All About Solar | Green Energy News

February 26, 2006 – Vol.10 No.49

All ABOUT SOLAR.

This week’s news...

When voters in the U.S. state of Colorado approved a Renewable Energy Standard (RES) they also agreed to see their utility bills increase to fund a program that would build solar power.

Under Amendment 37, as the RES is known, the largest utility companies operating in the state, such as Xcel, are required by law to build a solar rebate fund. On average Xcel estimates residential customers will pay an average initially of 35 cents per month extra, businesses 69 cents, to support the fund.

The bill was passed in 2004 and now is the time to begin building the solar capacity in the state.

Xcel Energy has officially opened its Solar Rewards program to its residential and business customers in Colorado. Under the program, qualifying customers can receive rebates of $2.00 for each Watt of nameplate solar capacity installed for systems up to 10,000 watts or 10 kilowatts. (They’d get a $20,000 rebate for a system that size, but Xcel believes most residential systems will be 2-3 kilowatts.)

Further Xcel will purchase the Renewable Energy Credits (REC) related to the customer’s system for an additional $2.50 per what. (The hypothetical 10 kilowatt system would get the initial $20,000 plus $25,000 in RECs)

Xcel says the rebate plus the RECs will only cover the about half the cost of a photovoltaic system since PV systems cost between 8 and 10 per installed Watt. Customers must pay the remaining half of the solar system and hope that over the 25 - 30 year life of the system they can recoup the cost.

The solar systems, too, must be grid connected and program does not include the cost of battery packs that could be used in conjunction with the system.

Potential customers for the rebates can apply online at http://www.xcelenergy.com/solar

Last week Evergreen Solar of Marlboro, Massachusetts announced a $100-million, four-year supply contract with S.A.G. Solarstrom AG for solar products. This week Evergreen has announced another four-year supply contract, this time with Global Resource Options based in the state of Vermont.

The contract is for $88 million in solar modules for the U.S. market. The modules will be made in Evergreen’s Massachusetts facility as well as the company’s joint venture EverQ 30-megawatt facility in Germany.

The contract with Global Research Options marks the third multimillion supply contact signed in recent months. Together the three contacts are valued at $260 million over the next four years. Visit Evergreen Solar at http://www.evergreensolar.com/ .

Interest in solar thermal power generation seems on the rise after a lapse of more than a decade. Projects recently announced, such as the large-scale Nevada Solar One from Solargenix, have brought the technology back to life.

Now there’s another large desert project.

Solel Solar Systems of Beit-Shemesh, Israel plans to build and operate a 150-megawatt solar thermal power plant in the Negev Desert.

Before the project is built Solel must leap one major hurdle: become Israel's first privately-owned power producer. The company has applied with Israel Electricity Authorities to reach that status.

Solel will use technology similar to that used in the nine Solar Energy Generating Stations (SEGS) operating in California's Mojave Desert. Those projects as well as the planned Nevada Solar One project use rows of parabolic mirrors to reflect and concentrate sunlight on an oil-filled metal pipe encased in a glass vacuum tube. Sunlight heats oil to as high as 752 degrees Fahrenheit (400 degrees Celsius) The heat is then exchanged to water to make steam which spins a turbine and electric generator.

Visit Solel at http://www.solel.com/ .