Panasonic and Span team up for home battery backup and energy management
Span’s ambition is to “transform the electrical panel into an intelligent gateway” and help expand the adoption of solar, EVs and storage like Panasonic’s residential battery.
Nikola bets on electric and hydrogen trucks for long-haul economic recovery, goes public via SPAC
Bucking a volatile market, the company’s NASDAQ debut signals growing auto industry confidence in clean transport as engine for post-Covid economic recovery
Morning brief: Bifacial solar panels stay tariff-free, Musk’s $775M payout, G.E. sells lighting business
Also in the brief: Solar-plus-storage microgrid project at the San Diego Blood Bank.
Used EV batteries for large-scale solar energy storage
MIT scientists have suggested that used electric vehicle batteries could offer a more viable business case than purpose-built systems for the storage of grid-scale solar power in California. Such ‘second life’ EV batteries, may cost only 60% of their original purchase price to deploy and can be effectively aggregated for industrial scale storage even if they have declined to 80% of their original capacity.
Morning Brief: Six Ohio school districts go solar with no upfront cost, two big solar projects are coming to capped landfill sites in New York
Also in the brief: the California Solar and Storage Association has released an eight-point economic stimulus plan of action, PG&E’s restructuring will likely happen later this month, a new solar car, Mark Menezes’ nomination to become Deputy U.S. Energy Secretary and more.
Morning Brief: the North Carolina solar industry has weathered Covid well, Vistra announces battery expansion
Also in the brief: Consumers Energy is providing 100,000 Google Nest thermostats to Michigan households, Tesla has quietly made Model 3 ready for bidirectional charging, SolSmart adds new partners.
The future of cars is electric – but how soon is this future?
According to a new report by Bloomberg New Energy Finance, 58% of global passenger vehicle sales in 2040 will come from electric vehicles, yet they will make up less than 33% of all cars on the road.
Morning Brief: Trump administration slaps retroactive rent bills on solar, wind on federal lands
Also in the brief: Lightyear gets a key supplier, a nine-project network in New York, the 25th National Solar Tour of Homes and more.
Overbuilding solar at up to 4 times peak load yields a least-cost all-renewables grid
The global energy firm Wartsila found a least-cost renewables mix for the U.S. that involves overbuilding renewable capacity, but requires no seasonal storage, and needs only four to ten days of multi-day storage capacity. The analysis modeled meeting current uses of electricity, based on projected technology costs for 2030.
Span wins $10.2 million to modernize the home electrical panel, ease shift to solar, storage and EVs
“The standard electrical panel has not seen major innovation for nearly a century.”
