Commentary

After Japan announced a generous feed-in-tariff (FIT), Japan has become one of the hottest new PV markets in the world. Like all significant PV markets where there is also domestic manufacturing, the issue of protecting that fragile manufacturing base in a hostile solar market is bound to come up. The U.S. and Europe have to take on competing countries head-on by proposing – or implementing, in the U.S. – import tariffs on Chinese cells and/or modules and China is retaliating. Rumors from manufacturers in Taiwan suggest that Japan will announce more stringent efficiency standards on imported modules: reportedly increasing minimum monocrystalline (c-Si) module efficiencies to 18.2%, and multicrystalline (mc-Si) to 17.4%. Other examples of indirectly incentivizing domestic content are present – for example, wind projects in Brazil can only access low-cost financing from state banks if they contain 60% domestic content.

Since the beginning of the power sector reform in India, several initiatives have been taken for commercial performance improvements of distribution companies; however, the desired results have not been achieved even after significant investment in the sector during last ten years. Situation is unlikely to go for a rapid change until there is a strong regulatory enforcement, effective project management and accountability at all levels. Our recent experience with government utilities portray that key challenges in the sector during pre-reform was lack of investments and smart technological solutions, which has been shifted over time to the lack of commercial process acumen, project management skills, inefficient asset and technology utilization and ineffective monitoring tools during post reform era.

Market change has been a force for evolution in Asian power companies in this new millennium. Reviewing how these forces are playing out leads to some interesting conclusions about where companies and the industry as whole is heading.

My friends at Asian Power asked if I would do another article so I decided to do a follow up to my May article on Rotating Equipment Condition Monitoring and Condition Based Maintenance (CBM), in May 2012.

On a planet that is nearly 75% covered with the stuff why would we ever say that?

According to BBC's report , a tiny country with 1500 of population in South Pacific called Tokelau claims that it will be the first country in the world to 100% meet its electricity need with solar power.

Singapore’s Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong recently stated at the inaugural Singapore Summit that for Singapore to continue on its growth trajectory, the country has to evolve into a smart city.

In the wee hours of Sunday, July 29 2012, India witnessed one of its worst power failures in over a decade. An inter-connect substation near Agra tripped, followed by the automatic shutdown of all power generation plants in the Northern region.

