Whether they are driven to set up a new shop by strong FITs or other important state and local drivers, it’s clear the the global expansion of renewable energy is on the rise.

In Ontario, Canadian Solar announced that it will be setting up shop in Guelph. The facility is expected to be ready by 2010 and the company says that it will be one of the largest solar panel module manufacturing plants in North America, capable of manufacturing 200 megawatts of solar modules a year and employing approximately 500 people in the process.

Canadian Solar currently has its manufacturing operations in China. The decision to set up a manufacturing facility in Ontario was driven by the feed-in-tariff domestic content requirement set forth by the government of Ontario under the Green Energy and Economy Act.

Arizona’s State Incentives Draw Solar Companies

In Surprise, AZ, CSP component manufacturer Rioglass Solar, a subsidiary of Spain-based Rioglass Solar Holdings, will set up U.S. headquarters that it says will create more than one hundred new jobs through its $50 million capital investment.

Rioglass Solar’s tempered glass reflectors will be deployed at Abengoa Solar’s Solana Generating Station, to be constructed near Gila Bend. Rioglass says that it is in negotiations to supply reflectors for several other solar projects under development in the United States.

Rioglass Solar received $10.6 million in federal tax credits to locate its mirror manufacturing facility in Surprise. In addition, Surprise will waive $290,000 in review and public infrastructure fees; invest $865,000 in public infrastructure including rail and electricity upgrades needed to serve the solar facility and will provide the company with project office space at the city’s business incubator, the AZ TechCelerator.

This is the 5th solar energy company to set up operations in Greater Phoenix under the state’s new Renewable Energy Tax Incentive Program, which was launched in January 2010.

Boston-based Photon Consulting delves deeper into the global expansion of solar energy in its new report: Solar Annual 2010 Part One: Place Your Bets. The report predicts 17.2GW of new PV system installations in 2010 alone, which is a 104% year over year growth.

“As the solar sector grows and increases in complexity, it is also becoming increasingly exposed to major shifts in capital market conditions, energy technology evolution and incentive policies in key markets,” says Mark Farber, PHOTON Consulting consultant and co-author of the report.

Wind Companies On the Move, Too

Across the world in South Africa, independent renewable energy group, Wind Prospect, announced that it will open a new office in South Africa with the goal of becoming a key element in the developing African wind market by 2012.

Since the company launched its Developer Service business in 2009, Wind Prospect has opened offices in emerging markets across Europe including most recently Turkey and Poland. The African office will open in Cape Town in October and will provide wind resource assessment, due diligence and development support services to developers, banks and financial institutions across the continent, according to the company. The company says that it is already working on 11 contracts across Kenya and South Africa, representing 1.3 GW of potential capacity.

Following the opening of the African office, Wind Prospect will have offices in 10 countries around the world: Australia, Canada, China, France, Ireland, Poland, South Africa, Turkey, UK, USA.

Source: www.renewableenergyworld.com

Industrias y empleos

En su alocución semanal por la radio y la internet, Obama dijo que los fondos eran parte de su plan para traer nuevas industrias a Estados Unidos.

“Vamos a seguir compitiendo activamente para asegurar que los empleos y las industrias del futuro se arraiguen aquí”, dijo Obama.

“Después de ver a compañías que construyen y crean trabajos en el extranjero, es una buena noticia que hayamos atraído a una compañía para crear trabajos aquí en Estados Unidos”, señaló el presidente estadounidense.

Obama destacó que el 70 por ciento de los componentes y de los productos que se utilizarán en la construcción de la planta serán manufacturados en Estados Unidos, lo que permitirá “impulsar el empleo” y las comunidades “en todos los estados”.

Una vez completado el proyecto, “esta planta será la primera gran planta solar de gran escala en Estados Unidos, que almacenará energía para su uso posterior, incluso en la noche”.

Compañías beneficiadas

Las dos compañías que van a recibir los fondos del plan presidencial de estímulo económico son Abengoa Solar, que construirá en Arizona una de las mayores plantas solares del mundo, creando 1,600 empleos de construcción; y Abound Solar Manufacturing, que está construyendo plantas en Colorado e Indiana.

El gobierno de Obama dice que esos proyectos crearán más de 2,000 empleos de construcción y 1,500 empleos permanentes.

En la víspera, el Departamento del Trabajo reportó que el sector privado agregó sólo 83,000 empleos el mes pasado, menos de los 112,000 pronosticados por los analistas. El Dow y otros indicadores bursátiles importantes registraron pérdidas grandes por segunda semana consecutiva.

Empleos perdidos

La tasa de desempleo cayó a 9.5 por ciento.

