Rooftop solar plus storage would become the focus of FEMA’s spending to rebuild Puerto Rico’s grid, if a federal court grants the plaintiffs’ requests in a lawsuit, said their lead attorney. Equipping every home in Puerto Rico with 2.7 kW of PV and 12.6 kWh of battery backup is one option recommended by an independent study.

A GridStor VP challenged recent interconnection proposals by three grid operators, and the slow pace of federal regulators, while suggesting a $1 billion gift to grid operators to hire staff, and a digital twin of the nation’s grid to speed interconnection studies.

The Clean Energy States Alliance has published a report giving an overview on modeling a transition to a clean energy grid, while NREL has discussed its free modeling resources in a webinar.

The nonprofit RMI says that $9.7 billion for rural electric cooperatives under the Inflation Reduction Act could leverage 20 GW of solar, wind and storage capacity. The U.S. Department of Agriculture hopes to begin obligating funds by September.

The trade groups proposed interconnection process improvements including more transparency on available and planned transmission, incorporating best practices of other grid operators, and raising the grid management fee to pay for additional staff.

Just 86 GW of fossil capacity awaits interconnection.

The advocacy group NextGen Highways has found that Minnesota voters favor using highways for transmission. With funding from Breakthrough Energy, an initiative of philanthropist Bill Gates, the group plans to launch state and national advocacy coalitions.

Scheduled home charging of EVs reduces the cost for hosting more electric vehicles on a utility’s distribution circuit, according to a national laboratory analysis.

A clean energy plan for TVA sponsored by the Center for Biological Diversity and GridLab could save customers about $200 billion through 2050. It calls for almost four times more solar by 2035 than the maximum amount TVA was considering last year.

The grid operator’s projected 5% “completion rate” for projects in its interconnection queue was questioned by executives at the renewables trade group ACORE and the consultancy GridLab.