Sunrise brief: North Carolina carbon plan favors gas over solar-plus-storage
Also on the rise: New electrolyzer to split saltwater into hydrogen. Solar Alliance completes 687 kW distributed generation projects in New York. And more.
New electrolyzer to split saltwater into hydrogen
Scientists in China have developed a new way to split seawater into hydrogen without using a separate desalination process.
Perovskite challenges addressed with new manufacturing process
NREL researchers develop an approach that produces efficient and stable perovskite solar.
Utility-scale solar developers went bigger and bolder in 2022
In 2022, as supply chain challenges persisted, utility solar projects in development grew in size and energy storage is connected to half of them.
California utility to deploy 20 MWh storage and 10 MW rooftop solar VPP system
SMUD’s My Energy Optimizer Partner+ program will be able to scale up to 54 MWh / 27 MW storage and solar capacity over time.
Researchers see aqueous batteries as safe, reliable and affordable alternatives to lithium ion
A pair of University of Houston professors launched start-up LiBeyond to refine aqueous battery architecture for use in EV and storage applications.
Sunrise brief: 2022–A year of interconnection queue logjams
Also on the rise: Most-read news stories of 2022. White House releases IRA program guidebook. And more.
A year of solar industry proposals to clear interconnection queue logjams
Industry participants proposed many solutions this year to speed interconnection studies. Although federal regulators included key solutions in a proposed rule, for now the logjams and cost allocation problems continue.
Testing prairie and pollinator agrivoltaics at a former nuclear power site
The EPRI and SMUD project team will create a pollinator habitat under a 160 MW utility-scale solar project and measure changes in energy, soil carbon and management costs at the site.
Lowering grid costs with voltage support from PV inverters at night
Researchers have proposed the use of solar inverters in utility-scale solar assets to replace expensive voltage compensators, in order to provide voltage support at night. They said reactive power from PV inverters could be significantly cheaper and suggested the introduction of incentives to convince PV plant owners.
