Energy Educators Meet to Learn SCADA Systems

Jan 10, 2020

Twenty eight educators representing 17 U.S. states took time out of their winter break to participate in the CREATE Supervisory Controls and Data Acquisition (SCADA) Workshop delivered by Indian River State College.  The workshop featured a day of programming hosted by NextEra Energy Resources, the world's largest generator of renewable energy.  CREATE faculty met with NextEra power generation engineers and subject matter experts to learn about SCADA technology.  The day included a tour of the Renewable Operations Control Center (ROCC), which serves as the monitoring and operations center of NextEra Energy Resource's wind, photovoltaic solar, and battery energy storage fleet.  Participants learned about ROCC Operations processes including plant Start-Up/Shutdown, Curtailment, Daily Work Management, Troubleshooting and Outage restoration, and Energy Market Communications.  The workshop participants also contributed to a draft SCADA job task analysis to identify key knowledge and skills necessary for the energy workforce.  A curriculum scoping activity also laid the groundwork for forthcoming SCADA curriculum development that will be completed in spring 2020.  The group also received the first glimpse of the new Open Source SCADA platform being developed by experts from Indian River and NextEra.  The Open Source platform will be distributed in the year ahead for free access by community colleges participating in the project.

Webinar: How Solar Knowledge Spreads: Who learns what, from whom, and how?

Wednesday, January 22, 1-2pm ET 

Non-hardware “soft” costs now account for about 60% of the cost of a residential solar PV system. As part of the US Department of Energy Solar Energy Evolution and Diffusion Studies 2 (SEEDS2) program, a team of researchers led by the University of Texas at Austin has worked to understand how best practices related to solar installation, permitting, and customer acquisition are transmitted. The project examined how solar information and best practices spread through knowledge “spillovers,” what kind of solar knowledge is most likely spillover, and how decision makers can design policy to facilitate the spread of solar knowledge and drive down solar soft costs. This webinar, hosted by the Clean Energy States Alliance, will present the findings of this research, including network structures and strategies that promote solar knowledge transfer, organizational capacity building, and innovation.

To Register and for more information visit: Webinar Registration

5 Tangible Advances for Long-Duration Energy Storage in 2019

Julian Spector

December 30, 2019

Following long-duration storage is like rooting for a home team that’s always about to win next year.

Lithium-ion batteries utterly dominate grid storage deployments these days. That’s great for the cost decline narrative, in the way that cheap Chinese photovoltaic cells produced a massive expansion in solar deployments. But cost obsession results in technology lock-in, boxing out other tools that could prove useful or even better if given the time and space to grow.

It also makes for homogeneous storylines: In other news, the latest energy storage plant looks and performs exactly like all the other ones; check back as this story develops.

There are good reasons to root for the scrappy upstarts challenging the conventional wisdom and building alternative technologies to store clean energy for days, as will be needed for renewables-heavy grids. But the last decade has seen the long-duration storage field make outlandish promises and instead deliver bankruptcies or a slow-rolled smattering of small demos.

For the rest of the story visit: 5 Tangible Advances Long duration Storage 2019

How Energy Storage’s Growth Trajectory Differs From the Early Days of Solar

December 4, 2019

By Julian Spector

DENVER — It's become a cliche to compare today's energy storage market to where the solar industry was a certain number of years ago. But storage's trajectory differs from the early growth dynamics of solar power in a crucial respect: It transcends the geographic boundaries, dictated by sunshine and policy, that constrained solar's rise.

Fast-acting battery technology performs many roles: frequency regulation, capacity, deferral of wires upgrades, resilience, firming renewable generation and more. It does not rely on a geographically specific weather pattern or any one set of state policies to become valuable, and it's already asserting itself across the U.S., said Daniel Finn-Foley, energy storage director at Wood Mackenzie, speaking Tuesday at GTM's Energy Storage Summit in Denver.

For the rest of the story visit: Energy Storage Growth Trajectory

INNIO, German utility plan hydrogen CHP project in Hamburg

11.25.19
Global on-site power giant INNIO and utility HanseWerk AG will collaborate on a 1-MW hydrogen-fueled pilot project in Hamburg, Germany.

The two companies signed a letter of intent on a hydrogen-fueled combined heat and power plant. The city of Hamburg (pictured) has set itself the goal of ensuring that all interested customers in the power, heat and transportation sectors can be supplied almost entirely with green hydrogen by 2035.

