California

Also in the brief: IREC on energy storage interconnection, Wunder Capital and partners to invest more than $100 million in U.S. commercial solar, Photosol buying land rights near coal plants with eye toward transmission, and NREL on recycling solar panels.

Also in the brief: nearly 1 MW of solar has been installed on the roof of a 300,000-square-foot Kroger bakery facility, a big-rig driver installing solar on his truck, camouflage for solar panels and more.

When Covid-19 hit his small solar engineering business, CEO Methode Maniraguha said, no furloughs or layoffs — we’ll pivot.

The startup is building a battery using Prussian blue analogue electrodes and a sodium-ion electrolyte. Investors include ABB Technology Ventures, NanoDimension Capital, Volta Energy Technologies, Chevron, Khosla Ventures, and Prelude Ventures.

Solar workforce development can help win independence from systemic racism

Industry participants noted the significance of a real-time pricing project on a single distribution circuit in California. State officials are evaluating real-time pricing as a means to help integrate more solar and wind power on the grid.

Also in the brief: Project development galore from EDF, Pine Gate, Silver Creek, Idemitsu, and Origis Energy.

Also in the brief, SunPower provides a Maxeon update, Solar Support, DEPCOM Power and Power Factor partner on disaster recovery, KB home is the first builder to offer OneRoof and more.

This investment comes on top of the $100 million invested in 2018. Venture capital and corporate funding of new energy technologies continues despite — or perhaps because of — the pandemic.

The Bureau of Land Management “has ignored most possibilities” for utility-scale solar “on its vast land holdings across the solar-rich Southwest,” says a paper. Renewable energy development accounts for less than 1% of economic activity on BLM lands, while oil and gas account for 70%, according to BLM data.