Two Wednesdays ago, Virginia’s State Corporation Commission announced that Dominion Virginia Power would be able to charge a standby fee for large-scale solar residential owners who use net metering. In another solar news story, SolarTown  discussed the implications of such a charge. Solar power advocates worry that this will deter solar energy installations, dealing a blow to the solar energy industry in Virginia.

The decision allows Dominion to charge any residential customer with solar systems that produce between ten and twenty kilowatts up to $60 per month, or $4.19 per kilowatt for a solar customer’s average peak usage of Dominion’s electricity each month. The idea is to pay for infrastructure costs associated with developing net metering: the charge covers costs to keep the power flowing to solar customers at times when the sun does not shine. Today, this charge affects only one customer in Virginia, but will deter any other large-scale installations from being built.

This announcement worries solar advocates because it will deter potential customers from installing solar energy installations who fear that the charge may be extended to small-scale solar energy users. The typical residential installation generates between three and four kilowatts. At the moment, the law does not allow for discrimination against small-scale net-metering users in Virginia, but this might open a precedent for other utility companies around the nation. In addition, this charge effectively punishes large-scale solar energy users. Dugger, the one customer affected by the charge, feels punished: “It’s like Dominion Power is going, ‘Yeah, that’s fine, but we want to set up our template so if people jump on board and set up a good-sized system, we’re going to penalize you,’” he said.  

Virginia lags behind many states in providing solar energy incentives. Besides the 30% federal tax credit, residential customers with solar installations in Virginia have access to a Tennessee Valley Authority performance-based incentive, in which TVA pays a customer a certain amount for each kilowatt-hour, net-metering, and property tax exemption for solar energy. The last allows a county to fully or partly exempt a solar installation from property taxes, but depends on the county-currently, the counties and cities of Albemarle, Alexandria, Charlottesville, Chesterfield, Hampton, Hanover, Henrico, Isle of Wight, King and Queen, Loudoun, Lynchburg, Prince William, Pulaski, Spotsylvania, Warren, Wichester and Wise offer this. Virginia has an optional renewable energy standard of 15% of 2007 electricity sales by 2025, which is less stringent than states that, for example, require utility companies to generate 25% of their electricity from renewable energy by 2025, such as California. Virginia has, in the past, offered PACE financing, but currently no counties or cities offer the program, due to a Federal Housing Finance Agency announcement disqualifying homes with PACE financing to receive mortgages from Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac.

Virginia does not currently have a viable SREC market, as there is no solar carve-out in its Renewable Portfolio Standard. However, solar owners in Virginia may be eligible to participate in the Pennsylvania SREC market. This is because Pennsylvania allows for solar energy systems to be cross-listed. Virginia SRECs can be traded within the PJM region, which is a Regional Transmission Organization and which includes Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan, Tennessee, North Carolina, Virginia, West Virginia, Ohio, Pennsylvania, DC, Maryland, New Jersey, Delaware, New Jersey, New York and Massachusetts. However, some states have closed SREC markets, meaning that utility companies in those states only buy SRECs from solar installations located in that state. These include DC, New Jersey, Massachusetts and Delaware. Ohio accepts 50% of its SRECs from out of state applications, but only from contiguous states, including Pennsylvania. Thus, Virginia SREC owners can sell SRECs in Ohio, Maryland (which buys only from the PJM region until 2012), North Carolina and Pennsylvania. The other states in the PJM region do not buy SRECs.

Here is an article I wrote for SolarTown’s website about the different PV technologies available in the market today:

Not all solar energy is created equal and there are essential differences between solar electricity primarily produced by photovoltaic (much easier to say PV) panels, and solar thermal (much easier to say solar heating) primarily produced by solar collectors that heat water on your roof.  If you are interested in producing electricity, then you should look at our home solar panels, and if you are interested in heating your water, you should look at solar water heaters.

If you are not confused by the difference between solar PV and solar thermal, then you may be ready to start learning about another technology that is used to generate electricity on a large scale. Concentrating Solar Power (CSP) uses mirrors and a heat-conducting liquid to generate electricity at a large scale. CSP, solar thermal and solar PV are the major three technologies used today to harness the power of the sun. In this learning article, we take a look at solar PV technology, which provides electricity from the sun.

