SmartPower & SmartHomes

Thursday, August 21, 2014

Solar on the East Side!

Recently there has been a new addition to the Eastside landscape. Prince Charles Drive is now home to a solar project that illustrates the viability of using solar power in the Bahamas. Beneath the sunny skies that we enjoy in the Bahamas, exist local solutions for renewable energy that are surprisingly abundant. The natural beauty of the Bahamas is a perfect match for utilizing renewable energy for Hotels, Resorts, Homes, Offices and as we see below, even Churches. Keeping the Bahamas Green and Pristine is not only good for tourism but it's also good for your budget. Solar and Hybrid power solutions to provide primary or stand-by power will eventually become an integrated system in new home construction in the Bahamas. Local options are becoming abundant. As the industry grows, there will be a need for locally trained technicians, local suppliers, sales professionals and customer service agents. This new renewable energy sector provides abundant opportunities for our youth and brings with it the potential of new growth and advancement in eco-industries. Go Solar Bahamas!

You're Greener than you Think!

If you're using an Apple Tablet, then you're more than likely using your laptop computer much less. Regarding power consumption, you may be surprised how your tablet measures up to it's larger laptop cousin. Although, I am still using a Laptop running Ubuntu, (that's another blog altogether), my very close "Mac" friends have over the course of the past year had me 99.9% convinced me to switch to Apple. But after looking at the data, I've seen the light and the bottom line!

Analysis from Palo Alto, Calif.-based Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) shows that "each model of the iPad consumes less than 12 kWh of electricity over the course of a year, based on a full charge every other day." Laptops consume six-times more electricity than a tablet. By comparison, a plasma 42” television consumes 358 kWh of electricity a year. With electric rates in the USA hovering in the $0.11/kWh range, that amounts to just a little over $1.32 per year to power a iPad. Using local BEC rates, your iPad would cost you a little over $5.10 per year. Powering your Laptop could range more than $30 per year. Windows Desktops gulp even more power. Can you imagine what your old PC and CRT monitors consume in kWh annually? Out with the old, in with the new!

So the next time you're surfing the Internet, Downloading Apps, playing Sudoku or actually getting work done, it's safe to say, you're helping to "green" The Bahamas in your own way.
Every kWh saved in energy efficiency helps to lower energy expenses. Combine that with smart use of renewable energy systems, and you'll be well on the road to lowering your electric expenses and playing a role in "greening" The Bahamas.

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Solar kWh Costs - News Archive

Having recently seen single module PV prices dropping to a low of $0.60/Watt, it's no surprise to also see associated solar electric kWh costs plummet.

Searching through online archives we find a related article posted February 12, 2014 on www.Energy.Gov, by Erin R. Pierce, "The U.S. solar industry is growing at a record-breaking pace, while becoming more affordable and accessible than ever before. The industry’s forward progress comes in part thanks to support from the Energy Department’s SunShot Initiative.

Set up in 2011 to re-establish U.S. leadership in the solar marketplace, SunShot partners with industry, universities, local communities and the Department’s National Laboratories to aggressively drive down the cost of solar-powered electricity generation across America.

To achieve this goal, SunShot works to lower the price of solar electricity to $0.06 per kilowatt hour (KWh) -- a cost target that will make solar-generated power to be fully cost-competitive with traditional energy sources by the end of the decade."

Fast forward to 2015 and we read of a recent study by the Berlin-based Agora Energiewende, a leading German think tank. The lead author, and renewable energy specialist Daniel Fuerstenwerth says that one of the reasons for the study was the lack of recognition among policy makers and advisors about future cost falls in solar PV, and official forecasts which continued to downplay the potential role of the technology.

He goes on to say that "the cost reduction potential of large scale solar is still misunderstood, and predicts that solar PV will be the cheapest form of power within a decade, and cost less than $US0.02/kWh by 2050."

Originally published in RenewEconomy, we further read from the Angora report that “Our results indicate that solar power will become the cheapest source of electricity in many regions of the world, reaching costs of between Euro 1.6 and 3.7c/kWh in India and the Mena region (Middle East and North Africa) by 2050.

Cost competitiveness, we're told, with large scale conventional power plants will be reached in these regions already within the next decade, at a cost for solar power by 2025 ranging between 3.3 and 5.4 ct/kWh.

The article places emphasis on the fact that, "in UAE for instance, solar is already cost competitive, with a tender for 200MW of solar going at less than $US0.06/kWh, less than the prevailing cost of gas-fired generation at $US0.09/kwh."