DOE to Invest Up to $13.7 Million in 11 Solar Cell Projects
DOE announced last week that it will invest up to $13.7 million over the next three years in 11 projects run by 9 universities that will develop advanced solar photovoltaic (PV) manufacturing processes and products. With a minimum university and industry cost share, up to $17.4 million will be invested in these projects. The chosen universities include Arizona State University, the California Institute of Technology, the Georgia Institute of Technology, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, North Carolina State University, Pennsylvania State University, the University of Delaware, the University of Florida, and the University of Toledo. Each of the 11 universities will work with an industry partner that will help transition the discoveries to the marketplace.
All of the projects will involve researching ways to make high-performance solar cells more effective by using different metals, alloys, and cell designs. One project will try to reduce bottlenecks in the qualification testing for concentrating solar cells, two will explore better methods of building crystalline silicon solar cells, four will explore solar cells built from thin films of semiconducting materials, one will combine an organic (plastic) semiconductor with arrays of titanium dioxide nanotubes, and two will try to create multijunction solar cells by depositing thin layers of materials (amorphous silicon and indium phosphide) onto silicon solar cells.
Multijunction solar cells convert more sunlight into electricity by employing multiple layers of photovoltaic material, with each layer capturing a different part of the solar spectrum. While current commercial multijunction solar cells have three active layers, the project conducted by North Carolina State University and Spectrolab, Inc. will involve building a four-junction solar cell with a targeted efficiency of 45%, that is, the cell would be able to convert 45% of the sunlight hitting it into electricity. See the DOE press release.
Tesla Motors Starts Production of its Electric-Only Roadster
Tesla Motors started limited production of its all-electric 2008 Tesla Roadster on Monday. The rear-wheel-drive two-seater sports car combines a lithium-ion battery pack with a 185-kilowatt (248 horsepower) electric motor, packaging it all in an aluminum chassis wrapped in a carbon-fiber body that yields a curb weight of about 2,690 pounds. The car has a top speed of 125 miles per hour (mph) and a range of about 220 miles, and its worst-case recharging time, for a drained battery, is about 3.5 hours. Tesla claims that the battery will last through 100,000 miles of driving.
According to the company, the car achieves the equivalent of 135 miles per gallon and costs only 2 cents per mile to drive, counting only the fuel costs, of course. The company set a base price of $98,000 on its 2008 models, all of which have been sold, and it is accepting deposits on its 2009 models, but has not yet set a price on them. See the Tesla press release.
Tesla has faced its share of problems in the production of the Tesla Roadster. The company had to delay its production due to problems with its two-speed transmission and ultimately decided to build its initial models using a transmission that is essentially locked into second gear. That creates some disappointment for performance enthusiasts, because the two-speed transmission promised to accelerate the car from zero to 60 mph in less than 4 seconds, on par with the top supercars, but the interim transmission will slow that time to 5.7 seconds.
Tesla now plans to drop the two-speed transmission altogether and will instead employ a new powertrain with a single reduction gear. The cars being built today will be upgraded for free when the new powertrain becomes available later this year. Because of the transmission issues, Tesla expects to only produce about 600 vehicles for the 2008 model year, but plans to ramp up production to 2,000 cars per year in the near future. See the Tesla press release on the transmission issues.
Cargo Ship Completes Maiden Voyage Using Towing Kite
The two-month maiden voyage of the Beluga SkySails cargo ship was successfully completed last week, providing proof that its kite towing system can cut fuel use by up to 20%. The first voyage focused on perfecting the automated kite deployment system, so the kite was deployed for as little as a few minutes and for as long as eight hours. When deployed in strong winds, the kite pulled the ship with a force equal to 20% of the engine power.
The system is undergoing a 12-month pilot phase, and in the second half of that test period, the kite will be deployed for longer periods of time. Once the pilot phase is over, the 191-square-yard kite will be replaced with one twice its size, which is expected to save about 5 tons of fuel per day, for a daily operating savings of about $2,000. The owner of the ship, Beluga Shipping GmbH, is currently building two larger cargo ships that it plans to outfit with kites as large as 717 square yards. See the SkySails press release.
Washington State Approves Bill to Slash Greenhouse Emissions
Washington Governor Chris Gregoire approved a climate change bill last week that will reduce the state’s greenhouse gas emissions to half of its 1990 emission levels by 2050. The bill also includes interim limits of returning to 1990 emission levels by 2020 and reducing emissions to 25% below 1990 levels by 2035. The bill, House Bill 2815, leaves most of the details to the state’s Department of Ecology, which has until December 1 to create a greenhouse gas reduction plan that achieves the bill’s emissions targets. The department also has to develop a system for monitoring and reporting greenhouse gas emissions.
