Category: Renewable energy

Recognizing the Water-Energy Nexus

The following article was published recently on Wiley’s online journal Global Challenges. It serves as the prologue to a special issue on water and energy issues that was edited by Gustaf Olsson and Perer Lund. It discusses, in a personal way, my professional involvement with these strongly related issues.
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Water–Energy Nexus
Global Challenges Special Issue on Water and Energy

Prologue: Recognizing the Water-Energy Nexus: A Personal Recollection
By Allan Hoffman

My first professional contact with water issues came in August 1999 when I was invited to represent the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), my employer, at a meeting in Amman, Jordan. The meeting was to plan a major Middle East water conference for later that year in Amman that would involve King Hussein of Jordan, President of the Palestinian Authority (PA) Yasser Arafat, and Prime Minister Ehud Barak of Israel. The motivation for the conference was clear—U.S. President Bill Clinton, assisted by King Hussein, was actively engaged in Middle East peace talks with the Israelis and the Palestinians and water was a principal issue in these negotiations. The planning meeting, to take place a few weeks later in mid-September, was to set the stage for a meaningful dialogue on water that would advance the peace process.

I remember well the moment I received the invitation because of my immediate reaction to Gene DeLaTorre, who delivered the invitation on behalf of DOE’s Assistant Secretary for Policy: “Why me? I don’t know a damn thing about water except what I read in the papers.” Gene, whom I had not known previously but subsequently became a good friend, gave me the three reasons I was targeted: I was a senior DOE official, an expert on renewable energy, which was recognized as part of the solution, and had considerable experience through my work on renewable energy dealing with senior officials in other governments. Not having a good reason to say no, and interested in doing what I could to help the peace process, I said yes and put myself on a fast learning curve.

That learning curve included lots of reading on global water fundamentals, the Middle East water situation, desalination, and meetings with former government and current think tank officials with experience in the Middle East. Less than a month after receiving and accepting the invitation I was on my way to Frankfurt, Germany to meet up with two scientists from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) who would be joining me for the final leg to Amman. Unfortunately, one of the LLNL scientists missed the connecting flight to Frankfurt and had to take a later flight with a middle of the night stop in Syria. He also arrived in Amman without his luggage and attended our first meeting the next morning in his jeans and sneakers.

The majority of the participants in the planning meeting were water experts from Jordan, Israel and the Palestinian Authority, people who had been cooperating for many years and knew one another well. The PA delegation was led by Nabil al Sharif, the PA Water Minister and a civil engineering classmate of Arafat. The U.S. delegation was small, consisting of me and the two LLNL scientists, a Middle East water expert from the U.S. Department of State, and a former U.S. Congressman from Utah who was focused on U.S.-Middle East dialogue and was a moving force behind the planning meeting. In total, about fifty people participated in the two-day meeting.

My role was to bring an energy perspective to the meeting, in addition to the hydrologic expertise of the LLNL staffers and the political experience of the State Department representative. The meeting went well, reflecting the shared interests and perspectives of the water experts who had clearly worked together in the past, and I learned a great deal. In fact, my growing interest in water issues peaked when Nabil stood up at one point in the meeting to state that there would be no peace in the Middle East until the water issue was addressed.

Upon returning to the U.S. after the meeting, having concluded that water issues were much more important than I had realized, I resolved to learn as much as I could. Even though George W. Bush was elected U.S. President in November and Republicans took over the Executive Branch on January 20, 2001 (note: I had served as a political appointee in the Democratic Carter Administration in the 1970s), my senior status at DOE and control over most of my calendar allowed me the time to pursue my water education. Very quickly I realized that many of the things I had been saying in my public presentations on energy applied to water as well: there is no shortage of energy (water) in the world; what is in short supply is inexpensive energy (clean water) that people can afford to buy; energy (water) security depends on the wise use of the resource, whatever its source. This was my first realization of the close connection between water and energy, an understanding that I presumed other people shared. What surprised me, as I began to talk about this with people in both the water and energy communities, is that energy people rarely thought about water except as it was needed to cool thermal power plant exhausts and run through hydropower plants, and water people rarely thought about the energy needed to provide water services.

As I delved further into the nexus I came to understand the following: Central to addressing issues of water security—defined as the ability to access sufficient quantities of clean water to maintain adequate standards of food and goods production, sanitation and health—is having the energy to extract water from underground aquifers, push water through pipes and canals, manage and treat impaired water for reuse, and desalinate brackish and sea water to provide new fresh water supplies. Many aspects of energy production depend on the availability of water including hydropower, cooling of thermal power plants, fossil fuel production and processing, biofuels, carbon capture and sequestration, and hydrogen production. The inextricable linkage between energy and water is clear, but hasn’t always been recognized.

Other, indirect, linkages exist as well. Energy production and use can lead to contamination of underground and surface water supplies. If competing water uses limit use of waterways for transport of goods, rail and truck will require more energy to move those goods. Another critical linkage is that energy production and use are major contributors to greenhouse gas emissions, which have the potential to disrupt the hydrological cycle and impact global water resources long before other impacts are felt. By altering the timing of winter snows, snowmelt, and spring rains, climate change could overload reservoirs early in the season, forcing releases of water and leaving areas like California and the Himalayas high and dry in late summer. Coastal areas and island nations also face a serious threat from rising ocean water levels that destroy property and flood low-lying areas, causing salt-water intrusion of fresh-water supplies and putting the drinking water of millions at risk.

