| Phil is First Green Energy's go to expert on all things Solar! Great read for those interested in the solar industry. Reducing BoS field labor and material costs on projects are critical to achieving competitive system performance and pricing. |
By Phil Winters
 As PV modules decline in price, the focus on cost savings increasingly turns to the Balance of Systems (BoS). Though material costs of BoS continue to rise (copper, aluminum, steel, etc.), costs savings are derived primarily from the engineered integration of the BOS system which can reduce labor and materials on the job site.
Two recent studies concluded that BoS costs will likely exceed the costs of PV modules in the near term, becoming the highest cost portion of a solar system (this is including the mounting system, which we are including in BoS descriptions). According to GTM research, “…attention from developers and EPCs will increasingly be placed on a project’s balance-of-system (BoS) costs. Historically, innovation in the BoS space has been somewhat limited, given its smaller share of the total system. However, BoS costs will represent more than half of total project costs by 2012, and many BoS players are beginning to integrate their offerings into full-service component packages and positioning for greater share in the market via meaningful economic gains.”
As well, the recently launched U.S. Department of Energy SunShot Initiative ‘aims to dramatically decrease the total costs of solar energy systems by 75% before the end of the decade’. Much of the focus of this initiative is on BoS and labor savings advancements.
During the last decade, we have seen a series of shifts in the PV landscape. In 2002, the solar industry was squarely focused on the modules while the inverter was considered a mysterious box with a limited 3 year warranty that could be sourced from only a handful of suppliers in the market. Slowly the focus changed to the inverter, which now comes with standard 10 and 20 year warranties, and boasts thousands of suppliers globally.
Until recently, nary a thought was given to the BoS, with integrators frequently building their own mounting systems out of strut, stuffing their own combiner boxes and cobbling together their BoS solutions from a series of manufacturers via their local electrical distributor.
Thankfully, the industry has matured and many of these ‘home-made’ solutions have abated over time with suppliers like Eaton stepping in with high-quality, volume manufacturing. This has contributed to the decreasing installed cost of PV. There is, however, much to improve upon where significant BoS cost savings can occur, which Eaton is now squarely addressing.
Take for instance, the current state of connecting modules to combiner boxes. Most contractors currently do all this work manually; running PV cable the length of the combiner box to module connection point, cutting and stripping the wires, crimping their contacts, assembling the connectors, attaching ID labels and terminating the string in the combiner box. This will be repeated dozens, hundreds and thousands of times depending on the scale of the project. Did we mention this is generally being done by highly paid electricians?
Like days of old, with homemade mounting systems and combiner boxes, this practice results in more cost, more connection points, more leak paths and definitely more potential quality and safety issues due to human error. On top of this, it is questionable whether testing is conducted on every one of those connection points─i.e. pull, hi-pot and continuity testing─thus further increasing potential human error trouble spots, which can be dangerous down the road, costing significant resources to fix.
There’s an option, Eaton BoS alternative: a custom made PV cable assembly that is manufactured for your project in a controlled condition, by highly trained personnel using precision Swiss made equipment. These custom assemblies arrive at the job mapped, labeled, guaranteed and 100% certified for pull test, continuity and Hi-Pot. This approach also reduces material and labor costs up to 30% while significantly increasing the quality and certainty of long-term system performance. The Eaton solution replaces a highly laborious and time consuming process with a plug and play solution.
BoS breakthroughs like this are driving the reduction in system costs while driving solar towards grid parity. Companies like Eaton, with their integrated total BoS solution, are driving innovation and cost reductions across the system to benefit the entire solar industry.
Part of what differentiates the Eaton approach to BoS is how the engineering teams from each product work together to optimize layouts and system designs to achieve material and labor savings.
Eaton engineers across product disciplines work together, so our designs are focused on reducing labor and materials in the field. While other mounting manufacturers design their mounting solution and provide a quote around this one component of the system, the Eaton approach is to review the electrical design parameters of the project to ensure mounting, cable, cable management and combiners are all designed in one integrated fashion to maximize efficiency and cost savings opportunities on each specific project. A complete BoS engineered solution looks at every angle of the project, ensuring consideration of every component in tandem rather than in a vacuum. This reduces cost while increasing certainty of construction logistics, material costs and performance of PV asset.
