Texas has seen a boom in solar power in recent years, and experts say that’s helped the state grid weather an intense June heat wave.

Solar power proves its worth as heat wave grips the state

While Texans drag through another punishing heat wave, people have nervously watched the state’s power grid, hoping it will hold up as the triple-digit days wear on. Under the blazing sun, the state has produced significant amounts of electricity from solar panels to help avoid shortfalls.

The heat pushed demand to a new record — topping 81,000 megawatts on Tuesday — but the state’s grid operator has only requested that residents lower their power use one day during the heat wave, when electricity from wind and power plants that use coal, nuclear or natural gas fell short of their past output.

Solar power provided nearly 20% of the Texas grid’s power needs on Tuesday before demand reached a new high.

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Source: The Texas Tribune

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EPA launched a $7B grant competition to increase access to affordable, resilient, and clean solar energy for low-income households.

EPA launches $7B competition to bring low-cost solar energy to more hard-working American families

Today, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) launched a $7 billion grant competition through President Biden’s Investing in America agenda to increase access to affordable, resilient, and clean solar energy for millions of low-income households. The Solar for All competition, which was created by the Inflation Reduction Act’s Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, will award up to 60 grants to states, territories, Tribal governments, municipalities, and nonprofits to create and expand programs that provide financing and technical assistance, such as workforce development, to bring residential solar to low-income and disadvantaged communities. EPA Administrator Michael S. Regan announced the grant competition today with U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders (VT) in Waterbury, Vermont while touring a residential solar project.  

EPA’s Solar for All competition is just the latest way that the Inflation Reduction Act is expanding access to solar for hard-working American families. Solar is the cheapest form of power available, so it helps lower energy costs while creating good-quality jobs, advancing environmental justice, and tackling the climate crisis.

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Source: The White House

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Solar is growing at 33.7% year-on-year and is now at twice the capacity of coal power in China, according to a new report.

China’s solar is now at twice the capacity of its coal power – report

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Today, the China Electricity Council, a state-approved nonprofit national trade association, released its first-quarter report, the “Operational Situation of [the] Electric Power Industry.”

As of the end of March, according to the report, China’s installed power generation capacity was 2.62 billion kilowatts, a year-on-year increase of 9.1%. Every category of fuel – that is, both renewables and fossil fuels – saw year-on-year installed capacity increases.

Overall, the installed generation capacity of non-fossil-fuel energy power generation was 1.33 billion kilowatts, a year-on-year increase of 15.9%, accounting for 50.5% of the total installed capacity, and the proportion increased by 3 percentage points year-on-year.

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Source: electrek

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‘Solar grazing’ around panels is providing a lifeline to the US shepherding sector as clean energy expands.

How sheep keep solar farms out of the shade

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Stung by high fuel costs and a labor squeeze, some clean energy companies are turning to an unlikely ally — flocks of sheep — to keep their solar panels out of the shade.

The nascent practice, known as solar grazing, is so far used on only a tiny sliver of the expansive arrays of panels that are increasingly dotting rural America. But with significant financial benefits to both the renewable energy industry and the struggling mutton sector, more solar sites in the US are expected to start swapping lawnmowers for lambs.

The US solar industry has been growing rapidly: The country is expected to break solar-construction records this year by adding more than 32 gigawatts of capacity, according to a BloombergNEF outlook. That’s enough to power more than 25 million homes. At the same time, there are concerns there won’t be enough cropland to feed a growing world population, especially if acreage is covered by buildings, roads or photovoltaic installations instead.

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Source: Bloomberg

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Agrivoltaics is experiencing increased adoption thanks in part to increased awareness about the associated benefits coming during a time of accelerated farm transitions.

Agrivoltaics hit ‘watershed moment’ as farmland transitions increase

“State governments, solar developers, farmers, and landowners are recognizing, and more importantly seeing first-hand, the multiple potential benefits that are possible with agrivoltaic projects,” Macknick said. “In some areas this is driven by land constraints, in other areas this is driven more by local perceptions of solar development, and in other regions farm economics are a major contributing factor.”