Obama dijo que aunque pudiera tomar años para recuperar todos los empleos perdidos durante la recesión, la economía se está moviendo en dirección positiva.

El presidente responsabilizó a los republicanos en parte por el lento ritmo de la recuperación, diciendo que los legisladores de ese partido “están jugando los mismos viejos juegos de Washington y usando su poder para mantener como rehén la ayuda”.

Los republicanos han tratado de capitalizar el asunto. El senador Saxby Chambliss dijo en la alocución semanal republicana que la deuda del país es una cuestión de seguridad nacional que dejará a Estados Unidos vulnerable y obligará a generaciones futuras a “pagar altos impuestos para cubrir los gastos descontrolados de los demócratas”.

Estos proyectos forman parte del Plan de Recuperación Económica que el Gobierno estadounidense puso en marcha en 2009 para paliar la crisis económica, dotado de $787,000 millones, centrado en aumentar los gastos en infraestructura, la creación de empleo y recortes tributarios.

“Son dos de las mayores inversiones en energía limpia del Plan de Recuperación Económica”, señaló Obama, que aseguró que ya ha visto los resultados de las inversiones que se han hecho en estos meses en las factorías de paneles solares y turbinas que ha visitado.

Fuente: www.univision.com

So-called concentrating solar power uses hundreds of thousands of mirrors to turn water into steam. The steam turns a conventional turbine similar to those in coal-fired power plants. The technology, which is potentially cheaper than most types of renewable power, has captivated many engineers and financiers in the last two years, with an abrupt surge in new patents and plans for large power operations in Europe and the United States.

This year may be China’s turn. China is starting to build its own concentrating solar power plants, a technology more associated with California deserts than China’s countryside. And Chinese manufacturers are starting to think about exports, part of China’s effort to become the world’s main provider of alternative energy power equipment.

Yet concentrating solar power still faces formidable obstacles here, including government officials who are skeptical that the technology will be useful on a large scale in China.

Much of the country is cloudy or smoggy. Water is scarce. The sunniest places left for solar power are deserts deep in the interior, far from the energy-hungry coastal provinces that consume most of China’s electricity. Provinces deep in the interior have few skilled workers or engineers to maintain the automated gear that keeps mirrors focused on towers that transfer the heat from sunbeams into fluids.

Concentrating solar power “is not very suitable for China,” wrote Li Junfeng, a senior government energy policy maker, in a detailed e-mail reply to questions this week.

Yet the private sector in China is racing to embrace the technology anyway.

A California solar technology company and a Chinese power equipment manufacturer plan to sign a deal on Saturday for the construction of up to 2,000 megawatts of power plants using concentrating solar power over the next decade, executives from both companies said this week. That is equivalent to the output of a couple of nuclear power plants. They will start with a 92-megawatt plant in Yulin, a town in a semi-desert area of Shaanxi Province in central China.

The Chinese equipment manufacturer, Penglai Electric, hopes to work with other Chinese manufacturers to drive production costs down precipitously, clearing the way for exports, although these would require further approval from the California licensor of the technology, eSolar.

Eric Wang, the senior vice president for international business development at Penglai Electric, said that manufacturing mirrors, turbines, towers and other equipment in China instead of the United States could cut costs by at least half. That could make concentrating solar power more competitive with other forms of power generation around the world.

China’s Ministry of Science, the Beijing municipal government and the Chinese Academy of Sciences are already building Asia’s first concentrating solar power plant on the outskirts of Beijing, although it is only a pilot operation to generate 1.5 megawatts.

Preparations are also under way for the construction of a 50-megawatt concentrating solar power plant in Gansu Province in northwestern China, said Min Deqing, a renewable energy consultant in Lanzhou, the provincial capital of Gansu.

But while nuclear power, wind energy and photovoltaic solar panels have strong backing from China’s political leaders and enormous financing by government-owned banks, concentrating solar power still faces deep-rooted skepticism in senior ranks of the government.

Unlike in the United States, the roots of that skepticism do not lie in concerns about disrupting the habitat of rare species in sunny, desert areas – a worry that may block some attempts to build concentrating solar power plants in the Mojave Desert.

Mr. Li wrote that concentrating solar power works best when cheap water, cheap land and lots of sun are available in the same place – a rare combination in China. Mr. Li also expressed concern that concentrating solar power would prove more expensive per kilowatt-hour generated than photovoltaic solar power, a technology in which China is already the world’s low-cost supplier.

Mr. Li has a lot of influence on these issues. He is a deputy director general for energy research at the National Development and Reform Commission, the top economic planning agency in China. And he is the secretary general of the government-backed Chinese Renewable Energy Industries Association, which helps oversee these industries’ operations in China.