Let me give you a real-world example: Eaton recently worked on a 10 MW project which had received three quotes from three different companies to provide single component solutions (mounting, combiner boxes and PV cable solutions). Standard solutions at a standard price. Then, Eaton got involved with our Total BoS Solutions. What we were able to achieve by integrating our design practices across our BoS solutions was a 15% reduction in mounting costs, and a reduction in pier requirements by 33%. By matching our mounting configuration to the string sizing of the system, were able to reduce PV cable costs by 50% while reducing the labor on PV cable installation by 70%. This is a remarkable achievement on one project─and this approach drove the advancement of innovation at Eaton.
It is a remarkable and positive change for the PV industry that one company can offer roof and ground mounting solutions, combiners and re-combiners, cable management solutions, PV cable harness assemblies, wireless monitoring and grid tie solutions all from one qualified highly bankable vendor.
As solar continues to step onto the world stage of large scale utility and massively distributed rooftops, the manufacturing community also needs to step up their game to ensure they are integrating BoS solutions which provide better performance, higher long-term certainty and reduced costs in materials and labor.
Phil Winters is the Renewable Energy Business Development Manager for Eaton in Canada. Prior to joining Eaton, Winters launched and led project development and EPC firms serving the Canadian and global solar markets. Winters is a graduate of both Solar Energy International (1999) and the Ontario Solar Academy (2009), and is currently the Vice President of the Solar and Sustainable Energy Society of Canada. He holds MBA from Southern Methodist University’s Cox School of Business.
http://www.interpv.net/market/market_view.asp?idx=814&part_code=03
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Showing posts with label solar power. Show all posts
Showing posts with label solar power. Show all posts
Tuesday, September 9, 2014
Integrated Balance of System Solution: The Next Solar Cost Savings Frontier
Tuesday, February 1, 2011
Recurrent Energy hires Celestica to make solar electricity modules for Ontario
TORONTO - Celestica (TSX:CLS), a Toronto-based global manufacturing company, will be making solar modules for a U.S. company that will supply the Ontario Power Authority under a multi-year agreement announced Monday.
The modules are part of a project awarded to Recurrent Energy of San Francisco as part of the renewable energy Feed-In-Tariff program for the government-owned Ontario power grid.
Production will begin at Celestica's Toronto plant in the second quarter of this year, said Mike Andrade, Celestica's senior vice-president of the Americas.
"It's nice that there's a (green energy) market in our backyard," he said, adding that clean technology is a major growth initiative in the company's Canadian business.
"In Canada, historically we've done most of our business in the IT and communication space and we've made a concerted effort over the last few years to shift our focus to diversifying that."
The Celestica-manufactured photovoltaic modules will be used in the construction of 19 solar power plants that Recurrent Energy has contracted to do under the provincial government program.
Recurrent Energy said it expects to invest hundreds of million dollars in the development, which it says will create about 2,500 jobs in the province.
Last week, Celestica said it sees the opportunity for double-digit growth in revenue in 2011, for the first time in several years.
The revenue growth follows several years of investments in new market segments for Celestica _ particularly aerospace and defence, industrial and healthcare _ and the company anticipates making further investments in such areas in 2011, Muhlhauser said.
Thursday, January 20, 2011
Ideas for a rational electricity policy platform
Rod Taylor
We are about 10 months away from the next Ontario provincial election, and electricity policy is likely to be one of the top five ballot issues. What follows is a short list of ideas, available free to any political party, on what should make up an electricity policy platform.
1. Reaffirm the principle that making Ontario’s electricity prices competitive with our neighbours is the overriding objective. This principle has been sadly neglected in the recent “maximum renewables whatever the cost” era of Ontario’s Green Energy Act. The price of electricity should be set in the market, but electricity policy should be guided by a comprehensive, independent regulatory analysis of which of the various generation, transmission and demand management options offer the lowest, long-term life-cycle costs.
This analysis should consider all costs, including environmental, such as the cost of long-term nuclear waste storage, mercury emissions from flooding, greenhouse-gas impacts from backing up intermittent solar and wind generation, etc.
