Focus
NEW YORK TIMES - Sep 26 Lithium-ion batteries have become essential for powering electric cars and storing energy generated by solar panels and wind turbines. But their drawbacks are also by now familiar: They use scarce minerals, are vulnerable to fires and explosions, and are pricey. On Wednesday, NantEnergy, an energy company headed by the California billionaire Patrick Soon-Shiong unveiled a rechargeable battery operating on zinc and air that can store power at what it says is far less than the cost of lithium-ion batteries. NantEnergy says it expects to expand the use of its product in telecommunications towers and eventually extend it to home energy storage, beginning in California and New York. Beyond that, it anticipates use in electric cars, buses, trains, and scooters.
UTILITY DIVE - Sep 18 California regulators are poised to decide soon between two proposals on how to calculate the exit fee charged to customers moving away from California’s investor-owned utilities (IOUs) to new electricity providers. The result could determine the near-term viability of California’s budding customer choice movement. Regulators face three big questions on how to calculate the Power Charge Indifference Adjustment (PCIA), a small per-kWh amount added to the bill of a departing customer that compensates the utility for investments made in anticipation of serving that customer. The first question is whether the PCIA should include the cost of high-priced utility-owned generation the IOUs might long ago have sold off. The second question is whether it should include the cost of somewhat newer but still high-priced utility-owned generation added to IOU portfolios largely for reliability purposes. And, finally, regulators must decide how, if at all, to limit the size of changes in the value of the PCIA.
POWER MAGAZINE - Sep 21 The companies negotiating to purchase the largest coal-fired power plant in the southwestern U.S., Avenue Capital and Middle River Power, have ended their pursuit, which means the 2,250-megawatt Navajo Generating Station near Page, Arizona, remains scheduled to close by year-end 2019. The companies on Thursday said they were unable to find anyone willing to buy power from the plant. Uncertainty over the outcome of a November ballot measure supporting the expansion of renewable energy in Arizona also cast a shadow over the plant’s future.
SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE - Sep 20 Consolidated Edison, the energy giant that serves customers in the greater New York City metropolitan area, has agreed to pay $1.54 billion in cash for all of Sempra’s solar projects in California, Arizona, and Nevada, as well as a wind farm in Nebraska, representing about 980 megawatts. Con Edison will acquire the Mesquite Solar project in Arizona; Copper Mountain Solar in Nevada; Great Valley Solar and the Alpaugh, Corcoran, and White River solar facilities in California; the Broken Bow II wind facility in Nebraska; and certain battery storage and solar development projects.
THE TRIBUNE - Sep 24 The City Council wants San Luis Obispo to be carbon-neutral by 2035, an ambitious target that is 10 years earlier than Governor Jerry Brown’s statewide goal of 2045. The City Council last week directed staff to move forward with a climate action plan that could mean new building codes and ramping up citywide electrical vehicle charging stations, among several other initiatives. In a separate decision last week, the City Council also voted unanimously to form a Community Choice Energy program in partnership with the city of Morro Bay.
PV MAGAZINE - Sep 13 Regions outside of California and the Southwest accounted for 70 percent of all new utility-scale PV capacity additions in 2017, according to the new Utility Scale Solar report from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. The Southeast accounted for 40 percent of all new utility-scale solar capacity in 2017. According to the report, utility-scale plants accounted for nearly 60 percent of all new solar capacity in 2017.
WHITTIER DAILY NEWS - Sep 26 The Los Angeles-Long Beach-Santa Ana region is the nation’s top metro area for clean energy jobs, according to a study released Tuesday by E2. The state’s 519,000 clean-energy jobs are heavily focused in metro areas, where more than 430,000 of those jobs are located. California accounts for 16 percent of the 3.2 million clean-energy jobs nationwide.
SOLAR POWER WORLD - Sep 26 This week at Solar Power International, EnergySage released its latest semiannual Solar Marketplace Intel Report. According to the report, the cost of a solar installation is now 5.6 percent higher due to President Trump’s solar tariff than it would have been if costs had been allowed to fall at their preexisting rate of decline. This has created $236.5 million in additional costs for American consumers. Though prices have since restarted their decline, they are decreasing at a slower rate than before.
Projects
GREENTECH MEDIA - Sep 24 Two of the state’s universities, the University of California and Stanford University, are taking new steps to eliminate carbon emissions in their buildings. Earlier this month, the University of California announced it would seek to achieve 100 percent clean electricity across its campuses and medical centers by 2025. UC had previously announced its intent to be carbon neutral by that same year. A similar effort is underway at Stanford University. In a presentation last month at the Electric Power Research Institute’s Electrification 2018 conference, Joseph Stagner, Stanford’s executive director of sustainability and energy management, said the university is nearing a decision on going all-electric in a new-build student housing complex.
