The Energy Show

Copyright 2021 - The Energy Show, Barry Cinnamon This week’s Energy Show was recorded on Earth Day 2021, 51 years after the very first Earth Day in 1970. When Earth Day was established our country was concerned about water and air pollution — not global warming. There were two environmental disasters that year: a drilling rig leaked millions of gallons of oil off the coast of Santa Barbara, and the Cuyahoga River on the southern shore of Lake Erie started burning as oil and other industrial materials dumped into the river literally burst into flames. There was widespread acknowledgment throughout the country that we should not be polluting our environment for the sake of convenience. Anyone watching TV in 1970 probably remembers the crying Native American in the “Keep America Beautiful” PSA. Since then we’ve made tremendous progress reducing water, air and toxic waste pollution. While we are still focused on these issues, the bigger issue is global warming. All of the World’s governments — including the U.S. now -- are striving to reduce the warming of the earth to less than 1.5 degrees Celsius. World governments are convening to more aggressively limit CO2 emissions. Notably, the U.S. plans to accelerate our CO2 emission reductions by 50% by 2030. In spite of these high level government efforts, reversing global warming is a battle that must be fought by committed citizens locally. One of the most notable efforts in California is being led by Menlo Spark. They are an independent non-profit group that has set a goal for the City of Menlo Park to be climate neutral by 2025. Menlo Spark's efforts are proving to be a model for other communities across the State. My guest on this week’s Energy Show is Dianne Bailey, Executive Director of Menlo Spark. Their focus is on individual and community-based changes such as building electrification, switching from fossil fuel vehicles to EVs, and implementing clean electricity sources such as solar and storage. To learn more about the origins an community activities of Menlo Spark, please tune in to this week’s episode of the The Energy Show.

Copyright 2021 - The Energy Show, Barry Cinnamon Riddle me this: what is the most common element in the universe, comes in various colors, and was not the subject of “Jumpin’ Jack Flash,” by The Rolling Stones? Here are a few more hints. Over 100 million metric tons of this gas are produced per year globally, and nearly all of that is made from fossil fuels. In its most common form, this element has one proton and one electron. It was the combustion source for the demise of the Hindenburg. And if you take two of these atoms, add an oxygen atom, you’re all wet. OK, it’s hydrogen. Almost all of the world’s hydrogen is made from natural gas. The best hydrogen is green, produced by the electrolysis of water, using electricity from renewable sources (solar, wind, hydro). The worst hydrogen is brown, made from coal from a gasification process. Gray hydrogen is produced from natural gas using the steam-reforming method. Both brown and gray hydrogen production results in large quantities of CO2 emitted into the atmosphere. Blue hydrogen is made from either coal or natural gas, and is theoretically cleaner since the CO2 emissions are sequestered or repurposed. What really interests me is the potential for using renewables, most likely solar and wind, to create vast quantities of affordable green hydrogen for industrial processes — and possibly transportation. Our guest on this week’s Energy Show is Janice Lin, CEO of Strategen Consulting. She is the driving force behind the Green Hydrogen Coalition, as well as several other successful energy storage organizations. Please tune in to this week’s show as Janice explains how hydrogen is made, distributed, and used today — as well as the potential for widespread applications of green hydrogen.

Copyright 2021 - The Energy Show, Barry Cinnamon We did a recent podcast on the Texas power failures, with a focus on practical solutions to these weather-related events. This week I’m happy to have a first-hand perspective of this extended Texas blackout with Jeff Wolfe, CEO of Veloce Energy. Jeff will share his uncomfortably cold experiences for three days — complete with almost- frozen pipes, lack of water, minimal driving, and limited food choices. But Jeff and his family didn’t suffer at all…they had a solar system with battery backup. His lights never went out. He had heat as long as there was natural gas pressure. His water pipes didn’t burst. The food in his fridge stayed cold. His computer and internet continued to function. Please listen up to this week’s Energy Show for Jeff's practical insights on what Texas can do to solve their structural and political electricity problems. And, naturally, specifics about how a solar and battery system can keep your home and business powered up during the next extended blackout.

