Natel Energy announced a $20 million funding round, led by Breakthrough Energy Ventures (BEV) and supported by Chevron Technology Ventures, to build momentum in deploying its flagship product, the Restoration Hydro Turbine (RHT). “As more solar and wind power solutions are deployed, the role of hydropower will become increasingly important due to its inherent reliability, flexibility, and ability to integrate other renewables onto the grid,” said Carmichael Roberts, BEV. “Natel’s Rest [...]

The U.S. Energy Storage Association intends to merge with the American Clean Power Association in a move to spearhead transformative growth for renewable energies. The merger would unify groups representing wind, solar, storage and transmission companies within the membership. “Our Board sees the merger with ACP as a powerful new chapter for our industry and a pathway to achieving 100 GW of new energy storage by 2030,” said Kiran Kumaraswamy, the Vice President of Market Applications a [...]

PowerGen, a developer of on- and off-grid distributed energy said this week that it has secured long term project financing to connect 55,000 people to electricity in rural Nigeria from CrossBoundary Energy Access with construction financing provided by Oikocredit, Triodos Investment Management (Triodos IM) and EDFI ElectriFI (the EU-funded Electrification Financing Initiative). The project is supported by grant funding from the World Bank and the Nigeria Rural Electrification Agency’s Nige [...]

A joint venture owned by utility giant National Grid has secured $150 million in new credit to help grow its renewable energy investment over the coming years. Emerald Energy Venture LLC secured its $150 million portfolio revolving facility structured by SMBC, which is also lead arranger and agent. The portfolio revolver can be expanded to $250 million midway through next year. The new credit will allow National Grid’s EEV to fund construction of solar, battery storage and wind projects [...]

Clearing the current queue backlog is the focus of the Southwest Power Pool (SPP) generator interconnection staff. However, they are missing a key long-term solution to address the root cause of backlog, identifying network upgrade costs for developers. Indeed, renewable energy (RE) developers could check if alternatives to network upgrades exist if these developers have study results in hand. SPP staff should run multiple Definitive Interconnection System Impact Study (DISIS) study cycle mo [...]

Our new report finds that installing rooftop solar panels and community solar systems to serve the equivalent of 30 million American homes would create significant economic benefits — including 1.77 million jobs and $69 billion electricity bill savings over the next five years — while addressing the climate crisis and historic inequities. The report, “The National Impact of 30 Million Solar Homes: A Vision for an Equitable Economic Recovery Built on Climate Protection and Ener [...]

U.S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer M. Granholm today announced the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) goal to reduce the cost of grid-scale, long-duration energy storage (of which pumped storage hydro is the largest source) by 90% within the decade. The second target within DOE’s Energy Earthshot Initiative, “Long Duration Storage Shot” sets goals to accelerate breakthroughs that store clean electricity to make it available anytime, anywhere and support more abundant, affordable and [...]

Fuel cell technology firm Plug Power and Apex Clean Energy are partnering on a 345-MW wind power purchase agreement and development of a green hydrogen facility driven by the zero-carbon electricity. The 100-percent renewable energy PPA will supply a new hydrogen production plant being co-developed by Plug Power and Apex. Once operational, the hydrogen plant could produce more than 30 metric tons per day of carbon-free, liquid hydrogen—enough to fuel 1,000 heavy duty trucks and twice that m [...]

An international consortium made up of InterContinental Energy, CWP Global and Mirning Green Energy Limited, announced today an integrated green fuels mega project in the South-East of Western Australia. When fully operational, the Western Green Energy Hub (WGEH) could produce up to 50 gigawatts of hybrid wind and solar power over 15,000-square-kilometres in South-East Western Australia, across the Shires of Dundas and the City of Kalgoorlie-Boulder. The region provides an optimal diurnal pro [...]

Last year the number of residential battery systems installed in Australia increased by 20%. The 31,000 battery systems that were installed is a remarkable number, considering Australia entered a recession in September last year for the first time in almost 30 years. This article considers some of the key drivers behind the growing market adoption of small-scale battery storage systems in the Australian market. Reduction in Feed-in Tariffs The rate solar system owners can earn for selling [...]

As solar power proliferates, at a certain point, it’s time to consider adding energy storage to help stabilize the grid. Take California’s duck curve problem as an example. The state has more than 31 GW of installed solar capacity and is ranked number 1 in the nation for solar according to SEIA. But all that solar means that between the hours of about 4-9 PM, as the sun is setting and folks are getting home and cranking up their appliances, the grid becomes strained. That’s why one innovat [...]

Community solar programs are popping up across the U.S. Not only do they allow for the proliferation of more clean energy because new solar arrays can be constructed in just the right locations, but they also allow any utility customer to go solar by subscribing to a project and earning bill credits that lead to savings of around 10% on electric bills. This session will bring together a project owner and a utility to discuss how community solar projects come together today and explore best pr [...]