In June 2000 I felt confident enough of my growing knowledge to give a talk on water–energy issues to the Organization of American States: “Water, Energy and Sustainable Development”. This was followed by presentations to the World Renewable Energy Council in July and to an electric utility industry conference in March 2001. I also began to write on the subject and remember asking one of my colleagues, who was an accomplished writer, if it would be acceptable to use the word ‘nexus’ to describe the relationship—i.e., would it be easily understood? He said yes and so the phrase water–energy nexus was born.

During those early days at the start of the new century I was trying to generate some interest in DOE to explore this interesting connection, which I believed had relevance for several of DOE’s programs, but with little success. When the issue reached my new Assistant Secretary he dismissed the effort as ‘mission creep’ that would divert funding from other programs. Thus, to the best of my knowledge, my efforts constituted DOE’s only focused attention to the water–energy nexus at that time. Following several public presentations in 2003 and early 2004 the first real breakthrough came in August 2004 when I was invited to write a paper on water and energy security for the Institute for the Analysis of Global Security, where I served as a technical advisor. This request came in on a Wednesday; the article was published the following week and quickly led to more speaking opportunities. One of the more interesting was a presentation in September to FERC, the U.S. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, on the topic “Water and Energy Security”. Another opportunity was a plenary address to the 2005 Solar World Congress in August 2005 entitled “Water Security: A Growing Crisis”, which was also published as the lead article in the July/August 2005 issue of Solar Today magazine. There were many other speaking opportunities in the following years, including presentations to the National Science Foundation, Lockheed-Martin Corporation, the U.S. State Department, the National Association of State Universities and Land Grant Colleges, the Brookings Institution, the Environmental Protection Agency, the IEA Working Party on Renewable Energy, the U.S. National Academies of Sciences, the International Water Association, and others.

Another important step in recognizing the water–energy nexus was the realization, at a regular meeting of DOE and U.S. National Laboratory officials to discuss DOE’s research needs, that many of the Labs had an interest in the water–energy connection but were pursuing it quietly on their own using small amounts of discretionary funds. I did a brief overview of the topic at the meeting and an entire afternoon ended up being devoted to Laboratory discussions of their activities. What came out of that meeting was the organization of a coordinated National Laboratory effort on water–energy issues to be led by Sandia National Laboratory (SNL) and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL). Both Laboratories had committed resources to exploring the linkage between water and energy, and LBNL, involved in State of California water efforts, even had a dedicated water–energy technology team called WET. Other important players were Oak Ridge National Laboratory, which years earlier had led studies on desalination, and the National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL), supported by DOE’s Fossil Energy Program. The resultant coordinated National Laboratory team soon provided briefings on the nexus for senior DOE managers.

To illustrate how quietly these Lab efforts had been underway, I had close contacts with LBNL through my clean energy efforts, and was totally surprised to learn of WET. When I mentioned this to a close friend at LBNL he invited me to spend a day at the Berkeley Lab to get briefed on their water activities and to talk about mine. It was an illuminating day on both parts.

Another important step was a meeting in 2008 with Professor Gustaf Olsson of Lund University in Sweden. He had read some of my papers, was on a visit to the U.S., and, expressing interest in learning more, asked to meet. We had a lengthy conversation in which I offered to share more of my work and a collaboration was born that lasts till this day. The rest is history—Gustaf undertook to master this field and in 2012 published his important book entitled “Water and Energy: Threats and Opportunities”, which is now in its second edition.

While there was no specific support for U.S. water–energy nexus studies during the Bush–Cheney Administration (2001-2008), there was a growing understanding that energy generation was the major contributor to the growing threat of global warming and climate change that would have major implications for precipitation patterns, water supply, and frequency of extreme weather events. As a result the phrase water–energy nexus was beginning to be heard more often and conferences began to be organized around that theme. Fracking of oil and gas shales, to increase fossil fuel supplies, also emerged as a contentious issue, given its large water demands and its potential for contaminating water supplies. To address that topic I organized a session on fracking for the Ground Water Protection Council Annual Forum in September 2010.

Throughout this period I continued to speak and write, and was encouraged by the election of Barack Obama as President of the U.S. in November 2008. Unlike the Bush Administration, which effectively denied the reality of global warming, President Obama talked openly about the need for global cooperation in addressing climate change. This was reflected in an Executive Order issued shortly after his inauguration that called on the federal departments and agencies to work together in identifying the potential impacts of global warming on U.S. government programs. This was an exciting time in which staff from all over the government worked together on multi-agency teams to carry out the mandated study. As the principal DOE official with a background in water–energy issues I was assigned to three of these teams, and on one was joined by a staff member from DOE’s policy office. Within a few months a comprehensive study was delivered to President Obama’s office.

With a Democratic Administration in place, I assumed water–energy issues would get increased attention and even some financial support. This proved to be naïve on my part as the new Democratic appointees to head the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) transferred me from my position in the EERE Policy and Budget Office to the Wind Power Program, where I was told that if I joined them I could no longer pursue my water–energy nexus activities. Rather than retire at that time, which I certainly could have done, I talked with people in the Wind Program and decided to serve as a graybeard in the newly established Office of Offshore Wind and help the program get started. I was and am enthusiastic about offshore wind as the most important emerging renewable energy technology.