Copyright 2021 - The Energy Show, Barry Cinnamon We all know about the devastating blackouts that hit Texas last month. Millions of people were without power for a week. People were miserably cold, pipes froze causing flooding damage, and most people were without potable water. Sounds eerily like the blackouts that occur in California. Been there, done that for three years in a row…and there is no end in sight. Rick Perry, the former Texas governor and DOE Secretary, said: “Texans would rather be out of power than connect to the grid outside of Texas.” I’m pretty sure he is not talking about the people who’s lives were disrupted from this latest blackout. The causes of the blackout are fairly obvious. It was unexpectedly cold — note that Texas has had cold weather like this every ten years or so. Energy systems were not “weatherized” to withstand freezing temperatures, so all types of power plants failed to generate sufficient power. The Texas electric grid is isolated from eastern and western electric grids, so extra power could not be transferred from out of state. Moreover, the solutions to these problems are also fairly obvious. But it is extremely unlikely that Texas regulators, legislators, ERCOT, businesses and utilities will agree to these solutions before the next disaster. As we’ve seen in California, the finger-pointing will go on for years, billions of dollars will be fought over in bankruptcy courts, and whatever judgments and laws that are indeed passed with be appealed for several more years. There are simply too many strong business interests that are fundamentally opposed to changing the way Texans get their electricity. So if you are a homeowner or business in Texas, are you going to wait for a government solution and hope that there are no more freezes, heat waves or hurricanes? Or are you going to explore your own solutions to ensure you have safe, reliable an inexpensive power? Please listen up to this week’s Energy Show as we discuss timely and practical solutions to keeping the lights on in Texas.

Copyright 2021, The Energy Show, Barry Cinnamon This week we’re talking about carbon capture and storage, or CCS (sorry, these TLAs are not my fault). Here’s why carbon capture and storage is a hot topic. If we could only capture the CO2 that is emitted when we burn fossil fuels, we could keep burning fossil fuels forever. Hooray - especially if you’re in any business related to fossil fuels, which is a pretty big chunk of our economy. Taking it one step further, if we could capture the CO2 that is already in the atmosphere, we could potentially reverse the earth’s global warming trend. CCS is a fairly straightforward technology, and has been in use for about a hundred years. Billions of investment dollars have been going into scaling up various CCS processes for decades. CCS works best at the source of emissions, such as electric power plants and industrial processes (making steel and cement). When I look at CCS from a thermodynamic, economic and technological maturity standpoint, it is a dead end. Here’s why: First, CCS requires a lot of additional energy to remove CO2 from power plant exhausts, and even more from the atmosphere. Remember where that CO2 comes from: when we burn hydrocarbons (natural gas, coal or oil) we release a lot of energy, along with water vapor and CO2. It takes a lot of energy to re-capture the CO2. Second, the extra energy is expensive. The efficiency of CCS power plants is about 40% lower than ordinary power plants. So the energy from these clean CCS plants costs 40% more. Third, in spite of billions of dollars and decades of intensifying research, there are ZERO power plants or industrial processes in the world that are ready to scale up. So why is there so much investment and interest in CCS? If the technology were to work at scale we could keep burning fossil fuels. I have nothing against R&D of various CCS technologies; maybe someday there will be a breakthrough. The problem is that we are betting on a CCS breakthrough in the future, while continuing to burn fossil fuels now. While the fossil fuel industry lobbies for a CCS miracle, other more economic and workable technologies are not being deployed. It reminds me of a person addicted to smoking cigarettes, who knows about the risks of lung cancer, but keeps smoking in the hopes that science will find a cure before he dies. I’m convinced that pursuing CCS as a solution to global warming will INCREASE our CO2 emissions over the next 20+ years. We would be on a faster, cheaper course to solve global warming by focusing on currently viable and scalable technologies. To learn more about the science behind carbon capture and storage, their economic realities, as well as practical energy alternatives, please listed up to this week’s Energy Show.

