Distributed Solar and Grid Parity

Date: 8 Mar 2011 | posted in: Energy, Energy Self Reliant States | 1 Facebooktwitterredditmail

Grid parity is an approaching target for distributed solar power, and can be helped along with smarter electricity pricing policy.

Consider a residential solar PV system installed in Los Angeles.  A local buying group negotiated a price of $4.78 per Watt for the solar modules and installation, a price that averages out to 23.1 cents per kilowatt-hour over the 25 year life of the system.*  With the federal tax credit, that cost drops to 17.9 cents.   Since the average electricity price in Los Angeles is 11.5 cents (according to NREL’s PV Watts v2), solar doesn’t compete. 

Or does it? 

In Los Angeles, there are three sets of electricity prices.  From October to May, all pricing plans have a flat rate per kWh and total consumption.  During peak season (June to September), however, the utility offers two different pricing plans: time-of use pricing and tiered pricing.   Time-of-use pricing offers lower rates – 10.8 cents – during late evening and early morning hours, but costs as much as 22 cents per kWh during peak hours.  Prices fluctuate by the hour.  Tiered pricing offers the same, flat rate at any hour of the day, but as total consumption increases the rate does as well.  For monthly consumption of 350 kWh or less, the price is 13.2 cents.  From 350 to 1,050 kWh, the price is 14.7 cents.  Above 1,050 kWh, each unit of electricity costs 18.1 cents.

The following chart illustrates the difficulty in determining whether solar has reached “grid parity” (e.g. the same price as electricity from the grid).  For some marginal prices, solar PV is cheaper than grid electricity when coupled with the federal tax credit.

Over the course of the year, solar is not less than grid electricity.  A very rough calculation of the expected time of day production of a solar array in Los Angeles finds that the average value of a solar-produced kWh is 15.1 cents over a year.  That suggests that solar power is not yet at grid parity, even with time-of-use pricing.

There are other considerations, as well. 

For one, we ignored additional incentives for solar power, including federal accelerated depreciation (for commercially-owned systems) as well as state and utility incentive programs.  These programs substitute taxpayer dollars for ratepayer ones, making the cost of solar to the grid lower.

We also didn’t confront the complicated issues involving a grid connected solar PV system.  Net metering is the rule that governs on-site power generation and it allows self-generators to roll their electricity meter backward as they generate electricity, but there are limits.  Users typically only get a credit for the energy charges on their bill, and not for fixed charges utilities apply to recover the costs of grid maintenance (and associated taxes and fees).   Producing more than is consumed on-site can mean giving free electrons to the utility company.  So even if a solar array could produce all the electricity consumed on-site, the billing arrangement would not allow the customer to zero out their electricity bill.

Where Can Distributed Solar Compete?
Based on our own analysis, solar PV at $5 per Watt (with solely the federal tax credit) could not match average grid electricity prices in any of the sixteen largest metropolitan areas in the United States.  With accelerated depreciation – an incentive only available to commercial operations – solar PV in San Francisco and Los Angeles (representing 21 million Americans) could compete with average grid prices near $4 per Watt installed cost. 

Under a time-of-use pricing plan (where prices could be 30% higher during solar hours, as in Los Angeles), 40 million Americans would live in regions where solar PV could compete with grid prices at $5 per Watt with both federal incentives.

With solar at $4 per Watt, Californians would only need the tax credit (not depreciation) for grid parity with time-of-use rates.  Adding in the depreciation bonus would increase the number to over 62 million Americans.

Distributed solar is nearing a cost-effectiveness threshold, when it will suddenly become an economic opportunity for millions of Americans.

*Note: for regular readers, we changed and improved our levelized price model (in response to some comments on our cross-post to Renewable Energy World). 

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Every Utility Should Have This Map

Date: 2 Mar 2011 | posted in: Energy, Energy Self Reliant States | 0 Facebooktwitterredditmail

To support its solar PV program, Southern California Edison rolled out a map of its grid system, highlighting (in red) areas that “could potentially minimize your costs of interconnection to the SCE system.” A similar map is forthcoming from San Diego Gas & Electric and Pacific Gas & Electric. The benefits for distributed generation are obvious, … Read More

Distributed Generation Requires Standardized Contracts

Date: 1 Mar 2011 | posted in: Energy, Energy Self Reliant States | 0 Facebooktwitterredditmail

Twenty MW is also consistent with Commission decisions. We have established certain contract provisions for small sellers because we have found they are unable to bid into a utility request for proposal, and generally do not have the resources or expertise to negotiate and enter into a bilateral contract. We define the size of those small sellers as 20 MW and less.