2. Recognize that dispatchability is key to operating a power system. Demand and supply must be instantaneously matched, and this means generators must be dispatched on and off the system. Wind and solar power are intermittent, variable and non-dispatchable. Hydroelectricity is renewable and dispatchable.
There are 2000 megawatts of hydro power waiting to be developed in Ontario’s north. In its 2007 integrated plan, the Ontario Power Authority said this option is the most cost-effective of all renewables, including the cost of transmission incorporation.
3. Overcome Ontario’s delusional obsession with electricity self-sufficiency. It is delusional because two-thirds of our power is made from primary energy sources (uranium, natural gas, coal) sourced outside the province. If Boston can rely on northern Canadian hydro power for a substantial portion of its power, why can't Toronto? Ontario sits between the two lowest-cost power jurisdictions in Canada – Manitoba and Quebec. Once we’ve built out our own untapped and renewable northern hydro power, let’s import more from our neighbours. Ontario has world-beating expertise in transmitting high voltage power through climate and distance; let’s use it.
4. Revise the Clean Energy Act. Dramatically reduce the terms for new purchased power to five years; reduce the size of any single installation; reduce the subsidy offered; restore local planning authorities; make competitive electricity prices an objective of the act.
5. Rationalize Ontario’s power sector. The government has announced its intention to reduce the number of agencies, boards and commissions as part of its austerity program. Recombining parts of the power sector must be done with extreme care. For example, the planning parts of the OPA could be merged with the Independent Electricity System Operator, but if the contracting for long-term supply that the OPA currently does joins the IESO, the “I” (for “independent”) will be lost and the credibility of the Ontario market structure destroyed.
There is, however, room in Ontario’s power sector for significant rationalization and that’s on the distribution wires side. This sector offers major opportunities for economies of scale. Local distribution companies should be encouraged to amalgamate or, at the least, share scalable network services (e.g. billing, metering, forestry, line maintenance) to reduce costs.
6. Do not build social programs on the backs of ratepayers. No future government will be elected on the basis of tax increases; but unlike in other sectors (mining, forestry, chemicals, steel, autos, telecom, gas distribution, etc.), in the electricity sector, the province owns the lion’s share of the assets and can send directives to the regulator.
This tempts every government to build social programs (e.g. employment programs) and charge them to the electricity ratepayer (e.g. creating an Ontario nuclear industry, or an Ontario industrial windmill manufacturing industry). No new taxes should also mean no further plundering of the capital pool made available by raising electricity rates by ministerial direction. The best way to prevent this in future is by taking the assets out of the province’s hands, and relying on a well-funded, independent regulator to protect the consumer without ministerial direction.
By taking these six positions, a political party would have a rational and comprehensible electricity policy to offer voters in the October, 2011, election.
Rod Taylor is former executive vice-president, Hydro One, and was a member of the board of the Ontario Independent Market Operator and sat on Ontario’s Market Design Committee.
Wednesday, January 19, 2011
EDF's Solar `Time Bomb' Will Tick On After France Pops Bubble
Jan. 19 (Bloomberg) -- France’s solar power boom that’s led to farmers building unneeded barns just to cover them in panels is costing Electricite de France SA more than a billion euros ($1.3 billion) a year as it meets state pledges to pay above- market prices for renewable energy.
French payments for solar-generated electricity sold into the distribution grid were the highest in Europe in 2009, leading to a 10-fold capacity increase in two years. What’s been a boon for panel owners and manufacturers has hit EDF because a tax to cover the higher costs of renewable electricity has fallen short.
“This is a time bomb EDF needs to defuse as soon as possible,” Bertrand Lecourt, an analyst at Deutsche Bank AG, said by telephone from Paris. While “the totally out-of-control phase” could be over, “it’s still something to be watched carefully,” he said.
The cost is siphoning off funds from EDF as it plans to spend 35 billion euros to extend the life of France’s aging nuclear plants. Europe’s largest power producer also aims to invest tens of billions of euros building plants in the U.K., China and Italy. The tax shortfall will widen this year and last until 2017 even as the government moves to cool the solar rush, said Aurel BGC analyst Louis Boujard.