Copyright 2021 - The Energy Show, Barry Cinnamon This week we’re focusing on the most common question we get after someone has installed solar and energy storage: “How do I read my electric bill?” Standard electric bills are hard enough to read, but when you have solar and storage you almost need a degree in forensic accounting to figure them out. At a high level -- and forgive my cynicism -- we are pretty much stuck with a ridiculous array of random charges from utilities. The good news is with a properly designed solar and battery storage system you can completely eliminate your electric bill. The bad news is that with the majority of the population working and schooling at home over the past year, our electric bills are at an all-time high. The added electricity consumption (measured in kwh), plus annual rate increases (those $/kwh numbers add up), plus Community Choice Aggregation electricity providers cross-billing, make it almost impossible to determine how well your solar and storage system is working. You need to know three things in order to evaluate the economic performance of your system: 1) Your annual True Up statement, usually 12 months after your system was interconnected. This statement tells you how much your charges and credits were each month, in both kwh and dollars. 2) Your total solar energy generation amount in kwh, which comes directly from your monitoring system. Beware, do not believe the amount that the utility says you generated; that number is ALWAYS wrong. 3) The projected amount of electricity, in kwh, that your solar and storage contractor expected from your system. Once you have these three pieces of information, and a dictionary to decipher the blitz of TLAs that we’ll explain on this week’s Energy Show, you will have a better understanding of your electric bill.

Copyright 2021 - Barry Cinnamon, The Energy Show I’m starting off the year with my Ten Solar and Storage Trends for 2021. But first, a recap from Dave Barry, my favorite chronicler of all that is crazy and warped in this world: “2020 was a year of nonstop awfulness, a year when we kept saying it couldn’t possibly get worse, and it always did. This was a year in which our only moments of genuine, unadulterated happiness were when we were able to buy toilet paper.“ Looking ahead to 2021: The solar investment tax credit was extended at the last minute by President Trump Home electric bills went through the roof in 2020, and will stay high for most of 2021 The President, Senate and House of Representatives are committed to accelerating transition to clean energy So here are my predictions for solar and storage trends in 2021: All roof orientations are fair game for solar Buildings will be designed to be carbon negative Skill levels for solar and storage contractors will increase Module level power electronics duopoly will continue Customer service and warranties are key battery system selection criteria UL 9540 requirements will stall new battery system releases Rooftop solar systems should be oversized EV chargers will be common options for new solar and battery installations The home of the future will have two batteries in every garage Whole home battery backup will remain expensive For the details of these predictions, please listen up to this week’s Energy Show.

Copyright 2020 - The Energy Show, Barry Cinnamon Sometimes I think that the last thing we need is more electric utilities (except for the mini-utility our customers have with solar and batteries). But I make exceptions for new Community Choice Aggregator (CCA) utilities that are striving to reduce electricity costs in a sustainable way, including Silicon Valley Clean Energy (SVCE). One of the founding board members of SVCE, Howard Miller, is our guest on this week’s Energy Show. Howard wears two hats: both as Mayor of the city of Saratoga, and Chairman of the Board of SCVE. Howard is also an adjunct professor of West Valley College. I've known Howard for almost 20 years, both as a friend and customer. No surprise that he is passionate about the environment, as well as new solar and battery storage technology. Silicon Valley Clean Energy was born in the second wave of CCAs following an expensive legal battle simply to get state authorization to operate. In fact, PG&E spent over $46 million to oppose CCAs in California, compared to the less than $100k spent by CCA supporters. Once these legal roadblocks were removed, several of the cities in Silicon Valley got together to form SVCE. Separately, San Jose created their own CCA called San Jose Clean Energy. The cities of Palo Alto and Santa Clara already had municipal utilities, so there was no need to join SVCE. The fundamental premise behind SVCE is that clean energy can be provided to customers in a way that is significantly less expensive than investor owned utilities. In addition to customer savings, additional funds are available to invest in local programs and resources. Nearly 5 years since their formation, SVCE now buys and distributes nearly $300M in carbon free electricity. To learn more about the politics of utilities in California, the ways in which the “guaranteed 10% profit” business model of investor owned utilities is fundamentally flawed, and perhaps how to read your electric bill, please listen up to this week's Energy Show.

