By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent

What Happened: The Minnesota-based Institute for Local Self-Reliance, who employs one of the best DG analysts in the industry in John Farrell, have released a study that

• Proves that distributed generation is now cost competitive with utility-scale solar.
• The sweet-spot for project size is between 10 MW and 20 MW.

SolarWakeup’s View:  The common narrative in the solar industry is that DG solar is still more expensive utility-scale. But an analysis by the Institute for Local Self Reliance (ILSR) says that a full analysis shows that narrative is simply wrong.

Farrell’s analysis is worth reading for its detail, but it’s the big takeaway that should rock the industry. If what Farrell and his team found is true, then the utilities should be worried about their long-term viability unless they change their business models significantly.

As I wrote about yesterday, the weakest link in the current transmission-and-distribution system on which the U.S. electrical grid is based is t

he wires. Not only are they prone to breakdowns, they leave the grid vulnerable to attacks by groups that want to disrupt life in the country.

Think about the chaos that would ensue if the electrical grid in this country went down for any length of time. And it’s those unsightly wires that could provide the inflexion point for an attack (I recounted my own experience with such a grid-level problem yesterday).

On the other hand, while distributed generation isn’t foolproof, it is much harder to damage or hack a system that is not the result of a centralized grid system. The more electricity is distributed in single-home or community-level distribution, the more secure our electrical system will be.

That’s why this report is great news for the solar industry – it undermines the typical utility argument about big being better. It’s something all solar advocates should internalize when that argument inevitably comes up again.

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Solar Surprise – Small-Scale Solar a Better Deal than Big

By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent

What Happened: Quartz Media’s Michael Coren read a Greentech Media report and pronounced that solar in California is overbuilt.

• At the same time, Coren contends there is plenty of solar in the pipeline.
• And the residential and commercial markets are still moving ahead.

SolarWakeup’s View: What happens when writers who aren’t steeped in the inner workings of solar try to write about it? Bad information gets spewed out into the atmosphere and undoes whatever pollution control solar has done in the first place.

Now, I’m sure sure Michael Coren can write rings around around me when it comes to evaluating venture capitalists, technology and Silicon Valley (which are listed as his areas of expertise) – but his understanding of the California solar market is…well, charitably put, limited.

In his five-paragraph piece, Coren examines a Greentech Media report that indicates utilities in California did not procure any new solar last year, and utilities say plans to procure more solar this year will also be slow.

Coren seems oblivious to the fact that this utility slowdown has been expected in light of the Section 201 tariffs President Trump imposed in January. It’s long been assumed the utility-scale market would be hit most severely because of the number of modules they buy for the larger projects. The dip by California utilities may be entirely the result of that horrible federal policy change.

But no matter: Coren ploughs ahead and draws the conclusion that California has too much solar and is taking a break from growing its solar industry.

Except that in the piece itself, Coren undoes his argument when talking about two of the fastest-growing segments of the industry: residential and commercial. Those, he says, are still growing in California. He also adds that there is plenty of utility-scale s

olar in the construction queue.

So…let’s see if I have this straight

• Californians have built too much solar and are taking a break from new generation.
• Except for the projects utilities have already planned, which are plentiful.
• And except for the residential and commercial markets, where people are putting distributed-generation solar arrays on their roofs almost as fast as they can be permitted.

I’m not sure Coren thought his premise through (either that, or he/his editor just put a click-bait headline on the story to generate interest).

Despite Coren’s central contention that California is taking a break from solar development, I’m here to tell you: Solar is alive and well in California and looks to be about to rise.

Statewide policies like a 100% renewable portfolio standard, a clean-peak standard and the shuttering of fossil-fuel plants (and a reluctance to build new natural gas plants) means more solar is almost inevitable in the Golden State.

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California is taking a cooling off period after generating too much energy from the sun

By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent

What Happened: GE unveiled its latest wind turbine, the Haliade-X. It will

• Stand 853-feet tall.
• Have blades the length of a football field.
• Will, if all goes according to plan, will produce 67 GWh annually (Vox calls that “whackadoodle.”)

SolarWakeup’s View: First off, let me say my first reaction to this story was, “Whoa – that is one enormous wind turbine.”

But then it got me to thinking: When a utility retires a fossil-fuel-fired plant, how much wind and solar will we need to replace all that generation? The answer is a ton.

When a plant is retired, it takes a lot of megawatts with it. If you multiply those megawatts by the capacity factor, the amount of electricity production that is actually disappearing is staggering – and it provides an enormous opportunity for solar and wind to take up that space.

Here’s the rub, however: The wind industry seems to have realized how much production it will have to make up, and they are engineering their new technology to account for it. From our vantage point, the solar industry lags a bit behind its renewable energy cousin. It’s time for us to get with the program.

Although it’s true energy storage is the hot new technology, with breakthroughs coming at an ever-quickening pace (see our article yesterday on DC-coupled battery storage), it’s important not to forget that flexibility still requires energy generation.

The bottom line is this: Whatever else we are focusing on in the industry, it’s time we did some long-term planning to account for the sheer volume of electricity production we’re going to need to make up – and get our technology ready to fill that need.

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GE Renewable Energy Secured $10.4 Billion In Orders In 2017 (CleanTechnica)

E030: GE Invests In Renewable Energy To Grow Its Power Business With Daniel Hullah of GE Ventures