Renewable Energy Focus
The Desert Sun - Mar 27 With the costs of solar continuing to fall, and wind still one of the cheapest sources of new electricity around, California should have no problem hitting its 50 percent clean energy target by 2030. But getting to 100 percent — the goal floated by Senate leader Kevin de León in a bill last month — would be more complicated. That's because solar panels only generate electricity when the sun shines, which doesn't always match up with when people use energy. As a result, officials have increasingly been forced to shut down solar farms in the middle of the day, when they're producing more energy than people need. At the same time, solar falls short in the evening. The sun goes down just as electricity demand goes up, forcing the state to fire up polluting, gas-fired power plants. A new bill in the state Legislature could help solve those problems. Introduced by Assemblymember Kevin Mullin, D-San Mateo, the bill would create a "clean peak energy standard" for California utilities. By 2029, utilities like Southern California Edison, PG&E, and SDG&E would be required to get 40 percent of their energy from clean sources during "peak demand" periods — the handful of hours each day when homes and businesses use the most energy — on at least 15 days each month.
Energy Storage - Mar 28 Macquarie Capital, the investing and advisory arm of global finance corporation Macquarie Group, has closed a non-recourse project financing deal for an undisclosed sum with CIT Energy Finance, a division of CIT Bank. CIT Energy Finance, backed by the $64 billion bank group, says it invests in “all asset classes across the energy sector." The deal is paying for the deployment of 50 megawatts of energy storage behind-the-meter in grid-constrained locations of California investor-owned utility Southern California Edison’s service area in the West Los Angeles Basin. The projects will use Tesla’s commercial, industrial, and utility-scale solution, Powerpack 2. Macquarie acquired these projects from Advanced Microgrid Solutions (AMS) in August last year, and is now developing them jointly with AMS.
Greentech Media - Mar 29 President Trump made good on a campaign promise this week to start rolling back President Obama’s climate change policies and take steps to reboot the coal industry. The “Energy Independence” executive order triggers a review of the Clean Power Plan, as well as methane emissions rules. Among other things, it also lifts a freeze on federal coal leasing. But despite Trump’s pledge to revive coal, the industry experts who manage power plants don’t see the coal sector making a comeback. A new survey of utility executives found that just 4 percent think coal use will increase moderately or significantly in their utility’s power mix over the next decade, while 27 percent said coal use would decrease moderately and 52 percent said it would decrease significantly. A majority of respondents in each region also expect grid-scale energy storage, wind, and natural gas to play a greater role in their power mix going forward.
Bloomberg - Mar 28 Energy-storage systems are spreading across the U.S. as states encourage deployments to help integrate an increasing amount of solar and wind power into electric grids. There are now 21 states with at least 20 megawatts each of storage projects in service, under construction, or proposed, according to a report Tuesday from GTM Research. Ten of those states have development pipelines exceeding 100 megawatts. Rapidly falling battery prices along with increasing support from regulators has spurred the growth. Oregon, Massachusetts, and New York City have followed in the footsteps of California by mandating deployments of batteries, and Utah’s legislature last year passed a bill that lets utilities invest in storage projects.
Construction Dive - Mar 29 Electric car maker Tesla announced last week that it will begin taking orders for its solar roof panels in April. The tiles will be made of textured glass by Panasonic Corp. and are expected to look identical to ordinary shingles that enable light to pass through them onto a flat photovoltaic cell, according to Bloomberg. Musk has said the rooftop solar cells will cost less to produce and install than traditional roofing materials, even before the estimated savings from the electricity saved by using the units.
St. Louis Business Journal - Mar 29 Anheuser-Busch InBev has committed to securing 100 percent of the purchased electricity used in its brewing operations from renewable sources by 2025. The brewery, which announced the commitment Tuesday, said the move will reduce its operational carbon footprint by 30 percent. A-B InBev expects to secure 75 to 85 percent of its electricity through direct power purchasing agreements, with the remaining 15 to 25 percent coming from on-site technologies such as solar panels. Currently, more than 13 percent of its total energy is generated by renewable resources, such as the solar panels in use at the company’s St. Louis corporate offices as well as at its Eagle Packaging plant in Missouri, its Bronx distributorship, and its breweries in Los Angeles; Newark, New Jersey; Baldwinsville, New York; Fairfield, California; and Cartersville, Georgia.
Los Angeles Business Journal - Mar 28 L.A.’s solar power industry grew by 11 percent in 2016 over 2015, but dropped to second place for the most solar-related jobs in the nation’s metropolitan areas, according to a report issued Tuesday by the Solar Foundation, a Washington D.C. nonprofit dedicated to promoting the solar power industry. The L.A. metro area’s 11 percent growth rate paled in comparison to the Bay Area, which added more than 10,000 solar power industry jobs over the past year for a growth rate of 67 percent. With a new total of 26,056 jobs, the Bay Area leapfrogged L.A. to take over the No. 1 spot.
PV-Tech - Mar 31 PV solar systems provider First Solar announced Thursday that it has completed the sale of the cash equity interests in the 250-megawatt Moapa Southern Paiute Solar Project in Nevada to private asset manager Capital Dynamics. Less than two weeks ago, First Solar brought the solar plant online — with the project standing as the first ever utility-scale solar installation on tribal land in the U.S. The project has a 25-year PPA with the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power and can generate enough clean energy to power around 111,000 homes in Los Angeles.
