The Middle East has generated a lot of media attention in recent weeks when it comes to clean power, particularly since the Saudi government announced a plan to install 41 GW of solar systems by 2032. The country also wants to add wind, geothermal, nuclear and other sources into its mix. Saudi Arabia relies heavily on its own oil and gas for power generation. But with a rising domestic demand for power, the government doesn’t want to use fossil fuels from its wells when it could sell them at far higher prices to the rest of the world.

“If Saudi Arabia continues with its business-as-usual scenario, they will have no more oil to export to the world by 2030,” said Shihab Kuran, founder and CEO of Petra Solar in New Jersey.

The region has been considered a new frontier for solar power development for some time. For over a year, First Solar executives have talked about opportunities in the Middle East, and the company recently told Bloomberg that it would open an office in the United Arab Emirates this year – and possibly a solar panel factory somewhere in the Middle East – to meet local demand. In April, First Solar said it would close its German factory and lay off 30 percent of its workforce worldwide to deal with a glut of solar panels in the global market and to look for project development opportunities in parts of the world where solar electricity could be competitive without heavy government subsidies.

A 2012 Pricewaterhouse Coopers report found that solar electricity, which can be produced at $0.15 per kilowatt-hour, is an economical choice for the Middle East because many countries in the region rely on expensive oil and natural gas to produce electricity.

Beyond the Saudis

Saudi Arabia isn’t alone with renewable energy plans in place. Iran plans to build a 5MW pilot geothermal energy project and wants to add 12,000 megawatts of renewable energy, reported Iran’s government-owned TV station recently. Qatar Solar Technologies plans to build a $1 billion silicon plant in Qatar to supply the material to manufactures of solar panels. The idea is to use the plant to feed the market growth in the region. Qatar Electricity and Water Co. wants to get 10 percent of its electricity from solar by 2018.

Petra Solar has been courting Arab leaders and power companies for a few years now. The company announced a 5 MW solar and smart grid project in several locations in Bahrain last week. The startup also is working on a similar project in Jordan, where Kuran grew up. Last year, the company bought Jordan-based EnergyFlow Consulting to help it expand its Middle East presence. Earlier this year, Petra Solar agreed to partner with Enviromena Power Systems, a solar project developer in United Arab Emirates, to develop solar and smart grid projects in the Middle East and North Africa together.

Petra Solar pairs solar panels with smart meters, sensors and communication technology to monitor and report the performance of solar panels and other important equipment. It also offers software for controlling street lighting and equipment to control the voltage, current and other aspects of the distribution grid.  The company made headlines in 2009 when it won a contract from the Public Service Electric and Gas Co. to put 40MW of solar panels on utility poles in New Jersey. The project is 80 percent complete, Kuran said.

The company has lined up $54 million in private equity, is pitching its package of hardware and software as a more complete way to not only generate clean power but also manage the solar power generation and the health of the electric grid more intelligently.

Kuran said the upfront cost of a Petra Solar project may be higher than a traditional solar power plant project, but buyers or investors of the project will get lower cost of solar electricity over time than a stand-alone solar project.

Government incentives

Petra Solar will find some serious competition for the larger market in Saudi Arabia, where other solar panel makers and project developers have been angling for government contracts as well.

Although Saudi Arabia has announced a solar installation goal, it has yet to figure out what incentives should be in place to help create that 41 GW. The government is looking at whether the government should buy and own solar power plants or to buy power from producers who could get a premium price for solar electricity, Kuran said.

The idea of creating a flourishing, local solar energy market isn’t new. Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates, is building a giant city from scratch in the desert that is supposed to be using lots of renewable energy and featuring energy efficiency measures and driverless, electric public transportation systems to reduce wasteful energy consumption. The city project, called Masdar City, has progressed at a slower pace than the government initially anticipated, however. Abu Dhabi also has installed demonstration projects to put solar panels or use solar mirrors to produce electricity for local consumption.

