In early June, the UK enshrined into law a commitment to reach net zero carbon emissions by 2050, making Britain the first major economy to do so. Meeting this target will require substantial reliance on renewable energy from solar, tidal, hydro, and wind sources, both onshore and offshore.

New York is poised to pass its own version of the Green New Deal with a climate bill that would more than triple the state’s solar capacity and aggressively promote development of wind farms off the state’s coast.

Go Electric Inc. is a specialist in energy resiliency solutions for microgrids and commercial & industrial customers integrating renewables and generators

Eos Energy Storage is manufacturer and supplier of the zinc-based Aurora 2.0 battery system for Duke Energy's McAlpine substation and as a behind-the-meter solution at the University of California, San Diego. 

Wind or solar now represent the least expensive option for adding new power generation capacity in approximately two-thirds of the world.

New York’s Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act passed the Assembly early in the morning of June 20 and will now await the governor’s signature. Solar advocates praised the state legislature’s adoption of long anticipated legislation that will require at least 70 percent of electric generation come from renewable sources by 2030 and providing needed funding to low-income and environmental justice communities.

Jose Maria Romay, general manager of Corani (a subsidiary of Ende), has announced the company is seeking financing from Latin American development bank CAF and French development agency AFD for the 147-MW Banda Azul hydro project.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has issued the Affordable Clean Energy (ACE) rule and simultaneously repealed the Clean Power Plan (CPP).

Homeowners and businesses may now have an easier time getting solar panels on rooftops thanks to software developed at Sandia.

The Energy Web Foundation (EWF) this week announced that it has launched the world’s first public, open-source, enterprise-grade blockchain tailored to the energy sector: the Energy Web Chain (EW Chain). As a refresher, blockchain allows for peer-to-peer energy market transactions.

Last week, the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities announced it selected Ocean Wind, an offshore wind energy project proposed by Ørsted with support from PSEG, to develop an 1,100 MW offshore wind farm. Ocean Wind will be located 15 miles off the coast of Atlantic City. Construction is expected to commence in the early 2020s, with the wind farm operational in 2024.

The Kariba Dam has towered over one of Africa’s mightiest rivers for 60 years, forming the world’s largest reservoir and providing reliable electricity to Zambia and Zimbabwe.

It may be safe for a bird to land on a wire, but not on two of them at once.

8minute Solar Energy, NV Energy and the Moapa Band of Paiutes announced that NV Energy selected 8minute to develop the largest solar plus storage project ever built in Nevada and one of the largest in the world.

Back in the 1980s and 1990s, the twin forces of privatization and deregulation of public infrastructure services ascended to a global paradigm of progress and development. Government management of services such as telecommunications, transportation, water, and energy was deemed inefficient, underperforming, and monopolistic. Private industry – accountable to the profits and losses of an open market and, thus, believed more efficient than government – was proclaimed the better way for consumer choice and a more efficient use of taxpayers’ expenses.

This week the Global Wind Energy Council (GWEC) launched the first edition of its Global Offshore Wind Report, which provides a comprehensive analysis of the prospects for the global offshore wind market, including forecast data, market-level analysis and review of efforts to lower costs.

Yesterday, ENGIE Storage announced that San Diego International Airport (SAN) installed a 2 MW/4 MWh GridSynergy energy storage system. Paired with the airport’s existing 5.5 MW of solar capacity, the new energy storage system will reduce energy charges during peak demand, which according to ENGIE equate to approximately 40 percent of the airport’s monthly electricity costs. The system is expected to begin operation in early 2020.

The Massachusetts Department of Public Utilities has issued an order approving long-term contracts for 9,554,940 MWh annually of hydropower between H.Q. Energy Services (U.S.) Inc. and the Commonwealth’s electric distribution companies through the New England Clean Energy Connect 100% Hydro project (NECEC Hydro).

China’s National Development and Reform Commission (the NDRC) issued a Circular on Policies of Improving the Electricity Price for On-Grid Wind Power (the Circular) at the end of May 2019. According to the Circular, the price of electricity from offshore wind power projects is cut to 0.8 yuan per kWh [US $0.12 per kWh] in 2019 and will further drop to 0.75 yuan [US $0.11] per kWh in 2020.

On July 1, Public Service of New Mexico filed a plan with regulators in the state for how it plans to get to a 100 percent emission-free power by 2040. The utility reviewed four scenarios, all of which involved the early retirement of the San Juan Coal Plant, to arrive at its recommended path forward.

The vast majority of Americans have air conditioning but in Germany almost nobody does. At least not yet.

According to data recently released by the China Electric Vehicle Charging Infrastructure Promotion Association, the number of public charging stations for electric vehicles (EVs) owned and operated by its members totaled 401,000 units as of May 2019, of which 229,000 were AC charging stations, 171,000 were DC and 500 AC/DC were integrated, representing a year on year increase of 50.5 percent and 9,658 units from the previous month. Between June 2018 and May 2019, the number of public charging stations for EVs showed an average monthly increase of some 11,205 units.

Given the diverse benefits that microgrids provide – reductions in energy costs, business risk, and carbon emissions, and increases in resiliency and power reliability – one wonders why discussion of microgrids has only started to take off recently.

Last week in San Antonio, Texas, about 150 DISTRIBUTECH stakeholders convened to discuss industry trends, best practices for marketing and sales in the utility industry and set the educational agenda for the 2020 event.

Commercial property owners with existing energy storage systems, or owners considering implementing an energy storage system, may be able to benefit from a recent order by the Massachusetts Department of Public Utilities (DPU) allowing utility companies to pay customers who agree to rely upon their energy storage systems and dispatch the energy during peak events.

Dominion Energy has begun construction on the Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind (CVOW) project, which will feature two 6-MW wind turbines and power about 3,000 homes.

