Bill Gates leads $10M investment in Quidnet’s long-duration geomechanical pumped storage
The year of living durationally — the holy grail of energy storage has always been low-cost and long-duration. Venture investors have started putting their money into novel, extended-duration storage technologies.
Vivint Solar joins EnergyHub in expanding PV and storage demand response programs
Can programs like EnergyHub and National Grid’s battery-powered DR turn utilities into residential solar fans?
Advanced macro grid initiative announced, with funding support from Bill Gates-backed group
Bill Gates and Breakthrough Energy see enhanced transmission as facilitating electrification and grid reliability. Increasing transmission development at the “seams” between regions could save consumers more than $47 billion and return more than $2.50 on every dollar invested.
Solar hosting capacity maps must be accurate to be useful
Solar hosting capacity maps, now required in seven states, show where solar can be added on a distribution circuit without incurring any grid expense—but only if those maps are accurate. California’s experience, says a policy paper, shows that best practice guidelines for validating maps are needed to aid state regulators.
Keeping net energy metering credits ‘clean’ in California means adding relays and meters
It’s during the interconnection review and approval processes that most developers run into the NEM integrity issue with California’s big utilities.
Analyst expects ‘unprecedented’ consolidation of Chinese solar industry
Private PV manufacturers and project developers alike are set to be squeezed out by the state in the world’s biggest solar market, according to Frank Haugwitz, who has compiled a wide-ranging report as preparations for the next five-year plan gather pace.
Clipsal solar looks to deliver the world’s most customizable energy management platform
Developed to meet the needs of a rapidly-growing distributed energy market and backed by some of the biggest names in the Australian market, the team at Clipsal Solar has developed a platform they say can work with any combination of hardware and resources.
90% clean power by 2035 is ‘challenging but feasible’
“90% by 2035 is the sweet spot” for a pathway that uses existing technology, allows “judicious use” of existing generation assets, and “achieves near-complete decarbonization in a realistic timeframe,” said study co-author Nikit Abhyankar of UC Berkeley. The resulting lower wholesale cost of electricity by 2035 “was a surprise for us.”
Record low solar PPAs in the Southwest mean ‘carbon capture is not going to save coal plants’
Recently approved solar PPAs could spell trouble for proponents of retrofitting the state’s San Juan Generating Station to capture the coal-fired plant’s carbon dioxide emissions.
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.
