Solar Energy Show

Copyright 2020 - The Energy Show, Barry Cinnamon As our society recovers from the triple threats of Coronavirus, economic collapse and social unrest, the longer term threat of global warming continues to hang over our heads. Earlier this year — just as the Coronavirus hit and our economy went into a recession — the Trillion Trees Act was introduced. Representative Bruce Westerman, a pro-logging advocate from Arkansas introduced this act, along with several Republican colleagues. Representative Steve Stivers of Ohio hailed the act as offering a powerful solution to combat our changing climate. And President Trump declared the US will join this initiative. A fundamental claim of this initiative is that a trillion trees is an important part of solving the global climate crisis. In itself, this claim is an acknowledgment by Republicans that there is indeed a global warming problem that humans can effectively address. Both political parties to some degree acknowledge that global warming is a man-made problem.

Copyright 2020 - The Energy Show, Barry Cinnamon In response to the Financial Crisis of 2008, Rahm Emmanuel — at the time Barack Obama’s Chief of Staff — quipped: “Never let a good crisis go to waste.” The death, economic destruction and havoc wreaked by the Covid-19 crisis is by no means “good;” nevertheless, sometimes it does take a life-economy-society altering crisis to overcome the inertia that stands in the way of fundamental changes. One of those changes that we need to make relates to our archaic electric grid. New technologies — wind, solar, batteries, EVs, computer controls, building electrification, software, heat pumps — make the distributed electric grid cheaper, safer and more efficient. But we have over one hundred years of established grid infrastructure practices standing in the way of transforming our electric grid. Companies that are transforming our electric grid have a tremendous market opportunity, magnified and accelerated by any government stimulus spending that may be allocated. Th

Copyright 2020 - The Energy Show, Barry Cinnamon With the Stay At Home orders in place throughout a large part of the U.S., many of us are now 100% dependent on our home's electric grid for work — as well as lights, refrigeration, HVAC and entertainment. Unfortunately, our old fashioned electric grid is not up to the challenges of wildfires and storms, not to mention ever-increasing maintenance costs. Transmitting power long distances over high voltage transmission lines is particularly vulnerable to disruptions. Although this old grid was good for over a hundred years, new technologies — particularly battery storage, solar and smart appliances — are more reliable and less expensive. These new technologies move the generation and storage of electricity much closer to the buildings that need this power — a design that is called Distributed Generation. In suburban areas there is often enough available roof space for solar panels; power for these systems is generated Behind the Meter (on the customer’s side o

Copyright 2020 - The Energy Show, Barry Cinnamon The Covid-19 crisis will transform many of our traditional businesses processes. Although this podcast was recorded before Shelter In Place became a household phrase, Greenlancer‘s outsourcing business model is proof that there are better, faster and safer ways to handle many traditional business processes. Solar hardware costs — such as solar panels, batteries and mounting equipment — continue to decline. However, non-hardware costs, referred to as “soft costs — such as permitting, labor and overhead — have continued to increase steadily. With equipment costs going down and soft costs going up, there has not been much change in the overall cost of a solar and battery backup system. As a long time solar contractor, I’m always looking for ways to reduce our costs while still installing top quality systems. I’ve come to the conclusion that there are no magic bullets. Nevertheless, there are a a number of smaller actions that we can take that, in the aggregate,

Copyright 2020 - The Energy Show, Barry Cinnamon

Copyright 2020 - The Energy Show, Barry Cinnamon With the gradual improvements in solar technology over the past 15 years, many early solar customers are considering a solar system upgrade. Some people want to add more panels because their electrical demand has increased. Some people have inverters that are past their warranty. Some people want better system monitoring. And some people are doing a home renovation and want to re-use their existing panels. Not surprisingly, the most common reason for an upgrade is to add battery backup capabilities to keep their lights on and their fridge cold. Systems based on older string inverter technology (and some microinverters), need an inverter upgrade to be compatible with the latest lithium ion battery technology. Thinking back on the equipment we installed 20 years ago to today, a lot has changed. Solar panel efficiency has gone from 14% to over 22%. Inverter efficiency has gone from 93% to 99%. Monitoring (while still somewhat complicated) is now standard. And,

Copyright 2020 - The Energy Show, Barry Cinnamon The general consensus is that there is a climate emergency –global warming, climate change, whatever you want to call it but it looks like its happening. Candidly, there is still not 100% consensus of the problem, cause and solution but 90% of people including the science community and politicians believe global warming is a big problem. On this week’s Energy Show we are talking about “Project Drawdown” which is a plan to reverse the increase of CO2 in the atmosphere. Not just slow down the emissions but reverse the trend of these emissions so we can reverse global warming. We are currently over 400 parts/billion of CO2 in the atmosphere, and it use to be 100 so were looking at reducing that number through lower emissions and other methods such as sequestration. The key to this project drawdown is finding a way to reduce every source of C02 in the atmosphere so that over time, the concentration is reduced. The Drawdown effort was led by a couple of environm

