PSE Customers Could Save $10 Million Annually After Judge's Ruling

Puget Sound Energy customers could save as much as $10 million per year after a Thurston County judge reversed part of the Bellevue-based company’s rate plan.

The state’s oldest and largest investor-owned electric and natural gas utility has to propose a rate plan for approval from the Washington Utilities and Transportation Commission (UTC).

The regulatory body approved PSE’s rate plan for 2013 – which included automatic rate increase for customers through 2017 at the company’s option – but it was challenged by customer advocates who worried rates could be unfairly calculated.

The state Attorney General’s Public Counsel Unit and the Industrial Customers of NW Utilities appealed UTC’s decision on behalf of customers.

“This is an important win for PSE’s ratepayers,” Attorney General Bob Ferguson said in a statement. “The court’s ruling will ensure that customers’ rates under the multiyear plan will be fairly calculated.”
Ferguson said the ruling could save residential and industrial customers as much as $10 million.

Thurston County Superior Court Judge Carol Murphy sent the plan back to the UTC to determine new rates, but denied a challenge that would have overturned automatic annual rate increases.

Kimberly Harris, PSE president and CEO, hosted a talk for the Puget Sound Business Journal’s Business 

Journal Live series, where she spoke about making customers a priority for the company.

PSE this week received $3.8 million of a $14.3 million state grant for so-called “smart grid” technology intended to help state utilities better and more efficiently utilize solar and wind power.

Source: Puget Sound Business Journal. Ashley Stewart. 7/9/14

The Future of Solar is Bright

With federal, state, and utility incentives, the residential solar industry is seeing growth upwards of 50% per year.

In 2005, Western Washington University professor, Jack Hardy, started a renewal energy company as more of a hobby. Nine years later, his garage start-up is thriving with two locations and over 130 projects completed last year alone.

Now retired, Jack’s legacy is doing business as Western Solar Inc and under new direction. Josh Miller, General Manager, reported substantial growth in 2013. “We installed the second largest number of projects in the state last year. Our business has easily grown 50% annually since 2009.”

Recently, Miller completed a contract for a 108kW/400 panel installation which will mark the largest array in King County and fourth largest array in the state. This project will take what was once a small town operation and make it into one of the leading solar installation businesses in the Puget Sound.

According to the Solar Energy Industries Association’s (SEIA) U.S. Solar Market Insight Report, photovoltaic (PV) installations increased 41% nationwide since 2012. This pencils out to an increase of nearly fifteen times the installations six years ago, making solar the second largest source of new electricity behind natural gas. To date, there are over 445,000 PV systems operating in the states, with 140,000 of those installed in 2013.

The boost in PV installations created more than 10 new jobs every hour, as reported in The Solar Foundation’s National Solar Jobs Census. Nearly 143,000 workers joined the solar industry in 2013.

SEIA reported that the average price of solar panels declined 60 percent since 2011 making solar more affordable. Rebates and incentives are also making solar more attractive to Washington residents.

The financial incentives available for homeowners currently rank among the richest programs in the United States. Until 2016, there is a 30 percent federal tax credit for residential properties and no state sales tax on equipment or installation until 2018.

Additionally, local utilities offer production rebates. According to the Database of State Incentives for Renewables and Efficiency, Washington has one of the highest performance-based incentives in the world. Grid-interactive systems may receive production incentives ranging from $0.12 to $0.54/kWh or up to $5,000 per year. Multiplying factors of this incentive are based upon the electricity produced using equipment manufactured in Washington State.

Snohomish PUD customers are eligible for an additional one-time credit of $500 for every kWh installed, capped at $2,500, on qualifying units.

The return on investment, once taking ten years, is now closer to five to seven years. With Washington based panel manufactures offering a 25 year warranty and production expectancy of 35-40 years, anyone with initial funding would be hard pressed to turn down switching to solar.

With 50-60% projected growth in 2014, those in the solar industry like Miller are in for a positive fiscal year, making for a very bright future.

Source: Written by- Amanda Brock. Western Solar Inc. Marketing Director. July 2014.

Boston's Solar-Powered Benches Will Charge Phones and Collect Data

President Barack Obama and Sandra Richter of Cambridge, Mass., on an example of eco-friendly urban furniture, a solar-powered "soofa," on June 18 in Washington, D.C. Photograph by Mike Theiler-Pool/Getty Images

 

Boston has started installing park benches that double as electronic device charging stations. “Your cell phone doesn’t just make phone calls,” said Boston Mayor Martin Walsh last week. “Why should our benches just be seats?”

The multitasking benches, dubbed Soofas, have USB ports in which park dwellers can plug in their devices. The seats also connect wirelessly to the Internet to upload local environmental data such as air quality and noise levels, as well as information on how much energy is being generated. So far, two Soofas have been placed in Boston Common and two in Titus Sparrow Park. Several more will be added in Boston and Cambridge in coming weeks.

