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Solar Road Failure in France – Update on Technology

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The world’s first solar road (Normandy road in France) has been a bit of a bust. According to an article in Business Insider it’s in very poor shape and not even worth repairing. What a shame – let’s read more about the Normandy solar road, what went wrong, and what its failure might mean for future solar highways.

Solar Road Failure in France – Update on Technology, Idaho solar road.

The Normandy solar road covers 2800 square meters and was installed in 2016 in Tourouvre-au-Perche. 

A report from Le Monde has been translated by Business Insider and paints a pretty sad picture of the road’s effectiveness (or lack thereof):

On top of the damage and poor wear of the road, the Normandy solar track also failed to fulfill its energy-production goals. The original aim was to produce 790 kWh each day, a quantity that could illuminate a population of between 3,000 and 5,000 inhabitants. But the rate produced stands at only about 50% of the original predicted estimates.

Other issues the ~$6.1m Normandy road has include rotting leaves, thunderstorms, and the volume of the solar road – where the speed limit even had to be lowered as it was so loud.  Daily Caller are advising that 75% of the panels were broken pre-installation and now 83% are non-functional. The current amount of energy being generated by this project is so low it would only be able to power a small water fountain and restroom lights. The Daily Caller article also discusses a $3.9m USD Idaho road which is suffering from a similar issue. 

If you’d like to read the original article (it’s in French) from Le Monde, entitled “En Normandie, le fiasco de la plus grande route solaire du monde”, please click here. 

If you’d like to read more about other solar highways across the world, here are a few links:

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The Planetary Society’s LightSail 2 Solar Satellite

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The Planetary Society have launched a solar satellite which has been named the Lightsail 2. The solar sailing Cubesat device will be in orbit for the rest of August. Let’s learn more about the solar sailing technology and what the Planetary Society hope to achieve with the launch of this fascinating new piece of technology! 

The Planetary Society’s LightSail 2 Solar Satellite

The Planetary Society’s LightSail 2 Solar Satellite (source: planetary.org)

The concept of ‘solar sailing’ means that an object will be moved by photons escaping the sun’s gravitational pull. According to Popular Mechanics, It’s the second ever solar sailing object to fly – with the solar satellite following IKAROS (Interplanetary Kite-craft Accelerated by Radiation Of the Sun) from Japan, which launched in 2010. IKAROS certainly has the cooler name, but the LightSail 2 has some superior technology – an aluminzed (a coating of aluminum alloy) Mylar sail and far better uptime.

“For The Planetary Society, this moment has been decades in the making,” said Planetary Society CEO Bill Nye. “Carl Sagan talked about solar sailing when I was in his class in 1977. But the idea goes back at least to 1607, when Johannes Kepler noticed that comet tails must be created by energy from the sun. The LightSail 2 mission is a game-changer for spaceflight and advancing space exploration.”

“We’re thrilled to announce mission success for LightSail 2,” LightSail program manager and Planetary Society chief scientist Bruce Betts said. “Our criteria was to demonstrate controlled solar sailing in a CubeSat by changing the spacecraft’s orbit using only the light pressure of the sun, something that’s never been done before. I’m enormously proud of this team. It’s been a long road and we did it.”

If you’re interest in reading more, the Planetary Society have created a site named Mission Control where you’re able to track the LightSail 2 in space. To visit Mission Control please click here. 

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Tesla Megapack | Massive Energy Storage | Large Scale Renewable Storage

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The Tesla Megapack has been announced by Tesla today. The Megapack is designed for utilities and large-scale commercial customers and could be a real game changer for those in remote areas or looking for large amounts of portable renewable storage. Let’s learn more!

Tesla Megapack | Utility Scale Energy Storage

Tesla Megapack (source: Tesla.com)
Tesla Megapack (source: Tesla.com)

Tesla announced the Megapack today – as a potential replacement for “peaker” power plants, which help the grid when it’s overloaded. Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) will deploy several Megapacks at Moss Landing on Monterrey Bay in California. There are also three other locations PG&E are looking at optimising.