Copyright 2020, The Energy Show - Barry CInnamon The global warming crisis is a slow-motion train wreck that requires an all hands on deck response. Individuals, businesses and government all need to be pull in the same direction to minimize the effect of this crisis. Unfortunately, our federal government continues to focus more on supporting the incumbent fossil fuel industry instead of the clean energy technologies encouraged by the rest of the world. The good news is that leadership in many state and local governments are stepping up with practical, effective and affordable climate change solutions — and the City of San Jose is clearly a leader when it comes to implementing these solutions. A key component of the City’s efforts is the award-winning Climate Smart San Jose program. This community-wide initiative focuses on reducing pollution and improving the quality of life for San Jose residents. Basically, it’s the city’s plan to align with the targets of the Paris Climate Agreement. Our guest on this

Copyright 2020 - The Energy Show, Barry Cinnamon What started as a trickle of a few EVs has turned into a flood of models from virtually every single manufacturer. Hats off to Tesla for opening the floodgates, and making GM’s EV1 a crude and distant memory. While the specifications for some of the new cars coming out in 2020 are still getting fined tuned —battery pack capacity, horsepower, range — the 2020 EVs look pretty impressive. Like all successful new products, EV market adoption goes through phases: innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority and laggards. We are still at the innovators stage in most of the world. California is leading in the U.S., with China clearly on a path to be the leading EV market. For cost, reliability and environmental reasons, EVs are destined to represent the majority of vehicles on roads within a few decades. Nevertheless, before EVs dominate they must be comparable to gasoline engines in terms of range and cost. Continuing reductions in the cost of batteri

Copyright 2020 - The Energy Show, Barry Cinnamon Buildings consume 40% of our energy, most of that for heating and cooling. Almost all of this energy is supplied by fossil fuels, resulting in tremendous CO2 emissions. Building electrification solves this problem. Instead of burning fossil fuels in homes and businesses, we can heat, cool, wash and cook using electricity generated from clean, renewable sources. San Jose is one of the first cities to establish building codes that pursue a  zero net energy policy by strongly recommending all electric new homes. But what about existing homes? To find out first hand what was involved in getting to a zero net energy home, my wife and I embarked on a project to completely electrify our 50 year old home in San Jose. I’ve done quite of bit of energy upgrading on homes and businesses over the past 40 years. Nevertheless, I checked in with a few friends who had done some electrification of their homes (thanks to Howard, Jeff and Dick). The steps we took mostly followe

Copyright 2019 - The Energy Show, Barry Cinnamon Will batteries keep your AC cranking and electric vehicle charged up during an extended blackout? Probably not. We like to believe the myth of whole house battery backup or the notion that our 21st century lifestyle will continue unabated despite fire hell or high water. The reality is different: Typical battery backup systems work best when they are designed to ration battery capacity and minimize the use of major appliances. These systems must also be integrated with rooftop solar so that the battery can be recharged as soon as the sun comes up. There are two fundamental engineering limits that make it impractical to run a whole house on battery power alone. First, the energy capacity of typical lithium-ion battery systems is insufficient to power an entire house through a nighttime blackout. Second, battery backup inverters are not powerful enough to start and run many large appliances. Adding multiple batteries and inverters can overcome these engineerin

Copyright 2019 - The Energy Show, Barry Cinnamon People talk about solar panels and batteries a lot (at least the people I talk to). The reasons are that solar panels are conspicuous on rooftops -- and batteries are what keep the lights on during increasingly frequent blackouts. But the real brains of a solar and battery storage system is the inverter. With increased global production, solar panels and battery cells have become commodities -- differentiated mainly by price and efficiency. For a variety of reasons, inverters are still quite specialized. Initially, inverters simply converted DC current to household AC current. Modern inverters also provide a variety of safety features (rapid shutdown and arc fault protection), monitoring, and grid support services. The next generation of inverters extends beyond solar, providing backup power, EV charging and home energy management capabilities. Through a combination of great technology, disciplined execution and industry vision, SolarEdge has become the lead

Copyright 2019, The Energy Show, Barry Cinnamon The Green New Deal is getting a lot more attention as we get into the 2020 Presidential election. The Green New Deal is a set of proposed economic stimulus programs in the United States with a goal of addressing climate change and economic inequality. The green part refers to renewable energy, energy efficiency, agriculture and related strategies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The new deal part refers to social and economic reforms and public works projects, similar to what was undertaken by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in response to the Great Depression (Civilian Conservation Corp, Civil Works Administration, Social Security Administration, etc.). Author Thomas Freedman coined the Green New Deal term back in 2007. Taking up where he left off, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Ed Markey released a 14-page resolution for their version of the Green New Deal in February of 2019. Not surprisingly, there are strong political party lin

Copyright 2019 - The Energy Show, Barry Cinnamon Whether it’s a residential, commercial or utility solar project, contractors strive to install systems that generate the most energy at the lowest lifecycle cost. Solar panels operate at their peak output when the sun is perpendicular to the panel. So for maximum energy collection, tilting the solar panels at the local latitude (37 degrees here in San Jose) facing south is generally best. Because of existing building structures, compromises are necessary when installing solar panels. Residential systems are generally installed flush to the roof because tilting the panels is unsightly, and the efficiency benefit of tilting the panels is not worth the additional mounting system costs. Commercial systems on flat roofs are generally installed on racking at a relatively low tilt so that more panels can be installed — but almost never horizontal since flat surfaces collect dirt and debris. But large-scale solar installations do not need to compromise when it comes