But Mr. Li did say that he saw a limited role for concentrating solar power, particularly in places where it could be combined with other power plants, or where it could be combined with a way to store power overnight. Penglai and eSolar hope to do both.

Water consumption, mainly to condense the steam after it has been used to generate electricity, is another potential weakness of the technology. Water tends to be scarce in deserts, of course. Penglai and eSolar are leaning toward air cooling instead of water cooling, at the price of cutting the efficiency of their plant.

Mr. Gross said the eSolar technology could also be used to create extra heat during the day, with the heat being stored and used to generate power at night – a form of the electricity storage sought by Mr. Li.

Despite the government’s skepticism, renewable energy investors remain enthusiastic about the potential for concentrating solar power projects in China. K. K. Chan, the chief executive of Nature Elements Capital, a renewable energy investment fund in Beijing, said that he had been looking at such deals in recent months after concluding that the valuations for photovoltaic solar projects were unreasonably high, possibly because that technology had such strong government backing.

Mr. Min in Lanzhou said that while there was little data yet on the cost of concentrating solar power, the price tag was likely to fall in China. “Eventually, when 100 percent domestically produced mirrors are used,” he said, “the cost will be lower than solar panel power plants.” 

Source: www.nytimes.com

Power Options Limited and Go Solar Limited have been awarded a Sh273.6 million tender to install, test and commission solar panels in schools and health centres that have never had power and which are to be used as test grounds for the eventual use of solar energy across the country.

“This project is specifically for regions that are far off the national power grid” said Mr Patrick Nyoike, the permanent secretary in the Ministry of Energy. Mr Nyoike, however, said the pilot project will not be extended to other facilities in urban centres. “This project is for affirmative action to ensure the arid and semi arid regions are also included in the development agenda,” the PS said in an interview with Business Daily.

The government set aside Sh500 million in the 2009/2010 budget to light up isolated regions such as North Eastern province.

The regions have sunshine through out the year and could be used as a test case to eventually roll out the use of solar power across the country.

“This project is one of the success stories of the rural electrification programmes,” said Mr Nyoike. The project comes barely four months after Prime Minister Raila Odinga appointed a team to fast-track the expansion of the generation and use of clean and renewable sources of energy such as solar, wind and biogas.

Economic recovery

Kenya plans to commission the national use of clean energy by 2012 that will help install an additional power generation capacity of 2,000MW as the country expects demand for electricity to pick up with the economic recovery early next year, putting the current supply levels under serious strain. The task force will investigate and recommend measures to speed up the construction and commissioning of the accelerated green energy programme by June 2012. The UN says Kenya can reduce the cost of energy to manufacturers and domestic consumers if it tapped into solar and wind energy in its vast and dry northern regions.

According to the UN, Kenya has the capacity to generate more than 3,000 MW of electricity if it tapped into wind and solar energy in its vast northern districts. The utilization of clean energy could help inject additional power to the national grid to assuage the fears of the manufacturing sector and potential investors who have grown cold feet in putting their money in Kenya. Manufacturers have blamed the high cost of locally produced goods on the expensive electricity tariffs.

Kenya could avoid irregular electricity supplies if it tapped into clean energy. A power crisis that hit the country between August and October last year affected production and was blamed on inadequate rainfall and failure to implement planned generation projects on schedule.

Domestic consumers

The increased generation of additional power could spur the manufacturing sector which could be left to utilise the current supply installation with the solar generated power left to domestic consumers.

Last year, the Africa Development Bank (ADB) injected Sh32 billion into a private consortium to develop an initial 300MW from wind energy in Turkana district – equal to around 25 per cent Kenya’s current installed energy capacity. This follows the Government’s introduction of new legislation covering electricity generation.

Kenya obtains more than 75 per cent of its power from hydro. The country’s only existing source of renewable energy is the geothermal power, which however has not been exploited to its maximum. For example, while Kenya has geothermal potential to produce 3,000MW of electricity, geothermal sources account for only 11 per cent of the country’s approximate 1150MW existing capacity.

Source: www.businessdailyafrica.com

La vendedora de vegetales Ramiben Waghri tomó un préstamo para comprar una linterna solar que usa para iluminar su puesto por la noche. La linterna cuesta entre 66 y 112 dólares, aproximadamente su ingreso de una semana.

“Los vegetales lucen mejor bajo esta luz, y es más barata que el keroseno y no huele mal”, dijo Waghri, quien estima que gana unas 300 rupias (6 dólares) más cada noche con su linterna. “Si podemos usar el sol para ahorrar algo de dinero, ¿por qué no?”, agregó.