Photovoltaics is the process of converting sunlight directly into electricity. There are three types of solar PV:

• Crystalline silicon (c-Si)
• Thin film
• Third generation technologies, including Concentrator PV (CPV-not to be confused with Concentrating Solar Power, CSP) and organic photovoltaic cells (OPV)

A solar energy installation is made up of solar modules and the balance of system components. A solar panel is the same thing as a solar module, which is actually a collection of several solar PV cells. Solar cells generate the electricity in the system through reactions that convert light particles, or photons, directly into electricity. This electricity (called a direct current, or DC) is unusable in your house, which runs on alternating current (AC). Do not plug anything that is running on DC into your home electrical outlet.

Inverters are connected to the module and convert the DC electricity into AC. The AC is what you use to turn on your lights. Inverters, batteries (which you will need if your system is off-grid) and solar racking that point the panels in the direction of the sun make up the balance of system components.

Now you are purchasing solar panels for your home. Your options for PV technologies are between crystalline silicon (c-Si) or thin film, although the vast majority of homes going solar in the U.S. are installing crystalline solar modules. And in the future you may want to look out for third generation technologies such as CPV.

Crystalline Silicon

You may have heard of crystalline silicon, since this technology represents most (85-90%) of the PV technology in the global market today. There are three types of crystalline silicon cells:

• Monocrystalline silicon (or single-crystalline silicon) (sc-Si)
• Polycrystalline silicon (or multi-crystalline silicon) (p-Si)
• Ribbon and sheet-defined film growth (ribbon/sheet c-Si)

The manufacturing process of mono- and polycrystalline silicon solar cells begins with a block of silicon (the second-most abundant element on Earth) called an ingot. The ingot is cut into thin slices, or wafers. Each wafer is treated with anti-reflective coating and metal contacts in order to generate electricity and to increase the absorption capacity of the cells. The manufacturing of ribbon cells is accomplished by drawing flat thin films directly from molten silicon, reducing manufacturing costs but also efficiency.

At a measured efficiency of 12-19%, monocrystalline modules are the most efficient in the market. They generally contain 60 to 72 solar cells and have a nominal power ranging from 120 to 300 Watt-peaks (Wp-a measure of the power of a PV device in laboratory conditions). Monocrystalline modules are this efficient because they are made from pure silicon crystals.

You can tell poly- and monocrystalline cells apart by the speckled blue aspect of polycrystalline cells. Polycrystalline cells are made from less pure silicon, making them cheaper to manufacture and to buy. Because of the price, polycrystalline cells are becoming more popular for producers and consumers. They are, however, less efficient than monocrystalline silicon cells. In contrast to both, ribbon silicon modules represent less than 5% of the crystalline silicon cell market.

Thin Film

The name for thin film technology comes from the process by which it is manufactured: each film is deposited in very thin, consecutive layers of atoms, molecules or ions. Thin film solar panels are the cheapest to produce, and are becoming more and more popular, to the point that some companies offer only thin film technology. Thin film is less efficient than crystalline-based technology.

There are three main types of thin film cells:

• Cadmium telluride (CdTe)
• Amorphous Silicon (a-Si)
• Copper, Indium, Gallium, Selenide (CIGS/CIS)

CdTe cells are made of cadmium and tellurium, and are the most popular of all three thin film technologies. You may have seen amorphous silicon before, which was the first thin film material available commercially, in your solar-rechargeable calculator. This thin film technology is mostly used for items such as calculators. CIGS just recently became available for small commercial applications. Manufacturing is still expensive, but high efficiency in the lab has been achieved.

All currently manufactured thin film cells rely on rare earth elements such as indium or tellurium, which might limit the large-scale production of this technology.

Thin film is less efficient than crystalline silicon-based solar cells, but it is cheaper to manufacture and to buy. Cyrstalline solar cells are still the most popular solar cells, but thin film is being installed at a much higher rate. In fact, between 2004 and 2009, the growth in thin film CdTe was more than three times that of the growth of PV in general. Nevertheless, the most efficient PV cells are still crystalline-silicon cells.

