Nanosolar Goes Live

I have been watching a company called Nanosolar for some time now. They came up with a novel and disruptive technology for producing photovoltaic (solar electric, PV) panels.

The usual method for making PV panels is to grow crystals of purified silicon and shape them into cells. Some companies grow big sausage shaped crystals and saw them into discs, like high-tech pepperoni. Others grow them in thin sheets or hollow octagonal tubes. All these methods require melting silicon (sand, essentially), growing the crystals, and then treating them with minute quantities of chemicals to make them photoreactive. It all takes a lot of energy and time.

Nanosolar’s innovation is to make a nanomolecular ink. That is, a fluid that has sub-microscopic particles in it. It is made up of copper, indium, gallium, and selenium, hence the acronym CIGS. They spray this ink on metal foil from a roll and voila, instant solar material at room temperature. The ink film is extremely thin, so very little of the rare elements gets used. The foil is cut into cells and those cells are sandwiched between two sheets of tempered glass to make a module.

They just fired up a highly robotic factory in Germany with a capability of 640 megawatts a year. Compare that to perhaps 150 megawatts of annual production in the U.S. right now. The video of the factory is entertaining, awkward engineer talking heads aside.



Those of you not in the solar business can go get a doughnut or something, because I am going to write about specifications for a bit. Nanosolar doesn’t give dimensions in its promotional material, but from the photos the module appears to be about one meter by a little over two. They specify a power range of 160 to 220 watts at 6 amps, so the operating voltage is roughly that of a standard 24 volt module, 26 to 36 volts. They say that they sort and bin the cells by voltage off the line, so it seems that they have a slightly broader than voltage spread than is usual for crystalline silicon cells. They claim a cell efficiency in the mid-teens, but given my size estimate the functional module efficiency works out around 10%. The modules dispense with the usual deep aluminum frame and rely on the sandwich of tempered glass for strength. This bodes well for longevity. The only other module out there with double glass is the ASE-300, which seems to have a very low rate of degradation. Much of the deterioration I have seen in conventional modules has been related to the failure of the plastic back sheet.

The ultimate point of these modules is the potential for low energy, low cost manufacturing. Nanosolar has hinted at a cost of a dollar a watt, the Holy Grail of the PV industry. Looking at their methods and product, I can believe it. Such a price would reduce the raw cost of residential solar to the range of $4.50 to $5.00 a watt. That translates into a per kilowatt-hour price of around 15 cents, in the range of what a lot of Americans are paying now. Subtract the 30% federal tax credit and the amortized price per kilowatt-hour drops to around 11 cents. In Vermont, with its $1.75 a watt cash incentive, it would make residential PV a no-brainer at 5 cents. (I’m not even considering Vermont’s Act 45 feed-in tariff.) That kind of pricing is the disruptive factor.

Don’t expect to see these modules on your neighbor’s house any time soon, though. Nanosolar has pursued a policy of megawatt-scale sales to major installers for industrial arrays. It’s a smart move in terms of controlling the rollout of their product and minimizing sales effort and customer service costs. I understand the reasoning, but I still wish I could get my hands on a few.
 

Act 45 takes a Step Forward

(From page 46 of the Public Service Board’s Interim Price Order, Docket #7523)


VIII. ORDER
IT IS HEREBY ORDERED, ADJUDGED, AND DECREED by the Public Service Board of the
State of Vermont that:

1. Based on the foregoing discussion, we conclude that the interim price levels that apply
under the standard offer program to qualifying Sustainably Priced Energy Enterprise
Development (SPEED) resources are as follows:

(a) for landfill methane projects, 12 cents/kWh;
(b) for farm methane projects, 16 cents/kWh;
(c) for wind projects (15 kW or less) , 20 cents/kWh;
(d) for wind projects (over 15 kW), 12.5 cents/kWh;
(e) for solar PV projects, 30 cents/kWh;
(f) for hydroelectric projects, 12.5 cents/kWh;
(g) for biomass projects, 12.5 cents/kWh.