Photos of Abu Dhabi’s clean power projects, courtesy of Ucilia Wang

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So it would be nice if solar panels — or more specifically, the inverters that turn their direct current into grid-ready AC — could talk to the smart grid, to let utilities know what’s going on. This week, the utility industry released a common standard for doing just that. The next step will be for solar inverter makers and smart grid vendors to make equipment and software that speaks the language, and start testing it out. (To learn more about the intersection of smart grid and solar come to Green:Net on April 21 in San Francisco, where we’ll feature a discussion between NRG Energy CEO David Crane and Silver Spring Networks EVP & CMO Eric Dresselhuys. Get tickets here.)

The new standard from the Distributed Network Protocol (DNP) Users Group is the result of nearly two years of effort by the industry, aimed at capturing some of the extra benefits that come from solar panels and inverters. Besides delivering power, inverters can manage voltage and reactive power fluctuations, and can push power to storage systems to cover the the passing of clouds over panels — or save up to feed back into the grid when it’s facing peak demand.

Indeed, projects that integrate these kinds of functions are underway around the world. Echelon is working with big inverter maker SMA Solar Technology and Fat Spaniel was bought by inverter maker Power-One. Enphase uses its own technology for its microinverters, as does Petra Solar with its pole-mounted, solar panel-connected microinverter arrays. Big players like General Electric, Siemens and Schneider Electric are also getting involved.

But without a standard to build to, they’ve all progressed along unique, mostly proprietary lines, said Brian Seal, analyst with the Electric Power Research Institute. In practice, that means a lot of the cool things inverters could do for the grid were left untouched, just because they were too hard for utilities to operate, he said. It took two years, but the industry has finally come up with a common language to get around that problem via DNP3, one of North America’s most common grid control standards, he said.

“This release is significant, because we now have a standard document that allows manufacturers to pick it up and actually build to it,” Seal said. While he didn’t name any companies that have announced technology around the new standard, he did note that the working group that came up with it had 450 individual participants, including every inverter maker he knows of. EPRI coordinated the effort with the Department of Energy, Sandia National Laboratories and the Solar Electric Power Association. For more information, read my GigaOm Pro report,  EPRI’s Solar Power Phrasebook — a Guide to Future Communications (subscription required).

What’s next? Eventually, a world in which every inverter and smart grid device can plug into a standards-based system and open up the innate abilities — absorbing and releasing power to keep the grid in balance — to manipulation and control by any number of software platforms, Seal said. Of course, there’s a long way to go before that happens, and interoperability testing and field trials are next on the agenda.

What are the benefits? First and foremost: enable solar to continue to grow. While it’s hard to predict just how much local solar power it takes to destabilize the grid, Energy Secretary Steven Chu has said that the 20 percent wind power levels seen in the Pacific Northwest present problems with stability. Local neighborhoods aren’t likely to be able to take much more than that either.

Instability can even force utilities to stop new solar arrays from being built, or force them to hook up smart grid functions to do it. In Germany, where generous government subsidies have led to the world’s most solar panel-saturated neighborhoods, new medium-voltage grid codes require all solar inverters to provide a long list of advanced grid support features such as reactive power and VAR support, Seal noted.

While DNP3 is the main technology used for grid field equipment for the U.S. and Australia, Europe relies on a set of standards known as IEC 61850, and the two are working together, he said. Standards geeks will also be interested to hear that the IEEE 1547.8 group, which deals with distributed energy resources-to-grid integration, is also getting involved.

Image courtesy of CERTs via Creative Commons license.

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Where Solar Meets Smart Grid, Smart Grid Neurons, Petra Solar, April 23, 2010

Smart Solutions for a Smarter Grid, Sempra Power, June 9 2010

Smart Grid Law, Gowling Lafleur Henderson LLP, April 19, 2010

The Eyes And Ears of the Smart Grid, Sentient Energy, December 4 2009

GridSmart, Nexant, February 23 2010

Smart Grid Intelligence as a Service, Energics, February 10, 2010

Smart Grid SMS, S&C Electric, September 11 2008

Plug Into the Smart Grid, GE, December 18 2008

Smart Kids for the Smart Grid, City of Glendale, January 26 2010

Smart Grid OS, Universal Devices,  November 2 2009

Smart Grid City, Xcel Energy, April 7 2008, Xcel also abandoned its trade mark for Smart Grid City Kids on June 14 2010

We Put the Smart in Smart Grid, Grid Net, March 31 2009

GridSmart, AEP, May 22 2008

Enabling the Smart Grid, SmartSynch, August 30, 2007

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Photo courtesy TpolyG

Oh, and as we reported, the price for renting TV shows in HD is dropping from $2.99 to $0.99 HD TV shows is shifting from $2.99 to buy to $0.99 to rent for the ABC and Fox shows that will be available at the outset. Other broadcasters have yet to commit to the service, but Jobs said that “other studios will see the light soon, and get on board with us.”

