The solar rebate in California’s PG&E utility district just dropped yet another step to just $350 per kilowatt installed – 35 cents per watt – dooming new solar homeowners to higher costs today than those who got in while the combination of high CSI incentives (and solar-glut panel prices) cut solar costs.

The California Solar Initiative or CSI rebates are administered through the big three electric utilities in the state. The PG&E rebate initially started at $2, 500 per kilowatt installed, so for example, building a 3 kilowatt system got $7,500 off a few years ago. Now that same 3 KW system will get only $1,050 off.

Technically, all three California utilities that participate in the CSI program are still in Step 7, which provides a rebate of $650 for each KW installed, but in Northern California’s PG&E territory, there are more systems halfway through the approval process than there are approvals left.

PG&E has already put word out to the solar industry that they need to start quoting based on Step 8 rebate levels, because of this. There are still 4.61 MW of solar systems to be approved before the next step down is triggered, but 6.41 MW of systems are already under review.  Even for many people who have not yet got their permit, their rebates will be at the lower Step 8 level of just $350 per KW.

The basis for the California Solar Initiative step down to level 8 incentives is that solar is now mass-market-ready. As someone who works in solar, I disagree.

Most people have had no knowledge that rebates exist. For incentives to work, people must know about them. The average homeowner is only just beginning to hear that there are incentives.

In the 1950′s the whole country watched Walter Cronkite, and saw the same advertising. All the news and advertising was percolated uniformly through society. Now, we are a nation of ignoramuses. Clever ads tell us more and more about the subjects that we previously showed interest in. And that’s just if we don’t block online ads altogether!

Now news actually percolates much MORE slowly in a post-advertising media environment. Advertising online is now completely personalized to the interest of the reader. If you are interested in Britney and Lindsay, you’ll see handbag ads (or may be rehab ads) and you”ll know more about these things.

How sad that just as the news of the PG&E rebate has begun to percolate to the mass market, it is yanked away. Only when Britney gets her CSI rebate will California be ready for a mass market in solar PV.

Image: Lauren Keith
Susan Kraemer@Twitter

One of the charming things I discovered about Finland’s green tech sector on my blogger tour this summer is how close-knit a group the whole green energy sector can be in a nation of just 7 million souls. Where everybody knows everybody, there is an unusual degree of collaboration between large and small companies and a resulting workshop of ideas, that you just would not see in a larger country.

For example: now giant energy company Metso with its 27 million employees worldwide, is working on extremely innovative underwater wave energy tech with wild and crazy start-up AW-Energy: the inventor of the groundbreaking Waveroller.

Next summer, Portugal (getting 45% renewable power by the end of this year) is hosting the Waveroller’s full scale 300 kilowatt demonstration off the coast of Peniche. The renewable energy harnessed from the Atlantic Ocean will be transferred through a sea cable to the national grid and measured by Portugal. I first wrote about the company last year.

As new CEO John Liljelund told me in Finland, Portugal’s permitting is refreshingly practical and not burdened with a lot of second guessing: “They say does it make any harm? If no, then, OK. Prove it. They say, ‘Let’s do it: then we’ll see.’ This a problem; this is not.’”

Metso is supplying AW-Energy with the information system to analyze the prevailing wave conditions, and to respond to those changing conditions, with around-the-clock automated control of the operation of the unmanned power plant. Both systems are the first of their kind in the world. It is unusual to see big companies be so helpful to little companies, and so invested in completely new concepts.

The Waveroller is anchored on the sea bottom at a depth of 10-20 meters and  unlike the majority of the ideas being pursued in wave energy, which use surface waves, it takes advantage of the back-and-forth movement of the surge pushing back and forth on the sea floor.

The invention was inspired by a complete accident, when the Finnish diver Rauno Koivusaari almost got hit on the head by a powerfully flapping door on a shipwreck 15 years ago, and had a Eureka moment, and began working on the idea.

Wave energy development is slow, because while it is on the frontier of renewable energy, it takes giant investments using very heavy industry to test and move ahead at each step. One flap of the Waveroller weighs 20 tons.

But when a giant company teams up with a start-up to help push the frontiers of renewable energy invented in a small nation, that is heartening.