Copyright 2020 - Barry Cinnamon, The Energy Show Why is Electricity So Expensive? We can complain all we want about the absurdly high price of electricity, but this situation is likely to persist for two reasons. First, electric companies are government-sanctioned monopoly utilities. There is usually only one electricity supplier, just as there is one water and natural gas supplier. Telephone services — and phones themselves — used to be a monopoly; it took years of legal battles leveraging the Sherman Antitrust Act to break the telephone monopoly. Now there is a competitive market for phone services and handsets, just as there is the potential for a free and competitive market for electricity. Second, the cost of electricity is primarily affected by the local cost of living; factors such as electric company wages, real estate costs, taxes, etc. So locations with a high cost of living — such as Hawaii, California and New York — have high electricity prices. And these high electric prices are likely to persist without some magical solution. Speaking of magical solutions, it’s not practical to drill a well in your back yard for your own natural gas or water, but I can imagine a future in which you could generate your own electricity. How are the existing monopoly electricity providers reacting to this reality in which customers can produce their own less expensive electricity? Please listen up to this week’s Energy Show as we delve into the reasons why electricity is so expensive — and how things are changing as solar, storage and better public policies are rolled out.

Copyright 2020 - The Energy Show, Barry Cinnamon Unless you’re totally off the grid -- both literally and figuratively -- you know that there are power shortages in California. With California experiencing hotter weather, people working at home, dirty power plant retirements, fires, and Public Safety Power Shutoffs, power outages have become a fact of life. But the solution to these problems does not have to exclusively be more power generating capabilities. Demand Response is a concept that describes the reduction in power consumption by utility customers to better match the available supply of power. An example would be if homes and businesses reduced their air conditioning needs — by simply raising the set point on their thermostats — during a peak power demand event at 4 PM on a hot summer day. There are challenges to implementing Demand Response programs, including communicating to customers when they should cut back their power usage, compensating these customers for their inconvenience (keep in mind that utilities profit when they don’t have to purchase very expensive peak power), and installing the hardware and software necessary to initiate and support these services. OhmConnect has a better way to for customers to participate in Demand Response without expensive equipment and metering. Their approach is to use your existing internet-connected thermostat and smart plugs, in conjunction with data from your electric meter, to provide these Demand Response benefits to the grid. Their business model is simple: customers get paid for lowering electric usage during high demand, and utilities can keep the power on without purchasing expensive peak power. My guest on this week’s Energy Show is Cisco DeVries, CEO of OhmConnect. Cisco is a legend in the energy industry, having transformed solar financing by pioneering Property Assessed Clean Energy financing programs (PACE). Now he is transforming Demand Response with OhmConnect. Please join me as we discuss how Cisco and the OhmConnect team are deploying their technologies to help reduce power demands during peak periods.

Copyright 2020 - The Energy Show, Barry Cinnamon You just invested in a brand new EV charged by your rooftop solar and battery. Then, a year later, your utility adds a $50/month fixed charge to your bill just because you have rooftop solar. How would you feel? This scenario is not just hypothetical. Utilities all over the country are lobbying to change rates for solar and battery customers by adding large fixed fees, eliminating net metering, delaying interconnections, and deliberately mismanaging incentive programs. This anti-competitive behavior should be no surprise. Businesses don’t like competition; it hurts their profits. Homes and businesses can generate electricity for much less than their utility charges. So rather than find ways to be more efficient, competitive and environmentally friendly, utilities spend hundreds of millions of dollars suppressing competition from rooftop solar and battery storage and diminishing your solar and battery storage rights. To add insult to injury, the money they are spending was collected from ratepayers. You! Unfortunately, the solar and storage industry doesn’t have the bankroll to counteract these utility lobbying efforts. But what we do have is public support: polling shows that 95% of people support solar and battery storage. The Solar Rights Alliance was founded to convert the support of millions of solar and storage enthusiasts into action that will change these anti-competitive, environmentally-hostile policies. The Solar Rights Alliance operates under the premise that everyone should have the right to generate his or her own power directly from the sun, and that no monopoly company or special interest should try to block or “own” the sun. My guest on this week’s show is Dave Rosenfeld, the Executive Director of the Solar Rights Alliance. He’s spent his career building movements and institutions that expand freedom, liberty and justice -- including National Public Radio, the Public Interest Research Group and the Public Interest Network. Please listen up to this week’s Energy Show as Dave and I discuss the issues that the Solar Rights Alliance fights for every day to protect your solar and battery storage rights.