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U.S. Wind Projects Get Bigger By Building Up (Not Adding Turbines)

Date: 28 Feb 2011 | posted in: Energy, Energy Self Reliant States | 0 Facebooktwitterredditmail

Have U.S. wind projects hit a size sweet spot?  While average project capacity continues to grow, it’s largely because of increasing turbine size rather than adding more turbines to a wind farm.

The following chart illustrates, showing how the capacity of the average American wind project has more than doubled in a decade (to nearly 90 MW in 2009), but that almost all that growth can be attributed to a more than doubling in the average turbine size (from 0.71 MW to 1.74 MW). 

Although the American definition of distributed generation may differ, it may be that the U.S. isn’t so different from Germany, where the country’s 27,000 MW of wind power is spread over 3,300 wind projects with an average project size of 9 megawatts. It may be that smaller wind projects are encountering fewer political and transmission barriers than their larger neighbors.

 

Caveat.  The linked post shows an average of all installed German wind projects, and it would be interesting to see how Germany’s size progression compares to the U.S.

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A First Look at Colorado’s Community Solar Gardens

Date: 24 Feb 2011 | posted in: Energy, Energy Self Reliant States | 0 Facebooktwitterredditmail

Last week the Colorado PUC released draft rules for the Community Solar Gardens created under a 2010 state law.  We discussed the legislation in detail in our 2010 Community Solar Power report, with this conclusion (unchanged by our review of the new rules):

It’s clear that the policy will help overcome barriers to community solar, in particular by providing a legal structure for community solar projects and defining the type of generation they qualify as. Community solar gardens should expand participation in distributed solar generation and perhaps expand ownership as well. Solar gardens should help make solar more affordable by allowing for economies of scale in construction and installation, by enabling access to federal tax incentives, and by (unfortunately) using open fields instead of existing structures. Hopefully the distributed nature of solar gardens will encourage projects to connect to existing grid infrastructure. Perhaps the greatest strength in the bill is creating an easily replicable model for community solar. While there will be variations as allowed by law, the creation of a defined “solar garden” in state law and a mandate for utilities to buy their electricity should encourage the development of many community solar gardens.  [emphasis added]

For more detail, see the summary drawn from our report below.  Italicized text indicates clarifications from the PUC’s recent rules release:

Colorado Solar Gardens, Briefly

Definition of a Solar Garden

  • 2 MW or less
  • 10 or more subscribers (none owning more than 40%)
  • Rooftop or ground-mounted

Owner

  • For- or non-profit whose sole purpose is to own or operate a solar garden

Subscribers

  • Must live in same county
  • Must own 1 kW share or more
  • Share must not exceed 120% of electricity consumption
  • Compensation for subscription comes from a proportional share of electricity, virtually net metered, and renewable energy credits.

Utility

  • Must buy 6 MW of solar garden electricity by 2013
  • Half must come from solar gardens smaller than 500 kW via a standard offer.
  • Must encourage solar gardens with renters and low-income subscribers – 5% of CSG capacity is reserved for customers at or below 185% of the federal poverty limit.
  • Can own up to 50% of a solar garden
  • RECs from solar gardens cannot add up to more than 20% of the utility’s retail distributed generation obligation under the state’s RPS.

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Concentrating PV a Cost-Effective Option for Distributed Solar

Date: 23 Feb 2011 | posted in: Energy, Energy Self Reliant States | 0 Facebooktwitterredditmail

Concentrating solar typically fills people energy nerds with visions of large fields of mirrors focusing sunlight to make heat/steam/electricity, but concentration technology is also available for photovoltaics (PV).  In fact, using lenses to focus sun onto PV cells – concentrated PV or CPV – may prove to be a more cost-effective (and compact) strategy of doing solar power than either concentrating solar thermal power or traditional solar PV.

For this analysis, we compared a real-life, 1 megawatt (MW) concentrated PV installation in Victorville, CA (just outside Los Angeles) to Southern California Edison’s 250 MW distributed PV installation (in 1-2 MW projects).  Since SCE’s project likely involves fixed-tilt or flat PV panels, we also included a hypothetical ground-mounted single-axis tracking PV project for comparison.

The data suggests that CPV has a lower levelized cost of operation, even as both technologies have a levelized cost (with federal incentives) below the peak local retail electricity rate.