Our demand for energy, especially electric power, is forecasted to continue to increase. For example India's energy demand has grown an average of 3.6% per annum over the past 30 years. To help accommodate this expanded need while reducing emissions, renewable energy has become a worldwide initiative. Rewables energy sources include wind, solar, hydro and other sources of non-emitting power. For example, the Chief Minister of Gujarat recently dedicated the 300 MW Gujarat Solar Park, covering 3,000 acres of desert and one of the largest solar parks in Asia. But many utilities worldwide are finding that energy conservation is the cheapest source of alternative power. To improve the reliability of our electric power grids and simultaneously enable the integration of distributed intermittent renewable energy, utilities worldwide are working to make our grids smarter. Smart grid technology involves empowering consumers; integrating renewable energy, adding sensors such as synchrophasors, and automating distribution networks. In the United States the top priorities for electric power utilities in 2012 not only include traditional smart grid related technologies such as distribution automation, analytics to manage big data, support for electric vehicles (EV), electric power storage, and solar PV, but also smart buildings. Japan invested in technology in the 1990's to improved the reliability of the transmission and distribution grid. Both Japan and South Korea have joint smart grid projects underway with U.S. jurisdictions including New Mexico and Chicago. China plans to invest $490 billion in grid upgrades by 2020, including about $90 billion in smart grid technology. India is projected to soon become the world's fifth largest economy, but to achieve this India needs to increase its electric power generation. To address these challenges in May 2010 the Union Government created the India Smart Grid Task Force, chaired by Sam Pitroda, advisor to the Prime Minister, one of whose priorities is improving the energy efficiency of the Indian power grid. Smart buildings Smart buildings means buildings that not only use less power, but are able to manage peak load. Globally the International Energy Agency (IEA) estimates that residential, commercial, and public buildings account for one-third of the globe's total final energy consumption. In the U.S. in 2008 buildings accounted for 72 percent of U.S. electricity use. In the future the proportion of energy consumed by buildings is expected to increase as emerging economies develop, rising temperatures increases demand for cooling buildings, and rising personal wealth increases consumer demand for appliances. This has made improving the energy efficiency of buildings, both existing and new structures, a global priority. According to a recent study by Global Insight currently only 6% of worldwide construction activity incorporates green technology. Driven by regulation, owner and investor demands, resource cost, security concerns, and third party standards, it is projected that by 2020 this could increase to 75%. The European Union (EU) has taken a leading role in improving the energy efficiency of buildings. The EU has mandatory carbon emission reduction standards, referred to as the 20-20-20 standard, which among other things requires the EU to improve energy efficiency by 20% by 2020. In 2002 the European Commission promulgated the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive (EPBD) which requires all EU member states to upgrade their building regulations and to introduce energy certification schemes for buildings. About a year ago the European Commission (EC) proposed a new Energy Efficiency Directive (EED) , also known as the EPBD recast, which imposes a legal obligation for all member states to establish energy saving schemes, with the public sector leading by example. Japan‘s announced mid-term emission reduction target is to cut Japan's GHG emissions by 25% by 2020 compared with 1990, subject to international negotiations. Energy saving measures for commercial buildings are urgently required, since the commercial sector including office buildings consumes more than half of total energy consumption in the residential/commercial sector. Moreover energy usage growth in the commercial sector has been more striking than that of the residential sector. The Chinese government has established a goal of having green buildings account for 30 percent of new construction projects by 2020. The Ministry of Construction (MOC) is responsible for the development of a national energy efficient design standard for public buildings which was adopted by the MOC in 2005. It sets a target of 50% energy reductions compared to pre-existing buildings for commercial and residential buildings. Zero energy buildings A major area of focus in the EU is “nearly zero energy” buildings. A nearly zero energy building on average generates as much energy from renewable energy sources as it consumes. For new buildings, the EPBD recast fixes 2020/2021 as the deadline for all new buildings to be designed to be nearly zero energy. For public buildings the deadline is even sooner, by 2018/2019. The Government of Japan put forward its ZEB target in April, 2009 which is to acceleration the development of zero emission buildings with the aim that all new public buildings will be zero emissions by 2030. This is a similar objective as the U.S. Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 (EISA 2007) that requires that by 2030, all new Federal facilities must be “net zero energy” buildings. Pike Research has projected that as a result of the recast EU EPBD Directive and similar legislation in other parts of the world, such as Japan, worldwide revenue from nearly zero energy building construction will grow at an annual rate of 43% over the next two decades, reaching $690 billion by 2020 and $1.3 trillion by 2035, with much of the growth occurring in the EU. Municipalities, electric utilities and energy efficient buildings In many jurisdictions around the world, government and regulators are mandating energy conservation measures. In Ontario, Canada the Ontario Energy Board's (OEB) Conservation and Demand Management Code for Electricity Distributors (CDM Code) sets out the obligations and requirements for all provincial electricity distributors. The OEB has set an aggregate target of 1,330 MW of provincial peak demand reduction by the end of the four-year period and 6,000 GWh of reduced electricity consumption accumulated over the four-year period. In addition for businesses there are a number of programs developed by the Ontario Power Authority (OPA) to help reduce both peak demand and consumption including demand response (DR) programs and for new buildings a High Performance New Construction (HPNC) program that provides financial incentives for building owners and architects who exceed the electricity efficiency standards specified in the Ontario Building Code. Building information modeling A key technical advance that is transforming the architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) industry is model-based design, or building information modeling (BIM). BIM is an intelligent model-based process that helps owners and service providers achieve better business results by enabling more accurate, accessible, and actionable insight throughout project execution and lifecycle. BIM also helps enable building energy performance analyses of new and existing structures that can reduce significantly the energy footprint of buildings. Improving electric power efficiency of new buildings 3DEnergy is a small building energy performance analysis firm that works with architects and engineers to optimize energy usage for new buildings. An energy performance analysis typically starts either with a simplified version of a BIM model of the building provided by the architect or 3DEnergy creates the simplified model from architectural drawings. The simplified BIM model contains the key elements of the building that are required for the energy performance analysis including walls and floors, room bounding elements, complete volumes, and window frames and curtain walls. The simplified BIM model is exported as a Green Building XML (gbXML) file. gbXML provides an industry standard schema for transferring building properties stored in 3D BIM models to energy performance analysis applications. The energy performance analysis uses the geographical location of the building and local environmental conditions to conduct thermal, lighting and airflow simulations to compute an estimate how much energy the building will consume in a year and test different design options and draw conclusions on energy use, CO2 emissions, occupant comfort, light levels, airflow, and LEED certification level. By conducting energy analyses and testing alternative options, it is possible to reduce annual energy consumption and power bills by up to 40%. As an added benefit and important motivation, in Ontario the OPA will pay for up to 100% of the cost of the energy performance analysis. In additon reducing the expected electric power usage of a new building compared to code generates an immediate payback of betweeen $400 and $800 per kW from the OPA's High Performance New Construction (HPNC) program. Improving electric power efficiency of existing buildings For an existing structure, it is necessary to measure how the building is currently performing. This typically involves compiling information from historical photographs, construction drawings, and field observation. High definition laser scanning can be used to collect accurate three-dimensional physical and spatial information and an dimensionally accurate building model (BIM) can be created in a fraction of the time that it would take to perform field measurements or interpret the design from existing construction drawings. Information which would impact the performance of the building such as glazing types, material thermal properties, HVAC zones, and occupancy patterns is incorporated into the BIM model. With this information, together with the geographic location and orientation of the building, energy performance analysis can be performed that incorporates local historical insolation and weather information including temperature, moisture, wind and psychrometric data and specific energy reduction improvements designed and ossessed. For example, the combined annual energy use of an historic, 140 year-old, large government building was calculated at around 5.5 million kWh. Space heating and cooling, equipment loads and lighting comprise the largest energy demands. It was estimated that by with strategies such as zoning, enabling natural ventilation, daylighting and advanced lighting systems, decoupling interior spaces, and solar photovoltaic, it is possible to reduce the building's annual energy consumption by as much as 60% per year. The convergence of model-based design, geospatial technology, and 3D visualization breaks down traditional repositories of information. Interoperability between disciplines makes it possible to model the energy performance of our building infrastructure, which currently consumes one third of the world's energy, and significantly reduce the energy footprint of residential and commercial buildings, providing a large and relatively inexpensive source of “alternative energy” to be used in other critical sectors of Asia's economies.

