Burn Some Daylight

"Occupiers are indicating that they are prepared to pay more for green real estate and that it is important for their organizations to occupy sustainable buildings...Occupiers will pay more for sustainable real estate solutions and where possible avoid non-sustainable real estate solutions."

--Jones Lang LaSalle--Corporate Real Estate Impact Survey

PV is the sizzle that sells green real estate--sustainability where you can see it.  Architecturally significant solutions that increase property performance.  The quoted survey reveals that 64% of respondents are prepared to pay a premium for greener real estate.  Sustainability is rapidly moving from a nice to have to a must have.

More than marketing--these sustainable solutions harness the latest in global technology to reduce onsite costs and increase performance.  We harvest a site's solar resource landing on marginal real estate--think parking lots, airspace over parking garages, patios and walks.

"only 18% of respondents considered current provisions of sustainable real estate good or adequate."

PV is a new way of thinking about real estate value creation--another layer in how you develop spatial solutions when renovating or developing property.  Harvesting the local solar resource, monitoring and measuring the load, load shape and the pv system's performance demonstrate the reduced carbon footprint and document sustainability efforts.

Users are prepared to pay more, but are under-supplied with sustainable building stock.

...although the math should only be the third ranking reason to adopt PV on your property.

Reason one is that our systems are designed to a 30 year life--providing clean power, carbon free power, when the sun is shining.  No moving parts.

Reason two is that PV is a relatively painless way to start making the changes we all need to make to minimize the effect of CO2 in the atmosphere.

And reason three is that the math works.  Now.   Even before PG&E's seven percent rate increase.  How many of your investments get you 10% returns--with no downside?

is a key part of the California Solar Initiative.  The legislative analysts correctly understood that there is a potential weak link between the global technology designed to harvest the power of the sun and the installer's skill set.  Says Christian Bendel at ISET:

"In 80 percent of the cases..., the problem is incorrect integration of the individual components into a system." 

Systems over 100kW--and soon dropping to >30kW--are paid on their output through California's Performance Based Incentive [currently $0.26/kWh].  Solar Renewable Energy Credits [SREC's} are created and traded for each MWh [=1000 kWh] produced.  Performance matters.

I want to know:

• how system performance compares with predicted performance taken from onsite irradiation measurements with a sensor.
• how the system performance varies across inverters.
• I want to be informed of any deviations via email or SMS.
• I want to know if any modules are being removed [stolen] from the string, and
• total performance measured on a revenue grade basis [+/- 2%]

From this data, I can generate the following financial information:

• total SREC's generated from the system for WREGIS reporting,
• avoided peak power energy and demand costs obtained from onsite generation.
• avoided fossil fuel use based on utility company fuel split.

Monitoring adds about 5% to the cost of the system, a relatively small price to pay for peace of mind and knowing how my investment is performing.

As a PV power developer, the yields of the systems I design, construct and operate is the primary determinant of how good I am.  Hence, I was disturbed last night when I read the results of Photon Magazine's module test on Sharp modules.

Sharp ended up at the back of the pack on yield--almost 10% behind the test leader.  Sharp has a reputation for under-promising/over-delivering on power, which held true here--their 175Wstc modules actually tested out at 188Wstc, but the yields were dramatically off when compared to other modules.  The yields are standardized to the actual measured power of the module, not the nameplate power.  I don't understand why the yields are so low.  The test looks really comprehensive--a typically thorough German approach to getting to the numbers.

The other surprise was the Sanyo HIP series modules finished just above the Sharp modules--and this module is marketed as a high yield, triple junction module.   These modules were apparently "samples" but were bought through the distribution chain, so my concern is how do I know that I don't end up paying for "samples" rather than the real deal?  These modules are being retested at the request of Sanyo--stay tuned.

I need to really dig into this as I have several jobs in planning that I was going to specify the Sharp module on.

Update:  I traded emails with Sharp--the main takeaway is that if you look at yield on nameplate, so that they are not penalized for under-promising on power, Sharp moves into the middle of the pack, like so--

...to go green was Friday's decision by the CPUC to allow commercial building owners charge their tenants for power used, rather than rolled into the base building operating expenses.  Owners will now be able to submeter and charge tenants for the exact amount of power they use.

Large tenants now have a much stronger incentive to utilize on-site photovoltaics as a tool to avoid peak demand charges, reduce their carbon footprint, and increase brand equity.   Inequity in cost allocation need not be tolerated by tenants any longer--Green tenants will no longer be subsidizing more energy intensive uses--and energy intensive users now have incentive to manage this cost exposure.  Landlords now have another way to reduce building operating expenses, and create value.

This rule only currently applies to properties served by PG&E, and the CPUC expressed the intent to expand this statewide.

A friend recently asked me about how photovoltaics [PV] is best used to meet Marin County's Single Family Dwelling Energy Efficiency Ordinance, or SFDEEO. 

Designed to compensate for grid-tied energy demands from homes larger than 3,500SF, this ordinance requires that

• all homes be designed to California's 2005 Energy Efficiency Standards.
• The delta between the home's calculated energy usage and the energy budget for a 3500SF home built to Title 24 Standards be calculated, and
• this delta must be compensated for by increasing the energy efficiency of the residence and incorporating on-site pv power production.

The larger the home gets above 3500SF, the bigger the energy offset is required to be.  I went through the guide published by the county, went through the actual ordinance, but still couldn't find the relationship between size and PV. 