2. This Docket shall be closed.

Dated at Montpelier, Vermont, this 15th day of September , 2009.

s/James Volz
s/David C. Coen
s/John D. Burke
PUBLIC SERVICE BOARD OF VERMONT

OFFICE OF THE CLERK
FILED: September 15, 2009
ATTEST: s/Susan M. Hudson
Clerk of the Board

This is the first outcome of Act 45, which establishes a special feed-in tariff for renewable energy. The other rules of the game won’t appear till September 30th,, though we know that there will be a 50 megawatt cap on the program. That means that by its conclusion Vermont will have about 5% of its peak electrical load supplied by renewables.

Just to recap, what Act 45 said was that we will need renewables in the future so we should promote renewables now by making sure that they are as profitable as other methods of electrical generation. This is the energy planning equivalent of putting on your parachute before jumping out of the airplane. If we wait till fossil fuel and nuclear energy are expensive before developing renewables then we’ll have to suffer for a long time while we try to catch up.

The bill set some preliminary prices and required the Public Service Board to evaluate and firmly set prices by September 15th. The prices will be adjusted in January 2010 and every two years after that. The standard is that a renewable energy generator (such as a wind turbine, a set of solar panels, or a farm methane installation) should make as good a return on equity (ROE) as the highest return of any existing generator. That turns out to be a local hydro company in Proctor churning out electrons at 10 or 12 percent ROE, depending on how you figure it.
 
And therein lies the problem. I attended the first meeting held by the PSB to solicit opinions on the subjects of price, eligibility, permitting, and so on. The room was filled mostly with utility lawyers, with a sprinkling of renewable energy people and private citizens. The discussion became arcane almost immediately. I have been on the email list for the process and as a result I have plowed through dozens of documents advocating this or that number for interest rates, capacity factors, and system size cutoffs. Committees are still working on how the 50-megawatt queue will be allocated, the permit process, and transmission and interconnection issues. The utilities would be happy to encourage fewer, larger systems. The renewable energy community and others are interested in a range of sizes. The utilities want to offload as much of the administrative work and cost on the installers as possible, and the installers vice versa.

I have been pleasantly surprised by the civil tone of the whole process, and the general use of facts, logic, and mathematics in the debate.

The prices listed above are an overall victory for the renewable energy industry. Northern Power Systems, a company that manufactures a 100-kilowatt wind turbine in Barre, may find the price point a bit awkward for their product. A 100 kW unit lacks the economies of scale of the 1000 kW units that are now the norm in the commercial wind industry. Residential scale wind and PV have scored a big victory and larger scale PV a reasonable win as well. With PV module prices dropping the feed-in price will lag on the high side of profitability. I don’t know enough about the economics of landfill gas or biomass generation to judge the effect on those technologies, but the price is well above usual market rates. Farm methane projects below the net metering threshold of 125 kW may find it almost as good just to net meter in certain utility areas. I’d call it a win for hydroelectric except that permitting for that technology is nearly impossible under present law.

So, there’s a bright spot in the news. On September 30th we’ll find out what difficulties await aspiring renewable energy installers in terms of permitting and fees. Stay tuned.


 

Miller Time at Vermont Yankee

Apparently it’s 9:44 AM.

I don’t generally cross-post, but Maggie Gunderson over at Green Mountain Daily (a fine site, by the way) came up with a good story from the files of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

To quote from the piece:

“FITNESS FOR DUTY - SUPERVISOR TESTED POSITIVE FOR ALCOHOL was today's posting on the NRC Website for current event notifications.

    A non-licensed employee supervisor had a confirmed positive for alcohol during a random fitness-for-duty test. The employee's unescorted access to the plant has been revoked. Contact the Headquarters Operations Officer for additional details.

What is a non-licensed employee supervisor?  Well, that means he was not one of the plant operators, but is a supervisor of another group, like engineering, maintenance, purchasing, or even health physics meaning dose measurement.”

Here’s the link to the NRC report. You’ll have to scroll down a bit.

As it turns out, it was a maintenance supervisor. You know, one of the people responsible for keeping the place bolted together so the radioactivity stays on the inside. The guy blew into the Breathalyzer sometime before 9:44 AM on September 1st and copped something over .04% blood alcohol concentration (BAC), which is the legal limit for operating a nuclear plant on the power superhighway.