This phase of my career ended with my retirement from DOE in 2012 and my decision to share my perspectives on renewable energy and water–energy issues via my writing, of which this invited article is one part. DOE has also taken steps to formally recognize the nexus as part of its program activities via a study released in 2015. The issue is finally getting more of the attention it deserves.

References

[1] Blog, ‘Thoughts of a Lapsed Physicist: Perspectives on energy and water technologies and policy’, www.lapsedphysicist.org

[2] A.R. Hoffman, The U.S. Government and Renewable Energy – A Winding Road. Pan Stanford Publishing 2016.

An Update on U.S. Renewables

The following article appeared in the July 2017 issue of North American Windpower. It states that “The share of domestic electrical production by renewable energy has now greatly eclipsed earlier projections by the U.S. energy Information Administration (EIA)..”. This resonated with me because, back in the 1990s when I was in charge of the U.S. renewable electricity programs, I had many difficult discussions with the EIA about their continued underestimation of the anticipated deployment of solar and wind technologies.

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“U.S. Renewables Decades Ahead Of Schedule

The share of domestic electrical production by renewable energy has now greatly eclipsed earlier projections by the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), the SUN DAY campaign has revealed.

According to the nonprofit organization, in the EIA’s 2012 Annual Energy Outlook, the agency forecast that renewable energy generation would increase by 77% from 2010 to 2025 (from 10% to 15%). In addition, the share of total electricity generation from non-hydro renewables would grow from roughly 4% in 2010 to 9% in 2035.

If one assumes growth were to continue at about the same annual pace as during the 25-year EIA forecast period (2010-2035), renewables would not be expected to reach 19.35% until roughly the year 2057 – 40 years from now, the organization says.

The EIA’s 2012 report further forecast that wind capacity would increase from 39 GW in 2010 to 70 GW in 2035 and that solar would reach 24 GW of capacity in 2035.

In reality, says SUN DAY, citing the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s (FERC) latest Energy Infrastructure Update, which includes data for the first three months of 2017, wind generating capacity already totals 84.59 GW, while utility-scale solar capacity has reached 25.84 GW (not including distributed small-scale systems, such as rooftop solar).

Moreover, the latest issue of the EIA’s Electric Power Monthly (with data through March 31) reveals that renewable energy sources (biomass, geothermal, hydropower, solar [including small-scale PV] and wind) accounted for 19.35% of net U.S. electrical generation during the first quarter of 2017. Of this, conventional hydropower accounted for 8.67%, followed by wind (7.10%), biomass (1.64%), solar (1.47%) and geothermal (0.47%). Combined, non-hydro renewables accounted for 10.68% of total generation.

“Not only has renewable energy’s share of total domestic electrical generation nearly doubled in the past seven years – it has reached a level of output that EIA, just five years ago, did not anticipate happening for another four decades,” states Ken Bossong, executive director of the SUN DAY Campaign. “While one might conclude that EIA’s methodology is seriously flawed, it is also safe to say that renewables – especially solar and wind – by now providing almost one-fifth of the nation’s electrical production, are vastly exceeding expectations and breaking records at an astonishing pace.”

According to the group, this is clearly evidenced by comparing 2017 with 2016. During the first quarter of 2016, renewables provided 17.23% of total generation versus 19.35% in 2017, meaning actual generation by renewables is 9.70% greater than it was just a year ago.

In particular, solar (solar thermal, utility-scale PV and distributed PV) has ballooned by 34.1%, wind has expanded by 11.4%, conventional hydropower has grown by 7.7%, and geothermal has increased by 3.2%. Only utility-scale biomass has declined year on year (by 1.6%).”

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The above report is based on data from the EIA as well as data for the first quarter of 2017 in the latest Energy Infrastructure Update by FERC, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. The EIA also reports, in a press release dated July 6, 2017, that “In March, and again in April’ U.S. monthly electricity generation from utility-scale renewable sources exceeded nuclear generation for the first time since July 1984. This outcome reflects both seasonal and trend growth in renewable generation, as well as maintenance and refueling schedules for nuclear plants, which tend to undergo maintenance during spring and fall months, when overall electricity demand is lower than in summer or winter.”

It is important to note the clear trend toward increasing amounts of renewable generation – “More than 60% of all utility-scale electricity generating capacity that came online in 2016 was from wind and solar technologies” -and the fact that solar generation on individual home and business roofs is not included in this analysis. All indicative of the clear conclusion that the U.S. Is on a path toward an energy future increasingly dependent on renewable energy, as is true in many other parts of the world.

Adapting to Change – Never Easy

The attached article by Giles Parkinson (renew economy.com.au) about the energy debate in Australia is reposted here because it illustrates a universal issue – resistance to change. This is certainly a characteristic of the global energy sector as it transitions from dependence on fossil fuels (coal, oil, natural gas) to increasing use of renewable energy in its various forms. There are many vested interests in the energy sector and each will attempt to maintain its current status, but the coming change is inexorable, and forward-looking energy companies will position themselves to take advantage of these changes. Others resistant to change will eventually become footnotes to history, as has happened to so many other commercial ventures that have been overtaken by new technologies and associated events. Australia, because of high energy prices and a resistant utility sector, is going through this change a bit earlier than others, but we will all get there.

