As we headed to Minneapolis for the Midwest Solar Expo and Smart Energy Symposium last week, we knew we were in for a great conference when our plane passed directly over two large ground-mount solar PV systems as we descended toward the airport. Minnesota has become one of the sleeping giants of solar, with innovative community solar programs and strong utility development led by Xcel. The graph from SEIA below shows the projected growth in Minnesota over the next five years.
Matt Roberts, executive director of the Energy Storage Association (ESA), gave the keynote speech at the conference. Roberts’ energetic, informative talk covered the once-in-a-generation opportunity we have to fundamentally change the energy industry from one driven primarily by cost and mitigation to one powered by efficiency and technology. The rapid development of innovative energy technologies with new capabilities and performance standards are why ESA has set an aggressive goal to see 35 GW of storage on the U.S. grid by 2025.
This is the solar-plus-storage equivalent of President John F. Kennedy’s declaration on May 25, 1961, that he wanted to put a man on the moon before the end of the decade. Few thought it could be done, yet despite the odds, Apollo 11 landed on the lunar surface less than 10 years later, on July 20, 1969. Such a lofty goal, Kennedy reminded Americans, “will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills.” The same can be said for modernizing the U.S. grid, and deploying gigawatts of energy storage systems.
Roberts pointed to two catalyzing factors in future markets that will encourage the push for more storage. First, as electric vehicles become more common, the energy demand needed to power them will grow, and this energy will be cheaper if it can be produced and stored close to the vehicle-charging stations. Second, as manufacturing and shipping become ever more automated, the power needed to charge the robots working around the clock will increase. Roberts showed a video shot inside a shipping center where orange robots (see below photo) that looked like they had been plucked off a Star Destroyer from Star Wars whipped around a warehouse carrying packages.
The best panel I listened to consisted of reporters from Midwest Energy News and Jim Horan, director of government affairs for the Minnesota Rural Electric Association. The rural electric co-ops have done some great work with community solar. For the uninitiated, community solar is when several citizens, businesses, and other ratepayers all chip in to develop a solar farm near their community. The funds contributed correlate directly to how much power from the farm covers that member’s electrical load. Horan took questions about the challenges that could be expected when developing community solar, such as securing enough participants and then educating them about the benefits and how it works. Community solar is not legal everywhere; unfortunately, Indiana is one of those places.
Jorge Valera, an Inovateus project engineer (and our company’s ping-pong champ), and Tim Powers competed in the Solar Ping-Pong Tournament, as I looked on and offered moral support. In preparation for the tourney, my two colleagues actually practiced and attempted to get back to peak ping-pong form. In the 68-player field there were some great players. Jorge and Tim both exited in the second round and watched with the rest of the crowd as the field whittled down to the final pair. Surprisingly, the contestant who had played tennis in college was defeated in overtime by an engineer with a wicked underhand shot.
The Midwest Solar Expo served as a great kick-off to the late spring/summer solar conference season. Upcoming events include the “Developing Solar on Landfills and Brownfields” conference in Chicago on June 12–13; the 28th annual Midwest Energy Fair on June 16–18 in Custer, WI; and one of the industry’s main tradeshows, Intersolar North America, in San Francisco on July 11–13.
By Adam Raifsnider, account executive, Inovateus Solar