I should note that we are one up on the Byron nuclear plant in Illinois. Just a minute later on the same morning one of their actual plant operators tooted the booze whistle and got nailed.

Susan Smallheer wrote it up for the Rutland Herald, reporting thus: “The employee must also go through a mandated employee-assistance program and, depending on the results of that program, the employee could be back on the job in two weeks, Smith said.”

This raises a number of concerns for me. First, am I just a worrier, or does a .04% plus BAC in the forenoon indicate an alcohol problem that won’t go away with two weeks of “employee assistance”? Second, given the random nature of testing, how long had this employee been dousing his Wheaties with beer before he got caught?

Third, as Smallheer reports, this is the third banned substance incident at Vermont Yankee in the past two years. This included a stoned control room operator and the actual administrative assistant tasked with giving the Breathalyzer tests getting busted for being north of .04. There is a basic principle of both Human Resources Management and being a bar bouncer. Your success is not measured by how many bozos you throw out. It is measured by how many you prevent from coming in. With the high turnover rate at Vermont Yankee they seem to be coming up short on that.

Fourth, .04 BAC? Really? I could blow a .039 and legally stroll into the plant for a little Homer Simpson wrench twisting?

And how many drinks get someone to .04 BAC? Defining a drink as ½ ounce of ethyl alcohol, or a 12 ounce beer, a 4 ounce glass of wine, or a 1.25 ounce shot of liquor, a 180 pound man would have to consume three drinks in an hour or four drinks over two hours.

Considering that the test occurred at 9:44 AM, I’d assume that the guy in question had been either at work or commuting for at least the past hour. That tells me that he hadn’t just snapped back a quick Irish coffee to beat a hangover. And .04 BAC is the minimum we can assume. The evidence points to a bottle-heavy breakfast for our hero. Yes, a couple of weeks of counseling and a “cross my heart, hope to die” promise and he’ll be ready once again to supervise the maintenance of our aging nuclear plant. With luck he will be able to prevent more incidents like this:

And this:

The State of Vermont needs to crack down on Vermont Yankee and then shut down Vermont Yankee. This is not a situation where I want to be able to say “I told you so.”

 

Singularity and Twilight

There is a school of thought in the computer world that is advancing the concept of what they call a technological singularity. The proponents of this concept point to the accelerating pace of computer speed and capabilities and state that there will be a point in the near future where computers gain a kind of consciousness and start to improve themselves. They call this point a singularity in reference to the gravitational singularity of a black hole. A black hole is a collapsed star so massive that gravity doesn’t allow even light to escape and common physical principles don’t apply. This departure from predictability is the essence of the appropriation. Once computers start advancing their own development the speed and direction of that development would be unpredictable. Some proponents of the theory claim that we will reach this singularity within the next 25 years.

There are doubters, of course. Some point to the recent slowing of the rate of increase in computer speed. Some question the basic principles of the argument and accuse the proponents of misleading themselves about the limits of electronic computation. I have a diametrically opposite opinion on the long-term future of computation in our society.

There is another limit on the evolution of computing power and on the widespread use of digital electronic technology in general. That limit is discretionary energy. The development of computer technology has occurred in an economic environment rich in discretionary energy. From the Second World War onward the worldwide production of coal, oil, and natural gas has been increasing and the supply has been far more than sufficient for the basics of human life. For decades we have been using these resources with absurd inefficiency, spending them on recreational mobility, and engaging in non-essential activities such as space exploration. In such a glut there is plenty left over for processor chip manufacturing and facilities full of servers and routers.

Our access to complex electronics and computing power is striking. Many children have cell phones, each device containing more computing power and memory than the mainframe computers of 30 years ago. The devices are affordable even to the relatively poor. Personal computers are common, if not universal. Even more significant are the electronic devices we no longer really notice: the automatic door opener and scanner at the supermarket, the programmable timer on the coffee maker, the smoke alarm, and the cordless phone. Even less visible and more important are the electronics that control our power grid, coordinate our transportation system, and speed our industrial production.

