NextEnergy buys big in North Carolina, project proposals flood Hawaii: pvMB 11/21/19

NextEnergy Capital acquires 99% North Carolina of a Recurrent project – “Recurrent Energy has closed the sale of 99 percent of the partnership that owns the 74.8 MWac solar photovoltaic project, located in Cabarrus County, North Carolina, to NextEnergy Capital. NextEnergy Capital indirectly acquired 99 percent of the interests through NextPower III, its third institutional solar fund.  In May 2018, Recurrent Energy secured the debt and tax equity financing for the project from Prudential Capital Group and U.S. Bancorp Community Development Corporation. The North Carolina project, which reached commercial operation at the end of September 2018, is one of the largest operating solar projects in North Carolina.  The project has a power purchase agreement with Duke Energy Carolinas and generates enough clean solar power to meet the energy needs of approximately 12,000 homes.” Source: Canadian Solar 

California replaces gas with battery storage! Read about it here: 

BREAKING: @californiapuc issues proposed decision approving 100 MW/400 MWh storage project outside @CityofOxnard to meet reliability need instead of rejected Puente gas plant. #PassOnGas https://t.co/ILvkIwPkZU

— Matt Vespa (@missionvespa) November 15, 2019

You, too can learn how to model the U.S. grid, starting with a webinar – The National Renewable Energy Laboratory’s (NREL’s) model of the U.S. electric grid, called ReEDS, is now free to access and use.  An introductory webinar recording is now available on the NREL YouTube channel, and the webinar slides are available here.  NREL plans to offer a ReEDS User Group Meeting in summer 2020.  To get on the list for a notice of that meeting, and notices when new user guides, training videos, or documentation become available, you may sign up for the ReEDS mailing list by sending a request to ReEDS.Inquiries@nrel.gov.

 Hawaiin Electric Company receives dozens of proposals after RFP – “Hawaiian Electric Companies recently said that they received more than 75 proposals in response to a call for more renewable energy resources. The proposals are for projects on Oahu, Maui, and Hawaii Island. The total includes proposals on the three islands for grid services from customer-sited resources like private rooftop solar. The proposals include bids to use solar, wind, energy storage, and several other technologies, and the submissions include more than 200 variations on how the resources could be configured. Hawaiian Electric’s renewable acquisitions team continues to review the exact number, size, and type of proposed projects. The companies issued the request for proposals in August, seeking approximately 900 megawatts of new renewables or renewables paired with storage, as well as 210 MW of grid services. The companies plan to name the final award groups in May 2020. Pending negotiations and final approvals by the Public Utilities Commission, the first projects would begin operation in 2022. Requests for proposals for Molokai and Lanai are expected to be issued later this year, with proposals due in early 2020.” Source: Daily Energy Insider

Iowa farmer uses solar power to make hydrogen, then ammonia fertilizer – Retired engineer Jay Schmuecker, formerly with CalTech’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, designed and built the demonstration system with 8 kW of PV on dual-axis trackers; a hydrogen electrolyzer in a building vented for safety; pumps to compress the hydrogen for storage in high-pressure tanks; a nitrogen generator needed to make ammonia (which is NH3); an ammonia reactor; high-pressure storage tanks; and a retrofitted tractor whose internal combustion engine can run on either hydrogen or a mixture of hydrogen and ammonia gas.  Applying ammonia fertilizer, said Schmuecker, doubles the yield of corn per acre. At full scale (10 times demonstration scale), the system could serve a 320-acre farm. This labor of love, said Schmuecker, absorbed more than $2 million of his retirement savings, mostly due to custom manufacturing.  He has created a nonprofit to fund further improvements. Source: IEEE Spectrum magazine

Jacksonville Electric Authority invests in Sungrow storage – “Sungrow today announced that its first 1500Vdc DC-Coupled PV plus energy storage system has connected to the 9MW/3.836MWh utility-scale storage project, which developed by 174 Power Global under JEA’s SolarSmart initiative in Jacksonville, Florida. The power will be purchased by Jacksonville Electric Authority (JEA) to serve its SolarSmart program which offers customers a way to benefit from solar energy without installing solar panels on their roofs. For the project, it integrated Sungrow’s all-inclusive solar energy solution consisting of 1500Vdc PV turnkey station SG2500U and all-in-one DC-DC Energy Storage System (ESS) solution ST1918KWH-D750HV. The containerized 1500Vdc 2.5MW solution features high efficiency and high DC/AC ratio of 1.5, ensuring an optimized LCOE. The DC-coupled system typically has lower interconnection costs than AC-coupled system, as it relies on only one single point of interconnection. Meanwhile, the energy is captured and stored at the DC level, preventing a loss in efficiency.” Source: Sungrow