The Biden administration is making available $20 billion from a federal "green bank" for clean energy projects such as residential heat pumps, electric vehicle charging stations, and community cooling centers. Two programs, worth $14 billion and $6 billion, respectively, will offer competitive grants to nonprofits, community development banks, and other groups to invest in clean energy projects, with a focus on disadvantaged communities. The investments follow a $7 billion Solar for All program launched last month for residential and community solar projects in low-income communities.
Average solar power purchase agreement prices across North America fell 1% to $49.09/MWh during the second quarter of 2023, following three years of steady and often steep price increases, according to a July report from LevelTen Energy. Prices for wind PPAs continue to increase amid dwindling project availability, according to LevelTen. The Q2 report did not include data for wind PPAs in PJM because the number of wind projects seeking buyers fell below LevelTen's threshold for inclusion.
This summer, California is setting a major milestone in energy storage. The state now has the capacity to store 5,600 MW of power using batteries. That's enough to supply more than 4 million homes. Companies like ESS are building large-scale batteries in Sacramento that can also be used as a backup power source for critical sites. There's now so much battery storage that California Independent System Operator – managers of the state's power grid – has changed its day-to-day monitoring procedures to track how much "charge" is left in the battery fleet.
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Monday denied the latest bid by conservationists and tribal leaders to block construction of a huge lithium mine already in the works along the Nevada-Oregon line. The critics claim the open-pit mine, as deep as the length of a football field, will violate multiple environmental laws and destroy lands tribal members consider sacred because they say dozens of their ancestors were massacred there in 1865. The mine would involve extraction of the silvery-white metal used in electric vehicle batteries.
B2U Storage Solutions is using the excess supply of used electric vehicle batteries to meet the high demand for stored clean energy in California. There are dozens of trailers in Lancester that hold old EV batteries stacked on top of each other. Each battery still has 60% to 70% of its original charge capacity. They sit right next to countless rows of solar panels, soaking in the harsh, unmitigated desert sun. The used car batteries — 1,300 of them in total — are hooked up to wires, using the juice they have left to store energy that the solar panels generate during the day.
Kern County oil fields look more and more like a viable place for storing renewable energy to help balance the state power grid. Bakersfield startup Renewell Energy is working on its first commercial system using renewably powered winches to lift weights from near the bottom of oil wells. Later, after the sun goes down and wind stops, lowering the weights will run a generator that feeds the grid. Another Bakersfield company, Premier Resource Management LLC, hopes to turn depleted oil reservoirs into synthetic geothermal storage.
DSD Renewables and Black Bear Energy have broken ground on two solar canopy installations totaling 1.7 MW in Southern California for The Muller Company. The canopies will be installed on top of parking garages and surface-level parking at the Orange Executive Tower in Orange and the Main Street Town Center in Santa Ana. The 804 kW and 981.26 kW solar canopies will provide covered parking for the adjacent office buildings and provide tenants with access to lower-cost, onsite solar energy through a power purchase agreement.
Public officials and conservationists are scrambling to understand the ramifications of a proposed power storage facility on the Sonoma Coast through which seawater sucked in and shunted uphill in large pipes would be used to generate electricity during peak demand. Details are still emerging regarding Hydro Green Energy's proposed Fort Ross Pumped Storage Project. It is one of three California proposals for which the company is seeking preliminary permits from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission amid increasing state and national demand for renewable power.
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