Nation’s last new coal plant proposal denied in Georgia: The Georgia Environmental Protection Division has denied a request for additional time to begin construction on the proposed Plant Washington, signaling the end of the troubled 12-year-old project. The now defunct consortium of electric membership corporations behind the project had 30 days to appeal the decision which expired last week. Plant Washington represented the last proposed new coal power plant project in the U.S. The 850 MW plant would have cost more than $2 billion dollars to construct. Source: Sierra Club
Audubon looking at how to build environmentally friendly energy projects without harming wildlife: If you’re working on new energy construction projects that are friendlier to the environment, how do you know where to build them so they won’t have a harmful impact on wildlife? That is a question that Sarah Haggerty and the Maine Audubon Society have been trying to answer. Besides being a conservation biologist, Haggerty also specializes in working with data mapping using Geographic Information Systems. Source: Bangor Daily News
DSIRE adds energy storage incentives and targets to database: The N.C. Clean Energy Technology Center (NCCETC) announced the addition of energy storage incentives and state procurement targets to the Database of State Incentives for Renewables and Efficiency (DSIRE). DSIRE is a comprehensive public source for information on clean energy policies and incentives and is managed by NCCETC’s policy team. Currently, seven states have energy storage targets, with five of these being adopted or increased within the last two years. Source: NC Clean Energy Technology Center
California CCA signs agreement for 100-MW battery storage project: Clean Power Alliance, a California community choice aggregator, signed its first energy storage agreement with a 100-MW/400 MWh standalone lithium-ion battery storage project — the largest energy storage agreement for a CCA in California and one of the largest in the entire state. The project, located in the City of Lancaster, within Los Angeles County, will be owned and operated by sPower, an independent power producer. Source: American Public Power Association
And: Invite a llama or goat to your next Zoom meeting or video call for under $100, Business Insider
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“Plant Washington represented the last proposed new coal power plant project in the U.S. The 850 MW plant would have cost more than $2 billion dollars to construct. ”
With economies of scale, one could build one 2GW energy storage facility for right around that $2 billion dollar price tag or several smaller distributed energy storage facilities along the grid to do the same thing. The caveat here is, when was the last time a “fueled” generation construction came in on time and at budget? The Kemper plant was $7.5 billion dollars, $4 billion over budget and didn’t work properly, it had to be retrofitted with natural gas fired boilers to work. The Vogtle nuclear plant was supposed to be a $10 billion dollar project, well over the construction timeline by years and around $16 billion over the original budget.
The thing about distributed energy storage facilities, is one has options of where the energy storage will be constructed. After construction and operation one might also find, it would be profitable to expand the project for more energy storage capacity or build two, three energy storage facilities in different areas to help remediate weak grid connections into or out of those areas. With fueled generation sites, if you don’t need the generation you still have to burn fuel to keep the site in spinning reserve just in case the grid demand increases.