling.

Although no absolute decisions were made during this outing many excellent ideas were offered and discussed.  The information gathered from this field trip will be invaluable during future indoor meetings as the group tackles the solar access building code issues for both infill construction and new development.

The Bend Solar Working Group began its meetings starting in early September 2007 and has held meetings averaging every few weeks since then. The group is made up of members of the City of Bend’s planning department, a Bend City Councilor, architects and builders who are specialists in active and passive solar design and construction, a well-known and respected “environmental” attorney, a State of Oregon DLCD employee, Bend-based sellers and installers of active and passive solar energy systems and one interested citizen.  More background information on the group can be found at “Bend Building Code Goes Solar?“