Solar and agriculture are beginning to converge as farmers learn renewable energy can make farming more efficient.

Why solar & farming is a match made in heaven

A plot of land can do a number of things. It can grow trees and crops. It can support a home, an office tower, or a factory. It can be a parking lot. But it can’t do all those things at the same time. Choices have to be made. It’s no use to erect the world’s tallest apartment building if there is not enough food for the people who will live there. It is no use to put solar panels everywhere if they don’t leave space available for crops or dwellings.

Multi-tasking is a word that has crept into our vocabularies lately. Computers can have a bunch of tabs open at the same time and still be able to do online chats. As the world becomes more densely populated, land will need to multi-task as well. Here are some examples of how that can work.

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Source: Clean Technica

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Displayed on a pedestal on the campus of Unity College is a solar panel that Jimmy Carter installed on the White House on June 20, 1979.

As solar power booms in the US, a key part of its history lies at Unity College

Displayed on a pedestal on the campus of Unity College in Waldo County, there’s a glass-covered gray rectangle, about the size of a picnic table. Unity College natural resources professor Doug Fox says it’s an important part of history.

“This is a solar panel that Jimmy Carter installed on the White House,” Fox says. “Unity College has a couple of dozen of these and this is the one that we have on display here.”

Solar power is experiencing an unprecedented boom in the U.S. This relic of its origins, not far from what will be the largest solar project in Maine, illustrates how American solar energy has evolved by fits and starts, over decades.

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Source: Maine Public

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Wood Mackenzie found that reaching 100% renewable electricity would require adding 200,000 miles of high-voltage transmission lines

How states are reimagining power grids to take advantage of wind and solar

For years, many states have set ambitious goals and incentives to promote renewable electricity projects. Now, more of those states are turning their attention to the transmission lines, substations, and transformers needed to get that electricity from wind farms and solar plants into homes and businesses.

Congress has invested billions in boosting clean energy. But the money won’t lower emissions as much as predicted without “more than doubling” the last decade’s rate of grid expansion, Princeton University researchers noted last year. That expansion is needed to support the new renewable energy projects coming online, as well as the growing number of electric vehicles, heat pumps, and other technologies requiring electricity.

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Source: Fast Company

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Peninsula Clean Energy says it can deliver affordable clean energy to its Bay Area territory nearly every hour of the year by 2025.

24/7 carbon-free energy is about to become a reality in California

Five years ago, California community energy provider Peninsula Clean Energy decided that buying enough clean energy to match its average annual electricity demand wasn’t enough. Instead, it wanted to deliver clean energy to its customers during every hour of every day — what it calls ​“24/7 carbon-free energy.” And last week, Peninsula explained how it plans to get there.

The goal of 24/7 carbon-free electricity is also being pursued by corporate giants Google and Microsoft, cities including Los Angeles and Des Moines, Iowa, and a growing number of other companies and communities across the world. But Peninsula Clean Energy appears to be the first energy provider to set a target of getting there by 2025, well ahead of other zero-carbon mandates at the utility or state level.

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Source: Canary Media

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Solar panels over parking lots produce clean electricity without wasting space and provide shade in sunny, warm weather for drivers.

Why not cover ugly parking lots with solar panels?

A BACKLASH AGAINST industrial-size solar farms is brewing. At least 75 big solar projects were vetoed across the United States last year, compared to 19 in 2021. And between January 2021 and July 2022, planning permission for 23 new solar farms was rejected across England, Wales, and Scotland, when only four projects were refused between 2017 and 2020—representing the highest rejection rate in five years. Decarbonization, to some extent, risks getting bogged down by planning objections. People very often don’t want solar farms in their backyard.

France, though, appears to have a solution: transforming its parking lots into solar farms nationwide. The French Senate has approved a bill requiring new and existing lots with more than 80 spaces to be at least half covered with canopies of solar panels that sit over the parking spaces. Assuming the bill comes into effect later this year, parking lots with more than 400 spaces must be compliant by 2026; smaller ones with 80 to 400 spaces will be given until 2028.

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Source: WIRED

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Newly developed software allows the management of thousands of residential batteries, which, if used collectively, become a virtual power plant.

Residential batteries linked over internet could soon help California’s electrical grid

It has been less than a year since Andrea Divis moved back to San Diego County into a two-story Oceanside home.

“It’s comfortable and cozy, and really, the backyard is kind of like my oasis,” Divis said.

She deals with a chronic medical condition that does not allow her to go without air conditioning or refrigeration for her medicines.

“When I was in Oregon, I was paying, I don’t know, $150 a month for my utilities,” Divis said. “And now I come here, and on the lowest month, it was $200, and I got upwards of $450, $480.”

Divis saw solar as a solution. She added power-generating panels to her roof, and just inside her garage, there is a new Sonnen battery.

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Source: kpbs

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The severe electricity shortages due to deep energy crisis have forced a Syrian dentist to use solar power to maintain his clinic in Damascus.

Amidst energy crisis, Syrians turn to solar energy

Severe electricity shortages have forced Ibrahim al-Akzam, a Syrian dentist, to use solar power to maintain his Damascus clinic. This is a reflection on the country’s deep energy crisis after 11 years of war.

This has protected Akzam from the continual blackouts caused by the state grid’s crumbling infrastructure and the rising costs of diesel for a private generator.

The 41-year-old said that moving to alternative energy was the best solution right now. He spent almost $7,000 on the installation.

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Source: Solar Quarter

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In the US, if you are on iOS 16, you can now set your phone to charge on clean, green energy as much as possible.

How to make your iPhone charge on clean energy

Writing about Apple’s deep decarbonization efforts recently, I discovered something about my iPhone that I didn’t realize. In the US, if you are on iOS 16, you can now set your phone to charge on clean, green energy as much as possible.

What does that mean? If you go to “Battery Health & Charging” and turn on “Clean Energy Charging,” Apple tries to track your charging patterns and then, when plugged in, only actually charge your phone when relatively low-carbon-emission electricity is being produced (whether than be solar energy, wind energy, or nuclear energy). This new option or feature is part of Apple’s new partnership with the CoolClimate Network at the University of California–Berkeley.

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Source: Clean Technica

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California’s new solar policy leaves low-income families behind. Community energy providers, nonprofits and vendors have come up with some creative workarounds.

These California programs steer solar+batteries to low-income households

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Rooftop solar and home batteries are already too expensive for most low-income California residents. Last week’s decision by the California Public Utilities Commission to radically alter the state’s net-metering policy will put them even further out of reach.

Last week Canary Media explained how California’s new rooftop-solar policy will dramatically reduce the moneymaking potential of stand-alone rooftop solar and incentivize customers to install batteries that can store and shift their output to the grid when it’s most needed. We also explored how solar and battery vendors, utilities, community energy providers and state agencies are looking for ways to expand access to these technologies for low-income and disadvantaged communities.

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Source: Canary Media

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Eichten’s solar purchase 10yrs ago was similarly the start of something big. Neighbors and clean energy companies began to see opportunities.

One farmer set off a solar energy boom in rural Minnesota; 10 years later, here’s how it worked out

It sounded absurd, the idea of spending a large sum of money to install solar panels in a Minnesota farm field that is covered in snow for much of the year.

But Ed Eichten’s family had gotten used to his wild ideas that turned out to work, like raising bison to sell or turning a small cheese-making business into a retail operation.

His solar purchase 10 years ago was similarly the start of something big. Neighbors and clean energy companies began to see opportunities that led to Chisago County, Minnesota, becoming a hub for solar power development, with dozens of projects including the largest one in the state, North Star Solar.

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Source: Inside Climate News

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