In April of 2013, SunDrum's Photovoltaic/Thermal (PVT) system achieved 86% efficiency on a Massachusetts home during peak hours. This is a record for a PVT system with a fixed (non-tracking) mount. SunDrum also installed a PVT system at the Inn at Schofield Barracks in Hawaii. That system is expected to pay for itself in less than three years and provide a 30% return on investment. In its first six months of operation, it recouped 25% of its installation cost. High efficiency and short payback periods look pretty cool to me, so let's see how PVT works...



In the sustainable energy industry, it’s commonly known that solar water heating offers a quicker payback period and a higher return on investment than photovoltaics. This is because solar radiation already contains a large amount of heat, so using the heat directly is more efficient than converting it to “high-grade” energy like electricity. Your mileage may vary, but on average a solar water heating system will pay for itself in about 4-7 years, where a photovoltaic system could take 10-20 years.

But the reason electricity is considered “high-grade” energy is that it’s more versatile. Heating water is great, but it’s only one job. Converting sunlight to heat and electricity, and doing both efficiently, would be a double-win. Give it a short payback period and you’ve hit the trifecta!

A PVT system includes a solar thermal collector (as shown above) that mounts underneath a photovoltaic panel. A typical PV cell has an efficiency of 15% under ideal conditions. When a PV panel heats up (as dark objects sitting in direct sunlight tend to do) its efficiency and lifespan will both decrease. Remove some of that heat and the panel will achieve closer to its ideal efficiency and be less prone to heat-related failures. And instead of just radiating that heat away, why not use it to heat your water?

The SunDrum collector is designed to work with a variety of popular PV panels, and its plumbing uses standard off-the-shelf parts to keep costs down.

SunDrum thermal testing shows that the hybrid panels are about 40oF (4.4oC) cooler than standard PV panels. As you can see from the chart below, this produces only a modest increase in electrical production but nearly triples the total usable energy that the system produces, bringing the total efficiency of the system to around 70% without increasing its overall footprint.

SunDrum claims that a hybrid PV/solar water heating system pays for itself in 5-10 years, just slightly longer than a solar water heating system without the PV, and quite a bit faster than a PV system by itself. In places like Hawaii, the payback period is even shorter.

If you’re going to go solar, why not go all the way? (Excerpt from ENGINEERING)


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After arduous negotiations, representatives of China's photovoltaic industry have reached an agreement with the European Commission on Saturday, setting a minimum price for imports from China. This price undertaking will avoid the largest trade dispute between China and EU culminating in a showdown and allow for Chinese solar panel exporters to maintain their market share in the EU which will in turn greatly ease industrial uncertainty. Consequently, this result has been warmly welcomed by China's trade groups and government.

Nevertheless, the agreement remains a serious intervention in free trade and the market pricing mechanism, making it the better option to take, but not the best, under EU protectionism. Although the EU Trade Commission and its chief Karel De Gucht seemingly brag about the dispute's solution, it's still not sufficient to help eradicate the existing problems within the EU photovoltaic industry. Facing a decline in prices of primary goods on the market, this type of price undertaking may actually cause big problems for Chinese solar panel products.

The plight of the EU photovoltaic industry is obvious. Earlier this month, Conergy AG, Europe's largest solar energy group, filed for bankruptcy. Conergy Group was valued over 2.2 billion euros in 2007, standing right at the top of the solar energy industry. Its current market value has dropped to a mere 57 million euros. Last year, Conergy's revenue was 474 million euros, running at a loss of 83 million euros. Its peer Solar World, one of the first to ask for anti-dumping duties on Chinese solar imports, has also been trapped in great losses. Can restricting Chinese products then really get the EU's photovoltaic industry out of trouble? The answer is no.

The industry's problems are rooted in low efficiency and high costs caused by the big salaries of senior executives and staff workers. The core competitiveness of the leading companies in the EU photovoltaic industry stems from political power lobbying for huge government subsidies or trade protectionism, instead of coming from their productivity or quality. Many professionals continue to demand outrageous paychecks in the face of fierce competition and huge losses, rather than actually work harder.

To cure this kind of sick industry, the best medical treatment is to invite external competition and let the fittest survive. If we maintain the low-efficient ones through trade protectionism and government subsidies, it may reduce the pressure in the photovoltaic industry for a short while, but will take a much higher toll on the downstream industry and consumers, as well as weaken the reform.

Furthermore, the biggest competitor of EU photovoltaic industry is not its peers in other countries, but the traditional fossil fuel industry. The photovoltaic industry has been booming ever since oil and natural gas prices rose sharply in the new century. Nonetheless, the power supply coming from solar energy is not as stable as that of thermal power. In short: if the solar energy industry cannot reduce its costs quickly, it will soon plunge into an abyss.

Although the international oil price is about a hundred dollars per barrel, the downward pressure on prices of photovoltaic products remains. The recent high oil prices were cooked up by financial markets under the guise of unrest in Arab countries; it does not reflect the real market value. As for the natural gas market, the dive of Bohai Rim steam coal price, the "Shale Gas Revolution" in the U.S. and its relaxing control over gas export, as well as the continuous natural gas programs for the East Asia Market, have signaled a price fall in the East Asia natural gas market – which has the highest natural gas price in the world. With the falling prices of natural gas, oil prices could not maintain a high level. When fossil fuel prices then went on the decline, the high fixed prices of photovoltaic products could do nothing but shrink, even leading to the sharp shrinkage of the EU photovoltaic market.

