Weekly Clean Energy Roundup:July 20, 2005

News and Events

• Minnesota Takes Early Lead in North American Solar Challenge
• DOE and USCAR Invest $195 Million in Energy-Efficient Vehicles
• DOE Awards $92.5 Million to 19 States for Home Weatherization
• Energy Secretary Bodman Helps Break Ground at Solar Facility
• Record Efficiencies Show Promise for Concentrating Solar Cells
• USDA Guarantees up to $200 Million in Clean Energy Loans

Site News

IEA Launches Web Site on Energy Efficiency Policies and Measures

Energy Connections

News and Events

Minnesota Takes Early Lead in North American Solar Challenge

The University of Minnesota is Monday’s early leader of the North American Solar Challenge. The 2,500-mile solar car race started on Sunday in Austin, Texas, and will end in Calgary, Alberta, on July 27th. After qualifying rounds last week, 20 teams are in the race, including five teams from Canada. Although the University of Michigan led after the first day, Minnesota had an impressive run on Monday, stacking up a 37-minute lead over the University of Missouri-Rolla and a 50-minute lead over Michigan. In this second and longest leg of the race, teams drive as far as they can over a 10-hour period each day, aiming for Winnipeg, Manitoba, by Saturday. Monday’s results are based on when the teams passed a checkpoint in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma. Notable as the first solar race to cross an international border, the North American Solar Challenge is sponsored by DOE, DOE’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Natural Resources Canada, the University of Calgary, and CSI Wireless Inc. See the race schedule, the latest press releases, and the “Reports from the Road” by DOE’s Richard King on the North American Solar Challenge Web site.

High school students also have a chance to cut their teeth on solar cars, through the Dell-Winston School Solar Car Challenge, a project of the Winston School in Dallas, Texas. This year’s eight-day race started in Round Rock, Texas, on July 8th and ended in Pasadena, California, on Saturday. Maintaining a five-year winning streak, the Houston Solar Race Team from Houston, Mississippi, won the open division?which allows high-efficiency solar cells and hub-mounted motors?by averaging 29 mph, with a top speed of 57 mph. The team from Saint Thomas Academy, a military school in Minnesota, won the “classic” division with an average speed of 26 mph. See the Dell-Winston School Solar Car Challenge Web site and the Dell press release.

DOE and USCAR Invest $195 Million in Energy-Efficient Vehicles

DOE and the U.S. Council for Automotive Research (USCAR) announced last week an agreement to develop advanced high-performance batteries for electric, hybrid electric and fuel cell vehicle applications. USCAR facilitates cooperative research among DaimlerChrysler Corporation, Ford Motor Company, and General Motors Corporation. The agreement could reach $125 million over five years; combined with a similar $70-million agreement signed in May, the total joint investments in vehicle technologies could reach $195 million over the next five years.

As part of the new agreement, DOE’s FreedomCAR and Vehicle Technologies Program and USCAR’s U.S. Advanced Battery Consortium (USABC) will split the cost of research and development for a number of new battery materials and technologies that have the potential to increase energy storage and charge/discharge performance, improve durability and reliability, and reduce cost. See the DOE press release, Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman’s comments at the signing, the related DOE press release from May 26th, and the DOE FreedomCAR and Vehicle Technologies Program.

The DOE/USCAR partnership has been ongoing for more than ten years, and one of its major accomplishments has been the development of the nickel metal hydride battery technology used in most hybrid electric vehicles. USABC is also pursuing the development of advanced lithium-ion systems, which offer the promise of compact, longer-life, high-power and high-energy batteries for electric, hybrid-electric vehicles and fuel cell vehicles. See the USABC page on the USCAR Web site.

DOE Awards $92.5 Million to 19 States for Home Weatherization

DOE announced Monday its award of $92.5 million to 19 states to improve energy efficiency in the homes of low-income families. DOE’s Weatherization Assistance Program cuts these families’ energy bills by making home improvements such as plugging air leaks, improving insulation, and tuning air conditioning and heating systems. Through the program, approximately 92,300 homes will be upgraded this year. See the DOE pres
s release.

Low-income families spend an average of 14 percent of their income on energy, and weatherization can reduce an average home’s energy costs by $237 a year. The Weatherization Assistance Program gives priority to low-income households whose family members include the elderly, people with disabilities, and children. Weatherization grants will go to every state this year, as well as the District of Columbia, the Navajo Nation, and the Inter-Tribal Council of Arizona. The states, tribes, and 970 local agencies administer the program. For every dollar spent, DOE estimates that weatherization returns $1.40 in energy savings to American families. See the Weatherization Assistance Program Web site.

