Expanding community solar will enable people who rent their homes and people without the means to finance such investments.

Biden administration launches plan to bring solar to low-income homes

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The Biden administration unveiled a new effort on Wednesday to hook up low-income residents with solar power — a move that could allow communities that have long been shut out of the fast-growing market for renewable power to reduce their utility bills.

The move, shared earlier with POLITICO by an agency official, is the latest by President Joe Biden to focus on executive actions to reach his ambitious climate goals after plans to pass hundreds of billions worth of clean energy incentives collapsed in the Senate.

The initiative would connect participants in a federal program that subsidizes energy costs for low-income residents with developers of community solar projects, which sell subscriptions to households for renewable power with the promise of lowering their monthly electricity bills.

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Source: POLITICO

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Research shows the need for storage decreases if the majority of the solar capacity is installed vertically in an east-west orientation.

New research says vertical solar panels have improved performance

Researchers in Germany claim vertical solar panels may be better than horizontal solar panels. Typically, solar panels are mounted horizontally and oriented toward the south to get maximum exposure to the sun as it travels across the sky. Instead of lying flat, they are angled at between 20 and 35 degrees, depending on how far from the Equator they are located. There are complex mathematical formulas that tell solar farm developers the precise angle the panels should be mounted at in Pensacola, Peoria, or Penticton. There are tracking systems that can move the panels during the day to follow the sun, but they are expensive and need regular maintenance.

But what if conventional wisdom is wrong? Researchers at Leipzig University of Applied Sciences claim that mounting bifacial solar panels with one side facing east and the other facing west would produce more renewable electricity and reduce one of the side effects of traditional solar energy farms — an abundance of electricity at midday and not enough in the morning or afternoon. Their study was published in the August, 2022 edition of the journal Smart Energy.

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Source: Clean Technica

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The Moss Landing Energy Storage facility has 400 megawatts of capacity and the ability to run at that level for up to four hours.

A giant battery storage plant is back online, just in time for summer

On July 9 at 7:35 p.m., California’s power grid hit an all-time peak for battery storage.

But that record is just one of many. All-time peaks—like the 2,519 megawatts on that evening—are going to be happening with regularity as more battery storage systems come online. What’s more interesting is the development of the projects that are helping to set those records, and the implications for transforming the grid into one that doesn’t need fossil fuels.

The big kahuna in California’s battery fleet is Moss Landing Energy Storage, with 400 megawatts of capacity and the ability to run at that level for up to four hours, discharging 1,600 megawatt-hours before needing to be recharged. The plant is back in action after a prolonged period when it was barely running.

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Source: Inside Climate News

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Judge asked for input on how to ease shock and got thousands of pages' worth of advice.

Californians’ energy costs could rise and fall with judge’s solar call

So the tortured, lawyerly tomes on whether and how to revamp electricity rates for California’s solar panel owners are in — hundreds upon hundreds of pages of them in a steamy soup of “NBCs on BTM consumption” and ” ACC Plus adder” and “SGIP storage incentive” and “upfront MTC” — and an administrative law judge is wading through them, weighing the future of your electric bill.

This proceeding before California’s all-powerful utility regulator will impact every person who flips a light switch or presses an “on” button in the Golden State.

If you’re one of the vast majority of Californians who do not have solar panels on your roof, it might save you money.

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Source: Los Angeles Daily News

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In California, batteries now contribute 60 times more to peak capacity than they did in 2017.

Batteries are already helping power grids weather a hotter world

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On Tuesday, the UK Met Office recorded the country’s first-ever temperature above 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit) at London’s Heathrow Airport just before 1 p.m., as temperatures were still rising. High demand sent power prices in the UK up 5% in one day.

Across the Channel, things have been even more volatile. Europe’s heat wave has reduced France’s available nuclear power, as the river water used to cool nuclear plants became too hot to be effective. As a result, day-ahead baseload power prices settled at 610 euros per megawatt-hour — about 10 times higher than prices from 2017 to 2021.

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Source: Bloomberg

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Starting in January, most new commercial construction in California will be required to install some solar generation and battery storage.

New California building codes include climate change mandates

Starting in January, most new commercial construction in California will be required to install some solar generation and battery storage, along with heat pump technology, as the state moves toward its zero-carbon goals.

The new 2022 building standards mandate, approved by the California Energy Commission, adds to the renewable solar mandate that went into effect in January 2020 for all new single-family residential construction.

“Solar as a standard feature on all new homes went pretty smooth,” said Bob Raymer, technical director with the California Building Industry Association in Sacramento.

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Source: Biz Journals

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Solar industry supporters rallied outside of Sempra’s San Diego headquarters complaining about making rooftop solar much more expensive.

Solar supporters rally in front of Sempra’s San Diego Headquarters

Solar industry supporters rallied outside of Sempra’s downtown San Diego headquarters Tuesday, complaining about proposals to make rooftop solar much more expensive.

The California Public Utilities Commission is in the midst of a process that will rewrite the rules for Net Energy Metering (NEM), the state’s system for creating financial incentives to install rooftop solar.

Rooftop solar is widely seen as a key part of California’s strategy to move the state’s power generation away from greenhouse gas emissions. That means relying more on renewable energy instead of fossil fuels like natural gas to generate electricity.

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Source: KPBS

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The project will support the development of utility-scale solar resources & will boost the reliability of the bulk power system in AZ and CA.

US greenlights key solar line project to power California

The Ten West Link project is set to run 125 miles between the Delaney substation near Tonopah, Arizona, and the Colorado River substation in Blythe, California. It will be built next to an existing transmission line.

When CAISO evaluated the project, the grid operator found it would reduce costs for California ratepayers by gaining access to less expensive electricity in Arizona, the California Public Utilities Commission said in its November 2021 decision approving the project.

Among the project’s benefits, Delaney Colorado River Transmission expects it will reduce CAISO’s need to curtail renewable energy output on its system, according to the PUC.

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Source: Utility Dive

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Transparent solar cells have taken another step toward becoming a reality. Here come windows that can generate power from the sun.

Scientists create a nearly invisible solar cell with up to 79% transparency

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Transparent solar cells, which have the potential to convert windows, greenhouses, glass panels of smart devices, and more into energy harvesting devices, have taken another step toward becoming a reality.

A team of scientists from the Tohoku University in Japan has created a near-invisible solar cell using indium tin oxide (ITO) as a transparent electrode and tungsten disulfide (WS2) as a photoactive layer.

Remarkably, the cell has the potential to achieve a transparency of 79 percent and can help take the TMD-based near-invisible solar cells from the basics to truly industrialized stages, according to the study published in the journal Scientific Reports.

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Source: Interesting Engineering

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California Energy Commission (CEC) officials announced on Wednesday that they will begin to certify the 500MW Gem Energy Storage Facility in Kern County.

California Energy Commission begins certifying $1 billion energy storage facility in Kern County

California Energy Commission (CEC) officials announced on Wednesday that they will begin to certify an energy storage facility development in Kern County that would help California continue to transition more into renewable energy use and severely reduce greenhouse gases.

According to the CEC and Hydrostor, the Canadian company looking to build it, the facility would ultimately be able to store up to 500 megawatts of energy through compressed air systems, and would be used to help the electrical system at peak times when more energy is needed. The facility, to be named the Gem Energy Storage Facility, would also connect up with the Southern California Edison power system and would power up to 400,000 homes in Southern California when needed. The total cost of the facility comes to $975 million, would be operational by 2026, and would bring 30 to 40 jobs to the town of Rosamond, as well as 700 temporary construction jobs.

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Source: California Globe

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