EDF shares have dropped 20 percent over the past year, compared with a 3.7 percent decline in Europe’s Stoxx 600 Utilities Index. The Paris-based company had net debt of $57 billion euros at the end of June, according to a company filing.
Elsewhere in Europe, governments have stepped in to contain spiraling growth in solar generation.
Spanish Limits
The Czech Senate introduced a temporary tax on solar producers in December, and Spain limited the hours during which existing solar parks can earn premium rates. Germany almost doubled the surcharge consumers have to pay in renewable-energy subsidies starting this year.
To end what it has called a “speculative bubble,” France on Dec. 10 imposed a three-month freeze on solar projects to devise rules that could include caps on development and lowering the so-called feed-in tariffs that pay the higher rate for renewable power. The tariffs were cut twice in 2010.
“We just didn’t see it coming,” French lawmaker Francois- Michel Gonnot said of the boom. “What’s in the pipeline this year is unimaginable. Farmers were being told they could put panels on hangars and get rid of their cows.”
Solar Projects
The French cuts haven’t slowed demand for new solar projects. EDF received 3,000 applications a day to connect panels to the grid at the end of last year, compared with about 7,100 connections in all of 2008, according to the government and EDF. France could reach its 2020 target of 5,400 megawatts of solar generating capacity by the end of 2011 if all proposed projects are completed.
France’s energy regulator estimates EDF will pay an average of 546 euros a megawatt-hour for solar power in 2011. That’s almost 10 times estimated spot market power prices of 55 euros, and the highest among renewable energy sources.
The promise of rich returns spurred suburban supermarkets to put photovoltaic panels in parking lots and farmers to install units on empty, purpose-built barns, according to a French parliamentary report.
“Most panels installed in France were made in China with a highly questionable carbon footprint,” Environment Minister Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet told parliament last month. Policy must “create jobs in France, not subsidize Chinese industry.”
The higher payments for renewable power are supposed to be covered by a levy added to consumers’ electricity bills, which also pays for the supply of power to needy households. For the last two years the CSPE levy, which remained at 4.50 euros a megawatt-hour between 2004 and the end of 2010, failed to keep up with the mounting costs.
Raised Tax
France raised the tax to 7.50 euros a megawatt-hour from Jan. 1, short of the 12.90 euros the regulator estimates is necessary to eliminate the shortfall through the end of 2011.
The new level and further increases in the coming years may allow EDF to reach a “balance” in the system by 2017, Aurel BGC’s Boujard said by telephone.
“EDF shouldn’t have to pay for renewable energy development in France,” Boujard said.
EDF’s shortfall was 1.4 billion euros in 2009, and is estimated to exceed 1 billion euros in 2010, the Commission de Regulation de l’Energie said in a report published this month. With the CSPE set at 7.50 euros a megawatt hour this year, the shortfall will reach an estimated 3 billion euros at the end of 2011 because of the increase in solar capacity, according to data in the report.
The solar component of the tax shortfall will rise to about a billion euros in 2011 compared with 60 million euros in 2009, according to Philippe de Ladoucette, head of the agency.
The development of wind and solar energies is “widening a deficit considerably,” EDF Chief Executive Officer Henri Proglio told Senators Dec. 14. “One can’t ask EDF to be the banker for marginal or local industries,” he said.
Solar energy investing: what's happening in the solar market?
You’ve heard it all before—myriad reasons why you should invest in solar technologies now, while the iron’s hot. If you’re expecting one of those typical news hooks, suspending popular belief, you won’t find it here. You should invest in solar companies, and here is Clean Energy Authority’s rundown of what’s going on in the solar market this week.
Friday, January 14, 2011
European Supergrid Slowly Coming into Focus
I would be very excited to hear about how people might envision this concept for Canada and all of North America. See the link at the bottom to watch a very informative video on the European Supergrid.
A new agreement is one more step forward on the long journey to develop offshore renewable energy infrastructure and unlock gigawatts of wind power capacity.
London, UK – In early December 2010, as Europe was grappling with sovereign debt crises and angry protests swept through its cities, a group of Ministers and grid operators met quietly to sign a deal that could help to secure the development of hundreds of gigawatts of renewable energy capacity.