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The great divide over Australia’s energy future
By Giles Parkinson on 22 May 2017

It was the head of the biggest electric network operator in the world, China State Grid, that summed up best the challenge of moving to a high renewable energy grid: It is not so much a technical problem, but a cultural one.

In other words, there are those who say it can be done, arguing that it offers a smart, cleaner and ultimately cheaper and more reliable alternative. And there are those who say it can’t be done, and are reluctant to adopt the new technologies and the new ways of managing a complex electricity grid.

In Australia in the past few weeks, we have been getting a clear signal as to which authorities fall into which camp, and the obstacles facing those who want to get on with the job and go with the technology, rather than fight it.

There is, inevitably, the politics, led by the federal Coalition, railing against the “reckless pursuit” of wind and solar and yet, at the same time, drumming up huge ideas for massive pumped hydro schemes, a sure sign that they see more wind and solar as inevitable.

And there is institutional resistance. The Australian Energy Market Commission, which sets market rules, last week released a document which painted a view of Australia’s energy market nearly as dystopian as Donald Trump’s inauguration speech, the one that prompted former president George W Bush to note at the time: “That was some weird shit.”

And so was the AEMC’s. Its full document is a thorough appraisal of the events of 2015/16, but the media release was another thing altogether: painting a dark picture of energy shortages, risky additions of wind and solar, lost inertia, reduced reliability and the threat of blackouts – comments that were readily picked up by the green-baiting Murdoch media.

Ivor Frischknecht, the CEO of the Australian Renewable Energy Agency, has said on several occasions in the last few weeks that it is clear that the technologies exist for transition to a renewables-based electricity grid. It is only old rules and regulations that are getting in the way and preventing it from happening.

tesla_grid_battery

It’s a view that is now widely shared. The CSIRO and Energy Networks Australia, in their ground-breaking Network transformation roadmap, speak of the critical important for rules and regulations to catch up with technology, lest the changes and cost reductions in solar, storage, and software becomes so rapid that the industry is unable to catch up.

Their two-years of research found a zero emissions grid could be put in place, based largely around renewables and with a special focus on consumer-owned solar and storage, and save consumers more than a $100 billion by 2050.

That would be at least some recompense to those consumers, who are clearly the biggest losers from the creation of the National Electricity Market two decades ago, and its failure to check the spending of the networks or the pricing power of the gentailers.

The consumers are now paying ridiculous prices from electricity still mostly delivered by now mythical “cheap coal”, and are facing even more rises in coming months.

Yet, as Accenture points out in a separate report, these consumers now have the technologies to be masters of their energy destiny, driven by concerns about sustainability, energy independence and simple economics.

When the cost of solar and storage is likely to be half the cost of grid power, as some networks recognise it will be, the economic modelling behind this grid concoction has a major, major problem, one that rivals the disruption posed by the internet and digital technology.

And because this is a heavily regulated and essential service, the challenge is not just to the incumbents but the regulators and rule makers.

Accenture warns that unless the industry changes quickly, there will be hell to pay in their boardrooms, and consequences everywhere. To do that, they need the rules to be changed, and to be changed quickly.

The Grattan Institute added to those calls on Monday, saying that urgent market reforms and rule changes are needed to ensure reliability of supply. It is hard to find anyone in the industry who disagrees with this statement.

The irony is that it is the AEMC that is charged with making and adjusting these rules, which makes its position on the risks to energy security all the more galling for many, given it has done so little to make the grid fit for purpose, either rejecting new proposals, or kicking them endlessly down the road.

The Australian Energy Market Operator has grown so frustrated with the situation that in its submission to the Finkel Review it asked to be allowed to take responsibility of many of the rule changes itself, so it can rapidly adapt the markets to the changing technologies and dynamics.

This call is likely to be intensified under its new CEO, the reforming Audrey Zibelman, and it was notable that last week AEMO and ARENA teamed up to drive a pilot on the use of demand response, an obvious and relative cheap solution to dealing with peak demand, and a lot cheaper and cleaner than building new peaking generators.

Zibelman knows it will work, because she has seen it operating effectively in markets throughout the world, including the one in the US where she used to manage New York’s radical shift in energy policy.

“There is often skepticism about change,” she told RenewEconomy last week. “This (trial) is a good way to show this technology can work. And when we have done that we can get it into the market and modify the market rules. Technology is changing. We have to look at the market design, to ensure it attracting the right sort of investment.”

It just so happens that demand response has been one of many initiatives presented to the AEMC (way back in 2012) that were rejected or delayed, with the rule maker arguing that there was sufficient demand response in the system. Clearly not, given the enforced load shedding that occurred across the country last summer.

But demand response is just another example of the number of initiatives that the incumbent fossil fuel industry has managed to have killed or shrunk: think carbon pricing, high renewable energy targets, energy efficiency, emission limits and other mechanisms.

All could have made the market more efficient and delivered savings to consumers. The latest of these is the proposed shift to 5-minute settlements, a change widely acknowledged as crucial to level the playing field for battery storage, and remove the pricing power ruthlessly exploited by the coal and gas generators.

Like many of the other proposals, it will likely crimp the bottom line of the incumbents. So they are fighting it, keen to push the argument that any impact on their profit margins could have an impact on reliability and supply.

