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<p><div class="image-container float_right"><div class="image"><p class="source">REUTERS/Stringer</p></div></div>For the first time ever, the world will have ended the year installing more new <keyword id="45681" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="Solar">solar</keyword> capacity than <keyword id="43948" type="ENTERTAINMENT" weightage="60" keywordseo="wind">wind</keyword>, <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-09-26/annual-solar-installs-to-beat-wind-for-first-time.html">according to</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"><a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-09-26/annual-solar-installs-to-beat-wind-for-first-time.html"> Bloomberg New Energy Finance</a>.</span></p>
<p>Photovoltaic plants will add about 36.7 gigawatts globally in 2013, a 20% jump from last year. Wind will only add 35.5 gigawatts, down from 25% in 2012. </p>
<p>"The dramatic cost reductions in photovoltaics, combined with new incentive regimes in Japan and <a href="http://topics.bloomberg.com/china/">China</a>, are making possible further, strong growth in volumes," said Jenny Chase, BNEF's head of solar analysis.</p>
<p>Meanwhile in the U.S., the amount of new solar capacity installed in 2013 through October - 2,528 megawatts - is nearly double the amount installed for wind, at 1,027 megawatts, for the same period, <a href="http://www.ferc.gov/legal/staff-reports/2013/oct-energy-infrastructure.pdf">according to FERC</a>.</p>
<p>And in terms of net generation, solar's 6,407 megawatt hours through September is 92% higher than it was through September 2012. For wind, the figure is just 22% higher, <a href="http://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/pdf/epm.pdf">according to the EIA</a>, though at 123,978 megawatt hours the overall amount of power generated by wind remains several orders of magnitude larger than solar. Monthly solar net generation growth in 2013 averaged 17% through September; for wind, monthly average growth was 0%. Here's the chart:</p>
<p><div class="image-container"><div class="image"><p class="source"><a href="http://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/pdf/epm.pdf">Rob Wile/Business Insider, data from EIA</a></p></div></div> </p>

The World Built More Solar Capacity Than Wind Capacity For The First Time Ever This Year

<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div>Tesla's home battery might lead to an energy revolution, but probably not for you.</p><p>The economics just don't make sense.</p><p><a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-05-21/your-home-doesn-t-matter-for-tesla-s-dream-of-a-battery-powered-planet">Bloomberg explains</a>:</p><p style="padding-left: 30px;">The noble home battery user wants independence from the grid, but a more sensible approach would be to pair rooftop panels with batteries designed to extend some solar power into the peak evening hours of electricity demand. When the battery is depleted, the homeowner would switch over to grid power. That's an idea that Tesla has been promoting: Save money by modestly extending the benefits of solar power with help from a battery.</p><p style="padding-left: 30px;"><strong>The problem is that this kind of energy "load shifting" doesn't save a penny for most U.S. customers, regardless of the cost of the batteries.</strong> Blame a policy known as net metering, explained in more detail below. Even in more favorable markets like Germany, the total cost for buying and installing a home battery would have to drop by almost two-thirds before load shifting would be cheaper than running rooftop panels without any batteries, according to analysis by BNEF. Tesla sees Germany and Australia as the biggest initial markets for daily-use batteries.</p><p>Even if home battery costs were to go low enough to make them economical with the current status quo, that fact in itself would likely shift the status quo.</p><p>This is already beginning to happen as some utility companies allow people with renewable power sources like solar panels to plug those sources into the grid in order to reduce their energy bills.</p><p><a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2013-12-26/utilities-feeling-rooftop-solar-heat-start-fighting-back">Another Bloomberg story</a> from back in December reported on a couple who had added solar panels with the assumption they could connect to the grid and reduce their monthly bill to zero, only to be refused once the panels were installed:</p><p style="padding-left: 30px;">Solar installers here estimate that hundreds if not thousands of the state's residents are being put in solar limbo by a virtual moratorium on new connections in many parts of the company's service area. The reason, according to the Hawaiian Electric Co.: so many Hawaiians are stampeding to solar that circuits may become oversaturated, causing voltage spikes, damaging appliances, electronics and even the utility's equipment. The company needs more time to study the matter.</p><p>There's a suspicion, however, that it's less about the circuits and more about the economics of the wide adoption of solar over the last few years. If everyone tries to sell their electricity back to the utility companies, there's no one left around to buy it from them. We seem to be quickly approaching the inflection point, where the utility companies are going to need to start fighting solar, rather than encouraging it.</p><p> </p>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/what-happens-after-black-widow-spider-bite-poison-2015-4">Here's what happens when you get bitten by a black widow</a></h3>        <div>            <div>        <div class="ooyala-video-player" data-video-autoplay="false" data-video-id="5wdGFndDqN2zqp8TnWPghhDHfhDWYD_r" data-player-variable="ooyalapopvideo" id="ooyalaplayer_popvideo" style="width:1280px;height:720px"></div>        </div>        </div>            </div>