Legislative efforts on the federal level, as well as in states like Massachusetts and Colorado, “could spark further and more rapid change,” he said.

In May, Colorado enacted a law authorizing the state’s Agricultural Drought and Climate Resilience Office to award grants for new or ongoing research on the use of agrivoltaics. Previous bills to fund agrivoltaics in the state were “primarily sponsored” by Democrats, the Colorado Sun reported in January, but this bill won key support from Republican Sen. Cleave Simpson, who said he became interested in the practice as a result of economic problems he experienced while running his family’s 800-acre alfalfa farm.

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Source: Utility Dive

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San Diego Community Power has agreed to sign contracts for a pair of solar and battery storage projects — one in NV & one in Imperial County.

San Diego Community Power green-lights a pair of renewable power projects

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San Diego Community Power, the community energy program that has enrolled about 900,000 accounts in the region, has approved a pair of solar-plus-storage projects to boost the amount of renewable power it delivers to customers in the next two years.

The first is a 20-year deal with the Yellow Pine III project in Clark County, Nevada, that will deliver 35 megawatts of solar power capacity and 35 megawatts/140 megawatt-hours of lithium-ion battery storage capacity to the electric grid. The storage portion of the contract plans to be operational by June 2025, with the solar portion in place by October 2025.

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Source: The San Diego Union-Tribune

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As clean energy production ramps up, transmission reform is becoming a major priority for the renewables industry.

Grassroots buy-in will be vital to transmission buildout, say clean energy experts

As clean energy production ramps up, transmission reform is becoming a major priority for the renewables industry. Tens of thousands of megawatts of wind and solar capacity are in the interconnection queue, waiting to be able to connect to the grid.

The debt ceiling agreement reached by Congress and the White House earlier this month contained reforms to permitting, but not transmission. It instead requires the North American Electric Reliability Corp., or NERC, to study interregional transmission capacity needs between regions over 18 months.

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Source: Utility Dive

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South America’s largest floating solar farm is now online, and it’s paired with hydropower, which boosts energy reliability and production.

South America’s largest floating solar farm is now paired with hydropower

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South America’s largest floating solar farm is now online, and it’s paired with hydropower, which boosts energy reliability and production.

Sausalito, California-based Noria Energy and partners developed the 1.5 megawatt (MW) floating solar pilot project – the largest of its kind in South America – for independent power producer URRÁ.

The floating solar farm is called Aquasol, and it’s installed at the 340 MW Urrá hydropower plant in the Sinú River basin in Córdoba, Colombia.

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Source: electrek

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Solar and wind power hit a new record this year, generating more U.S. power than coal for the first five months of the year.

Solar and wind generated more electricity than coal for record 5 months

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Solar and wind power hit a new record this year, generating more U.S. power than coal for the first five months of the year, according to preliminary data from the Energy Information Administration.

It’s the first time on record that wind and solar have out-produced coal for five months, according to industry publication, E&E News, which first calculated the figures.

Official EIA data, which is released with a lag, shows wind and solar energy out-producing coal for January, February and March, while real-time figures “indicate that same trend continued in April and May,” EIA spokesperson Chris Higginbotham said in an email.

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Source: CBS News

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Researchers from University of Cambridge developed a solar-powered reactor that converts captured CO2 & plastic waste into sustainable fuels.

Solar-powered reactor converts CO2 and plastic waste into sustainable fuels

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Researchers have demonstrated how carbon dioxide can be captured from industrial processes – or even directly from the air – and transformed into clean, sustainable fuels using just the energy from the Sun.

The researchers, from the University of Cambridge, developed a solar-powered reactor that converts captured CO2 and plastic waste into sustainable fuels and other valuable chemical products. In tests, CO2 was converted into syngas, a key building block for sustainable liquid fuels, and plastic bottles were converted into glycolic acid, which is widely used in the cosmetics industry.

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Source: Sci Tech Daily

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