A 4.1-MW solar project is coming to the Tri-County EMC district in Putnam County, Georgia. The project, developed by SolAmerica Energy, should reach interconnection and commissioning within the next month. Putnam Erickson 2 PV solar project uses First Solar thin-film modules.
“As a locally-owned electric cooperative, we are committed to investing in the communities that we serve. So when SolAmerica approached us about partnering with them on a project within our service area in Putnam County, we saw it as an ideal fit,” said Ray Grinberg, CEO of Tri-County EMC. “This locally-produced solar energy will allow us to continue to diversify our fuel mix by providing low-cost solar energy for the next 25 years.”
“This collaborative approach to project development demonstrates how clean energy projects unlock value at every level,” commented Jatin Khanna, Manager of Distributed Generation at First Solar. “We are proud to be powering Putnam Erickson 2 with technology designed and developed here in the United States.”
News item from SolAmerica Energy
“Putnam Erickson 2 PV solar project uses First Solar thin-film modules.”
Once again thin film solar PV IS competing with Chinese mono-crystalline and amorphous silicon solar PV products without needing a silicon foundry and all of that energy required to go from materials to finished product is an overhead cost not even China can fully ignore or subsidize away. I believe First Solar has three major plants World wide, in the U.S. in Vietnam and in Malaysia. The announcement that solar PV panels will be manufactured by using solar PV by 2028 on First Solar production lines, shows a forward looking commitment to controlling costs and allowing the company to ride through economic downturns by suppressing the costs of energy on the overall manufacturing energy and dollar costs of the plant.
Go back 20 years and the arguments that solar PV panels (weren’t) any more “efficient” than coal fired plants (because), solar PV panels are being built with coal fired power and this energy input is not (properly) accounted for in the manufacture and use of the solar PV product. Well since then, coal fired plants have dropped from 51% of the electricity generation in the U.S. to around 30% of the electricity generation today. Energy input efficiency has changed and attached emissions to make a solar PV panel have changed. It used to be about 3 to 5 years of solar PV operation to offset the energy required to manufacture the panel. After about 10 years, energy costs declined to the point on average it would take about 1 year of solar PV panel operation to recover the energy needed to manufacture the panel. That was the point at which the energy costs to produce whining stopped as solar PV manufacturing marched on.
Today it would be interesting to dig into old studies and archives and see if one can glean the overall cost of making a solar PV panel 20 years ago, with the cost of making a solar PV panel today. How long one must “operate” this panel to recover the equivalent amount of energy used to make the panel. What it costs to recycle the product. So now, we are looking at a “metric” of cradle to cradle of a product and the attendant usefulness and costs related to the materials used to manufacturing of the panel and to the end of life recycling of the solar PV panel. Running the costs from 20 years ago to the costs of overall energy costs today would be an interesting cost evaluation of individual technology over ideology and convenient censorship of actual costs over the lifetime of a product.