Procurement is a boon for solar-storage, demand response and other clean resources, and could forestall last-ditch option of keeping coastal gas plants open. California regulators have approved a 3.3-gigawatt “all-source” procurement that will pit new renewables, energy storage, demand response and other clean resources against natural gas-fired power plants in a race to meet what […]
Can Solar and Batteries Outlast an Extended Power Outage?
It depends, experts say. Just expect to make a few sacrifices. Even by the standards of the generally well-informed clean-energy customers in California’s Bay Area, Todd Karin is a savvy one. Karin works as a postdoctoral researcher in the energy storage and distributed resources division at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Last year, he chose to […]
US Solar Industry Rallies Behind 20% Generation Target for 2030
Priority #1: Extend the Investment Tax Credit, which new research says could increase installations by 36 percent through 2030. The solar industry met in Salt Lake City with a more sweeping and disciplined message than in some years past: Rally to extend the federal Investment Tax Credit and buckle up for a decade of massive […]
Hawaiian Electric Seeks Bids for 900MW of ‘Dispatchable Renewables,’ Storage and Grid Services
The next round of RFPs will help meet Hawaii’s goal of 100 percent renewables by 2045 and replace two big power plants closing on Oahu and Maui in the next five years. On Thursday, Hawaiian Electric issued a long-awaited request for proposals for about 900 megawatts of renewable energy and energy storage projects. It’s the […]
Ameresco Plots Larger Role for Solar and Storage
The microgrids and energy-efficiency specialist says the number of viable markets for on-site solar and storage is growing. Ameresco is best known as a commercial and industrial energy services company, or ESCO, competing against giants like Honeywell, Siemens, Johnson Controls and a host of other national and regional providers on HVAC retrofits, LED lighting upgrades, […]
Sunrun Hits Deployment Targets, Expands Grid Services Business in Q2
The nation’s largest home solar installer reached 255,000 total customers in the second quarter, a 26 percent increase since last year. The largest U.S. residential solar installer hit deployment expectations and built out its battery business in the second quarter. Sunrun installed 103 megawatts, hitting its guidance of between 102 and 104 megawatts. That’s an […]
India’s 1.2GW tender pits dispatchable renewables as viable alternative to conventional power
The state enterprise Solar Energy Corporation of India (SECI) issued at the beginning of the month a tender for 1,200MW of renewable power that can be used to alleviate peak demand issued on the grid, in effect mandating the use of energy storage systems (ESS). An invitation has been issued for bids to build, own […]
Bavarian solar-plus-storage subsidy scheme launches today
A new subsidy scheme for residential solar-plus-storage installs is now live in Bavaria. The state in southern Germany will provide €500 (US$550) for a storage system of at least 3kWh and a further €100 (US$110) for each additional 1kWh up to a maximum of €3200 (US$3530). The storage system must be paired with a solar […]
Solar-charged vanadium flow machine pre-qualifies for UK’s frequency response market
‘Flow batteries’ could provide frequency response in the UK for the first time ever, as a modestly sized solar-plus-storage system has been pre-qualified into National Grid’s dynamic firm frequency response (dFFR) market. Last week energy storage technology provider and system integrator RedT – which prefers the description ‘flow machines’ for its vanadium redox flow, long […]
GE and BlackRock Launch Distributed Solar and Storage Business
With BlackRock as a partner and a new focus on project ownership, GE’s under-the-radar solar business may be in for noisier days ahead. General Electric is a big and sprawling company that’s undergone some dramatic reorganizations over the past few years, particularly in its renewable energy, energy storage and grid edge business lines. But over […]