The equivocation over whether we have the tools to manage the energy transition appears to gripped the South Australian government too, whose state is surging past 50 per cent wind and solar and may find itself with two thirds of its demand coming from these two variable sources by the end of next year.

This is perhaps not surprising given the power interruptions of the last year, and the state election that looms next March. The bitter irony is that these events had sweet F.A. to do with the nature of renewables, but of the way the grid has been managed.

The major event cited in the AEMC report was a blackout in South Australia in November 2015, caused by a network fault during repairs to the interconnector to Victoria, and made significantly worse because of how a gas generator responded to frequency and voltage changes.

As the AEMC panel noted, the Torrens B gas generator was expected to reduce output to manage the frequency changes, but did the opposite.

The problem is being blamed on the governor response mechanisms for such plants, an issue raised by numerous analysts and which may be widespread across the country. It adds to concern about the reliability of gas and coal generators that are failing in the heat and at critical junctures in the market.

It might make you wonder why the AEMC and apparently the S.A. government is appearing to put all its eggs in the basket of gas generators, as it appears to have done by insisting only something called “real inertia”, delivered by large spinning turbines, should qualify for its proposed energy security target, at the expense of battery storage.

The draft proposal has stunned the industry. As a report from the CEC highlighted last week, the delivery of inertia can take multiple forms. Citing the same incident in South Australia in November, 2015, Tom Butler wrote:

“Those who advocate for the status quo because of the inertia provided by synchronous generators should be aware that these technologies are far from perfect.

“For example, they can become unstable at low power output. And there is simply no information available on how effectively these generators can respond to fast rates of change of frequency if they started operating before 2007.”

red flag twoIt reminds you of the transition from horse and cart to the automobile. For a while, all cars were required to have a human walk in front of them, waving a red flag, until someone woke up to the folly of the idea.

The hope is that the Finkel Review – due in just over two weeks – might convince more people that we can do without the waving of red flags. The change is upon us and it’s all OK. We just need our regulators and our politicians to catch up.

Protecting Consumers Who Install Solar PV Systems

The article attached below, authored by Dr. Peter F. Varadi and first published on the website CleanTechnica.com, addresses the issue of protecting consumers who install PV systems on their roofs or on local open spaces. Dr. Varadi, who co-founded a solar energy company, Solarex, in 1973, was a prime mover in developing quality control guidelines for the solar PV industry. With the near certainty that the rate at which such installations occur in the U.S. will increase in coming years, providing consumer protection information is a critical need. Dr. Varadi’s article is an important step in addressing this need.

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Consumer Protection For PV Systems — Finally In The Limelight
May 22nd, 2017 by Guest Contributor

By Peter F. Varadi

More than 1.4 million homes in the U.S.A. are currently powered by solar, and 3 million additional households are estimated to install PV systems by 2021. Therefore, the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) launched a timely educational campaign for consumers to understand the fundamentals of solar, to ask the right questions from the representatives of solar system installation companies, to compare the offers of solar companies, and to know how much electricity to expect from their PV system over the years. These guidelines also help consumers to understand the terms and costs of purchasing or leasing and of purchasing power from a solar electric system. SEIA also developed simple and understandable disclosure forms covering the full spectrum of residential transactions so that consumers would be able to protect themselves from a vendor when ordering a PV system to install on their property or for their community. SEIA’s president and CEO Abigail Ross Hopper said: “Solar is still a new power choice for millions of Americans, and it’s critical that we cultivate a well-informed customer base. By doing their homework and making use of these tools, consumers and stakeholders alike will feel confident and comfortable in the decision to go solar.” With these developed forms, SEIA achieved an excellent and extremely needed step forward in consumer protection for those 3 million additional households installing PV systems in the next 4 years.

The SEIA disclosure forms also advise consumers what information to request about system repair and maintenance, roof warranty and system guaranty. These well-constructed sections are extremely helpful for the consumer to select an installer and to obtain the best and least expensive solar roof for their home. But these sections of the disclosures form do not include what information consumers should ask to protect themselves from the frightening possibility that the guarantor – the installer – goes bankrupt or just simply goes out of business. Unfortunately, this is not a theoretical possibility.

Over the past year the number of home owners obtaining loans to buy their PV roof system has increased, and the business is shifting from large installers to regional and local installers. The financial stability of those is usually not very strong, and some of them may go out of business before their guaranty ends. This can happen not only with small regional or local installers, but also with national installers. Sungevity and Verengo Solar went bankrupt, and the very large NRG Home Solar informed people lately on their web site: “We are not offering new installations at this time, but we continue (for how long?) to serve our existing customers.” From this it is evident that bankruptcy etc. of installers is not a theoretical possibility but a real problem that many of the 3 million households who choose to power their home with solar in the next four years could face.

If the installer becomes bankrupt or goes out of business the guarantees given to the consumer become worthless. If thereafter the PV system develops a problem, the consumer will have to get it repaired on his own money. In general, the repair of the PV system is easy and not too expensive; however, the consumer will face a very big financial expense if the installer used low quality PV modules which stop functioning and must be replaced. As it is well known low quality PV modules are not fiction either.

