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27 Nov, 6 tweets, 2 min read
Important clarification on the Swiss 2050 Net Zero study/plan: it's no *net* electricity imports. So, Switzerland will export electricity in summer and import in winter. (Fine, but all north Europe will be planning the same...).

newsd.admin.ch/newsd/message/…
It hangs a lot of hope on "steeply tilted PV and facades", letting us generate 32% of our electricity from solar in winter halfyear.

Hmmm. Parts of Switzerland have much clearer skies in winter than my foggy valley, but that's still a lot of winter sun being assumed.
However you tilt the panels, you do need sunlight to generate electricity.

It does seem to have assumed massive expansion of rooftop solar just because nobody minds rooftop solar and there's space. Which is valid. I struggle to believe there is such tiny wind potential though.
Ultimately I don't think it is a bad plan, but it does seem to pass the seasonality issue to other countries (and if that's north Africa, those countries do have their own power needs too) and favour popular solar over a more diverse mix including new nuclear and wind.
Also nice to see a country realising the potential of rooftop solar for bulk generation, which I think is broadly correct. This whole "but solar uses land!!!!" argument just goes away in many countries if you're willing to pay a bit more to put the solar on roofs.
Also, I have found out that one reason my house is currently using so much power is, my husband is running big calculations on the supercomputer in the basement. Which by 2050 we could outsource in winter to somewhere with renewables. (Him: "but then it will not heat my lair!")

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Jenny Chase Profile picture
29 Nov
This deserves a serious answer.

Germany started in a terrible place for renewable energy action. It's not very windy, it's not sunny, it's quite densely populated and heavily industrialised.
I remember my parents in the UK worrying about milk and mushrooms because of events in far-off Ukraine. I don't blame Germans for saying no to nuclear in the late 1980s-90s. It wasn't the right decision, but you can't exactly dismiss their fears as unreasonable.
Germany could have gone the climate denier path to protect its interests.

But it didn't. It tried - at substantial financial cost - to do something new and amazing: to run a modern economy on renewables. It's hard to overstress how ambitious that was in 2004.
Read 9 tweets
Jenny Chase Profile picture
30 Oct
The @IEA says solar is king. Worth noting we @BloombergNEF say "wind retakes the lead from solar" because (very basically) with more granular modelling, wind electricity is just more useful at high penetrations. Blows in the early morning, in winter, etc.

about.bnef.com/new-energy-out…
I mean, we of Team Solar @BloombergNEF say "well next year we'll have a lower capex forecast and a slightly higher capacity factor figure assuming bifacial modules, so GAME ON" but that may not actually change the result here.
The global result also depends a lot on how sunny countries do economically. The model generally prefers to build solar, rather than wind, in relatively non-seasonal climates and those with lots of aircon.
Read 10 tweets
Jenny Chase Profile picture
18 Oct
1. Time to make minor updates to my annual “opinions on #solar” thread.
If you like these, you’ll like my 2019 book, Solar Power Finance Without the Jargon. Five stars on Amazon, apparently “entertaining” and writer knows her stuff”. Also available here: tinyurl.com/y6lc3ohl
2. Solar Power Finance Without the Jargon is the book I should have read before seeking a job in renewables, from the perspective of having worked in this for 14 years.

Link to 2019 thread. 2018 and 2017 are linked so you can see what I got wrong. tinyurl.com/y56zx5qc
3. To the opinions! Solar manufacturing is still a terrible business to be in, though 2020 is better than many years. Competition is vicious and the newest factories have the best technology. Older manufacturers carry heavy debt for factories rapidly becoming obsolete.
Read 40 tweets
Jenny Chase Profile picture
10 Sep
About 80% of U.S. gas open cycle gas turbines for peak power ran below 15% capacity factor in 2019, according to my colleague @YayoiSekine 's note, and about 60% never ran for more than 6 consecutive hours last year.

(Paywalled but bnef.com/insights/23449 )
Anyway that seems to be the main reason there's 8.9GW of PV with storage in the U.S. pipeline by 2023, and 69GW in the interconnection queue (basically hoping for a grid connection).

First you replace the peakers, and then you come for the CCGTs.
This observation brought to you because I am speaking at @Solarmedialtd 's Solar and Storage Co-Location Virtual Summit on Sep 24-25, and figured I'd better learn something about solar + storage.

There is more of it than I thought there was.

…ital.colocation.solarenergyevents.com
Read 4 tweets
Jenny Chase Profile picture
15 May
Although I don't agree with much of this analysis, it is right that solar will be incredibly cheap, and thought-provoking.

(I think the fundamentals of applying learning curve analysis to a LCOE are slightly dodgy, and 30% is too high a rate even for capex).
Specifically, I'm a little concerned that a lot of the falls in cost of capital, O&M cost and non-module cost over the last decade have been one-offs. Cost of capital has dropped worldwide for everything, for example.
Our definition of a normal utility-scale PV project has gone from 1MW to at least 50MW, and there aren't that many places where you can just whack down a GW plant, so typical system sizes will cap out. Cleaning panels and mowing vegetation is more and more of the LCOE.
Read 6 tweets
Jenny Chase Profile picture
12 Apr
Easter weekend holiday has been lovely. I finally got to do some jobs I wanted done.

These included cleaning the windows. Since I am proud to be a trained window cleaning professional, here follows a short thread on how to clean windows quickly and well. (1/n)
You really need: a good squeegee with a rubber (not plastic) blade. Once the rubber degrades, replace it (this will be decades in household use).
An old towel or rag
Sponge
A "scrim" cloth. A baby muslin or worn linen dish towel will do fine as this.
A bucket helps a lot (2/n)
First use the towel to wipe off spiderwebs, which leave grease marks otherwise.

Use water with a bit of washing-up liquid and an optional splash of vinegar. Soap up one window with the sponge, scrubbing as necessary.

Then use the squeegee to scrape the water off. (3/n)
Read 7 tweets

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