All this electronic intelligence relies on set of interlocking conditions. It is hard to know where to start, given the complexity of the connections. There were the initial scientific discoveries that were, in turn, augmented and speeded by the technological developments they enabled. There was the demand of early adopters, including the space program and the military that jump-started the consumer market, which then had its own early adopters. There was the ramp up into mass production. Then there was the export of high-tech manufacturing to countries with despotic governments and the resulting low standards for workers and the environment. This interaction of technological development, mass demand, and cheap mass production brought the price of electronic computing into a range that the ordinary consumer could afford. It also enabled product designers to include intelligent features in what were previously manual devices.

Underlying this all is discretionary energy. It is this energy that offers masses of people in the industrialized world the prosperity to be a mass market for electronic consumer goods. It is this energy that allows the mass international shipment of these electronic goods. It is this energy that allows industrialized agriculture to displace peasants into the cities of the third world, where they are available to cheaply produce electronic devices and the discrete elements that make up these devices. It is this energy that is available for the mining, transportation, and processing of the materials that go into these devices. Even the cheap plastic casings for all this electronic bounty are made from petroleum products.

The earth is no longer making fossil fuels, and therefore the supply is declining as we consume it. It is a geological fact that the annual production of oil fields, natural gas fields, and coal mines slows as they age. Many observers, myself included, conclude that the world is presently on the long bumpy plateau of peak production that precedes irreversible decline. So what happens when the supply of fossil fuels no longer meets all our superfluous needs? What happens when it no longer meets even our most basic needs for food production, heating, medical care, and the manufacturing of the basic necessities of life? What happens when the supply of diesel fuel and natural gas based fertilizer declines and the sons and daughters of third world factory workers make a desperate return to the land?

Part of Norse legend, as envisioned by Richard Wagner in his Ring Cycle operas, was the idea of Gotterdammerrung, literally the twilight of the gods. The balance of the world is lost, the rope of the Fates is broken, and the gods themselves go up in flames. I can foresee an Elektronikdammerrung, a twilight of electronics, when humanity no longer has the necessary supply of energy and materials to make them or the prosperity to drive demand. The huge chip and transistor factories in Southeast Asia will go to ruins. Like history running backwards, electronics will devolve from mass consumer goods to luxury consumer goods, and then to the vaults of universities, military bases, and government agencies. Computers will be lovingly tended by teams of specialists. More prosaically, people will open store doors by hand and time their coffee with windup devices, communicating the everyday events of their lives with letters and the landline telephone.

Eventually, without our present widespread use and facing the time and energy demands of post-petroleum agrarian life, our descendants will be faced with the decision between parts for the mainframe computer and the wheat harvest. Given the complexity of manufacturing processors, perhaps the industry won’t sustain itself below a certain level of mass demand. A period of electronic cannibalism will ensue and run its course. One by one, the last lights of the computer age will wink out.

I’m not a modern Luddite. Let’s face it, this piece was written on a computer and you are reading this on my website. I like my electronics and rely on them for business, personal communication, and recreation. However, I do not make the historical mistake of thinking that the way we live today is the way we will live forever. Nor do I make the similar mistake of thinking that the path of our society is onward and upward forever. The graph of human history is a series of rising and falling lines, with civilizations increasing in complexity and demand on their environments until they collapse. It would be arrogant to assume that we are exempt from the laws of physics, biology, and geology. I used to enjoy a vision of our future as a secular version of the Amish, augmented by a veneer of electronics, as a best case scenario for a post-energy-glut world. I now have a rougher, sparer vision, formed by what I know about the limitations of our resources and our species itself. If we are careful our descendants will still have the knowledge we have gained in our period of technological bounty. Perhaps they will be able to use much of it with only (I shouldn’t say “only”) their minds and their hands.

What Obama Should Have Said

President Obama held yet another one of those pointless town hall meetings in Montana recently. It did allow him to respond to some of the absolute mythology that the health insurance industry has been promoting, but the format itself is the folksy equivalent of a show trial. There is only the illusion of discussion and thought. Television viewers get the vicarious satisfaction of seeing their views expressed, pro or con, and the president gets to make his case to the .02% of the population as yet undecided.

Here’s one exchange:

Q My name is Mark Montgomery. I'm from Helena, Montana.

THE PRESIDENT: Great to see you, Mark.

Q I appreciate you coming here. It's great to be able to do this.

THE PRESIDENT: Thank you.

