Can programs like EnergyHub and National Grid’s battery-powered DR turn utilities into residential solar fans?
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, 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.
It’s during the interconnection review and approval processes that most developers run into the NEM integrity issue with California’s big utilities.
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.
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% 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.”
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.
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.
Sinn Power of Gauting, Germany combines wave, wind and solar power for the “first floating ocean hybrid platform.”
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