Today at the Solar Power Generation show (see my report on the first day here), I found myself once again wishing I could split myself into three different people. Today was the day when the conference moved into a three-track system focusing on utility-scale technologies: concentrated solar power, concentrated PV and traditional PV. Since I couldn’t be be in all three places at once, I broke up my day so I could attend all three tracks. Here are some highlights from what I heard:
- I was fascinated by the presentation by Drew Torbin, vice president of the Renewable Energy Group for Prologis. Prologis is not a solar company; they are a commercial real-estate developer that owns and maintains industrial properties (warehouses, distribution center and the like). So Torbin said the company had an epiphany one day: Prologis has lots of roof space (550 million square feet, to be exact, and 11,000 acres of land worldwide ) and have ideal locations to host solar arrays (flat roofs, anyone?) — but they are really low load facilities, so they don’t need the power for their own uses. So how does a company monetize those assets? Torbin said the company remains the landlord for all the buildings, but they cover them in solar panels — and lease the space to utilities that want to use them to build their arrays. It just goes to show how hot the solar industry is — even the real-estate companies are finding ways to get a piece of the pie.
- An interesting question came up in the same session: Why aren’t more projects being developed in the Southeast? Yes, the irradiation isn’t as high as it is in California, but it’s not as low as New Jersey. The regulations are lower, the hurdles to develop projects are lower — why isn’t anyone coming to the Southeast to bring solar projects to those states? The general consensus of the assembled experts was that the Southeast doesn’t get more business because, though all of the questioner’s points were accurate, there are few — if any — incentives for developers to go there. There’s no notable Renewable Portfolio Standards (which require state utilities to have a portion of their portfolio coming from renewable energy sources), and there are few if any subsidies or incentives (like the Renewable Energy Certificates so popular in other states). That renders projects less profitable in the Southeast than they are in other parts of the country — so developers aren’t coming.
- In the CSP realm, Partho Sanyal of Bank of America Merrill Lynch said that the chances of CSP companies going public are nearly nil in Europe because of the debt crisis. The public markets, he said, have not been kind to solar companies that have gone public — mostly their own fault by not performing as well as expected. It will take more long-term proof and larger CSP projects to establish a track record that the public markets can believe in.
- The inverter panel (made up of John Skibiniski, vice president of Renewable Energy Market Development for American Electric Technologies; Marco Trova, director of technical sales, Renewable Energy Products, Power One Italy and Elie Nasr, business development director, Power Plant Solutions, SMA) all agreed that the inverter market needs more coherent standards worldwide to allow solar farms to be more easily connected to the grid. They all agreed that this lack of standards is holding the inverter market back.
- I had a good opportunity to discuss CPV technology with Wayne Miller of GreenVolts, who discussed their fully integrated CPV system. He explained the ins and outs of the system and showed me some of the projects they’ve produced. So far, they’ve only done about 5 MW in projects, but they’ve attracted the attention of ABB, who has taken 25% interest in the company and is going to help them expand overseas. Miller says he expects their installed megawatts to increase significantly with their new partnership.
Today is the final day of the show, and I’ll give you my final wrap-up on Friday. Stay tuned.
Andrew Tomer says
There you go, lack of ratepayer extracted subsidies holding back solar power in the South East region of the country.
Geesh, who would have thought those hayseeds would not have wanted extra charges tacked on their power bills for the privilege of buying more expensive electricity!