  CPV PV Fixed Tilt PV 1-axis tracking
Installation size 1 MW
Cost per Watt (AC) $4.55 $4.38 $6.56
Cost of capital 5%
% debt financed 80%
Debt term 10 years
Project life 25 years
       
Levelized Cost      
Unsubsidized $0.199 $0.215 $0.253
With ITC/MACRS $0.117 $0.125 $0.147
       
Capacity factor 24% 17% 22%

The comparison is not just about lowest cost, because CPV offers other advantages.  The concentrating lenses are less expensive that the actual solar cells, and thus CPV can potentially offer lower cost for the same kilowatt hour output.  Additionally, a CPV can offer higher output per square foot of occupied space. 

CPV appears to already be in a strong position to compete with traditional solar PV options, a promising position for a product just entering the commercial market.

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Feed-in Tariffs Needed After Grid Parity

Date: 23 Feb 2011 | posted in: Energy, Energy Self Reliant States | 0 Facebooktwitterredditmail

Craig Morris has a thorough discussion of why feed-in tariffs (CLEAN Contracts) and other renewable energy policies are still necessary even when renewables get to grid parity.  It’s a direct response to an earlier piece on Renewable Energy World claiming that the best strategy for solar is to get off incentives.

First, he notes that there’s a pervasive myth that feed-in tariffs have failed:

In fact, every gigawatt market in the world for PV was driven by feed-in tariffs. Mints is right that some of these markets have gone bust, but do the other markets (like Germany) that haven’t gone bust not show us how to do it right? I can’t say that of other PV policies (think of the US or pre-FIT Britain).

Can we agree that solar feed-in tariffs have not failed in “most” countries – and that no non-solar FIT market has undergone boom-and-bust anywhere? A more accurate description would be that feed-in tariffs are the only policy that has led to major success stories for solar, but that some incompetent governments threw in the towel when they saw the price tag.

Morris also notes that the price tag is another myth – feed-in tariffs are a less expensive policy tool than most others:

Mints writes, “Here’s the golden rule of incentives: they are expensive, and someone has to pay the bill.” Actually, it’s photovoltaics that’s expensive, not feed-in tariffs. Studies have repeatedly found that feed-in tariffs are the least expensive way to promote renewables.

The bigger issue is that getting to grid parity is not an end in itself:

FITs for wind and biomass have generally always been below the retail power rate, so why should anything change when solar is no longer the exception? As Mints herself points out, conventional energy sectors also continue to be subsidized. Why should the situation ever be any different for photovoltaics?

Morris goes on to describe how solar below the retail rate will create a massive rush to solar that will actually make electricity more expensive (as solar installers take a larger cut of the favorable economics and increased solar capacity scales down baseload fossil fuel power plants during peak hours).  Instead:

But what we probably need over the long run are feed-in tariffs that pay for power production from intermittent sources (especially solar and wind) with a fluctuating premium based on power demand; when renewable power production approaches or exceeds demand too often, the premium will not be paid, and investments in such technologies will not pay for themselves as quickly. The floating cap will find itself, so to speak.

The Germans have already adopted such a policy, called “own generation“.  And a few U.S. states – where solar is already cheaper than peak electricity prices – will need a similar policy innovation.

Photo credit: David Parsons (NREL PIX)

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Solar Could Save Minnesota Schools Millions

Date: 18 Feb 2011 | posted in: Energy, Energy Self Reliant States | 0 Facebooktwitterredditmail

Currently, Minnesota’s public schools spend approximately $84 million per year on electricity costs, money diverted from the classroom.  But a bill to make clean, local energy accessible now (CLEAN) could help the state’s public schools use solar to zero out their electricity bills and add $193 million per year to their operating budgets.

The proposed bill would create a CLEAN Contract for public entities in Minnesota, requiring local utilities to buy electricity from solar PV systems on public property on a long-term contract and at a price sufficient to offer a small return on investment.  The program mimics the traditional model for utility power development, where the public utilities commission rewards utilities a fixed rate of return on investments in new power generation.  If schools maximize their participation in the new program, and cover their available roofspace with solar PV, the 750 megawatts of power would provide $193 million per year for school budgets, create hundreds of local jobs, and make the schools electricity self-reliant.  

The cost of the program would be negligible: adding less than two-tenths of a cent per kilowatt-hour to customer bills.  

Minnesota’s CLEAN Contract proposal is one of several programs spreading across North America, from Ontario to Vermont to Gainesville, Florida, and one that has ushered in thousands of megawatts of solar across Europe.  In Ontario, the full-scale program has contracted over 2,700 megawatts of renewable energy and is responsible for 43,000 new jobs.  Minnesota’s program is restricted to solar PV on public property, but as this analysis shows, it could still have a significant impact on school budgets without a significant impact on ratepayers. 

For more detail on CLEAN Contracts, read our 2009 report.  For more on CLEAN Contracts in Minnesota, check out Solar Works for Minnesota.

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