“Together with HanseWerk AG, we are paving the way for a future energy supply in Hamburg that is greener, more secure, more flexible and more decentralized,” said Carlos Lange, President and CEO of INNIO. “As a leading solutions provider of gas engines, we continue to invest in new technologies such as hydrogen. We are proud to be working in collaboration with HanseWerk AG to develop this innovative flagship project, a development that is a big step in advancing toward decarbonization.”

For the rest of the story visit: INNIO, German Utility Plan Hydrogen CHP Project

Secretive energy startup backed by Bill Gates achieves solar breakthrough

By Matt Egan, CNN Business

November 19, 2019

A secretive startup backed by Bill Gates has achieved a solar breakthrough aimed at saving the planet.

Heliogen, a clean energy company that emerged from stealth mode on Tuesday, said it has discovered a way to use artificial intelligence and a field of mirrors to reflect so much sunlight that it generates extreme heat above 1,000 degrees Celsius.

Essentially, Heliogen created a solar oven — one capable of reaching temperatures that are roughly a quarter of what you'd find on the surface of the sun.

The breakthrough means that, for the first time, concentrated solar energy can be used to create the extreme heat required to make cement, steel, glass and other industrial processes. In other words, carbon-free sunlight can replace fossil fuels in a heavy carbon-emitting corner of the economy that has been untouched by the clean energy revolution.

For the rest of the story visit: Secret Solar Breakthrough

ComEd looks to blockchain as tool to manage an increasingly complex grid

David Thrill

November 8, 2019

Another utility is jumping on the blockchain bandwagon.

Illinois electric utility ComEd is partnering with a California developer called Xage to test how its blockchain-based software might help the utility manage an increasingly complex distribution grid.

As customer-owned solar and storage becomes more common, electricity is more often flowing in multiple directions. Utilities are looking for better ways to securely track and verify how electrons are moving around on the system.

The information will be critical to ensure owners of distributed resources are fairly compensated and can exchange energy securely with other resources on the grid.

For the rest of the story visit: Tool to manage complex grid

Race Heats Up For Title Of Cheapest Solar Energy In The World

October 17, 2019
Dominic Dudley, Contributor

Dubai has narrowly missed out on reclaiming the title of having the world’s cheapest solar photovoltaic (PV) energy, after receiving bids for the latest phase of a massive solar park on the desert outskirts of the city.

Saudi Arabia’s Acwa Power submitted a tariff of just 1.6953 U.S. cents per kilowatt hour (kWh) for the 900MW fifth phase of Dubai’s Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum (MBR) Solar Park, according to a report by the Middle East Economic Digest. That sets a new record for unsubsidized solar PV production, in the region at least. However, it is still a little way short of the 1.654 cents/kWh achieved in Portugal earlier this year.

The Dubai authorities have delighted in repeatedly setting new records for previous phases of the MBR Solar Park and they may be disappointed to have fallen just short this time. A carefully-worded statement from the government-owned utility, DEWA, earlier this week claimed they had, however, set a new world record for a PV solar plant based on the independent power producer (IPP) model.

For the rest if the story visit: Cheapest Solar in the World

How the Battery Sector Is Looking to Improve Lithium-Ion

Jason Deign, October 17, 2019

Electric vehicle makers and battery manufacturers are making progress in developing new lithium-ion designs, amid persistent concerns over the supply of key materials.

Concerns over cobalt, in particular, are forcing battery makers to move toward cobalt-light lithium-ion formulations, said Hans Eric Melin, founder of Circular Energy Storage, a consultancy focused on battery end-of-life management.

Foremost among these formulations is a lithium nickel-manganese-cobalt (NMC) cathode chemistry with eight parts of nickel for each part of cobalt. This mix, known as 811, is the latest in a line of NMC cathode chemistries where the ratio of cobalt is being reduced in favor of other materials, particularly nickel, which is cheaper and easier to source.

For the rest of the story visit: Improved Lithium-Ion Battery

Webinar: NABCEP, Debating the State of Storage 2019 - October 30th

Where are we, really, with storage in 2019?

·    Are consumers catching on? If so, what is motivating them to add storage to their project? What's keeping them away?

·    Are contractors well-prepared, and well-positioned, to sell and install this technology? If not, what kind of support do they need?

·    Will California's "Title 24" play a prominent role moving forward? How so?

Join us on October 30th at 1:00 PM EST as our panelists debate these, and other important storage questions, in the first installment of a new educational series from BayWa r.e. Solar Systems and NABCEP.

For more information and to register visit:Storage webinar registration