The Clean Power Alliance (CPA) has signed three long-term power purchase agreements, including two new solar projects and one existing small hydro project.

Alabama is ranked 13th in the nation as having the greatest solar potential, yet only 0.26% of its energy comes from solar, leaving the state far behind others when it comes to total installed solar capacity. According to an annual report produced by the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA), Alabama ranked 29th in the United States for solar production in 2018. Solar in the Southeast, a blog dedicated to highlighting the ever-growing southeastern solar market, reported Alabama as ranking dead last in the seven-state southeastern region. By failing to adopt more solar, and other clean energy technologies, Alabama is missing out on lower energy prices, increased jobs in the solar economy, cleaner air and water, and a more resilient power infrastructure that protects our communities.

In April 2019, in the heart of coal country, Indiana regulators rejected a proposal by its electric and gas utility, Vectren, to replace baseload coal plants with a new $900 million, 850 megawatt (MW) natural gas-fired power plant. Regulators were concerned that with the dramatic decline in the cost of renewable energy, maturation of energy storage and rapidly changing customer demand, such a major gas plant investment could become a stranded, uneconomic asset in the future. Regulators are now pushing Vectren to consider more decentralized, lower-carbon resources such as wind, solar and storage that would offer greater resource diversity, flexibility and cost effectiveness.

According to a review by the SUN DAY Campaign of data just released by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), within the past month, the agency has dramatically revised its three-year forecast for changes in the U.S. electrical generating capacity mix. Sharp declines are foreseen for fossil fuels and nuclear power while accompanied by even stronger growth in renewable energy (i.e., biomass, geothermal, hydropower, solar, wind) than earlier projected.

This week artificial intelligence (AI)-driven energy storage services provider Stem said that it had formed a partnership with New York-based private equity company Syncarpha Capital to build 28.2 megawatt-hours (MWh) of large-scale storage projects co-sited with solar in Massachusetts.

Voith has received an order for the Ritom pumped storage power plant in Switzerland, which began operating in 1920 and will be replaced with a new facility.

Clarion Energy & iTEN Media announce the launch of POWERGEN India 2020 co-located with Indian Utility Week & DISTRIBUTECH India

A 138 MW windfarm in Turkey is to be powered by 27 turbines from GE Renewable Energy.

Arlington, VA based Summit Ridge Energy (SRE) announced that it will acquire 11 projects from Pivot Energy in Illinois totaling 29 MWs, increasing SRE’s portfolio of community solar projects in the state to more than 20.

GE Renewable Energy has taken a major step to cement its offshore wind operations in China.

Installed solar capacity in the United States exceeded 10 GW for the third year in a row in 2018, and the pace of growth is expected to continue. The first quarter of 2019 was the strongest in the history of the U.S. solar market, according to a recent report from Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) and Wood Mackenzie Power & Renewables. Yet inefficient and costly project financing inhibits many solar developers from tapping into the market’s true potential.

Gas peaker plants may be among the first casualties of a new Minnesota law requiring utilities to include energy storage as part of their long-range plans.

Global demand for air-conditioning is projected to triple over the next 30 years, as the planet warms and urban populations grow, particularly in emerging markets. Meeting that demand will call for significant investments in new cooling infrastructure and the electrical generating capacity necessary to power it. Although traditional cooling technologies are expected to become more efficient in coming years, countries will need to plan for these additional loads, which will be expensive. Emerging markets can also make use of district cooling, an approach that the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), which consists of six Middle Eastern countries — Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain, and Oman — have successfully adopted.

Turkeler and RT Enerji have chosen GE Renewable Energy to supply equipment for five onshore wind farms being built in Turkey.

The HydroVision International event is now under way in the Oregon Convention Center in Portland, with more than 3,000 hydropower professionals from around the world coming together for four days of learning and networking.

New York has signed the biggest-ever deals for offshore wind power in U.S. history, a key part of the state’s plan to get all of its power from emissions-free sources by 2040.

Finnish energy technology group Wärtsilä has signed an EPC contract for a 100 MW/100 MWh total capacity energy storage project in southeast Asia.

Last week, California’s Glendale Water & Power (GWP) received approval from the Glendale City Council to move forward with a plan to repower the aging Grayson Power Plant with a combination of renewable energy resources, energy storage and a limited amount of thermal generation.

Last week at the HydroVision International plenary session, a panel of three CEOs — Darrel T. Anderson, President and CEO IDACORP and Idaho Power, Mitch Davidson, CEO and Managing Partner, Brookfield Renewable Power, and Paul Jacob, President and CEO, Rye Development — along with moderator Elizabeth Ingram, Content Director, Clarion Energy, discussed both the merits and the challenges of hydropower development in the United States and Canada.

Global wind turbine makers are expanding manufacturing capacity in India to boost exports from the South Asian nation even as the country’s domestic industry faces headwinds.

According to the latest forecast by BloombergNEF (BNEF), energy storage installations (not including pumped hydropower) around the world will multiply exponentially, from 9GW/17GWh deployed as of 2018 to 1,095GW/2,850GWh by 2040.

ENGIE Storage has announced it will supply and operate a 19 MW/38 MWh portfolio of six energy storage sites that will contribute to the Solar Massachusetts Renewable Target Program and participate in ISO-New England wholesale markets.

Digitalisation is one of the biggest enablers of the global transition to clean energy. From intelligent asset management, to Artificial Intelligence and the Internet of Things. Find out how digitalisation is transforming the management, operation and maintenance of renewable energy assets, and driving a more efficient renewable world.

The latest crop of utility participants includes NRG Energy, Cleco Corp., Entergy, Louisville Gas & Electric/Kentucky Utilities, AEP’s distributed energy ventures group AEP OnSite Partners and Hindustan Power from India.