Concentrator PV (CPV) and Experimental Technologies

You will probably not install these on your roof, but you may want to keep your eyes peeled for these developing technologies that are emerging in the marketplace today.

CPV modules use lenses to focus sunlight onto solar cells made from small amounts of highly efficient and expensive PV material so that the most sunlight possible is collected. CPV cells are generally based on silicon or III-V compounds such as gallium arsenide (GaAs). Commercial efficiencies of up to 25% have been obtained for silicon-based cells, and up to 30% with GaAs, which is incredibly high compared to other technologies.

There are other emerging technologies, such as organic photovoltaic solar cells, which include fully organic solar cells (OPV) and dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSC). These are based on organic electronics, which is basically the use of small organic molecules that absorb light and generate electricity.

In summary, there are three main technologies available on the market today: crystalline silicon solar cells, thin film and third-generation. In addition, there are three key points when considering solar PV technologies today:

• The share of thin film technology has increased considerably in the past few years;
• Crystalline silicon PV still dominates today’s market;
• Crystalline silicon cells are the most efficient commercial PV cells.

Using molten salt instead of water or oil in concentrating solar power (CSP) plants increases their efficiency, because molten salt retains heat a lot better than other fluids. Companies are beginning to realize this and are switching to this fluid. BrightSource, for instance, would have built seven plants instead of six if it had not used molten salt as the heating fluid, for the same amount of energy (link here).

Don’t know what CSP is? Here’s an image of a plant:

CSP plants use mirrors to reflect and concentrate sunlight onto receivers that collect solar energy and convert it to heat, which, in turn, generates electricity. A CSP plant works by focusing sunlight onto a receiver containing a fluid that conducts heat with the help of mirrors. The heated fluid is used to heat water through a heat exchanger, producing steam, which goes through a steam turbine to generate electricity.

There are three types of CSP: linear concentrating systems, dish/engine systems and power tower systems.

Curious about climate change? Just don’t know who to trust? The Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change is the panel, sponsored by the UNEP, that brings together all existing literature and science on climate change and condenses it into reports. The last report came out in 2007. The Working Group I Report explains the physical basis of climate change science, the Working Group II Report assesses the vulnerability of socio-economic and natural systems to climate change, and the Working Group III Report assesses policy actions that can be taken to mitigate and adapt to climate change.

So how does this apply to solar energy? Climate change is caused by an accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. The main culprit this time around (yes, there has been climate change before) is carbon dioxide, which is released into the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels (like when you drive your car) and by land-use change, such as deforestation. The IPCC has released an official statement saying that the current change in climate is anthropogenic, meaning it is caused by humans.

There are two ways in which we can deal with climate change: mitigation and adaptation. Mitigation means trying to keep certain consequences of climate change from happening, which includes reducing fossil fuel emissions and planting forests to absorb carbon dioxide (more intense forms of mitigation include geo-engineering). Adaptation means adapting to those effects of climate change that we will not be able to change; this includes building “amphibious homes” in the Netherlands, which are homes that can adapt to rising sea levels.

Solar energy is a zero-emissions source of energy. That is, it provides electricity without emitting carbon dioxide. The main source of electricity in the United States today is coal, which emits the most carbon dioxide among any other fossil fuels. Solar energy is a mitigation technology, meaning that switching to solar energy reduces one’s carbon dioxide emissions. It is a mitigation technique that is currently being adopted by countries that are signatories to the Kyoto Protocol (and even by those, like the United States, that aren’t). In Germany, for instance, solar energy provides 3% of the country’s electricity, and will provide more in the future.

Recently, the IPCC published a special report on renewable energy sources. If you are interested in learning more, go to the IPCC website. This is a reliable source of information on solar energy and climate change.

The holiday season is just around the corner and you are looking to find green gifts for your friends and relatives! No holiday season is complete without a nice big get-together with family and friends. The holiday season always bring sumptuous food, fun, gifts and joy for one and all. Hit up SolarTown’s website to find a great bunch of gift ideas. Also, there is free shipping for anything above $49!!