To protect the consumer, SEIA’s disclosure forms should also include a request that the Installer provide the PV module manufacturer’s name and address and the type of module the installer will use for the solar system. It should also state the life expectancy and the power degradation during the life of the PV modules guaranteed by its manufacturer. Reputable manufacturers guarantee the solar module performance to produce a certain amount of electricity and its yearly degradation for 20 or 25 years. This information is needed to enable the consumer to go directly to the manufacturer if the installer goes out of business.

But to know the name of the manufacturer of the PV module is only one step forward to protect the consumer. Most consumers would not know which PV manufacturer is reputable, so the disclosure should have additional questions: “Was the PV module tested for quality and for safety?” If yes, “To what standards were the PV modules tested?” The answer to both questions is simple. The answer to the first question is either yes or no. This answer is clear to the consumer. The second is also simple to answer: 1) Quality: the PV module quality was tested to: IEC 61215 (or a newer version) and 2) safety: the PV module was tested to UL 1703 standards. This answer for the consumer is like it would be written in the Martian language. However, the PV industry needs to interpret this answer for the consumer as is done in many industries that have made it easy to recognize that a product successfully completed the required testing. These industries for this reason established “Quality Marks” (QM) to be displayed on the qualifying product. The consumer knows those Quality Marks, and seeing the QM displayed on the product indicates to them that the product’s quality and safety was tested according to the standards relevant to that product.

The disclosure form should ask if the UL safety QM is displayed on the utilized PV modules sold in the U.S.A. The answer to this question should be YES. If the answer is NO, obviously, the PV module may not be safe to use. The Underwriters Laboratory QM is well known to consumers, and they can recognize its QM:

It means that the product was successfully tested for safety, and the production was supervised by the Underwriters Laboratory.

The disclosure form should also ask if the PV Quality Mark is displayed on the PV module to be used. In the space for the answer it should be written: “PV QM presently is not available.”

Despite that the PV QM does exist, it is not being used. It will surprise people that SEIA, the European EPIA, and the Japanese JEPA supported the establishment and promotion of the “PV Quality Mark” which was introduced in 1996:

PV Quality Mark for PV systems
The reason it is not being used now is because several years later, after the year 2000, the PV Quality Mark was abandoned by SEIA, the European EPIA and the Japanese JEPA. Despite this abandonment, surprisingly, the PV Quality Mark still exists and is available, and its reestablishment would be extremely important for consumer protection. As the requirement that a PV module (or product) should be able to display the PV QM does exist, the re-introduction of its use would be simple. The story of its establishment, subsequent abandonment, and that it is still available and could be easily re-established is the following:

The prerequisite for a PV QM is that a PV module quality standard should exist. The PV module quality testing standard was developed in the U.S.A. In 1975, the U.S. government initiated a terrestrial PV research and development project, the aim of which was to help the terrestrial PV industry to reduce prices and produce reliable PV modules. That was the famous “JPL (Jet Propulsion Laboratory) Block program.” Its design and its execution were crucial for the utilization of PV solar energy to become a success. In retrospect, this was one of the most important and useful government-sponsored PV programs, because without this program the expected failure of the PV modules would have destroyed the image and usefulness of PV.

Manufacturers selling PV modules to the JPL program were forced to adapt a “Quality Manufacturing” system which required periodic product retests and inspections, a forerunner of the presently used global ISO 9000 system which was started only 10 years later. This system also required the production of the PV module to a standard established by JPL, which became the basis of the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) globally adapted PV module standard used today. The JPL program ended in 1985. The U.S. government never continued it. Furthermore, the U.S. government never instituted buying only products which were manufactured using a quality management system and tested to the JPL PV standard, as it did with the military “MilSpec” program.

The PV industry learned the JPL testing and manufacturing system and during the first decades realized that delivering high quality, reliable PV modules was advantageous for the industry and essential to get the confidence of customers. Failures would be detrimental for PV manufacturers. Therefore, as they did for the JPL program, they tested every module they sold.

In the 1990s the situation changed. Many new PV cell/module manufacturers started, and to compete and sell cheaper, they cut corners. To cut cost they abandoned testing, and the quality of their products became poor. That was the time when the quality manufacturers in the U.S.A. formed PowerMark Corporation to develop a PV certification system that customers should be able to differentiate between PV products manufactured using a quality management system and tested to the existing international standard from those which were not. Shortly after PowerMark started to work on a PV certification standard I had a meeting in 1995 with Charlie Gay who was the head of National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) and supported very much PowerMark’s effort and agreed that PV certification program should be global involving also Europe and Japan. He asked me to try and to arrange this as I had excellent relations with key PV people in those areas. With the help of Wolfgang Palz of the EU Commission and Heinz Ossenbrink head of the PV program at the European Central Research Laboratory in Ispra Italy that PV trade associations SEIA in the U.S.A., the European EPIA, and the Japanese JEPA, supported the development and promotion of the PV certification system and the “Photovoltaic Global approval Program” (PV GAP) was started. The “PV Quality Marks” were established in 1996. This story is described by John Wohlgemuth:

“In 1996 a “PV Quality Mark” system was established which is now operated by International Electrotechnical Commission of Conformity Assessment Schemes for Electrotechnical Equipment and Components (IECEE). The IECEE system for PV modules and components included product certification under IEC 61215 (or other relevant IEC standards) and IECEE certification of the manufacture’s quality management system (e.g., ISO 9000). The system also had requirements for periodic product retests and inspections. PV products qualified under the system could display a “PV Quality Mark” that customers should be able to distinguish them from untested and probably less reliable products. Initially several PV module manufacturers, including Solarex, TATA BP Solar (renamed recently as Tata Power Solar Systems Ltd.), ASE (Applied Solar Energy GmbH) and Websol (India), obtained IECEE certification on their products and displayed the “PV Quality Mark” on the product.”