Soofas are the creation of Changing Environments, an MIT Media Lab spin-out co-founded by three women in their early thirties—a designer, an electrical engineer, and a marketing expert. “We’re all from Germany, where solar energy is very popular,” says Sandra Richer, the startup’s co-founder and chief executive. “We were thinking about how can we change public opinion to accept more solar … and start a dialogue about air quality in cities and renewable energy.” Verizon is providing the group with technical support, and Cisco Systems paid for Boston’s first benches.

 

The smart seats are already gaining traction. “We average between 12 and 20 people using the benches per day,” Richter says. On Sunday, she notes, “there was what we think was probably a couple because there were two people charging from 5:30 to 7:30 in the morning.”

Changing Environments plans to make all the Soofa data publicly available once it improves its real-time data map. The group is also hoping to speed up production and develop more advanced versions of the bench. “This is a small, three-girl operation right now,” says Richter. “We’ve gotten a lot of calls already from cities and people asking, ‘When do we get our Soofa for our city or boardwalk?’”

Public access USB ports do present some unique problems. When New York inaugurated charging stations last year, experts warned that hackers might implant tiny computers to infect phones with viruses that could steal banking information, e-mail passwords, and perhaps even track the movement of phone owners. Richter says Soofas, made from concrete, sheet metal, and wood, won’t be vulnerable to such attacks. “The concrete boxes are screwed with security screws and only we have the actual bits to open them,” she says. “If one were to take an ax and hammer to one, the electronics would be useless.”

 

To make money, Changing Environments plans to charge a setup and monthly subscription fee or charge people, organizations, and companies to have their names and brands featured on subtle bench plaques. The startup has yet to determine its pricing. Another option, says Richter, would be to use motion sensors on the Soofas to collect data for companies, allowing them to better gauge how many passersby are in the area. “So if they have a billboard in the area, for example,” Richter says, “they’ll know how many people are likely to see it.”

Source: Caroline Winter. Bloomberg Businessweek in New York. 7/1/14

Interfaith Coalition Goes Solar!

Later this summer, Western Solar and Itek Energy are teaming up to help Interfaith Coalition reach their goal of going solar on their housing!  As part of our commitment to strengthen our local community, we will be donating labor and equipment at cost to the healthcare provider which serves 44 diverse congregations in Whatcom County each year.

Itek Energy will also be contributing by donating five of the ten panels that will be installed on the upper half of the south facing roof.

The estimated energy savings that the panels will provide once installed is approximately 2,435 kWh per year. That is equivalent to a reduction of CO2 emissions from 189 gallons of gasoline and 1,803 pounds of coal!

To learn more about Interfaith Coalition click here.

Equivalency data was provided by The US Environmental Protection Agency.

Itek Solar Panels - See the Specs!

We get a lot of questions regarding Made-in-Bellingham solar panels and why wouldn’t we?! They are highly efficient, monocrystalline modules reaching power outputs above 270 Watts! Designed to utilize more of the Northwest’s defused light, standard racking systems and weighing only 43 lbs, they are also very most economical.  The 2″ frame is designed specifically to allow for micro-inverter and DC Optimizer attachments, along with extra snow and wind loads. The silicon cells are some of the highest efficiency p-type cells on the market. The encapsulates are of the highest quality in the industry and the ultra-clear, low iron solar glass is specifically designed and manufactured for light conditions common in the Pacific Northwest.

Check out the spec sheet on these Certified Made-in-WA Solar Modules!

Apple Developing Solar Panels for Mobile Devices Read

In February, Apple patented solar panel technology to be integrated for mobile devices, but recently, the major computer distributor has furthered their development to make the solar panel technology for mobile devices more flexible and touch sensitive. The company is offering a hybrid solar system that can be placed underneath a large touch panel.

The system involves one or more flexible solar panels with one or more touch sensors stacked together like a chassis. The basic design utilizes a transparent double-sided ITO substrate superimposed atop of a solar panel cell. This solar panel cell is capable of translating light energy into usable energy that can be stored into the device’s battery. Other designs allow for flexible solar panel cells which can more easily capture light from different angles.

Apple released another design where the cell faces away from the user and in towards the device. In this arrangement, the cell can not operate in a optimal light sensing mode. When facing away from the user, light must be shown in through light channels. This design would be used if having the cell face up proves to emit too much heat for the touch sensor.  The utilization of fiber optics in this form of the technology has been included to improve the passage of light into the rear facing sensor. Fiber optics can bend light from the front of the device, into the housing, and finally onto the solar panel cell. Apple is also looking to incorporate a reflective mirror in their design to maximize energy consumption. The back surface of the touch sensitive sensor would reflect light towards the solar cell, maximizing the amount of light energy absorbed.