SolarTown has different solar gift ideas that can help make this holiday season exceptionally bright and fun! SolarTown solar landscape lights and solar lamp post lights can add extra lighting for outdoor events and family gatherings so you can spend more time with your loved ones. And besides solar lights, you have to consider a solar backpack or solar oven for your friends.

Be it your garden, backyard, living room or bedroom, SolarTown eco gifts accent and will shine bright for years to come. Here are our picks for solar gift ideas for your eco minded friends and relatives.

Solar Gift Ideas under $60 (holiday solar energy products)

Advanced Elements Solar Shower 3 gallon - $17.95
Looking for a holiday gift for the backpacker or outdoor person? Why not go with this Advance Elements Solar Shower. Traveling and having fun outdoor shouldn’t mean you do not take a hot shower. Great gift for that outdoor person!

Smart Solar Frosted Dragonfly Solar Lantern - $19.50
The Smart Solar Frosted Dragonfly Solar Lantern is a great solar light for any outdoor activity and function. Whether you’re dining outside with friends or looking for a nice gift for your friend who owns a restaurant, this is a great gift!

Smart Solar Crystal Ball Solar String Light - $26.95
Holiday season is here! This solar light is a great accent string light for your front yard or garden eliminating operating cost because the lights are solar powered! With your existing holiday decoration, this solar string light will help highlight any ornament outside your home.

Gama Sonic Solar Spotlight - $49.99
The Gama Sonic Solar Spotlight is a great solar spot light used to accent trees, flowers, sculptures or other decorative elements in your home garden. If you need additional lighting for Santa, this solar spot light is the way to go!

Solio Bolt Solar Charger $59.99
The Solio Bolt Solar Charger is a dandy little solar charger that can charge many portable handheld devices like your IPhone, Blackberry or other Smartphone. Great eco-friendly gift for the mobile contractor or traveler in need of power!

Solar gift ideas under $150 (holiday solar energy products)

Voltaic Amp Solar Charger $99.00 
The Voltaic Amp Solar Charger is a versatile little bag that can charge a multitude of handheld devices on the go. A great little eco-friendly gift for those on the go or travel to remote places. Never run out of power on your phone with this neat little solar charger. 

Gama Sonic Victorian Solar Lamp Post - $119.95
The Gama Sonic Victorian Solar Lamp Post is a wonderful solar lamp post that can be easily mounted to any porch or deck. Solar lamp post lights can be a great lighting option providing extra lighting in dark places around your home.

Smart Solar Blue Fish Ceramic Solar Fountain - $124.50
The Smart Solar Blue Fish Ceramic Solar Fountain is a great gift for a friend or yourself! The blue fish and blue basin can be placed in a garden, patio or deck creating a soothing escape from the holiday wildness.

Solar gift ideas under $250 (holiday solar energy products)

Voltaic Solar Backpack Silver - $179.00
Kids coming home for the holiday? Well, why not get them a versatile Voltaic Solar Backpack as a solar gift! Portable solar power and storage compartment for books, they will never have an excuse that their phone ran out of power and couldn’t call home! A hip solar energy product for college students with power on demand!

Smart Solar Kensington Garden Solar Fountain (Two-tier) - $225.00
The Smart Solar Kensington Solar Fountain is a carefully crafted and elegant two-tier solar fountain perfect for any home or garden. A beautiful fountain that is powered by the sun, the Kensington White Stone Solar Fountain is a wonderful holiday gift or anniversary gift for a loved one!

Global Sun Oven - $245.00
For a solar gift idea, why not go with the Global Sun Oven as a holiday gift? The Global Sun Oven is an excellent eco-friendly solar gift that can travel along while vacationing, camping or enjoying the outdoors. Baking holiday cookies, why not put this solar oven to use? The Global Sun Oven is a fun and versatile solar gift for the holidays!

Gama Sonic Solar Lamp Post Double - $249.95
The GamaSonic Double Solar Lamp Post is a solar lamp post that will brighten and accent any home while also save you money off your energy bill! The GamaSonic Double Lamp Post is a great eco-friendly solar gift that looks nice and easy to setup. A great solar gift idea for anyone!