The bill does help out the Department of Ecology with regard to vehicle emissions by setting benchmarks for reducing vehicle miles traveled within the state. The benchmarks lower the annual per capita vehicle miles by 18% by 2020, 30% by 2035, and 50% by 2050. Again, the department has until December 1 to figure out how to meet those benchmarks.
The bill also acknowledges Washington’s current commitment to the Western Climate Initiative, which has set a regional goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions to 15% below 2005 levels by 2020, and the bill aims to take advantage of that initiative through participation in its regional market-based mechanism to reduce emissions. The initiative is currently planning to create a market-based mechanism, such as a cap-and-trade system, by August.
The bill acknowledges an important benefit of reducing greenhouse gas emissions: the likelihood of creating new "green" jobs in fields such as energy efficiency and renewable energy. The state estimates that it had 8,400 such "green economy" jobs in 2004, and the bill encourages the growth in that sector through a new green economy jobs growth initiative.
The new initiative aims to expand the green economy sector to 25,000 jobs by 2020 through targeted financial incentives and comprehensive strategies to attract and expand industries and small businesses serving this sector. It will also include such measures as job training and curriculum development. The state has estimated that several of the recommended strategies for responding to climate change will have a net benefit to the state’s economy of nearly $1 billion by 2020. See the governor’s press release and the full text of the bill.
Oregon and South Dakota Approve Renewable Energy Tax Incentives
Oregon and South Dakota are the latest states to encourage renewable energy development in their state through tax incentives. Oregon Governor Ted Kulongoski approved a bill on March 11 that allows tax credits of up to $40 million for manufacturers of renewable energy equipment. The bill is clearly aimed at drawing economically beneficial facilities to the state, as it includes measures to reduce the tax credit if the credit is unlikely to draw a new or expanded business to the state, if the new facility is unlikely to provide a significant number of new jobs, or if the facility or the company building it appear unlikely to succeed. See the governor’s announcement of the bill signing (PDF 25 KB) and the full text of the bill, House Bill 3619 (PDF 49 KB).
While the Oregon act intends to encourage new manufacturing facilities within the state, the new South Dakota act provides tax incentives for wind energy facilities and the transmission lines that serve them. House Bill 1320, approved by Governor Mike Rounds on March 14, waives all state and local property taxes for wind energy facilities with a capacity of at least five megawatts. Instead, the owners of the facilities have to pay a tax of $3 per kilowatt of capacity plus 2% of the gross receipts of the wind facility.
The wind facility developers can also earn rebates for up to half the cost of underground distribution lines, substations, and transmission lines built to support the wind power facility. The rebates can equal 90% of the taxes paid for the first five years and 50% of the taxes paid for the following five years. The remaining tax proceeds will be divided among the state and the county and local governments where the wind facility is located. See the governor’s announcement of the bill signing and the full text of the bill, House Bill 1320.
EIA: New Energy Act to Yield More Renewable Energy by 2020
The U.S. outlook for the growth in renewable energy use by 2020 has improved considerably in just three months, thanks to the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007, which President Bush signed into law in December. DOE’s Energy Information Administration (EIA) is revising the early release of its Annual Energy Outlook to reflect the impact of the energy act, and the latest figures show renewable energy providing 13.7 quadrillion Btu (quads) of energy by 2030, up 12% from the 12.2 quads that EIA projected back in December.
For comparison, the total U.S. energy use was 99.5 quads in 2006 and is expected to increase to 118 quads by 2030. That number is 5% lower than the EIA projected in December (123.8 quads), reflecting the impact of improved fuel economy standards and new product efficiency standards.
The new projections show biomass energy use increasing to 8.12 quads by 2030, nearly triple the biomass use in 2006 and a 47% increase over the December projections, reflecting significant growth in renewable fuels. But the projections for biomass power production are less optimistic, increasing by a factor of 7.5 by 2030, compared to a ninefold increase in the December projections. The difference probably reflects the need to direct biomass towards fuel production, making less available for power production.
Perhaps in compensation for that, the projections for geothermal power production are more optimistic in the revised analysis, showing it more than doubling by 2030, compared to only an 88.4% increase in the December projections. The other renewable electricity projections remain essentially the same. See the Tables A1, A16, and A17 from the EIA report (PDF 164 KB), and for comparison, see the December 19 article from this newsletter.
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Kevin Eber is the Editor of EREE Network News, a weekly publication of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE).
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