The DOE will be providing $40 million in funding for 40 projects – 3 of which will help develop tech that will increase the lifespan of solar energy power plants (particuarly around operation under very high temperatures) and enhance energy storage tech. This is inside the DOE’s goal to reach a goal of increasing solar plant lifespan from 30 years to 50 years.
Tigercomm hosted their 5th Cleantech Editors Roundtable video where they brought together six editors from major cleantech news sites (like GreenBiz, Utility Dive, and SPW) to discuss a wide range of topics. They evaluated the hottest topics emerging from the summer, looked at storing heat vs. storing electricity, chatted about solving the transmissions challenge and more.
NREL found that high-renewable operation is possible and cheaper when a mix of energy storage tech is employed. Geographic variation, short and long-duration tech, multiple-day and seasonal capacity, storage-to-storage charging were among some of the factors they discussed.
An alternative to the PPA for decarbonizing the grid is hourly load matching, or 24/7 matching. This is when a buyer attempts to secure enough carbon-free energy to match a particular facility’s load in every hour. A new report argues that this, if tailored to region-specific grid dynamics, could create new markets for emerging tech which would drive grid decarbonization in the long term.
SPW does a nice roundup of energy storage safety codes and standards. They discuss the key info for UL 9540 – Standard for Safety of Energy Storage Systems and Equipment, UL 9540A – Test Method for Evaluating Thermal Runaway Fire Propagation in Battery Energy Storage Systems, and NFPA 855 – Standard for the Installation of Stationary Energy Storage Systems.
A new study shows that consumer actions like adopting res solar, driving EVs and cutting energy use could cut emissions twice as much as utility action alone. This means that the most significant, untapped opportunities for utilities to decarbonize the grid can be found on the demand side around energy efficiency, electrification, and demand flexibility.
SolarEdge now has a res battery – the Energy Bank battery and inverter – the Energy Hub inverter. The DC-coupled battery has 94.5% round-trip efficiency, 9.7 kWh of backup power and can be connected with 8 additional batteries for up to 87 kWh of backup capacity. The inverter offers up to 11.4 kW power and 10.3 kW backup power with 200% DC oversizing.
Aurora has gathered previous resources that can assist you in aligning your team’s work with your tech for optimal delivery and customer satisfaction. They include scaling with APIs, three new tools for design efficiency and effectiveness, super accelerated solar irradiance calculation, and boosting sales with solar design services.
Energy Toolbase (a popular modeling/proposal writing software platform) Prez Reid Wuntke discusses leadership, burnout, transparency and more in this Suncast podcast episode. Wuntke talks about his company and past work – elaborating on ET’s commitment to keeping the big picture in mind by supporting each solar install as part of a high-functioning clean energy portfolio.
Sunnova states that the key step for Congress around supporting solar is to extend the federal ITC. A 10-year, 30% extension of the ITC could be particularly vital given that the Clean Electricity Performance Program encouraging utilities to shift away from fossil fuels will probably be omitted from then budget plan.