Energy Secretary Bodman Helps Break Ground at Solar Facility

Secretary of Energy Samuel W. Bodman joined United Solar Ovonic last week in breaking ground on the company’s new amorphous silicon thin-film solar manufacturing plant in Auburn Hills, Michigan. When the new 160,000-square-foot facility is completed in May 2006, it will create 200 new jobs and double production, allowing the company to produce enough solar modules each year to generate 50 megawatts of power. United Solar Ovonic’s existing plant is already the largest of its type in the world, producing flexible thin-film solar power modules using technologies developed through 20 years of research by the company and DOE’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). See the DOE press release, Secretary Bodman’s comments at the event, and the related press release from United Solar Ovonic (PDF 118 KB).

NREL’s work with United Solar Ovonic is part of DOE’s Solar Energy Technologies Program, one of 11 programs within the DOE Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy. See the Solar Energy Technologies Program Web site.

Record Efficiencies Show Promise for Concentrating Solar Cells

Spectrolab, a Boeing company, announced in June that it has built a concentrating solar cell that converts 39 percent of the sunlight hitting it into electricity, a new world record. Concentrating solar power systems use lenses or mirrors to focus sunlight onto high-efficiency solar cells. Spectrolab, working under contract to DOE and DOE’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), achieved its record under sunlight concentrated by a factor of 236 (referred to as “236 suns”), using a “multijunction” solar cell. These solar cells consist of multiple layers of semiconductor materials, with each layer designed to capture different frequencies of sunlight, allowing the cell as a whole to convert a large part of the solar spectrum into electricity. Spectrolab’s achievement bested its sponsor, NREL, which had announced a record efficiency of 37.9 percent under 10 suns during a conference in May.

According to NREL, concentrator manufacturers such as Amonix, Inc. and electric utilities like Arizona’s APS believe that solar concentrators could be competitive in the near future. A recent NREL press release quotes an APS executive, who said that when the industry starts producing 10 megawatts of solar concentrators per year, the economies of scale should drop the cost to about $3 per watt. We’ll soon see if that’s true, since Amonix and Guascor, a Spanish company, have teamed up to build a 10-megawatt-per-year assembly plant in Spain by year’s end. See the NREL press release, and for more information about concentrating solar cells, see the DOE fact sheet “PV FAQs: What’s new in concentrating PV?” (PDF 795 KB).

USDA Guarantees up to $200 Million in Clean Energy Loans

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced last week that it is now offering $11.4 million to guarantee loans to farmers, ranchers, and small rural businesses for renewable energy and energy efficiency projects. The USDA estimates that the funds could guarantee up to $200 million in loans for such projects. Eligible renewable energy projects are those that produce energy or hydrogen from biomass, geothermal, solar, or wind energy sources. The loans can cover at most 50 percent of the project costs, can range from $5,000 to $10 million, and can extend up to 20 years. The loan guarantee funds will be set aside until August 31st, after which they’ll be reallocated to the USDA’s grant program. See the USDA press release, the full rules on applying for the funds (about halfway down, past the comments), and the USDA Rural Development Web site.

The USDA also announced last week its grants for marketing agricultural products. Two of the grants relate to ethanol fuel production: an $80,000 grant will allow the Montana Department of Agriculture to evaluate ethanol production from sugar beets or from some stage of refining the beets into sugar. In addition, $135,000 will go to the Nebraska Corn Development, Utilization and Marketing Board to survey Midwest livestock producers and feeders to determine their current and future potential usage of dried distillers’ grains, a livestock and poultry feed generated as a byproduct of the ethanol production process. See the USDA press release.

Site News

IEA Launches Web Site on Energy Efficiency Policies and Measures

The International Energy Agency (IEA) recently launched “Energy Efficiency: Policies and Measures,” a Web site that provides a compilation of recent government actions to improve energy efficiency in member countries. This compilation can be searched by country, sector, and type of policy. See the < FONT face="Arial, Helvetica" size=2>IEA Web site.

Energy Connections

EIA: Gasoline, Crude Oil to Stay at Record Highs Through 2006

With crude oil prices recently topping $60 per barrel, DOE’s Energy Information Administration (EIA) now expects crude oil prices to average $59 per barrel for the third quarter of 2005, about $6 higher than projected a month ago and $15 per barrel above the cost this time last year. According to the EIA’s “Short-Term Energy Outlook,” released last week, any imbalances in supply and demand (whether real or perceived) could easily cause light crude oil prices to average greater than $60 per barrel. The EIA report blames increasing demand and lagging production capacity for the high prices, and notes that the hurricane season may contribute to high prices if oil production is disrupted in the Gulf of Mexico.

As a result, gasoline prices at the pump for the summer driving season (April through September) are now expected to average $2.25 per gallon for regular unleaded gasoline. Diesel fuel prices are even higher, and the EIA projects the average price at the pump for diesel fuel to average $2.33 for the summer driving season. See the EIA’s “Short-Term Energy Outlook.”

According to the American Automobile Association (AAA), the average U.S. price for unleaded gasoline hit a record high last week, at $2.321 per gallon. On Sunday, the average U.S. price for diesel fuel hit a record high of $2.462 per gallon. See the AAA’s “Daily Fuel Gage Report,” and for the latest crude oil prices, see the New York Mercantile Exchange Web site.

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