The Tesla Powerpack, released in 2015, is Tesla’s current offering for large scale energy storage – the array in South Australia has a capacity of 129 MWh and can deliver 100 MW of power.

The Megapacks are substantially more powerful – each Megapack can store up to 3 megawatt hours (MWh) of energy at a time, and it’s possible to string enough Megapacks together to create a battery with more than 1 GWh of energy storage, according to the press release.

This gives the product comes with some serious grunt: “A 1 Gigawatt hour (GWh) project provides record energy capacity—enough to power every home in San Francisco for 6 hours.”

“Every Megapack arrives pre-assembled and pre-tested in one enclosure from our Gigafactory—including battery modules, bi-directional inverters, a thermal management system, an AC main breaker and controls. No assembly is required, all you need to do is connect Megapack’s AC output to your site wiring.”

According to The Verge, Tesla has been deploying record numbers of Powerwalls and Powerpacks in 2019 – which has created issues with battery shortage, undoubtedly a pain for anyone wanting to order the Powerwall 2 in Australia, for example: 

“Tesla deployed 415 MWh worth of Powerwalls and Powerpacks in the second quarter of 2019, a record for the company. Throughout 2018 and into early 2019, the company had to scale back the number of Powerwall and Powerpack products it deployed because it needed the batteries to support the dramatic increase in Model 3 production.”

Is it going to be easier to wait for the Powerwall 3? Watch this space. 

Megapack Specifications

Tesla Powerpack Rendition (source: Tesla.com)
Tesla Megapack Rendition (source: Tesla.com)
  • Microgrid – you can build a localized grid which is able to disconnect from the main power grid. Sound 
  • Renewable Smoothing – ‘Smooth out the intermittency of renewables by storing and dispatching when needed’
  • T&D (Transmission and Distribution) Investment Deferral – ‘Postpone costly grid infrastructure upgrades by supplying power at a distributed location to defer the need to upgrade ageing infrastructure’. (Learn more about T&D savings with energy batteries by clicking here)
  • Voltage Support – the Megapack can add voltage or remove it to help maintain the grid.
  • Frequency Regulation – The Megapack can rapidly change charge or discharge energy in response to changes in grid frequency.

How to buy Tesla Megapack in Australia

According to the Tesla website, the next step is to fill in an enquiry form on their site, after which “…our team of experts will work with you to identify custom site needs, and design a solution to maximize project values across multiple applications.”

If you’re interested in buying a Tesla Megapack please use the enquiry form on the Tesla website or click here. 

If you’d like more information on the Tesla Megapack in Australia, we have set up a mailing list which will keep you updated if you’re interested in large scale commercial solar / renewable storage like this one. Just fill in the box below and we’ll keep you posted.

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Victorian Solar Rebate Rally | Solar Homes

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Victorian Solar Rebate Rally – a rally was held at Victoria’s Parliament House today where hundreds of people in the solar industry voiced their displeasure with the rollout (and subsequent roll-in) of the Victorian solar rebate. Have they got a fair enough gripe? Let’s take a look.

Victorian Solar Rebate Rally

The original Victorian solar rebate (AKA Solar Homes) was announced in the lead-up to the 2018 election by Daniel Andrews and Lily D’Ambrosio. The plan was to install subsidised solar panels and/or solar batteries ($2,225 per system) – which then caused statewide PV solar installations to skyrocket from 3,000 / month to 7,000 / month.

Presumably the industry didn’t have too many issues with that, but the problem was when the scheme was paused in April 2019, only just recently reopening under an agency named Solar Victoria who had Stan Krpan from the Victorian Cladding Taskforce heading it up. 

This stop/start issue has seen a couple of follow-on effects – with owners now adopting a ‘wait and see’ approach and the subsequent slowdown in installations is causing a big bite for Victorian solar installers, especially those who have (bravely, given they’re relying on the Government) planned a growth strategy around the rebate. 

