News about Solar, Wind and alternative green power technologies

Rizhao, China is a port city whose name originated from the idea that it was the first to receive sunshine each morning. It is situated along the coast of the Yellow Sea, and its name is derived from the words ri qu shien shao, which in English translates, “first to get sunshine”. 

Rizhao is a vibrant and growing city with a coastline of one hundred kilometers and nearly three million residents. It is situated near Qingdao, a city famous for its eponymous beer, also known as Tsingtao. Rizhao’s claim to fame is to be the first city to become carbon neutral. 

China is now the country that produces the world’s largest amount of greenhouse gases, surpassing the United States. However, China is also developing inexpensive sources for renewable energy, namely solar power, and assisting in transforming the world’s energy supply.

Rizhao is situated in a superb geographic location with an abundance of resources and favorable eco environmental conditions. This city is also utilizing the energy from the sun, which transmits over 100 kilowatt hours of energy over each square meter of land every day. Its coastline is spotted with photovoltaic cells.

As new apartments and housing complexes are built, many are powered with solar energy. The homes are covered with black tubing that absorb the sunshine. Inside, the tubes are filled with water that heats up as the day progresses. This heating method is required, and has substantially decreased greenhouse gas emissions. This method of solar power is also the reason that energy use has decreased each year by an amount equal to the energy used by over 30,000 residences in the United States, or by 348 million kilowatt hours. 

With the size of the population in China, it has become the largest producer of solar heating systems. In 2007, China installed solar hot water panels that covered 246 million square feet. These heating systems can be produced at less cost than electric or gas powered heating methods. The growth in this energy sector has come from the growing demand for renewable energy sources.

China has many companies that focus on the production of solar energy, and they are located in “Solar Valley”, near Shanghai in the Jiangsu Province. Two of these companies are Suntech and JA Solar. 

Suntech, which was founded in 2001, produces enough solar panels each year in its global operations to create one gigawatt of energy. Although its production processes are not automated, this business has been very profitable for the company’s founder, Shi Zhengrong, who is the world’s first solar billionaire. The quality of Suntech’s products has put them into one of the top five solar cell producers in the world, and their solar panels have been used in projects in the United States and Germany. 

Suntech, known as a low cost leader in the solar energy market, builds a variety of solar products. One of its products is a highly efficient and advanced solar panel called the Pluto module. This product uses some of the most advanced technology in the world to produce electricity by capturing up to nineteen percent of the sun’s energy.  
Labor in China is relatively inexpensive in comparison to other parts of the world, and this gives the company the advantage of quickly responding to changes in market demand without a large capital investment. This strategy is unlike competitors of Suntech, who include Q-Cells of Germany, Sharp of Japan, and SunPower in the United States, and have all automated their production. The cost of materials used in the production process, such as glass and aluminum, are also more expensive in other nations, which gives China an overall cost advantage.

These lower production costs in China have attracted foreign manufacturers to expand into China and Asia. For instance, Evergreen Solar is a company that is based in the United States and has recently expanded into China. They have also built a number of production facilities in Malaysia with a capacity of 500 megawatts of solar cells. China has manufacturing capacity available to produce large quantities of solar products at a lower cost than other nations of the world. 

However, quality of product is always a primary concern in the marketplace. Although some of the highest quality products come from China, there are also many smaller sized manufacturers that produce low quality cells. In China, there are only a few recognized manufacturers in the marketplace of over 160 companies. Many of these small manufacturers produce low quality, no name solar panels.

Lower production costs leads to lower energy prices for solar power. In the United States, current prices are about $4.50 per watt of energy. However, this price can be reduced significantly as production costs fall, with a future goal in the range of $1.00 per watt of energy. 

Even with these price reductions, solar energy is still considerably more expensive than electricity rates of approximately thirteen cents per kilowatt hour. In Texas, a company called Austin Energy is currently building a 30 megawatt system using Suntech PV modules. They are predicting to sell their electricity at seventeen cents per kilowatt hour. 

By the year 2011, it is predicted that solar modules may sell for as low as $1.40 each.  This price point would put solar energy in the same range as other energy sources. 

In China, the largest market for photovoltaic is outside the country, although it is predicted that the domestic market will grow substantially over the coming years. This optimism is due in part to the government targets that have been set to reduce carbon emissions. 

Although Rizhao boasts to be carbon-neutral, other areas in China, such as Dezhou City in Shandong Province, also is home to a large manufacturer of solar hot water heaters and other solar power devices. Boading is a city located in Hebei Province, and is home to solar and wind power manufacturers, and a number of other manufacturers of renewable energy. The goal for the Chinese government by the year 2020, is to install 1.8 gigawatts of solar power throughout the nation. However, given the current level of progress in the solar industry, this goal could be surpassed four fold.

In the world, only four cities have tried to become carbon neutral. These cities are Arendal, Norway; Vancouver, Canada; Rizhao, China; and Vaxjo, Sweden. In order to achieve this goal, Rizhao needs to use a number of environmental improvements. They will need to recycle industrial waste into energy and find efficient ways to harness the sun’s energy to create power. So far, Rizhao has effectively reduced its energy consumption by thirty percent while reducing its carbon dioxide emissions by half.