Morning Brief: MIT spinoff developing next-gen CSP, The fate of the storage ITC in a split congress
MIT-spinoff 247Solar’s hot-air-driven Brayton Cycle system “operates at atmospheric pressure and requires no steam, molten salts, or heat transfer oils” and stores heat in ceramic pellets instead of molten salts. Also — more confusion for FERC chair Neil Chatterjee
Energy Transition Jobs: First Solar CTO retires, new CEOs at Arevon and Kinestral, plus Voltus, CAISO and NYSERDA
Executive jobs and job moves in solar, storage, cleantech, utilities and energy transition finance.
Oxford PV’s German perovskite solar module plant backed by Brandenburg state with $10 million
Oxford PV is currently building a manufacturing facility for its silicon perovskite tandem solar cells in Brandenburg an der Havel.
China’s ‘Liquid Sunshine’ project demonstrates PV powered methanol
A pilot project in China was brought online this month, combining 10 MW of PV with electrolyzers for hydrogen production and carbon dioxide hydrogenation to synthesize methanol. The methanol is supplied to the chemical industry, or can be converted back into hydrogen for energy use. And the project’s creators say their next goal is scaling the project up to 10 or even 100 times its current size.
CSP startup Heliogen scores $39 million in DOE funding for supercritical CO2 project
Startup founded by serial entrepreneur Bill Gross seeks to revitalize CSP with sCO2 technology that lowers costs, water usage, equipment size and plant footprint — and supports industrial applications in which PV may not be able to compete.
Jigar Shah: Policy action and tech deployments needed for power sector innovation
“We’ve averaged 2.4 cents a kilowatt hour for the last six months for PPAs. That’s actually too low. I think we would be fine at 3.4 cents… I don’t think that solar and wind industries would skip a beat [without their tax incentives], and they have other policy mechanisms.”
Morning Brief: Texas bill would tax wind and solar but not natural gas, Covid speeds up peak oil
Also in the brief: 100-MW Mustang Two Whirlaway Solar Farm comes online in California, Arizona utility APS offering $144M to tribes in coal-country, Q CELLS to build a 41-MW floating PV power plant.
An interstate HVDC transmission system could save the US $1 trillion by 2050
Chart of the day: Researchers with Vibrant Clean Energy have created a model that outlines how upgrading the nation’s existing transmission system or building an entirely new one could save the country hundreds of billions of dollars by 2050.
Clean energy funding roundup: batteries under solar panels, carbon capture acquisition, ultracaps
Yotta Energy just won seed funding to install batteries under solar modules — in an architecture analogous to microinverters and optimizers.
Morning Brief: Biden’s energy transition team, BlackRock CEO backs mandatory climate reporting
Also in the brief: The Solar Foundation and the Interstate Renewable Energy Council are merging, Trump administration removes scientist in charge of assessing climate change, Cypress Creek closed a seven-year, $200 million debt financing, and solar-powered butter.
