NREL Module Efficiency - Then and Now

In April 2009 I began my career in the solar industry with Eos Energy Solutions, a small PV installation “start-up” out of the owner’s house near Center City Philadelphia. I no longer work directly in solar, but it’s still a passion of mine. During this time I recall looking at NREL’s “Best Research-Cell Efficiencies” graph trying to decipher the different technology and compare it to what we were installing. Below is the 2005 graph - I had this printed and pinned to the wall near my desk.

Image courtesy of NREL.

It’s now 2020, more than ten years later, and I was wondering what that graph looks like now…

Image courtesy of NREL.

We mostly installed mono and multi-crystalline with some thin film mixed in. In 2005, mono and multi efficiencies peaked at around 24% and 19% respectively. In the 2020 graph, mono and multi efficiencies were about 26% and 23% respectively. Modest gains for sure in the crystalline silicon sub-sector, but really impressive gains in the multijunction sub-sector with peaks in the high 30s for non-concentrators. It’s also great to see so many more technologies being tested and pursued. If you’re curious what some of these technologies are, NREL has good summary on the topic. Or if you are interested in what other PV research NREL is working on, follow this link. For the crystalline silicon market, and for those customers looking at installing PV on their house or business, does the efficiency plateau mean most commercially available modules are closer to the upper-bound efficiency now? (In 2009-2014 I recall most efficiencies in the 14-16% range.) Or because we’re pushing the theoretical efficiency limit, and there is no cost-benefit to improve manufacturing process to realize the small cell gains, price stratification has remained the same? In another post I’ll do some $/watt comparisons to see how the market has changed.

Covid Impacts on PJM Demand

Like everyone else, PJM has had to react to the impacts of Covid-19 on their operations. Their Systems Operations Subcommittee has created an Operations Pandemic Coordination Team to discuss pandemic coordination operations. In addition, weekly on Fridays, PJM is providing status updates for each state and other members/stakeholders.

PJM Planning Committee has also been generating weekly updates on Covid-19 impacts to load. The graph above was taken from the most recent (April 14, 2020) presentation. Here are the findings:

• On weekdays last week (week of 4/6), peak came in on average 8-9% lower (~7500 MW) than anticipated.

• Largest impacts so far were around 10-11% (~9500 MW) on 3/26.

• Energy has been less affected, with average weekday reduction since mid-March being 7%.

• Weekends have been impacted less (~2-4%)

Take-aways: Obviously the change in work patterns via stay-at-home/shelter-in-place orders have impacted demand, but how so? What about the huge increase in unemployment? If the 8% reduction in peak is coincidental load, does that mean the energy footprint of our office employees while at work is higher than when working from home? What about the weekend load, is that all retail closures? Difficult to say at this point what the root cause is with so many variables.

Thoughts on Oil

I recently reread the book “Oil on the Brain: Petroleum’s Long, Strange Trip to Your Tank” by Lisa Margonelli.  Published in 2008, the reader is taken up the American gasoline supply chain - gas station, fuel haulers/wholesalers, refinery, drilling rig, Strategic Petroleum Reserve, NYMEX, Venezuela, Chad, Iran, Nigeria, and China - digging into all the details you may have questioned but never bothered to investigate.  It’s a good read and worth the time if you have it.  Recent comments by President Trump about “keeping” Middle East oil (here, here, and here) piqued my interest and is what motivated me to pick up Lisa’s book again. It got me wondering, whatever happened to oil?

If you recall, in the early 2000s there seemed to be an obsession about peak oil and its subsequent geo-political ramifications (of the 10 documentary films referenced on the ‘Peak Oil’ Wiki page, all were released between 2004 and 2008).  But over the past ten years the oil conversation has vanished from the national conversation (at least in the media).  I did some quick research on the EIA’s site and pulled the following two graphs.

Graph courtesy of the EIA.

Without getting into all the science behind petroleum, we can clearly see between the two graphs that American domestic production has increased (1,829,000 barrels in 2008 and 4,011,000 in 2018) and crude imports have decreased (4,727,000 barrels in 2008 and 3,629,000 barrels in 2018).  The idea of becoming more reliant on foreign oil has at least, for now, been deferred due to expansions in unconventional domestic oil production. With that deferment comes the alleviation of fears and as such, we’ve stopped talking about it.  As a finite natural resource however, we will no doubt pick this conversation up again in the next 10, 20, 30 years or so.

Graph courtesy of the EIA

Back to the book…

In the Iran chapter, the author interviews an unnamed individual who is “on the outs with the regime.”  Through their comments we can infer the individual is informed and had high(er) level access within the government.  She states:

My host worried that as oil fields around the world are depleted, leaving the bulk of supplies in the Middle East, the world’s wrath will turn here.  “Things will start to get crunchy,” he says with a grin.  “If I’m right, finding oil will be an enormous problem for the U.S. suburbia,” he says.  “They are the most important socioeconomic community on this planet, and they are not going to take the destruction of their way of life lying down.  They have an enormous power to change American politics – everything is possible.  Maybe even an end to democracy.  Forget about nuclear weapons and terrorism.  I am very worried about the explosive power of panicked suburbia.”

This statement has stuck with me and was the impetus for writing this post.  Is it not true?  Are American suburbanites the least politically motivated yet most powerful constituency in modern society?  What happens when the level of comfort in suburbia falls?  How does this idea reflect on our policies and governance?