En India, los proyectos de energía solar, a menudo financiados por instituciones de microcréditos, ayudan al país a reducir sus emisiones de dióxido de carbono y lograr su meta de duplicar la contribución de energía renovable a 6%, o a 25,000 megavatios, en los próximos cuatro años.
Mejor calidad de vida

Las aplicaciones que no requieren electricidad como cocinas y linternas solares, que dan varias horas de luz por las noches tras de ser cargadas bajo durante el día, ayudarán a reducir la dependencia de combustibles fósiles y los niveles de C02 del cuarto mayor emisor del mundo, dijo Pradeep Dadhich, miembro del instituto de investigaciones energéticas TERI.

“Apuntan a personas que de otro modo tienen acceso limitado o nulo a electricidad, y dependen del kerosene, diésel o leña para sus necesidades energéticas”, explicó Dadhich.

“Las aplicaciones no sólo satisfacen estas necesidades, sino que mejoran la calidad de vida y reducen los niveles de carbono”, agregó.

La Asociación de Mujeres Cuentapropistas (SEWA por sus siglas en inglés), es parte del creciente número de instituciones de microcrédito en India dedicadas a proveer fuentes de energía renovable para personas pobres, quienes de otro modo tendrían que esperar horas para comprar kerosene, o recorrer kilómetros para recolectar leña y cocinar.

SKS Microfinance, la mayor institución de micro créditos (MFI, por sus siglas en inglés) de India, ofrece lámparas solares a sus 5 millones de clientes, mientras que la Fundación Electricidad Solar Rural ayuda a financiar lámparas y sistemas de iluminación para pobladores de India, Nepal y Bangladesh.

“Suministrar electricidad es responsabilidad del Gobierno, pero es una tarea inmensa y el gobierno solo no puede hacerlo”, dijo Shirish Garud, coordinador de la Sociedad de Energía Renovable y Eficiencia Energética (REEEP por sus siglas en inglés) del sudeste asiático.

“En muchos casos el usuario final no tiene acceso a servicios financieros y bancarios convencionales, motivo por el cual necesitamos los MFI”, indicó Garud.

El banco Aryavart Gramin ha aprobado préstamos para la instalación de 8,000 sistemas solares domésticos en Uttar Pradesh, el estado más poblado de India y una región clave en la producción de granos.

En África, los micro préstamos están llevando sistemas solares a casas, escuelas e industrias informales en regiones remotas, a donde no llega la red de suministro eléctrico. Las personas pobres usan el dinero que habrían utilizado en keroseno para cancelar sus préstamos.
Millones de lámparas
Cientos de millones de personas en India tienen poco o ningún acceso a la electricidad. No obstante, la demanda de energía en un país que vio su PIB cerca de 9% en los tres años del 2007 al 2008 se ha hecho sentir en la capacidad e infraestructura.

De los 76 millones de casas de India que no tiene acceso a electricidad, 65 millones usa keroseno que emite carbono, según REEP. El keroseno es altamente inflamable y los gases son nocivos. Cada año miles de personas en países del tercer mundo mueren producto de accidentes que involucran cocinas y lámparas de este combustible.

Las naciones del tercer mundo ahora emiten más de la mitad de los gases de efecto invernadero en el mundo y esa proporción está por subir.

En India, se espera que las emisiones de gas invernadero salten de 4,000 millones de toneladas a 7,330 millones de toneladas en el 2031. No hay cifras de las emisiones actuales de gas invernadero de India.

Se espera que sus emisiones per cápita, estimadas en 1.2 toneladas, aumenten a 2.1 toneladas para el 2020, según un estudio reciente financiado por el gobierno.

India agrega unos 10 gigavatios de electricidad al año y es probable que vea un déficit de hasta 21,000 megavatios cuando la expansión de su capacidad no pueda seguir el ritmo a la demanda, dando lugar a más apagones. La energía solar aliviará algo de presión sobre las redes.

En la vecina Bangladesh, las plantas de energía estatales y privadas pueden generar entre 3,700 y 4,300 megavatios de electricidad al día, frente a una demanda de 5,500 megavatios, según la junta de desarrollo energético estatal.

Como sólo 40% de la población del país tiene acceso a electricidad, las instituciones de micro créditos como el Banco Grameen han hecho un gran avance en la expansión del uso de energía solar.

Desde el 2001, en Bangladesh se instalaron 350,000 sistemas solares domésticos y se han distribuido 550,000 linternas solares, llevando energía a unos 4 millones de personas.

“Ahora mismo 2.5 millones de personas se están beneficiando con la energía solar y tenemos un plan para alcanzar los 10 millones de personas para fin del 2012, dijo Dipal Chandra Barua, director general de Grameen Shakti, una filial del Banco Grameen.

Fuente: www.eleconomista.com.mx