Tesla's home battery doesn't make economic sense for homeowners

<p><span><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image"><p class="source"><span>Barclays</span></p></div><p></p></div></div><br /></span></p>
<p><span>It's been a good few decades for America's electric utilities: As regulated monopolies, they face almost no competition and enjoy access to cheap credit.</span></p>
<p><span>In a new note, a Barclays team led by Y.C. Koh says the industry is finally be facing its day of reckoning, from a source many have long dismissed as an unviable pipedream: solar. Specifically, the threat is residential solar, people creating their own electricity.</span></p>
<p><span>To prove that the threat is real this time, Barclays is </span><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">downgrading its Electric sector rating to Underweight from Market Weight <strong>"...T</strong></span><strong><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">he regulatory responses to the growing competitive threat from solar + storage may </span><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">prove inadequate to address potential strains to the credit profiles of issuers in these </span><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">states," </span></strong><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">they write.</span></p>
<p><span>There are main two reasons why solar is finally for real, the group says. The first is that for more than a decade, there's been a huge push from governments around the world, and at every level, to subsidize renewables. </span><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF) estimates </span><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">that the annual output of PV modules increased almost 30x in the past decade, from </span><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">1,000MW per year in 2005 to more than 30,000MW in 2013, Barclays notes. With that scale has come cheaper prices for panels. </span></p>
<p><strong><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Here's what the cost curve looks like:</span></strong></p>
<p><strong><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image"><p class="source"><span>Barclays</span></p></div><p></p></div></div><br /></span></strong></p>
<p><span></span><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">The second reason is the advent of cheap storage. For the past few years,</span><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> homeowners have addressed renewables' intermittency problem - the wind isn't always blowing, the sun doesn't always shine - by making a deal with her utility: she'll continue to buy their electric power, but she gets to keep her solar panels running when she's not home, and sell any excess power they generate back onto the grid. This is called net metering. </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Net metering has been a boon for incentivizing rooftop solar adoption. </span><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">But what if you could truly power up your home through a solar-charged battery, and only have to buy utility electricity in an emergency?</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">As recently as 2009, the all-in costs for such batteries would been as much as $17,000. </span><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">But with the expansion of electric vehicles, Barclays says the cost of storage has been falling rapidly, and now stands at about $3,700. And it just so happens that the power required to operate an electric vehicle can power the average home for up to three days, Barclays notes, "</span><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">potentially opening a new use in residential distributed generation systems." </span><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Battery costs</span><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> could come down even further if Elon Musk's gigafactory launches, they add. <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-bet-on-the-gigafactory-2014-5">Yesterday w</a></span><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-bet-on-the-gigafactory-2014-5">e discussed this idea in detail</a>. </span><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Here's the price decline chart:</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image"><p class="source"><span>Barclays</span></p></div><p></p></div></div> </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Barclays sees the solar + storage wave has the potential to spread beyond its roots in California and Arizona. Here is their timeline for when solar costs could reach parity in all 50 states:</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"><div class="KonaFilter image-container"><div class="image"><p class="source"><span>Barclays</span></p></div><p></p></div></span><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Cheap solar panels, combined with cheap storage, will spark a grid "defection spiral" that will pry away utilities' grip on the power monopoly. In this scenario, early adopters begin leaving the grid, incrementally increasing</span><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> utilities' power costs rise - which further exacerbate the shift into solar and storage, and so on.</span><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">We are already seeing evidence of step 1, as utilities have begun complaining that solar customers are causing electricity prices for non-solar users to go up. </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">This is maybe the most vivid description in the note of what solar will do to utilities:</span><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;"> </span></p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">we envision an electricity market where demand for grid power falls, peak hours shift (perhaps dramatically), and regulatory mechanisms need to be adjusted or overhauled to accommodate some utilities becoming the electricity generators of last resort. <strong>We expect the net effect to be higher grid power costs (thereby exacerbating the consumer shift to solar + storage), lower average credit quality for regulated utilities and unregulated power producers, and increased recognition of the long-term threat to grid power.</strong></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Whatever roadblocks utilities try to toss up - and there's already been plenty of tossing in the states most vulnerable to solar, further evidence of the pressures they're facing  - it's already too late, Barclays says:</span></p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">We fully expect utilities and regulators to make a good faith effort to preserve the status quo "regulatory compact," whereby the monopoly utility provides a safe and reliable service and regulators allow it to earn a reasonable low-risk return. However, we also expect them to be playing a constant game of catch-up as solar develops. The costs of solar and storage technologies are falling quickly and may fall even faster as higher demand builds additional scale. But the cost of distribution grids and thermally generated power are more likely to rise than to fall, in our view. As a result, regulators and utilities will be constantly trying to respond to a moving target, which is precisely the environment where slow-moving incumbents can fall behind.</p>
<p>It's been a good run.</p>

Barclays Has The Best Explanation Yet Of How Solar Will Destroy America's Electric Utilities

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The World Built More Solar Capacity Than Wind Capacity For The First Time Ever This Year

Rob Wile

Tesla's home battery doesn't make economic sense for homeowners

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Barclays Has The Best Explanation Yet Of How Solar Will Destroy America's Electric Utilities

Rob Wile

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