Morning Brief: Oil-rich Norway finds carbon capture too expensive, House’s $1.5T infrastructure bill packed with pro-solar provisions

Also in the brief: largest operational battery in the U.S., more futile carbon capture and more landfill solar

June 26, 2020 Eric Wesoff

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House’s $1.5 trillion infrastructure bill is packed with pro-solar, pro-storage provisions: In addition to making the stand-alone energy storage investment tax credit (ITC) eligible and extending a 30% solar ITC through 2025, the House bill creates a direct pay mechanism that can be used in lieu of the ITC. Source: pv magazine USA

Power plant developers LS Power Group and Terra-Gen added two big new lithium-ion battery stations to the California ISO’s expanding portfolio of electrochemical energy storage in June, marking the start of a potential sevenfold jump in battery resources on the state’s primary power system in 2020. That includes the initial 62.5-MW phase of LS Power’s planned 250-MW Gateway Energy Storage Project. Located next to the natural gas-fired Otay Mesa Generating Project in San Diego County near the U.S.-Mexico border, LS Power’s Gateway system is now the largest operational battery storage facility in the United States, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence data. If all of the energy storage projects seeking 2020 interconnection remain on track, the grid operator expects to have roughly 923 MW of battery storage online by the end of 2020. Source: S&P Global

Norway warned $2.6 billion carbon capture plan may be too costly: A huge proposal in Norway to capture and store carbon dioxide from fossil fuel emissions may prove to be too expensive, even for a country rich in oil and money. Source: Bloomberg Southern Co. said it is considering another carbon capture project in Kemper County, Miss. — the site of one of the most expensive cancellations of an initiative to create a near carbon-free coal plant. Source: E&E News

CS Energy, an integrated energy firm that designs and builds optimized solar and storage projects completed a 4.5 MW solar project installed with a 3.8 MWh lithium-ion storage system on a landfill cap site located in Amesbury, Massachusetts. The firm’s capabilities and onsite overview enabled the project to meet critical PCUP requirements, including not exceeding the 7-psi ground pressure limit for all activities on the landfill cap. The Amesbury project went live in January and is expected to produce 5,600 MWh of electricity each year. Source: CS Energy

Electriq Power, a developer of intelligent and integrated home energy storage, management, and monitoring solutions, announced that it has enhanced the capabilities of its PowerPod residential battery system. The new features include: AC-coupled stacking, retrofit plus new solar and Fleet management. The PowerPod is modular and expandable, giving installers and homeowners system design flexibility, with up to 20 kW of power and 102 kWh of battery storage. Source: Electriq

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