”This is a gold-level performance in incompetence,” said John Grimes of the Smart Energy Council in quotes relayed in The Age.

“The industry has become a solar coaster: one minute it’s up, the next it’s down.”

According to Mr. Grimes, installations across Victoria are down 30% since April. We also commend his pun game.

The Age article also quotes Dave Douglas of EverSolar who discussed his growth strategy prior to the rebate pausing and how it’s affected his business:

“We doubled in size because of this rebate. We put on an extra 20 staff, got more vans and ordered more solar panels.”

Mr. Douglas had a couple of ideas how to solve the issue – double the monthly subsidy quota or drop the eligibility from a pre-tax household income from $180,000 to about $80,000.

Opposition energy spokesman Ryan Smith was at the rally as well, with his own opinion (which, surprisingly, was the opposite of the incumbent Government) on the rebate:

“The change has made it more difficult to have panels installed,” he said. “Far from being cheaper, as businesses close, competition will dry up and panel installation costs will rise.”

Thoughts? Are you a solar business owner or a Victorian looking to get solar installed on your home? We’d love to hear from you.
 
To read more about the Victorian solar rebate please click here.

 

 

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Solar Waste – What’s the state of solar panel recycling?

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Solar waste is a currently unavoidable byproduct of Australia’s obsession with solar power. But what do we do with these panels when they reach end of life? Let’s take a look at solar panel recycling and what the current climate is, helped by a recent ABC Radio show about the topic.

Solar Waste and solar panel recycling – a primer.

We wrote about recycling solar panels back in January, but a new interview with Reclaim PV (who we talk about in the other article too) has some more information about this critical issue. 

A radio program by the ABC had some very interesting thoughts on the topic – you can listen to it here. 

The panel included:

  • Jeremy Hunt, solar panel installer
  • Professor Rodney Stewart, Griffith University
  • Clive Fleming, solar panel recycler, Reclaim PV
  • Andrew Gilhooly, Sunpower

With two million houses in Australia now enjoying the fruits of renewable energy and installing solar on their rooftop, their lifespan of 10-15-20 years is now starting to slowly fizzle out, especially for the early adopters. However there’s a huge issue to do with disposing of the solar PV waste in an environmentally friendly fashion.

Professor Rodney Stewart from Griffith University estimates that by 2050, we’ll have 1,500 kilotons of solar waste which will be sent to landfill unless we can figure out a more intelligent way to dispose of something supposed to help the environment. 

Solar Waste - Reclaim PV
Solar Waste – Reclaim PV (source: reclaimpv.com)

The only company in Australia to recycle panels is Reclaim PV in Adelaide, who take in 50,000 per year, but only panels manufactured without toxic chemicals. They then, according to owner Clive Fleming,

“…get the cells, completely separate that as well for the silver contacts, the aluminium and then the silicone to provide those back out to industry.”

According to the ABC program host Emilia Terzon, the Federal Government says it’s committed $167 million to an Australian recycling investment plan and state and federal environment ministers are expected to discuss how to tackle solar waste when they meet later this year. The Government is looking to set rules around how the industry deals with dead solar panels – adding them to the Product Stewardship Act, which mandates how electronic waste is dealt with.

Australian Council of Recycling chief executive Peter Schmigel also had a quote in the Sydney Morning Herald earlier this year about how a proper plan for recycling PV cells could have a positive effect on the economy:

“Recovery rates have been out of sight since the beginning of the scheme, nobody has said anything at all about there being an inbuilt recycling cost. It generates jobs, it generates environmental outcomes and yet for some reason we have policymakers who are hesitant about [establishing similar schemes] for solar PVs and batteries,” he said.

Watch this space. There will be plenty more on this topic as panels continue to reach EOL (end of life) and the policymakers are forced into action. 

 

 

 

 

 

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