Morning Brief: MIT spinoff developing next-gen CSP, The fate of the storage ITC in a split congress
MIT-spinoff 247Solar’s hot-air-driven Brayton Cycle system “operates at atmospheric pressure and requires no steam, molten salts, or heat transfer oils” and stores heat in ceramic pellets instead of molten salts. Also — more confusion for FERC chair Neil Chatterjee
Energy Transition Jobs: First Solar CTO retires, new CEOs at Arevon and Kinestral, plus Voltus, CAISO and NYSERDA
Executive jobs and job moves in solar, storage, cleantech, utilities and energy transition finance.
CSP startup Heliogen scores $39 million in DOE funding for supercritical CO2 project
Startup founded by serial entrepreneur Bill Gross seeks to revitalize CSP with sCO2 technology that lowers costs, water usage, equipment size and plant footprint — and supports industrial applications in which PV may not be able to compete.
Jigar Shah: Policy action and tech deployments needed for power sector innovation
“We’ve averaged 2.4 cents a kilowatt hour for the last six months for PPAs. That’s actually too low. I think we would be fine at 3.4 cents… I don’t think that solar and wind industries would skip a beat [without their tax incentives], and they have other policy mechanisms.”
Morning Brief: Texas bill would tax wind and solar but not natural gas, Covid speeds up peak oil
Also in the brief: 100-MW Mustang Two Whirlaway Solar Farm comes online in California, Arizona utility APS offering $144M to tribes in coal-country, Q CELLS to build a 41-MW floating PV power plant.
An interstate HVDC transmission system could save the US $1 trillion by 2050
Chart of the day: Researchers with Vibrant Clean Energy have created a model that outlines how upgrading the nation’s existing transmission system or building an entirely new one could save the country hundreds of billions of dollars by 2050.
Clean energy funding roundup: batteries under solar panels, carbon capture acquisition, ultracaps
Yotta Energy just won seed funding to install batteries under solar modules — in an architecture analogous to microinverters and optimizers.
Morning Brief: Biden’s energy transition team, BlackRock CEO backs mandatory climate reporting
Also in the brief: The Solar Foundation and the Interstate Renewable Energy Council are merging, Trump administration removes scientist in charge of assessing climate change, Cypress Creek closed a seven-year, $200 million debt financing, and solar-powered butter.
Vanderbilt University, Nashville sign power contracts for 125 MW solar project
The new installation is being developed by Silicon Ranch in Tullahoma and will help Vanderbilt become 100% renewably powered, while bringing the City one-third closer to its RPS goals.
Saul Griffith wants to electrify everything and rewire America
That’s going to take a lot of jobs, which is great news at a time when we have more unemployment in America since the Depression.