The Northsea Countries Offshore Grid Initiative Memorandum of Understanding is the latest step in an ambitious program to put in place the infrastructure and market conditions to ensure that renewable energy generated offshore can be fed into the grid and brought to where it is most needed. The supergrid is considered an essential step in the development of Northern Europe's offshore wind industry and has the potential to unlock billions of euros in investment in key infrastructure.
At the heart of the plan is a vast series of undersea grid connections stretching down the coasts of the UK, France, Denmark, Netherlands, Germany, Ireland, Belgium, Norway, Sweden and possibly even down into Spain and Portugal. This offshore development would be combined with an improved onshore network, a more uniform system of grid management and interconnecting High Voltage Direct Current (HVDC) cables between countries.
Currently there are around 35-40 GW of offshore wind power capacity in various stages of planning in the UK alone, with many other countries in the region also laying out ambitious plans. Long term, the projections are for more than 169 GW of offshore wind operating in the North Sea by the middle of the century.
“The North Sea is such a fantastic energy resource for renewables that can service the whole region and a single electricity market will facilitate that sort of exploitation,” said Alex Murley, of RenewableUK, a group familiar with the project.
“It would allow you to cost effectively develop energy resources on a regional rather than a national level. 95% of current electricity is consumed within the country in which it is generated. Can you imagine Spain consuming 95% of its oranges?” asked Murley.
While non-binding, the recently signed MOU builds on previous in-principle agreements and seeks to promote cooperation in developing an offshore grid. Currently, there are three working groups set up to examine and tackle the technical, political and regulatory barriers.
The idea of an offshore suprgrid has been around for many years, and one of its main evangelists is Dr. Eddie O'Conner, CEO of Maintream Renewable Power and formerly of Airtricity. Back in 2002 O’Conner helped to conceive Friends of the Offshore Supergrid (FOSG), an industry-led body that was formally set up in March 2010 to push for speedier development of grid infrastructure.
“The FOSG came together to promote the concept of a supergrid. We have assembled the supply chain: providing the consulting engineers, the manufacturers of the HVDC equipment, the cable manufacturers and so on. We intend to advise governments as to how the supergrid can be rolled out as a single grid,” he explained in an interview with Wind Energy Update last year.
Despite the recent progress there remains a number of unresolved issues over who will own and operate the grid, who will pay for it and who will profit.
“There are various different ownership models and operator models. It is something that the third package [EU's latest energy policy] is looking at. The merchant model approach is something that is on the table now and we would look to encourage in the future,” commented Murley.
'Merchant model' refers to a system under which new companies could be established to develop and own offshore interconnectors or other infrastructure.
There also remains the question of political will, since the development of a large offshore grid will revolutionize European energy markets, bringing a single energy market significantly closer than governments have so far been willing or able to do.
Nonetheless, there does appear to be momentum behind the proposals. The third European energy package contains much of the policy basis for an offshore grid, with its emphasis on market liberalization and unbundling of grid ownership, energy generation and transmission. Despite some opposition from EU heavyweights France and Germany, the package was adopted in 2009, an example of the broad support it enjoys. New pan-European bodies such as European Network of Transmission System Operators for Electricity (ENTSO-e) and Agency for the Cooperation of Energy Regulators (ACER) have been established to help improve communication and coordination across the sector.
While there are a great number of details still to be worked out before a clearer picture of the new grid emerges, a number of concrete proposals are already in the planning. By 2020, RenewableUK estimates that there may be around 25 GW of offshore wind power capacity in UK waters (up from just over 1 GW today).
At the same time there are concrete plans for an additional 6.5 GW of interconnector cables linking the UK to the rest of Europe (at present there are 2.45 GW of interconnectors). The ability to trade large volumes of electricity with its neighbors should greatly enhance the usefulness of the UK’s offshore wind resources and overcome the challenges of intermittency associated with wind power.
Below is a video put together by Mainstream Renewable Power on the potential for Europe's supergrid. It's a big vision. But if it works as planned, it could give Europe a big advantage in the offshore wind space.
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