With its ever growing energy demand, Asia has a great potential to utilize renewable energy resources towards a more secure energy future. Renewable energy will play an important role in meeting high energy demand growth and in addressing environmental concerns from the increase in fossil-fuelled power generation. However, the potential for a large scale shift from the use of fossil fuels to renewable energy for electricity generation remains a highly debated issue in many Asian countries. This is not without reason as large scale implementation of renewable energy will pose significant challenges to legacy power systems due to temporal fluctuations, geographical dispersion of renewable energy sources and inadequacy of the existing power grid. Fossil fuel resources, once harnessed, may be transported easily and used at power plants. Fuel supply is largely predictable and both base load and peak load power plants may be supported reliably (e.g. coal-fired power plants are suitable for base load power plants while gas-fired power plants function effectively as peaking plants). On the other hand, renewable power plants (wind, solar and hydro) are highly dependent on weather conditions and locations. Areas with ample renewable energy resources are generally remote. It is therefore crucial to comprehensively analyse the efficiency and impact of remote electricity transmission networks. Any expansion of the existing grid will require efficient planning and operational improvement over the existing network. This creates opportunities for innovative monitoring, control, communication, and self-healing technologies to enhance grid operation.

Is there a market for solar thermal in Asia? This question is not easily answerable. On one hand of course people need hot water. On the other hand, many of these countries have natural solar water heating solutions by exposing the pipes to the sun or use of black water tanks, very common throughout all Asia. So what is the purpose to design a solar water heater system that will always be more expensive? The answer lies on a different segment or easily said on a different scale: when more users are involved the amount of water to be heated increases and the roof area may be limited, so it is important to come with shared solar water heater systems. This applies to hotels, malls, industries and domestic buildings. Shared systems for household can and should also be implemented in Asia. The market can then be divided into pressurized and non-pressurized systems and that immediately relates to cost. Good solar thermal collectors use coated absorbers and copper piping as well as insulation. All that can be relaxed in hot countries bringing down the costs and still be quality systems. The affordable price is usually not perceived, since the system has already “fuel” incorporated and that does not have to be paid. We usually talk about payback as the criteria for decision on purchasing, but be aware of the real performance of the systems, since a lower cost may not surely mean the same heat generation potential – or the quantity of water at a certain temperature. In Asia seldom standards have found their way among common people, but it should be the task of government to implement such minimum standards to avoid disappointments and prejudice from their citizens. Solar thermal is the cheapest of all renewable Energies and has a tremendous impact on the energy consumption of any country and most importantly on the livelihood. Hot water provides comfort and quality of life and improves health standards. The answer to the initial question is yes, there is a market, there is a need and it is good for the Asian countries. Standards and adoption of already established schemes – European, North America, India – should be the way forward. Another area of interest in solar thermal is the concentrated solar thermal – CSP - and here the technical, economics and financials are completely different. It is a power generation system, suitable for utility scale generation and requires a specific component of the solar irradiation – Direct Normal Irradiation (DNI) – which is not abundant everywhere. In Asia India, China, Thailand have started implementing some CSP projects. Is there a market for CSP in Asia? If we take the two massive countries: India and China and if they are doing CSP, then the answer is yes. On the other hand CSP competes with PV for power generation with the single advantage of being cheaper than PV when dispatchable power is considered – it means with storage capacity. The scope of application is shorter than PV and the market players are also less. CSP and all dispatchable solutions are required when grid management is an issue, so load analysis and load management should actually dictate whether CSP is a better solution than PV. Good DNI sites exist in Asia and with large extensions and also low cost of land – usually barren lands – and if there is one solar energy that still has space for integration and addition of players is CSP, so it is also a business opportunity for Asia to be able to export technology to other continents. Solar thermal has been forgotten with all the PV revolution, but solar thermal is an industry with more than 30 years old while PV is now becoming a teenager. Asia should not forget solar thermal in its policies and goals. According to ESTIF (European Solar Thermal Industry Federation) almost 2.6 GWth were installed in 2011 (3500000 m2) in Europe and the total installed capacity in Europe is now 26.3 GWth, generating 18.8 TWh of solar thermal energy while contributing to savings of 13 MMt CO2. Despite the impact of the economic and financial crisis, the solar thermal sector still shows an average growth of 3.9% and 9.0% over the last five and ten years, respectively. China – the solar thermal giant According to the SHEC (Solar Heating and Cooling Program of the International Energy Association) on their yearly report on Solar Thermal worldwide regarding 2010, it is shown the installed solar thermal capacity worldwide per regions. China stands out with a massive 117600 MWth which means roughly 168 million sqm of collector area installed (1 m2 = 700 Wth) Asia, without China, comes second with Japan, India, Taiwan and South Korea being above the 1000 MWth (1,5 million sqm of collector area). Thailand comes next in the ranking with around 64 MWth of installed capacity. A more interesting metric may be the installed capacity per 1000 inhabitants, which removes the massive size of some countries versus others. The leaders in quantity and usually not the leaders in this metric an some countries do show a remarkable penetration of solar thermal, as Cyprus for example. China comes first again closely followed by Australia and NZ. Asia is way back with 9 m2 per 1000 inhabitants. There is actually no reason why Asia lacks so much behind when even the MENA region comes third showing that hot water is also needed in hot countries. Cyprus – the small great Champion – reigns with a massive 820 m2 per 1000 inhabitants and all those familiar with the solar thermal industry know that children in Cyprus never draw a house without a solar collector in the roof! A word for Austria which astonishingly comes third and it is a clear statement of the smart use of the solar resource for heating. China comes tenth, while Taiwan is the next Asian country in the list followed by South Korea, India and Thailand with slightly more than 1 m2 per 1000 inhabitants. Solar thermal compares favourably to other Renewable Energy technologies and stands in installed capacity hand in hand with wind, way in front compared to PV. The growing trend of wind and PV versus solar thermal is huge and the gap is being bridged, but energy is not only electricity, so heat should not be overlooked! The market growth is enormous in Asia, higher than anywhere else, even toppling China’s growth on this sector. We are poised to see Asia growing and taking advantage of the solar resource for heating and increasing the comfort of its populations. It is still common to see electrical water heaters being marketed strongly in Asia, while solar thermal should clearly be favoured and pushed by legislation. Solar thermal technologies In solar thermal for heating purposes it is usual to divide the market in unglazed, flat plate collectors (FPC) and evacuated tube collectors (ETC). The first refer to collectors that are open or are not enclosed with a glazed surface (glass), flat plates are the common type for almost everyone in the world, except in China where the evacuated tubes are more common. The distribution worldwide is: Clearly the evacuated tubes in China crowd out all the others, though unglazed still have a big predominance in some markets, namely those for swimming pool heating (Australia and the US). Chinese evacuated tubes are different from the European evacuated tubes and so are the prices and quality. It is nonetheless true that Chinese ETC from some companies are reliable and do provide a very interesting return on investment and increase the possibilities of building integration die to the nature of heat collection in evacuated tubes. Another interesting metric is the type of system installed. Here we have thermosyphon (tank and collector are both on the roof) and using pumps (only the collectors are on the roof). Asia (three countries are considered Japan, South Korean and Taiwan) shows a dominance of the former, which is also the case of China. Mostly we see domestic systems (Domestic Hot water – DHW) being the market for solar thermal worldwide, though interesting niches can be seen.

The electricity industry in Vietnam is unique. The Government still controls large components of the industry. Critically, it controls the price. This Article discusses the general pricing regime.

Grid Collapse & Coalgate should pave the way for Renewable Energy deployment.

Asia’s growth as international manufacturing powerhouse is in part due to low apparent energy prices, worker cost, and open-ended materials procurement. The greatest profit driver has been consistent exclusion of environmental true costs associated with handling carbon and nuclear-based emissions and waste.

Technological advancements, is changing the way or rather simplifying the way electricity is measured and communicated to both producers and consumers. One such advancement gaining ground, across the world, is the use of Smart Metering technologies in the power sector.

In recent years, the Asia-Pacific region has emerged as a strong driver of worldwide economic activity. With young and skilled workforces, countries in the region are experiencing sustained and solid growth, driven no longer just by exports but also by increasing domestic demand within the region.