Australian Sunshine Illuminates The Path Toward Massive Solar PV Growth

Global solar insolation average. Notice bright red oval on lower right. (Credit Mines ParisTech/Armines 2006)

Australia is climate change’s canary in a coal mine. It has been suffering heat waves, floods, and wildfires in a climate-fueled “angry summer” that demonstrates how critical reducing carbon emissions really is.

Australians are finding ways to use the sun’s energy to reduce fossil fuel consumption. According to a new report, Australia’s solar photovoltaic market could reach 10 gigawatts in five years:

The Australian solar PV market could tip the 10,000 mewagatt (10 gigawatt) mark as early as 2017, and could reach the “saturation” levels for owner-occupied houses in many areas in coming years, according to a new report.

The five-year forecast prepared by leading market analysts Sunwiz and Solar Business Services says that the Australian solar PV market – currently at 2.5GW – will likely grow to between 6GW and 10GW by 2017.

The actual outcome will depend on the speed of the growth in the largely untapped commercial sector, the pace of large, utility-scale solar farms, and the industry’s ability to penetrate more challenging parts of the residential sector.

That “saturation rate” has already been achieved in some areas of the owner-occupied residential sector — reaching 90 percent in some localities. Nationally, the average penetration rate is 20 percent. Adding apartment buildings into the mix, this share drops to 10 percent, and it is this rental market that offers the most promise for growth in solar installations.

You can see the prime driver of solar PV installation in Australia here:

(Credit reneweconomy.com.au)

The residential market has been, and will continue to be, the main force behind Australia harnessing the sun to power its homes and businesses. Rooftop solar photovoltaic is reshaping peak electricity demand curves, especially during the summer months (the last three months in the Southern Hemisphere). When Australians need electricity the most, solar panels on their roofs are supplying it. Over the last five years, midday electricity demand is down 15% despite higher nighttime demand.

What this means is that rooftop solar PV is reducing overall electricity demand by 3%. There is so much room to grow: As of November, more than 800,000 rooftops across the country hosted solar PV – out of eight million total. For illustration, here’s the most calming video about Australian solar rooftop leasing programs you will ever see:

Solar PV is also getting cheaper, with the price dropping a third in less than a year and a half. The concern going forward is that the easy installations have already happened, rebates are harder to obtain, and the price reductions have slowed.

The growth of the industry as a whole depends upon the participation of the commercial sector, which could reach 350 megawatts next year. If utilities impose higher standing charges, the report’s authors note that this will impact the growth of the commercial sector:

The entire electricity market is at the cusp of a radical evolution which will change the fundamental dynamics of energy generation, ownership, profit structure, competition and pricing — and the role of solar is highly significant.… This issue could be a major stumbling block — or opportunity — for our market, echoing international trends and issues.

New solar and wind power in Australia are cheaper than fossil fuels – even without a price on carbon. Michael Liebreich, chief executive of Bloomberg New Energy Finance puts it succinctly: “The perception that fossil fuels are cheap and renewables are expensive is now out of date.”

Globally, solar PV demand is set to increase from 29 gigawatts last year to 31 gigawatts in 2013. This is largely due to increasing demand from Asia and falling prices for solar PV systems, and despite decreasing demand from Europe, which has faced reduced subsidies. This skyrocketing demand has made prices drop. A report by Clean Edge released this week found that falling prices led to the first PV market contraction in more than 12 years, though installations expanded:

Solar photovoltaics (including modules, system components, and installation) decreased from a record $91.6 billion in 2011 to $79.7 billion in 2012 as continued growth in annual capacity additions was not enough to offset falling PV prices. While total market revenues fell 19 percent – the first PV market contraction in Clean Energy Trends’ 12-year history – global installations expanded to a record of 30.9 GW in 2012, up from 29.6 GW the prior year.

It’s an interesting time in the solar PV world, and homeowners in Australia are leading the way.

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NASA’s Startling Satellite Data Shows Massive Drop In Mideast Freshwater Reserves During Warming-Driven Drought

Variations in total water storage from normal in the Tigris and Euphrates river basins (from 1/03 through 12/09), as measured by NASA’s GRACE satellites (Full image here).

By Alan Buis, Steve Cole, and Janet Wilson, via NASA

A new study using data from a pair of gravity-measuring NASA satellites finds that large parts of the arid Middle East region lost freshwater reserves rapidly during the past decade.

Scientists at the University of California, Irvine; NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.; and the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo., found during a seven-year period beginning in 2003 that parts of Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran along the Tigris and Euphrates river basins lost 117 million acre feet (144 cubic kilometers) of total stored freshwater. That is almost the amount of water in the Dead Sea. The researchers attribute about 60 percent of the loss to pumping of groundwater from underground reservoirs.

The findings … published Friday, Feb. 15, in the journal Water Resources Research, are the result of one of the first comprehensive hydrological assessments of the entire Tigris-Euphrates-Western Iran region. Because obtaining ground-based data in the area is difficult, satellite data, such as those from NASA’s twin Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) satellites, are essential. GRACE is providing a global picture of water storage trends and is invaluable when hydrologic observations are not routinely collected or shared beyond political boundaries.