Copyright 2020 - The Energy Show, Barry Cinnamon Solar panels are long term assets - guaranteed by every manufacturer for at least 25 years. Lithium ion batteries are guaranteed by most manufacturers for at least 10 years. But there are no major solar panel manufacturers have been in business for 25 years, and no major battery manufacturers for 10 years. So how can a homeowner, building owner or financing company assess the reliability of solar panels and batteries? The best way is to scientifically gather and assess reliability data for these components. To be objective, this reliability analysis must be done by an independent organization - not by manufacturers. PV Evolution Labs is the leading independent lab for equipment testing. They assess the bankability of PV modules, inverters, storage, and other balance-of-system equipment. Joining us on this week’s Energy Show is Jenya Meydbray, CEO and co-founder of PV Evolution Labs. Please Listen Up to this week’s Energy Show as Jenya talks about the founding of PV Evolution Labs and shares his insights on reliability of solar panels and batteries. Jenya and I also share our real-world reliability advice as manufacturers, contractors and technologies come and go over the years.

Copyright 2020 - The Energy Show, Barry Cinnamon There are over a million homes with rooftop solar in the U.S. – out of about 100 million detached single family homes. So we are looking at market penetration of about 1%. There is a lot of growth potential for solar, storage and maintenance work. Once people have a solar power system the first question they ask is “how do I read my electric bill?” The second question they ask is “how often should I clean my solar panels?” Now reading your electric bill – that’s another show altogether given how complicated the bills are. But on today’s show we’ll mathematically and practically answer this second question –how often should I clean my solar panels. We will base our recommendation on daily and annual performance analysis of systems before and after cleaning and also provide advice on how – and especially how not -- to clean solar panels. To start, you might be wondering how the solar panels get dirty. They get dirty basically by wind-blown dust. Just like your car or your windows, the dust accumulates on the surface and builds up over time. And, if you are in a dusty area like a farm or near dirt roads, the accumulation may be worse. Pollen accumulation is another factor which typically happens in the spring. Some people talk about cleaning up after the birds, but bird debris is usually not a problem unless your name is Hitchcock and you live in Bodega Bay. What happens when panels get dirty the accumulated dirt absorbs or reflects the photons that hit the solar panels and output begins to decline. The amount of output decline varies based on location and amount of soiling. Interestingly enough, it also depends on where on the panel the soiling happens. So if you are like most solar power system owners and you have been wondering how often should I clean my solar panels, please listen to this week’s Energy Show as we walk through the performance implications of dirty solar panels and the best method for cleaning your system.

Copyright 2020 - The Energy Show, Barry Cinnamon For the first time in 20 years California is experiencing rolling blackouts. Reports indicate that over 3 million residents were recently affected. Conditions that caused these blackouts will continue, and the situation will get worse during fire season when we can expect Public Safety Power Shutoffs. In the olden days, blackouts were an opportunity to sit around by the fire and read by candlelight. Not any more. We rely on electricity to keep our food cold, to keep our lights on, to charge our cars and to keep our family connected to both school and work. PG&E is not being candid about the real cause of these recent blackouts. Ostensibly, the rolling blackouts were caused when hot weather caused air conditioning demand to spike at the same time that several 500 MW natural gas power plants went offline, either due to scheduled maintenance or failure. But when I checked into the cause of several extended Silicon Valley outages, it became apparent that these outages were due to local transformer failures — not the one to two hour rolling blackouts that were announced. The solution is almost universally recognized: more battery storage capacity charged by solar. I say “almost” because PG&E and other utilities are still recommending flashlights, candles and gas generators. Their logic is entirely based on their profit motive to install more of their own generating and storage capacity. PG&E and other utilities don’t want homeowners to install solar-charged battery backup systems — which are safe, reliable and affordable. Please tune in to this week’s Energy Show for the gory details about this latest rash of blackouts — as well as what you can do to keep your lights on, your food cold and your family connected.

Copyright 2020, The Energy Show, Barry Cinnamon