Most people don’t give the color of their roofs a second thought, but it could be costing their business a lot of money.  White or light gray roofs can increase rooftop bifacial PV energy yields by up to 25 percent and increase the return on investment by up to 10 percent, according to new research by Opsun, a bifacial PV racking company. Other companies are improving performance more directly. According to Reuters, a German company called Enerparc improved their bifacial performanc [...]

New York Governor Andrew M. Cuomo this week announced that New York plans to explore the potential role of green hydrogen as part of the state’s comprehensive decarbonization strategy. To support this effort to study green hydrogen and its possible applications, the state is collaborating with the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), joining two hydrogen-focused organizations to inform state decision-making and making $12.5 million in funding available for long duration energy s [...]

Bloomberg reported this week that over 2.66 billion doses of coronavirus vaccines have now been administered across the globe, with the bulk of those doses received in Western nations. Most people reading this will have lined up at their local leisure centre, school or sports club at some point over the last couple of months to get their vaccination without giving much thought to the resources needed to deliver such a large scale programme. The process is actually incredibly energy-depende [...]

The U.S. is taking a multifaceted approach to addressing forced labor allegations against Chinese suppliers of silicon and polysilicon. This article assess the impacts for the solar panel supply chain On June 24, 2021, the Biden administration took several steps to respond to allegations of forced labor and human rights abuses against Uyghurs and other minority groups in China. These measures included the targeting of certain Chinese suppliers of silicon and polysilicon. Related: US govern [...]

Last week Mortenson said it has started work at Terra-Gen’s 60-MW Oasis Wind project located in Mojave, California. The work involves the repowering of a project first operational in 2004. Mortenson will replace sixty 1-MW turbines with seventeen state-of-the-art, 3-MW class turbines. The repowered project will consist of six Vestas V112-3.45 MW turbines with 112-meter rotors at a 94-meter hub height, and eleven V136-3.6 MW turbines with 136-meter rotors at an 82-meter hub height. All acces [...]

By Archie Robb Over the past decade or so, the dominant trend has been the retirement of coal plants and the steady advance of renewable sources of generation. The next wave appears to be the phasing out as many natural gas-fired facilities as is feasible as more wind and solar resources are deployed. But there has been an unintended consequence in this headlong rush to displace rotating generation assets – grid instability. The steam turbines and gas turbines of power coal plants, combi [...]

Hydro-Québec ranked first in the 2021 Best 50 Corporate Citizens in Canada released by Corporate Knights magazine. This annual ranking of the organization that promotes responsible business practices is based on data in the public domain concerning the governance of companies, as well as their social and environmental performance. According to a press release, Hydro-Québec’s ranking reflects a well-established entrepreneurial culture, which puts environmental, social and economic i [...]

New rules give developers a longer window during which to complete projects in order to qualify for tax credits on projects. On Tuesday, the Treasury Department and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) issued guidance that extends safe harbor provisions for renewable energy projects in order to address impacts from the COVID pandemic.  The revisions, which are retroactive, do the following: Extends the placed-in-service safe harbor to six years for projects that began const [...]

The Mayor of Rockford, Ill., this week joined community solar provider Nexamp and ComEd to launch Give-A-Ray, a new 15-year program to provide solar energy benefits and savings to low and moderate income customers in Rockford and the surrounding area for free. With the help of local support services, including the Rockford Housing Authority, outreach to potential participants is underway. “Rockford places a high priority on using more renewable energy to generate electricity and on making s [...]

Today, Summit Ridge Energy (SRE) announced that it has entered into a joint venture with Osaka Gas USA Corporation (OGUSA), a subsidiary of Osaka Gas Co., Ltd., to construct, own and operate over 120 MW of community solar projects throughout the state of Maine.   Once operational, the portfolio of 20+ distributed solar farms will generate enough clean energy to provide approximately 11,000 residential and commercial customers with monthly utility saving [...]

Oracle is giving itself 4 years to be 100% powered by renewable energy while Amazon claims to be world’s largest buyer of renewable energy This week two large American companies made big claims about their use of renewable energy. Oracle pledged to power its global operations, both its facilities and its cloud, with 100% renewable energy by 2025. Amazon announced several new projects that make it the top corporate buyer of renewable energy in the United States, it said. Oracle Or [...]

On June 24, the U.S. government took action against forced labor in Xinjiang, China. As a result, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) have issued a Withhold Release Order (WRO) on silica-based products made by Hoshine Silicon Industry Co., Ltd., a company located in Xinjiang, and its subsidiaries. Personnel at all U.S. ports of entry will detain all shipments that contain polysilicon that was manufactured in Xinjiang, China. Polysilicon is a key ingredient in solar panels. In additio [...]