Image: AW-Energy
Susan Kraemer@Twitter

The rationale for subsidizing newer, cleaner, safer forms of energy production is that by paying incentives to increase the pool of early adopters, a mass market is developed faster, which drives down production costs sooner, making a more desirable form of energy cost-effective faster, helped by all of us, in the form of government incentives. The (initially artificial) demand acts the same way as normal demand in speeding more product to market. We consumers drive down the costs. Because of the urgent need to reduce greenhouse gases, we have to create that market faster.

Building any new technology infrastructure is expensive, but if government steps in and helps the invisible hand of the market, it become less expensive, because with an increased demand, mass production lowers costs to manufacture.

One example: Solar panels and inverters cost much less now, due to government intervention, mostly in Spain and Germany, with Feed-in Tariffs that literally paid homeowners to produce electricity on their own roofs. New Jersey has just tried the same approach, and now rivals California in solar installation and pricing. It works. Solar is now available for less money a month than the utility energy in about nine states. We all benefit, consumers, and utility-scale solar developers alike, from cheaper solar due to the forward thinking of legislators in Spain, Germany and New Jersey.

But nuclear power is different. It can not be implemented by individual homeowners. We are not going to be popping a nuclear reactor in our backyards any time soon.

A truly massive 709 MW Stirling solar thermal project from Tessera Solar has won approval from the BLM today as part of a slew of solar projects being rushed to approval by the end of the year, when the Recovery Act cash grants for renewable energy expire, although neither project is eligible for the cash.

Tessera qualifies for about $273 million in tax credits for their gigantic solar dish project. Their Imperial Valley project, on 6,500 acres about 14 miles west of El Centro, California was carefully sited with help by the NRDC.

“The process provided valuable lessons that careful planning, siting and designing up front will lead to renewable projects that are smart from the start” said the senior attorney Johanna Wald for the Natural Resources Defense Council which worked closely with both companies on careful siting.

“A program is smart from the start if it guides development to the least conflict areas — or zones — rather than prioritizing development on a first come first serve basis. DOI must play a proactive role to ensure speedy, responsible development of the renewable resources that we need”.

Tessera’s is the first to receive both CEC and BLM approval.

Their power production will be spoken for, because they have a 20-year PPA agreement for San Diego Gas & Electric to buy their power, starting with the first phase of 300 MW.

Another project was also given the go-ahead today by the BLM, with approval of the siting choice from the NRDC, with equal fanfare. Yet it is a relatively small 45 MW Lucerne Valley solar project from California oil giant Chevron. Power plants typically average about 250 MW.

As a profitable company, Chevron would not qualify for the 30% cash grants the Obama administration is supplying under the Recovery Act for its tiny solar project, because only companies that did not earn a profit in the aftermath of the economic apocalypse of 2008 qualify. But it does get a tax credit of 30% of the cost of building it.

Susan Kraemer@Twitter

When we first switched from horses to horsepower at the turn of the 20th century, the move was hailed as one of modernity, cleanliness and efficiency. After a century during which we’ve discovered that the “auto mobile” brought with it a far more dangerous environmental assault than horse droppings, now more than 60 French  towns are once again returning to the old horse-drawn cart, at least for picking up compost for recycling.

Interestingly, in towns that employed horses to pick up the compost, the composting rates have increased measurably.

“By using the horse for garden waste collection, we have raised awareness. People are composting more,” says the mayor of one of the French towns that has succeeded in making the change.  It is actually cost effective, cutting costs by almost 60%. “Incineration used to cost us €107 a tonne, ridiculous for burning wet matter, now we only pay €37 to collect and compost the waste.”

Perhaps the increased composting is related to the slower pace of the horse-drawn cart. The sound of the clip clop of the horses hooves is a reminder that “there is no away anymore“. It also is a soothing reminder of a slower pace of life, in which the patience and consideration needed to make recycling compost second nature doesn’t seem so out-of-kilter with today’s frenetic pace.

It doesn’t work everywhere. Some French towns tried the new clean technology, and abandoned it after a few months, due to picking the wrong equipment, the wrong kind of horse (cart-horses are needed to pull carts), untrained workers: inexperienced with horses, or just too many hills. But others have had several years of success now, and outside of France too.

“Compared with €5,000–7,000 annual running costs for a diesel truck, an ass costs €1,000–1,500 and can live 25-30 years,” says the mayor of a 14th-century Sicilian town, who has been using donkeys for three years.

“A truck costs around €25,000, lasts around five years and can’t reproduce.”