Apple has run into some issues developing solar panels for mobile devices. They are “having difficulty” fitting a suitable solar power cell into the larger version of the next generation of iPhones. Also, the incorporation of this technology could make the iPhones, iPads, and iPods thicker. Which is opposed to the demand of consumers who want thinner devices. Also, the iPhone and other mobile devices are-due to customer demand-making their phones with bigger screens which use up more energy.

Apple’s development of solar panels for mobile devices was first filed by Michael Nathan Rosenblatt, Gordon Cameron, Cameron Frazier, Steven Porter Hotelling, Benjamin Lyon, and John Benjamin Roslin in 2008. Tech analysts believe that a completely solar energy powered iPhone or iPad won’t be hitting the shelves soon. More likely, devices that are supplemented by solar energy will be introduced. Then, as the technology becomes more routine and improved, it could turn into the primary source for energy for Apple devices.

Currently, the United States is the third largest solar power industry behind China and Japan. The value of the solar power industry is $100 billion, and Apple is not the only one showing interest in the business. Google and Berkshire Hathaway are beginning their forays into the perpetual renewable resource. According to environmental scientists at the University of Washington, the total area of solar panels needed to power the whole world is somewhere around 1,00,000 kilometers.

Source: Andres Loubriel. Apple. USA Today, TechCrunch. Apple Insider, BoingBoing. http://guardianlv.com/2014/06/apple-developing-solar-panels-for-mobile-devices/#Grezl92Plul4LGWG.99

Los Angeles Ready to Add 300 MW of New Solar Energy Capacity

250 MW would located outside the city, while 50 MW would be distributed in the city.

Virginia, USA -- The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) is moving forward with multiple agreements for a large 250-MW solar array in Kern County while also spurring development of another 50 MW of solar power within the city of Los Angeles.

“This is a great milestone in the City of L.A.’s efforts to expand renewable energy and a win-win for the businesses and people of Los Angeles who will benefit from solar power development right in the city,” said Board President Mel Levine in a June 5 statement. “These solar projects will help spark economic development and jobs, reduce greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuel power plants, and meet L.A.’s renewable energy mandates.”

“These agreements put us within reach of our targets of 25% renewable energy by 2016 and 33 percent by 2020,” said Marcie Edwards, LADWP General Manager.

The agreements, which require approval by the City Council, pave the way for the 250-MW Beacon Solar Project, which will be built 14 miles north of Mojave, Calif., along Highway 14, while rounding out the full 150 MW Feed-in Tariff (FiT) Program. Last year, LADWP launched the FiT Set-Pricing Program for 100 MW, becoming the largest city in the nation to offer a FiT program.

The Beacon land, acquired by LADWP in 2012 and previously permitted for a solar development, has been divided into five sites. Four sites will be developed through four separate power purchase agreements for a total of 200 MW. Each of these contracts is tied to developing a group of small-scale FiT solar projects within LADWP’s service area in Los Angeles. Altogether, these “bundled” agreements will mean construction of 50 MW of local solar.

Through a competitive bid for the Beacon 200-MW Bundled Solar Program, the LADWP Board awarded two of the sites (88 MW) to SunEdison, and two sites (112 MW) to Hecate Energy. In conjunction with the large solar projects, SunEdison is obligated to develop 22 MW of local solar and Hecate will build 28 MW of solar within Los Angeles.

The fifth solar project that will be installed on the Beacon property is a 50-MW project that is not “bundled” with a FiT component. This contract was awarded to Hecate Energy.

Randy Howard, LADWP Senior Assistant General Manager-Power System, said: “These new solar projects will add to the existing Pine Tree wind and solar projects, and form a cluster of renewables in this area to help LADWP meet its renewable energy objectives near the Los Angeles Basin.”

To support the increase in renewable energy in Kern County, LADWP has begun construction of the Barren Ridge Renewable Transmission Project (BRRTP), which will expand the capacity of its existing transmission to bring these new renewables home to LADWP’s customers. Under the agreements, LADWP will provide all transmission and distribution infrastructure to support the Beacon Solar Project. The work involves expanding the Barren Ridge Switching Station and building a switchyard for the Beacon project as well as expanding the transmission line itself.

As part of the transmission project, LADWP has begun construction of a new switching station in Haskell Canyon near Santa Clarita, which will improve overall reliability by adding a second connection to the Castaic Power Plant. The Castaic Power Plant serves as “pumped storage” for solar and wind energy and is considered vital to integrating the renewables into the electric grid.

Source: Barry Cassell, Chief Analyst, GenerationHub.