USA SOLAR HAS RECORD GROWTH IN 2012

The United States experienced record growth in solar installations in 2012.

A total of 3,313 megawatts of capacity was added in the United States last year, bringing the national solar photovoltaics total to 7,221 megawatts. That's a 76 percent increase compared with 2011.

More new solar systems were installed in 2012 than in the three prior years combined. There were 16 million solar panels installed in the U.S. last year -- more than two panels per second of the work day -- and every one of these panels was bolted down by a member of the U.S. workforce. The report forecasts 4,300 megawatts of new PV installations for 2013, an increase of 29 percent over 2012.

Most credited supportive government policies for helping to spur the growth and called for longer-term policies to provide certainty to the solar sector. You need the same certainty that has been provided to the oil, natural gas, coal and nuclear industries.

The market value of solar installations reached $11.5 billion in 2012, from $3.6 billion in 2009.

Amidst this boom, the solar industry faced newly imposed import tariffs on Chinese solar cells and ongoing consolidation in the manufacturing space. Last year, the U.S. International Trade Commission imposed a 36 percent tariff on Chinese solar cell manufacturers, for dumping cheap products on the U.S. market. These tariffs did have the desired effect of barring Chinese cells from entering the U.S. market.

Average costs for residential systems dropped nearly 20 percent in one year, from $6.16 per watt in 2011 to $5.04 per watt in 2012.

California led the nation in the number of megawatts installed. An update Thursday from the California Public Utilities Commission indicated that the state has installed 1.5 gigawatts of rooftop solar. That's almost equal to the amount of power generated by three medium-sized coal-fired power plants. Under its "Million Solar Roofs" program created in 2006, California, with the help of $3.3 billion in incentives, aims to generate 3 gigawatts of solar power by 2016. The state had passed the 1 gigawatt benchmark in November 2011.

THE NEED FOR A BETTER GRID SYSTEM

Improved synchronicity: Preventive care for the power grid

President Obama in this year's State of the Union address talked about the future of energy and mentioned "self-healing power grids" -- a grid that is able to keep itself stable during normal conditions and also to self-recover in the event of a disturbance caused, for example, by severe weather.

But as the national power-grid network becomes larger and more complex achieving reliability across the network is increasingly difficult. Now scientists have identified conditions and properties that power companies can consider using to keep power generators in the desired synchronized state and help make a self-healing power grid a reality.

Designs for a better power grid could help reduce both the frequency of blackouts and the cost of electricity as well as offer an improved plan for handling the intermittent power sources of renewable energy, such as solar and wind power, which can destabilize the network.

The use of renewable energy is growing. More people will be driving electric cars, and the power grid will be delivering this energy, not gas stations. The need will be for a power grid that is more capable and more reliable. This requires a better understanding of the current power grid as well as new ways to stabilize it.

The crux of the challenge is that for the U.S. power grid to function the power generators in each of its three interconnections (Eastern, Western and Texas) must be synchronized, all operating at the frequency of 60 hertz. Out-of-synch power generators can lead to blackouts that affect millions of people and cost billions of dollars -- losses similar to those of the Northeast blackout of 2003. Having a network that can synchronize spontaneously and recover from failures in real time -- in other words, a self-healing power grid -- could prevent such blackouts.

When a problem develops in the power-grid network, control devices are used to return power generators to a synchronized state. The researchers derived a condition under which the desired synchronous state of a power grid is stable. They then used this condition to identify the parameters of the power generators that result in spontaneous synchronization. This synchronization can be autonomous, not guided by control devices.

The blackout at this year's Super Bowl was caused by a device that was installed specifically to prevent blackouts. A large fraction of blackouts have human and equipment errors among the causes. Reduced dependence on conventional control devices can improve the reliability of the grid.