HD movie rentals are set at $4.99 for first-run films, which Jobs says will become “cheaper as time goes on.” The new store also includes Rotten Tomatoes ratings and cast/crew listings “for the first time.”

Jobs called the Netflix interface on Apple TV “the best implementation of Netflix yet,” though he was probably saying that because the interface is a direct ripoff of Apple’s Front Row interface.

Jobs also announced a complete overhaul of the iPod line, including FaceTime for the iPod touch. The iPod nano now has a square face and is smaller, and today’s demo emphasized the device’s music player and other features, including a clock face. The iPod nano camera has been removed, and the square screen implies that there’s a de-emphasis on video.

That just means more cameras for the iPod touch! The new version of the device will have front- and back-facing cameras, allowing people to communicate using FaceTime. On-device editing and direct upload to YouTube will also be possible.

Related GigaOm Pro Content (subscription required): Apple’s Path to the Living Room

Petra Solar said it will use the new funding to expand its customer base and hire more staff. The South Plainfield, N.J.-based company also said it plans to expand its product line to address new applications and market segments. We’re still waiting for comment from Petra Solar, but we’re thinking that those new applications and markets might have to do with commercial and residential customers. The company’s website has dedicated sections for commercial and residential products and services.

Update: Petra Solar CEO Shihab Kuran has confirmed for us that the company will use the funding to expand into commercial and residential markets, but always with “utilities in mind as partners,” such as those with initiatives to add PV to their customers’ roofs. Also, the startup will use the funding to expand its applications for utilities, such as around smart grid, mounting systems and grid reliability.

Last year Petra Solar inked a $200 million deal with New Jersey utility PSE&G to build 40 MW of pole-mounted solar capacity, or about 200,000 installations. Petra Solar CEO Shihab Kuran said in a statement released at the time that the contract, its first deal with a utility, was “transformational” for the company. Petra Solar now says it’s shipping its pole-mounted solar systems in volume to PSE&G, and that a growing number of utilities and municipalities are “engaged with the company.”

Petra Solar’s pole-mounted package, called SunWave and including a solar panel (presumably with an embedded micro-inverter since it cranks out AC power) and a communications system, can be directly tied into a utility’s electric grid. The communications piece sends critical operational data, such as energy generation, voltage and temperature, to a utility’s back office where it can be viewed through a Web browser. Communications can also go the other way, from the back office to the pole-mounted systems, for firmware upgrades.

Petra Solar says its SunWave product is price-competitive with conventional roof-mounted PV but can be brought online faster because of the relative ease of mounting the systems to a utility’s existing distribution and streetlight poles. The startup hopes this will be attractive to utilities rushing to meet government rules that mandate the increased use of renewable energy.       

Founded in 2006, Petra Solar previously has received a grant from the Department of Energy worth up to $2.9 million and raised $14 million in venture funding.

Image courtesy of Petra Solar.

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Source: Piper Jaffray

Whaddya mean, you’re skeptical about reports regarding an upcoming Tablet announcement? When did you last hear a major publisher report exciting Tablet news from unnamed sources? Oh, wait.

Earlier in the week the Wall Street Journal reported on the rumors of Apple’s forays into television content subscription. It also made a passing reference to the tablet coming “by the end of March.” And we’d have left it at that, except that yesterday the Financial Times also chimed in with a little more on the same theme:

Apple is preparing an announcement next month that many anticipate will be the official unveiling of its tablet, but the company has so far declined to confirm the existence of the device. Wall Street analysts expect mass production of an Apple tablet to begin as early as February.