“GRACE data show an alarming rate of decrease in total water storage in the Tigris and Euphrates river basins, which currently have the second fastest rate of groundwater storage loss on Earth, after India,” said Jay Famiglietti, principal investigator of the study and a hydrologist and professor at UC Irvine. “The rate was especially striking after the 2007 drought. Meanwhile, demand for freshwater continues to rise, and the region does not coordinate its water management because of different interpretations of international laws.”

Famiglietti said GRACE is like having a giant scale in the sky. Within a given region, rising or falling water reserves alter Earth’s mass, influencing how strong the local gravitational attraction is. By periodically measuring gravity regionally, GRACE tells us how much each region’s water storage changes over time.

“GRACE really is the only way we can estimate groundwater storage changes from space right now,” Famiglietti said.

The team calculated about one-fifth of the observed water losses resulted from soil drying up and snowpack shrinking, partly in response to the 2007 drought. Loss of surface water from lakes and reservoirs accounted for about another fifth of the losses. The majority of the water lost — approximately 73 million acre feet (90 cubic kilometers) — was due to reductions in groundwater.

“That’s enough water to meet the needs of tens of millions to more than a hundred million people in the region each year, depending on regional water use standards and availability,” said Famiglietti.

Famiglietti said when a drought reduces an available surface water supply, irrigators and other water users turn to groundwater supplies. For example, the Iraqi government drilled about 1,000 wells in response to the 2007 drought, a number that does not include the numerous private wells landowners also very likely drilled.

“Water management is a complex issue in the Middle East — an area that already is dealing with limited water resources and competing stakeholders,” said Kate Voss, lead author of the study and a water policy fellow with the University of California’s Center for Hydrological Modeling in Irvine, which Famiglietti directs.

“The Middle East just does not have that much water to begin with, and it’s a part of the world that will be experiencing less rainfall with climate change,” said Famiglietti. “Those dry areas are getting dryer. The Middle East and the world’s other arid regions need to manage available water resources as best they can.”

Study co-author Matt Rodell of Goddard added it is important to remember groundwater is being extracted unsustainably in parts of the United States, as well.

“Groundwater is like your savings account,” Rodell said. “It’s okay to draw it down when you need it, but if it’s not replenished, eventually it will be gone.”

GRACE is a joint mission with the German Aerospace Center and the German Research Center for Geosciences, in partnership with the University of Texas at Austin. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., developed the GRACE spacecraft and manages the mission for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, Washington. For more about GRACE, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/grace and http://www.csr.utexas.edu/grace.

– This piece originally appeared at NASA.gov.

Related Post:

Reds and oranges highlight lands around the Mediterranean that experienced significantly drier winters during 1971-2010 than the comparison period of 1902-2010.

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Media Trackers Uncovers Massive Ballot Irregularities in Montana

From the diaries by Erick . . .

In at least two counties in Montana, the home of a competitive U.S. Senate race that could tip the balance of power in the upper chamber, massive mail-in absentee ballot irregularities have been uncovered by Media Trackers Montana, a non-partisan investigative research organization with operations in five states across the country.  In Broadwater county alone, where Sen. Jon Tester received only 35 percent of the vote in the 2006 general election, up to 600 erroneous mail-in ballots have been reported. Over a dozen Billings-area voters have complained that they received incorrect ballots.  Yellowstone county officials have also reported numerous complaints from voters receiving the wrong ballot.

And to top it all off, even a sample ballot available to individual voters on the Montana Secretary of State’s website is incorrect (this particular ballot allows the voter to select a state representative in two separate districts — districts 68 and 83).  A majority of Montana voters are expected to vote by mail this November.

The Media Trackers investigation found state political officials in total disarray.  One county elections supervisor gave Media Trackers Montana several conflicting reasons for the ballot snafu.  Broadwater County elections officer Rhonda Nelson, a Democrat, told Media Trackers that the county experienced a “computer glitch with the software vendor” which resulted in numerous ballot anomalies. But when pressed for more specificity, Nelson seemed to contradict herself, stating, “This happened because I was in the hospital the day the ballots were approved and while my deputy was watching things, it was one less set of eyes on the process.”  Despite the widespread and significant ballot problems, Nelson told Media Trackers that she was confident in the integrity of the mail-in ballot system and that she planned to “personally call everyone who received a bad ballot and let them know they will be getting correct ballots.”

Scott Aspenlieder, a Republican seeking to unseat current Secretary of State Linda McCulloch, a Democrat, issued a scathing press release after Media Trackers first reported the ballot irregularities.  “I call on our Secretary of State to begin a comprehensive audit of all of the 2012 absentee ballots to identify every single error, and immediately take steps to fix this process so a Montanan’s right to vote is never threatened again,” he wrote.  “This failure of leadership is simply unacceptable, and Montanans deserve better.”

Montana’s primary is scheduled for Tuesday, June 5.  Follow Media Trackers Montana on Facebook and Twitter to receive breaking updates on this developing story.

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