One couple’s starter home in a connected community in California shows how smart energy powered by smart home technology could be the future of affordable, energy-independent living.

How microgrids and smart homes are shaping our energy-independent future

Justine Yotti-Conrique and Michael Conrique just bought their first home together. The pretty, Spanish-style four-bedroom house in the planned community of Shadow Mountain is ideal for the young couple and their border doodle, Ziggy. Shadow Mountain is just one of many similar-looking communities popping up all over this fast-growing slice of Southern California desert, where young professionals like the Conriques are flocking thanks to remote work options and high prices along the coast.

But behind the home’s stucco walls and under its terracotta tiled roof lies a new breed of smart, energy-efficient home. One that’s part of California’s first planned smart, solar-powered residential microgrid community.

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Source: The Verge

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CA regulators say the state is unlikely to run out of electricity this summer because of a big increase in power storage and a wet winter.

California unlikely to run short of electricity this summer thanks to storms, new power sources

California regulators say the state is unlikely to run out of electricity this summer because of a big increase in power storage and a wet winter that filled the state’s reservoirs enough to restart hydroelectric power plants that were dormant during the drought.

The nation’s most populous state normally has more than enough electricity to power the homes and businesses of more than 39 million people. But the electrical grid has trouble when it gets really hot and everyone turns on their air conditioners at the same time.

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Source: AP News

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Lebanon's situation has shown the power of solar and how it can provide a source of clean & reliable electricity when other electricity systems break down.

How solar power is keeping Lebanon’s lights on

Sonia Constantin’s fridge and water boiler are plugged in. Sitting on her sofa with her sister, she appreciates the rediscovered comfort of her home in Beirut, Lebanon’s capital – now fully supplied with electricity.

A Lebanese professor of educational sciences, Constantin decided to invest $6,500 (£5,140) of her savings in nine solar panels and a battery last September. “We are not looking for a life of luxury, we simply want dignity,” she tells me.

The investment allowed her to unsubscribe from the privately owned diesel-powered generators which supply power to most households in Beirut. “I have since resumed a normal life: I can charge my phone whenever I want.”

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Source: BBC

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California needs to think creatively and find ways to put more solar energy in already built-out places, including rooftops and parking lots.

Editorial: California needs a lot more solar. Why not put panels along highways and parking lots?

California is racing to build enough solar panels, wind turbines and battery storage to meet its carbon-cutting mandates and prepare its electrical grid for worsening heat waves and growing energy demand.

But increasing renewable energy by covering far-off, undeveloped areas with solar and wind farms raises its own environmental concerns. That’s why California needs to think creatively and find ways to put more solar energy in already built-out places, including rooftops and parking lots, canals and agricultural fields, so we can slow the climate crisis without harming sensitive land, like the habitat of threatened Joshua trees or Mojave Desert tortoises.

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Source: Los Angeles Times

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The researchers used a statistical model to discover the suite of technologies that would minimize land impacts.

We need an area the size of Texas for wind and solar. Here’s how to halve it.

Imagine that all 462 billion watts of electricity consumed in the United States last year were supplied by a single source of power, rather than a mixture of different technologies. This is how much land each power source would require.

If nuclear power plants generated all U.S. electricity, that would occupy 469 square miles of land, including the land for mining uranium, storing spent fuel and connecting to the electricity grid.

That’s about the size of Madison County, Idaho, population 53,000.

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Source: The Washington Post

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Landfill solar projects not only help cities meet ambitious renewable energy targets, but they can also reduce local power bills and generate revenue for city coffers by leasing out idle land.

US cities turn old landfills into solar parks

Running low on suitable land for solar power projects, officials in the US city of Annapolis homed in on a spacious site they had long written off as useless – the old municipal rubbish dump.

The 25-hectare landfill closed in 1993 and “just sat there as a liability”, said David Jarrell, public works director in Annapolis, the state capital of Maryland.

Today, capped and covered with grass, the plot accommodates more than 50,000 solar energy modules with a total capacity of 18 megawatts (MW).

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Source: RTE

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A one-stop-shop solar solution lowers energy costs and raises cash on hand.

How to increase NOI while reducing capex & carbon emissions with solar

Commercial solar is in the middle of a surge. The total number of solar capacity installed by US businesses more than doubled between 2019 and 2022, according to the Solar Energy Industries Association. Meanwhile, states and localities are readying new penalties on carbon emissions, and energy prices continue to be vulnerable to global disruptions.

But while solar’s time is increasingly “now”, property owners and developers who take a do-it-yourself approach can quickly find themselves adrift amid all the complexities, says Blair Herbert, CEO of Coast Energy. Instead, having a partner who works as a one-stop-shop to navigate the regulatory, installation, financing and operational hurdles can help owners and developers gain real NOI benefits more efficiently.

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Source: GLOBE ST.

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Growing the crop under a canopy of solar panels has given the fruit, citron of Calabria a new lease of life in southern Italy.

These Italian farmers are saving an ancient fruit with solar power

The citron of Calabria in southern Italy had almost died out from extreme weather and lack of economic value. But growing the crop under a canopy of solar panels has given the fruit a new lease of life – with lessons for many climate-stressed crops.

On a warm late winter morning, Antonio Lancellotta, a 35-year-old farmer, shows me around one of his family’s unorthodox 1.8-acre (7,280 square metre) greenhouse in Scalea, southern Italy. Rows of lush citron trees (Citrus medica), heavy with white flowers fill the space. Yet, above the trees, at about 12.5ft (3.8m) above the ground, alternating lines of transparent plastic sheets and photovoltaic panels roofed the field. The Lancellotta family was one of the first in Italy to experiment with “agrivoltaics”, where crops are grown underneath solar panels.

“Look at the quality of this citron,” Lancellotta says, holding a large heart-shaped yellow fruit. “Perfect.”

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Source: BBC

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The flat, open, sunny roofs of medium and large warehouses and distribution centers are perfect locations for solar panels.

Report: The huge solar potential of American warehouses

Solar power is getting cheaper and more efficient all the time, and America should take advantage of untapped solar energy opportunities, including the billions of square feet of warehouse rooftops across the country.

Solar power is the fastest growing form of energy in the United States, thanks in large part to its low and rapidly dropping price and to supportive public policies in some parts of the country. But the United States has the technical potential to produce 78 times as much electricity as it used in 2020 just with solar photovoltaic (PV) energy. To quickly and sustainably achieve a future of 100% renewable energy, America must take advantage of untapped solar energy opportunities.

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Source: Environment America

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The attachment rates of storage systems to distributed solar in CA are projected to increase from around 11% today to over 80% by 2027

Interest in energy storage booms after implementation of NEM 3.0

California’s recent transition to a new framework to compensate customers who generate their own energy and export a portion of it back to the grid is leading to a flurry of interest in battery storage and is expected to significantly increase the number of batteries that are attached to solar systems over the next few years, industry experts say.

Companies like Sunrun and sonnen are introducing products and offerings that include energy storage, intended to derive the most value out of the new framework. Sunrun, for instance, recently launched an offering called Sunrun Shift, that enables customers to store excess rooftop solar energy for use when electricity prices are the highest.

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Source: Utility Dive

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