 Then I found the analysis that Marin County used to backstop the ordinance.  Basically, the county takes the annual production of the system, multiplies it by 4.2 [PV provides power at the same time demand on the power grid is peaking--so they estimate it is 4.2 times as valuable as an alternate power source not producing during peak times--defined as TDV, or Time Dependent Valuation] and then divides by the square footage of the home to establish the offset.

The math is different for each home, but it looks like a 5kW system would offset a prototypical 5,000SF home [1500SF larger than the design standard], an 11kW system would offset a 7,000SF home, and a 21kW system would offset a 10,000SF home.  This assumes no greater energy efficiency improvements and in climate zone 2--where 70% of us in the county live.  A lot of assumptions.

There are a multitude of ways to slice and dice the energy consumption and generation to get to the home you want.  You will want to put all options on the table--such as increasing insulation, using radiant barriers, solar shading, and glazing locations and options.  PV is a great component to any home,  and the wisdom of this ordinance is that it gives you credit for using onsite PV to minimize your effect on our old, obsolete power grid.

The good news is that harvesting your onsite available solar resource to reduce the environmental footprint of a large home makes sense for a lot of reasons. 

The bad news is that each deal must be taken on its own, the best outcome is achieved by iterating through the options, and an increasing amount of PV is needed for each additional square foot of conditioned area.

Applications for rebates under the California Solar Initiative, at least in PG&E territory, show that the program is working--people want pv--and the industry is responding to this want.

Governor Schwarzenegger pushed to get the California Solar Initiative into place, adding 3,000 MW of solar power to the state's base in ten years.  The equivalent of two new nuclear power plants distributed over rooftops, parking lots, and vacant fields.  No moving parts, a thirty year life, and no issues about what to do with spent fuel.

So, naturally, Californians are taking to solar power like the latest cult pinot noir. 

Here is number of applications by month, vs. forecast:

PG&E recently advised that they will be opening the A-6 tariff in early 2008 for customers that are currently on an E-19 tariff and have, or will have, PV systems installed that are sized to handle at least 20% of their onsite demand.  A-6 was capped at 500kW--the yellow below shows how PG&E is expanding this tariff to PG&E customers with demands of up to 1000kW.

Why should you care?  If you are planning a PV power system that provides greater than 20% of your demand, your service size is under 1000kW, and your peak and off peak demand is about the same, then your PV system just became more  valuable.

Part of PV's value is the ability to take advantage of "solar-friendly" tariffs, lowering your operating costs.

This is a good fit for a large hotel property, retailer, or industrial use with a load shape that doesn't fit with PV's power generation shape of mid-day max production.  Another area are users that are "peaky"--big peak demand charges that are outsized compared to total energy use.

PG&E has limited this to the first 20MW of customers approved for this transfer--so this opportunity won't last long.

E-19[pdf] has both an energy charge [how much you use] and a demand charge [how much you use at any one point--used to size the service].  A-6 is only an energy charge [pdf], with a much higher charge during summer peak periods.

Think this may work for you?  Drop me an email and we can explore it.

...early tomorrow. 

 Job here is to further develop relationships with our clients, vendors, and those that are helping make photovoltaics an attractive way of getting real estate to tread lighter on the land.

PV Power Development is an essential step towards our triple bottom line approach to community development.

Planning to be at SP07?  Shoot me an email or Skype me [see button on right sidebar]. I  look forward to getting your take on what needs to be done and how we can work together to do it.

And no, that is not my plugin hybrid.  Hat tip to PG&E for showing this off at West Coast Green!

...is captured in a book and a recent report on the transformative capability of solar power.  When I begin to doubt the potential of using photovoltaic technology to transform our homes and commercial property while reducing the impact on the world we leave behind, I pick up either this book or report, and the doubts evaporate.

The book, available on Amazon, takes a predictive approach to looking at how solar power, and distributed generation, can power our economy as costs drop.  I don't fully buy his pitch that it will transform the energy industry.  I do buy his predictions that solar will reach grid parity, and the ability to match our onsite needs with onsite generation is enhanced by these cost reductions.  The implementation will happen at the margins--and pv is already working at the margins.

This report--Solar Generation IV--[pdf 5MB] goes even further, looking at the jobs and economic effects of the transformation.  The report highlights the jump developing economies will experience with distributed pv generation, leapfrogging their lack of present energy infrastructure, to power schools, community, and home. 

Their prediction?  Solar power for one billion people and two million jobs in less than 15 years.

Shifting to a triple bottom line, distributed generation, sustainable way of looking at how we use the tools of home, workplace, and where we gather requires reminding myself of why this transformation is so important, and how it really is not that far from implementation.   Very possible.

had to be the 12,500 attendees--people who believe in the power of the sun to leave our world a better place than we found it. This new talent, together with some great products, and cooperation from those that run the power grid, set the stage for an extremely productive several days.

What was new?  Several new commercial size inverters, designed for longer life and at higher efficiencies. New module manufacturers--particularly from China--were in evidence.

Also evident was a willingness to roll up sleeves and get to work reducing the pace of global warming.

"I am not going to leave a burned-out, hot-house world that is not sustainable to our children and grandchildren.

We know what needs to be done, and by dammit, we better do it.

And that's why I am here."

--Ted Turner

Better tools to harvest the power of the sun--and the motivation to start now--were the best components of this show.