Checking in on Akon lighting Africa
Musician Akon has provided 14 African nations with solar-powered electricity via street lamps and solar panels as part of “Akon Lighting Africa,” a project aimed at providing the continent of Africa with low-cost, sustainable electricity.
Morning Brief: Home Depot and Enel signa power contract, National Grid rebrands its renewable arm
Also in the brief: CollectiveSun raises $4 million for San Diego nonprofits to go solar, EDP has closed on a power contract for 100 MW of solar generated by two projects in Ohio and more.
Fluence acquires Advanced Microgrid Solutions, in bid to help customers monetize storage, renewable assets
“Storage is the first truly digital asset that you can put on the electric network. That means the smarter we are with digital, the better job we can do powering the electric network,” Brett Galura, CTO at Fluence said, declining to disclose the acquisition’s price tag.
Pennsylvania has the opportunity to kickstart community solar — and its economy
Removing the state’s ban on community solar, an initiative which has gained immense bipartisan support, will create thousands of jobs and billions in economic development dollars.
Nobel Prize-winning auction geniuses want to apply their findings to renewables
Stanford professors Paul R. Milgrom and Robert B. Wilson were awarded the 2020 Nobel Prize in economics for developing a new auction theory and new auction formats for goods and services. Their findings were already successfully used in the electricity energy sector and may now meet the challenge on how to better shape clean energy procurements.
IPO update: Solar tracker builder Array Technologies increases number of shares in largest PV IPO of 2020
The reception in the financial community on the eve of the Array Technologies IPO must have been enthusiastic.
SunDensity secures $2.5 million in funding for output-boosting module coating technology
The company has developed a photonic smart coating that it claims will increase the per panel power output by 20%, driving down overall project costs.
Morning Brief: Solar power will be ‘the new king’ by 2030, fuel cell SPAC, advanced reactors get $160M
Even the profitless fuel cell industry can launch a SPAC, cheered on by the current mania for hydrogen technology. Lots more in today’s brief.
Wärtsilä’s 9 MW battery storage system reduces a city’s demand peaks, saves transmission costs
An independent power producer, AEP OnSite Partners, will be the first to deploy Wärtsilä’s new storage product. The 9 MW/15.6 MWh battery system will respond to PJM market signals and reduce the city’s peak demand by about 9 MW, while saving $1 million per year in transmission and capacity costs
America’s highways have significant solar potential
A report just released by the University of Texas at Austin’s Webber Energy Group has tackled how much solar each state could develop along interstate interchange and exit locations and how much this solar could potentially be worth.