The German Feed in Tariff (FiT) was first introduced in 2000, but after the second version was established in 2004, the “solar rush” started, and solar cell and module manufacturers and PV installers appeared like mushrooms after rain. The demand for PV modules became so great that some of the installers were buying anything which had only the PV module “look”. The PV Quality Mark system was abandoned because governments did not specify that only “quality” products could be used for government-supported projects. This is especially true in Germany, where the government did not specify that for customer protection only PV products with “Quality Mark” would qualify to participate in the FiT program despite the fact that in 2004 about 25% of the modules offered were untested. Only the World Bank supported the IECEE quality system and recommended that in the programs they supported, IECEE approved PV products should be used. Even in 2012 the situation was not better.

Today the situation is not that bleak. PV certification is taken seriously by the PV industry and government agencies participating in the IEC PV committee, and SEIA is doing what industry associations usually not do, launching a PV consumer protection program.

One of the reasons the “PV Quality Mark” program was not promoted properly because when it was transferred to IEC it was put under its existing IECEE program which was established by IEC for certification of many products, e.g. refrigerators, washing machines etc. The “PV Quality Mark” established by SEIA, EPIA, and JEPA was transferred to IECEE, therefore only very little attention was given to PV certification and QM.

After hard work by the NREL members of the IEC’s PV standards committee (TC-82), finally in 2016 IEC established IECRE, (RE=Renewable Energy) Conformity Assessment Scheme for Renewable Energy (including PV), and the PV certifications were transferred from IECEE to IECRE. It was anticipated that the applications for the first certifications would be made during the second half of 2016. However as of now, the “PV Quality Mark” is not yet transferred to IECRE. At present it is available free of charge still only from IECEE. (http://www.iecee.org/about/photovoltaics/).

The next step would be to also transfer the PV QM to IECRE, and manufacturers could obtain it after they received the PV certification from IECRE.

Conclusions and Recommendations

To protect consumers planning to install a PV system on their home or in their neighborhood from the event the installer becomes bankrupt or goes out of business, the SIEA disclosure forms should be amended:

Provide the PV module manufacturer’s name and address and the type of module the installer will use for the solar system.
State the life expectancy and the power degradation during the life of the PV modules guaranteed by its manufacturer.
Was the module tested to the quality standard IEC 61215 (or a newer version)?
Is the PV Quality Mark displayed on the module?
Was the module tested to the safety standard UL 1703?
Is the UL quality Mark displayed on the module?
The answer to 4) will be “PV QM presently is not available.” until the PV Quality Mark will be transferred to IECRE and it will establish the procedure by which the PV manufacturer can obtain it. Both of these actions should be accelerated.

For consumer protection it is also important that after the “PV Quality Mark” is available PV modules without the UL and “PV Quality Marks” and proper certification documents could not be imported into or installed in the U.S.A.

http://www.seia.org/news/seia-launches-national-consumer-education-campaign
Peter F. Varadi –Sun Above the Horizon – Chapter 27 – Pan Stanford Publisher – 2014
It is reprinted by permission from: Peter F. Varadi – “Sun Towards High Noon” – Pan Stanford Publisher – 2017
Sarah Kurtz (July 2016). Defining bankability for each step of a PV project using IECRE, Intersolar North America.
Peter F. Varadi is the co-founder in 1973 of SOLAREX Corporation, Rockville, MD (USA), which pioneered the utilization of solar cells (PV) for terrestrial applications. By 1978 it had become the largest PV Company in the world. After it was sold to AMOCO in 1983, Varadi continued to work as solar power consultant, first for SOLAREX, later for the European Commission, The World Bank, NREL, and many other organizations. In 2004, Varadi was awarded the European Photovoltaic Industry Association’s (EPIA) John Bonda prize. Varadi is the author of two books, “SUN Above the Horizon – the Meteoric Rise of the Solar Industry” published in 2014 and “SUN Towards High Noon – Solar Power Transforming Our Energy Future” published in 2017 (www.amazon.com).

Renewable Energy and Jobs

The attached article was first published on the website energypost.eu edited by Karel Beckman. The article was stimulated by my strong belief that the job-creation aspects of renewable energy manufacture and deployment are receiving too little attention.

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Jobs? Investing in renewables beats fossil fuels
May 19, 2017 by Allan Hoffman

For policymakers who are interested in job creation, investing in renewable energy is considerably more effective than investing in fossil fuels, writes Allan Hoffman, author of the blog Thoughts of a Lapsed Physicist and formerly with the U.S. Department of Energy. Solar and wind are powerful engines of job creation and economic growth.

Job creation is always a safe issue for politicians to address and it played a crucial role in our recent presidential election. Donald Trump achieved his unexpected upset victory over Hillary Clinton by appealing to disaffected workers in normally Democrat-leaning states such as Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. A primary focus of the Trump campaign was jobs in the manufacturing and coal-mining industries, where many workers had been laid off in recent years. Some people have blamed these job losses on Obama Administration policies, including support for solar and wind energy. What are the facts?