So please Mr. Karel De Gucht, do not brag about the recent solution until the real problem has been solved. Taking the China-EU textile dispute as an example, only one month after signing a memo on China's textile exports to the EU in 2005, a large amount of Chinese fabric exports was impounded by EU customs due to quota limits. This caused some types of clothing usually available on the EU market to widely be out of stock; and that shortage could not be supplied by other exporters. The then trade commissioner Peter Mandelson was once content with the signing of the memo and was praised as a "hero" by some from the clothing industry and media. Soon he was beleaguered and criticized for the ensuing crisis. The EU trade department should conduct self-discipline by reviewing its lessons learned.

As for the Chinese photovoltaic companies, price undertaking is a better choice than incurring a costly anti-dumping tariff. After all, the EU is still their largest target market. If this policy can work with the domestic industrial restructuring, it will promote the technological upgrading and phase out the technically backward and low-efficient ones. However, if the pricing rule is applied too rigidly and cannot adjust itself with the future fall of fossil fuel prices, while EU companies in the meantime still have freedom of pricing, Chinese companies will face the challenges from their EU peers' low prices. They might eventually even be phased out. China must try to avoid this kind of situation at all costs and reduce the risks by nurturing the domestic market. (By China.org)


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Day Workshop to Have Extensive Deliberations on Standards for Renewable Energy and Micro Grids

IEEE-Standards Association (IEEE-SA), a globally recognized standards-setting body within IEEE, is partnering with SEMI for a day workshop on the 2nd of August as part of SOLARCON India 2013. The workshop titled 'PV Standards-from materials and manufacturing to systems' will see leading industry practitioners and testing/certification firms sharing latest updates on the most relevant aspects of standards for PV. There will also be discussions on global standards development activities, standards needs specific to India and the need for greater participation by Indian firms in global standards development. For registration, agenda and related details of the workshop, please visit http://www.solarconindia.org/node/1106

According to Bill Ash, Strategic Program Manager, IEEE-SA, "India is a significant market for renewable energy globally with solar/PV as a key component. It is also a market where cutting-edge innovation is happening. This workshop provides a platform for us to interact with industry leaders and researchers here and understand the local needs better, to make our standards' solutions more relevant to local needs. An aspect of particular significance considering some of the issues faced with the grid in India is fairly unique."

Added Bettina Weiss, President, SEMI India, "We are delighted to partner IEEE Standards Association (IEEE-SA) and IEC for this workshop at SOLARCON India 2013 on a topic of great relevance. With rapid growth in installations in India, and with components being sourced from across the world, installers, developers and end users have a direct stake in quality, reliability and performance standards, best practices for reliable installations, component benchmarks and field-performance indicators. Similar issues are important across the PV value chain. SEMI's International Standards Program focuses on manufacturing standards that enable companies to reduce costs, align technology roadmaps, ensure connectivity & compatibility besides driving positive growth and economic benefit." (By DNA)


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Don't hire someone to wash your dirty photovoltaic (PV) panels, engineers at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) advise. The reason: paying for a solar-panel washing would cost more than the energy it would save.

The UCSD researchers found that panels that had been neither cleaned nor rained on for 145 days during a summer drought in California dropped in efficiency by only 7.4%. Overall, for a typical residential solar system of 5 kW, washing panels halfway through the summer would translate into a mere $20 gain in electricity production until the summer drought ends in about 2½ months.

For larger commercial rooftop systems, the financial losses are bigger, but still rarely enough to warrant the cost of washing the panels. On average, panels lost a little less than 0.05% of their overall efficiency per day. The findings were published in the July 25 online issue of Solar Energy.

If very large, go ahead and wash
Jan Kleissl, the principal investigator on the study and a professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at UCSD, cautions that the study is focused on smaller systems. For very large installations, economies of scale may mean that washing panels is worth it.

The researchers analyzed data from the California Solar Initiative showing solar panel output at 186 residential and commercial sites from the San Francisco Bay Area to the United States-Mexico border for the year 2010. They compared output after more than 0.1 in. of rain fell on the panels with output during the 145 day summer drought California experienced that year. The panels would have been cleaned by rain but would have remained dirty during the drought, researchers reasoned.

The survey's findings are applicable more widely, says Kleissl. Pollution and dust levels in California are fairly representative of the rest of the United States -- and possibly higher, he explained. If anything, other areas of the country get more rain, resulting in cleaner panels and even smaller losses. "Of course, there are exceptional events, like dust storms in Arizona," Kleissl says.

The researchers didn't find any statistically significant differences between different regions of the state for output during the drought period, although sites in the Los Angeles basin and the Central Valley had dirtier panels. A caveat: solar panels heavily soiled with bird droppings should be cleaned, because the droppings essentially block all sunlight and are not washed away when it rains. (By Laser Focus World)


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