Copyright 2019 - The Energy Show, Barry Cinnamon The annual Solar Power International show held in October of this year celebrated its 16th year. The first show was a tiny venue that started in back in 2004 and was held in a tiny venue in San Francisco. Since that day back in 2004, the show has grown significantly as has the solar industry itself. This year, the Solar Power International show was held in Salt Lake City with a big focus on energy storage --which has been building more and more every year, with a particular focus on new battery storage products. In addition to the plethora of bigger and better solar panels, there was many new racking and mounting products that connect these systems to a roof or big utility scale field, plus all kinds of hardware such as inverters, controls and accessories. Most notably, software and hardware companies are now working to make installing and managing these systems easier, so software is becoming an important part of the whole industry. But with the current de

Copyright 2019 - The Energy Show, Barry Cinnamon On this week's The Energy Show, we’re talking about energy — duh. And power. Not just because we’re short on both energy and power. But because solar and battery customers need to understand these properties so they can properly size and operate their systems. This show is a bit on the geeky side, so buckle up. Power is the measure of the amount of work that can get done over a period of time. We measure power in units of watts in the metric system, and in units of horsepower in the English system. Even though the English use the metric system and horses are basically just recreational vehicles for rich people. Commonly we refer to the power of a car in horsepower, or the power requirements of an appliance in watts. Energy is the measurement of work, or force over distance, or an amount of heat. Not a watt, but instead a watt hour or kilowatt hour (kwh). Your utility bills you for electrical energy in terms of kilowatt hours, and for natural gas thermal energ

Copyright 2019 - The Energy Show, Barry Cinnamon Hold onto your seats because this is going to be the most exciting Energy Show I’ve ever done. This week we are talking about … DRUMROLL … your PG&E electric bill. Modern utility bills are a masterwork of corporate obfuscation (Wikipedia: the obscuring of the intended meaning of communication by making the message difficult to understand, usually with confusing and ambiguous language). Indeed, there should be a picture of a PG&E electric bill on Wikipedia for illustration purposes. Rather than trying to figure out their electric bill, most people’s eyes glaze over — they just write a check or click on Bill Pay to get the offending document out of their inbox. Almost every one of us could be paying an extra $10 or more a month and we would never know. Fortunately, the PUC (that’s a Three Letter Acronym for Public Utility Commission) tries to ride herd on overzealous utility rate makers. Most mortals can understand charges per kWh — and solar customers unders

Copyright 2019 - The Energy Show, Barry Cinnamon Almost everyone in California is aware of the Public Safety Power Shutoff Program — when the utility turns off power to customers in large areas in an effort to reduce the risk of fires caused by utility lines. In October of 2019 the first series of these power shutoffs began, inconveniencing millions of homes and businesses. These shutoffs were effective in preventing fires in areas that the power was off, but ironically a number of fires were still caused in areas that the power remained on. California utility companies begin Public Safety Power Shutoffs (PSPS) when dry conditions and typically high winds with gusts up to 60-70 mph are forecast. These high winds often blow down utility lines or cause nearby trees to come into contact with wires — causing fires. Because long distance transmission lines are often the cause of these fires, power shutoffs can affect customers hundreds of miles away from where high winds occur. During one of these recent power

Copyright 2019 - The Energy show, Barry Cinnamon In addition to installing solar equipment, solar contractors also install a variety of electrical equipment: wiring, junction boxes, conduit, circuit breakers, etc. Since many of these electrical items are not carried at your local “big box” hardware store, experienced solar contractors source them from electrical distributors. Since solar is one of the fastest growing industries in the U.S., some of the more farsighted electrical distributors have started to supply a limited amount of solar equipment. And some are distributing solar and storage equipment enabling them to become a “one stop shop” for everything needed on a typical residential or commercial rooftop system. Having a single source distributing solar and storage equipment significantly reduces the supply chain costs for a typical solar contractor. Instead of ordering from several different manufacturers and have the materials trickle in over a few weeks or months, a contractor can back up his or

Copyright 2019, The Energy Show - Barry Cinnamon Where do solar panels, batteries and inverters come from? No, they don’t come from solar elves or a retail store. They come from distributors who order in huge quantities directly from manufacturers. These distributors then pick, pack and ship efficiently in smaller quantities to contractors who do the installations. Essentially the same manufacture-distributor-contractor supply chain as in the HVAC, electrical and plumbing industries. Distributors provide a tremendous service to solar and storage industry. Even though they mark up the equipment slightly to make a profit, they significantly reduce costs for contractors by eliminating overhead and all the hassles with dealing with dozens of vendors and thousands of components. These lower costs flow to the businesses and homeowners that are purchasing systems. I have learned over the past 20 years in the solar industry that it is more efficient and actually cheaper to order equipment through a good distributo