Q Mr. President, I make a living selling individual health insurance. (Laughter.) Obviously I've paid very close attention to this insurance debate. As you know, the health insurance companies are in favor of health care reform and have a number of very good proposals before Congress to work with government to provide insurance for the uninsured and cover individuals with preexisting conditions. Why is it that you've changed your strategy from talking about health care reform to health insurance reform and decided to vilify the insurance companies? (Applause.)

THE PRESIDENT: Okay, that's a fair question, that's a fair question. First of all, you are absolutely right that the insurance companies, in some cases, have been constructive. So I'll give you a particular example. Aetna has been trying to work with us in dealing with some of this preexisting conditions stuff. And that's absolutely true. And there are other companies who have done the same.

Now, I want to just be honest with you, and I think Max will testify, that in some cases what we've seen is also funding in opposition by some other insurance companies to any kind of reform proposals. So my intent is not to vilify insurance companies. If I was vilifying them, what we would be doing would be to say that private insurance has no place in the health care market, and some people believe that.

I don't believe that. (Applause.) What I've said is let's work with the existing system. We've got private insurers out there. But what we do have to make sure of is that certain practices that are very tough on people, that those practices change.

Now, one point I want to make about insurance: Some of the reforms that we want for the insurance market are very hard to achieve, unless we've got everybody covered. This is the reason the insurance companies are willing to support reform, because their attitude is if we can't exclude people for preexisting conditions, for example, if we can't cherry pick the healthy folks from the not-so-healthy folks, well, that means that we're taking on more people with more expensive care. What's in it for us? The answer is if they've got more customers, then they're willing to make sure that they are eliminating some of these practices. If they've got fewer customers, they're less willing to do it.

So it's important for people -- when people ask me sometimes, why don't you just do the insurance reform stuff and not expand coverage for more people, my answer is I can't do the insurance reform stuff by itself. The only way that we can change some of the insurance practices that are hurting people now is to make sure that everybody is covered and everybody has got a stake in it, and then the insurance companies are able and willing to make some of these changes that will help people who have insurance right now. But thank you for the question. I appreciate it. (Applause.)

Sorry, Mr. President, but that was anemic. Here’s a preferable response.

THE PRESIDENT: Okay, that's a fair question, that's a fair question. First of all, I am vilifying insurance companies because they richly deserve vilifying. In fact, when you look at their behavior over the past few decades, you’ll see that they deserve prosecution for fraud. In some cases they probably deserve prosecution for murder, when denial of coverage could easily have been predicted to cause the death of the insured person. Where’s the Tarpeian rock when you need it? Whoops, any classics scholars out there? (Laughter) In ancient Rome they pitched murderers off a rocky cliff, and at least figuratively that’s what we need to do to the health insurance industry. (Applause)

They are playing at cooperation with reform efforts right now. I guess that with the Blue Dog Democrats in their pockets they expect to write in some more subsidies for themselves. They certainly aren’t acting out of the goodness of their hearts, because, well, there’s no goodness in there. Just raw profit motive.

There is ample evidence that they have groups of employees whose sole purpose is to exploit any tiny loophole in their complex contracts to deny people the coverage they paid for and that they deserve. The whole industry is based on suckering people into signing flawed contracts and then breaking those contracts when they think they can get away with it. That’s fraud. It’s also downright immoral. The executives and upper management should consider themselves lucky if they don’t end up behind bars. Once they are in prison I’d make them pay out of pocket for their medical care. (Laughter, Applause)

So, Mr. Montgomery, I consider you the equivalent of a minor errand runner for an organized crime family. Perhaps you do your job with the best of intentions, but thousands of Americans die every year thanks to the efforts of your employers, and millions more suffer pain and hardship. Tens of thousands go bankrupt. If I have my way you will be looking for a new job soon, one that doesn’t involve contractual fraud and sucking the lifeblood from the American people. I hope you enjoy your new anus. I enjoyed tearing it for you. Okay, time for one more question – back there…

In my dreams. Now it seems that the White House is backing off from the public health insurance option. The insurance companies will continue their dominance in the sole industrialized nation without a public health care program. We’ll keep forking over the money and fighting for our benefits. It’s the money, folks, the campaign money.