The type of floating wind turbines needed to harness California’s blustery coastal conditions are rare — most turbines are affixed to the ocean floor — posing a technically challenging yet alluring opportunity for innovation and industry, according to the Port of San Francisco. Port officials are vying for state approval to establish a manufacturing hub to develop and fabricate a new kind of floating platform necessary to generate energy off California’s coast, where the steadiest wind patterns are found above deep waters. On April 25, port commissioners heard staff presentations on the merits of their endeavor, still in its early stages. Current wind energy areas are planned off Humboldt Bay to the north and Morro Bay in central California.
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) on Thursday largely approved plans by the California and New York grid operators, plus four utilities, to use ambient-adjusted ratings, called AARs, to measure how much electricity their transmission lines can carry. AARs, which are already used by some utilities, take into account near-term changes in temperature and solar heating values to measure capacity on transmission lines. They can increase the effective capacity on transmission lines, making them more efficient and in some cases reducing renewable energy curtailment.
The Department of Energy (DOE) announced its first-ever award for a virtual power plant project on April 20. DOE is awarding a $3 billion conditional loan guarantee to Sunnova Energy Corp. to help finance a virtual power plant program known as Project Hestia, which would span most of the country and link together new rooftop solar and battery storage on 75,000 to 115,00 homes.
If the rooftops of American warehouses were all bedecked with solar panels, these buildings would generate enough solar energy to power almost 19.4 million U.S. households each year, according to a new report by the Environment California Research & Policy Center and the Frontier Group. In California, more than 66,000 warehouses and distribution centers have over 1.5 billion square feet of rooftop space — enough to generate more than 32 TWh of electricity each year and power nearly 5 million homes, according to the report.
The DOE will invest $52 million for financing research and development into domestic solar manufacturing and recycling. The agency has split the financing across 19 projects that will focus on establishing end-of-life and recycling processes for solar panels, domestic manufacturing, and dedicated research and testing projects to develop and improve U.S.-made cell technologies.
Amusement park company Six Flags Entertainment Corp. will install a 12.37 MW solar carport and energy storage system at Six Flags Magic Mountain in Los Angeles. The company said that it will partner with Solar Optimum and DSD Renewables on the delivery of the largest single-site commercial renewable energy project in California.
The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is seeking public comments on the proposed Libra Solar Project in Nevada. The 30-day scoping comment period opened April 24 and will close May 23. The proposed project would generate up to 700 MW of electricity on approximately 5,500 acres of BLM-managed public land, primarily in Mineral County.
ForeFront Power and investor HASI have entered into a follow-on equity investment for a portfolio of distributed solar and solar-plus-storage projects located across California. The portfolio comprises 48.5 MW DC of commercial and industrial ground-mounted, carport, and rooftop solar, including several projects paired with battery storage totaling 3.7 MW.
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