The fact that renewable energy, mostly in the form of solar and wind energy, is entering the energy mainstream, both in the U.S. and in other countries, is a reality. This is often attributed to their reduced costs and role in reducing carbon emissions. What is often overlooked or given minimal attention is that investment in the manufacture and deployment of these clean energy technologies creates many ‘green jobs’. What data supports this statement?

Already the largest source of renewable energy jobs in the U.S., solar energy will be a major factor in shaping our future energy system and creating new jobs

Data for the U.S. was available from the Green Jobs Initiative of the Bureau of Labor Statistics in annual reports for fiscal years 2009, 2010, and 2011. Unfortunately, budget sequestration brought an end to this program in 2013. Today other organizations are filling the gap, e.g. The Solar Foundation’s annual ‘National Solar Jobs Census’, monthly reports from the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), and occasional reports from other non-governmental organizations.

Largest employer

On a global basis the International Energy Agency (IEA) has become a source of jobs information, as has the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) through its Renewable Energy and Jobs Annual Reviews. Two highlights of IRENA’s 2016 Review were that (a) global direct and indirect employment in the renewable energy industry had reached 8.1 million in 2015, a 5% increase over 2014, and (b) solar photovoltaics (PV) was the largest renewable energy employer at 2.8 million jobs, an 11% increase over 2014.

Solar Foundation data indicated that in 2016 the U.S. solar industry (8,600 companies) employed 260,00 workers. This was an increase of more than 20% for the fourth straight year and more than 178% since 2010. This outpaced the overall 2016 national jobs growth rate of 1.5%. California led U.S. states in solar employment with 100,050 jobs.

How do these numbers compare with numbers in the fossil fuel industries? In 2015 workers employed directly in oil and natural gas extraction numbered about 187,000, a decrease of 14,000 from 2014. Indirect related jobs number about 2 million, of which about 40% are at gas stations. Another fossil fuel industry that received considerable attention during the 2016 election was coal mining. It accounted for 68,000 jobs in 2015, continuing its decrease of recent years.

A different story

Looking ahead, what can we expect? As oil and natural gas prices increase from their recent lows, and fracking is therefore reinvigorated, the number of related extraction jobs should stay approximately level. This should continue as long as no cost penalty is imposed on carbon emissions, and Trump Administration support for maintaining and expanding fossil fuel extraction is strong.

Coal is a different story. Long the basis of more than half of U.S. electricity generation, coal’s share of that market is now down to about a third and heading lower. When combusted it is the dirtiest of the fossil fuels, and automation of the coal digging process and competition from fracked and low cost natural gas has signaled the beginning of the end of the coal era and related jobs in the U.S. In addition, utilities are not adding new coal powered systems because their capital and operating costs are higher than for new natural gas, wind and solar power plants (data provided by EIA).

Solar and wind are no longer niche businesses

What are the prospects for renewable energy and related jobs in the U.S. in the future? As reported by the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA), at the start of 2016 jobs in the U.S. wind industry totaled 88,000, an increase of 20% over 2014. This was made possible by the installation of nearly 9,000 megawatts of new electrical generating capacity across 20 states, an increase of 77% over 2014. Wind accounted for 41% of all newly installed U.S. electrical capacity in 2015, ahead of solar (28.5%) and natural gas (28.1%). This growth will continue both onshore, where essentially all U.S. wind turbines have been installed to date, and offshore as this large resource begins to be tapped.

Impressive prospects

Two recent reports have documented the equally impressive prospects for solar energy’s growth. IRENA’s ‘Letting In the Light: How Solar Photovoltaics Will Revolutionize the Electricity System’ states that “The age of solar energy has arrived. It came faster than anyone predicted and is ushering in a shift in energy ownership.”

Bloomberg New Energy Finance reported in a June 2016 report that “..solar and wind technologies will be the cheapest way to produce electricity in most parts of the world in the 2030s..” Already the largest source of renewable energy jobs in the U.S., solar energy will be a major factor in shaping our future energy system and creating new jobs. A recently published book Sun Towards High Noon: Solar Power Transforming Our Energy Future (Pan Stanford Publishing; Peter Varadi editor and contributor) discusses the jobs issue in detail along with other issues, including solar financing, markets, and quality control.

We must not be left behind as this energy transition unfolds in the next several decades

What conclusions can be drawn? If a primary national goal is to create jobs in the energy sector, investing in renewable energy is considerably more effective than investing in fossil fuels. Solar and wind are no longer niche businesses, their widespread use addresses global warming and climate change, and their manufacture and deployment are powerful engines of economic growth and job creation.

The U.S. Congress must recognize this and put policies in place that accelerate their growth. Other countries recognize this potential and are moving rapidly onto this path, some even faster than the U.S. We must not be left behind as this energy transition unfolds in the next several decades, but we must also not forget the people who will be displaced from their jobs in traditional energy industries.

Editor’s Note

Allan Hoffman is author of the blog Thoughts of a Lapsed Physicist. He is a former Senior Analyst in the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and physicist by training.

Hoffman is a contributor to a new comprehensive handbook, Sun Towards High Noon, edited by solar pioneer Peter F. Varadi, which details the meteoric expansion of the solar (PV) industry and describes how solar power will change our energy future.