Of course, when it comes to reporting about Apple’s fabled Tablet device, no one ever properly cites their sources. Instead, we get fleeting, nebulous references to shady characters and nameless insiders: “Sources close to Apple told us…” or “An executive familiar with the matter revealed…” Occasionally, some enterprising analyst stares at a spreadsheet for a while and makes up some bold predictions — and then they get named as sources, their prophecies presented almost as iron-clad statements of previously super-occluded fact.

Even worse, it’s not hard to imagine that sometimes ( just occasionally) those same analysts become the mysterious, unidentified sources of privileged insider information, referred to almost casually as “sources with intimate knowledge of Apple.” While that’s not technically incorrect, it’s still wildly misleading. And unethical, too.

Of course, I’m not suggesting venerable publishers such as the Wall Street Journal or the Financial Times get up to these shenanigans. However, it’s at least interesting to note that earlier this month, and reported by AppleInsider, Oppenheimer analyst Yair Reiner offered much the same predictions for a first-quarter 2010 Tablet launch;

Reiner…revealed his latest tablet news in a note to investors issued Wednesday morning.

“Our checks into Apple’s supply chain indicate the manufacturing cogs for the tablet are creaking into action and should begin to hit a mass market stride in February,” the note said.

Reiner said Apple would likely need at least five or six weeks of inventory built up before it can release the product, positioning a likely launch in March or April.

Now, I don’t know about you, but when I read that an analyst has revealed his “latest” news about Apple’s super-duper-secret-history-making-miracle-tablet, I gotta assume that doesn’t mean his latest morsels of juicy, hitherto-unknown insider information, but rather, his “latest roundup of most reasonable rumors and assumptions gathered from around the Internet.” I guess it depends on your level of cynicism, how badly you want the Tablet, and how you choose to read between the lines.

Either way, the WSJ and the FT are in competition with one another. One mustn’t be outdone by the other — even if that means reporting “old” news that isn’t really news at all. It’s conjecture from a man who doesn’t claim to have inside knowledge, but just looked into Apple’s “supply chain” and offered some best guesses. That is, after all, what analysts do. You can do the same thing, by the way, just by gathering together a half dozen industry trade-press magazines.

Mind you, that line which begins “Apple is preparing an announcement next month…” is pretty specific, isn’t it? Specific without actually telling us anything, but then, that’s what the rumor mill is all about these days, right?

Frankly, I’m growing tired of all these rumors — Apple can’t release this thing soon enough, as far as I’m concerned, if only so we can finally put all this frothy prognostication behind us!

UPDATE: Boy Genius Report is now reporting that its own inside source is reporting a 7-inch Apple tablet launch in January is a 100 percent certainty. Looks like we may not have to wait much longer to put the rumors to rest.

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The entire solar project, dubbed “Solar 4 All,” which the utility will own, will include 40 MW, or 200,000 installations, of Petra Solar’s solar units on utility poles, and 40 MW of rooftop solar installations. PSE&G says the entire 80 MW project will double the solar capacity of New Jersey, and make the utility the largest owner of solar in the North East. The cost to PSE&G’s customers? The utility says an average of 10 cents a month for the first year of the program.

While the solar project is a big deal for PSE&G, it’s a point of celebration for South Plainfield, N.J.-based startup Petra Solar. Petra Solar says the contract with PSE&G is worth $200 million and will create 100 “green jobs.” In a statement, Petra Solar President and CEO Shihab Kuran, called the contract, “[T]ransformational for us. We are tripling in size and will start hiring immediately.”

Petra Solar’s “SunWave” solar pole technology, which includes a solar microinveter, a solar panel, and a communications system, can be connected directly to the grid at the pole itself. Petra Solar says the system can be installed easily and help utilities add solar assets quickly to meet state renewable portfolio standards (RPS), which say utilities have to offer a certain percentage of their electricity from clean power by a certain date. In addition, Petra Solar says SunWave has a wireless communications system that can connect with utilities’ smart grid rollouts.

Petra Solar has been developing its microinverter solar products over the past couple of years and in 2007 raised $14 million from DFJ Element and BlueRun Ventures and National Technology Enterprises.

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