Washington ranchers, farmers and state agencies are learning that certain land features make them ideal for renewable energy projects.
Ranchers are losing land to solar farms, but help is on the way.
Leases canceled from the Department of Natural Resources are hurting ranchers. But a new bill would compensate those forced off public land for more profitable uses.
New designs for perovskite-silicon solar cells have reached a conversion efficiency of 27.7 percent.
The use of solar photovoltaic cells as a renewable energy source is booming, as the technology becomes more efficient and less expensive. Stacking perovskite solar cells on top of silicon ones is one way to increase the amount of sunlight harnessed, and now researchers at Australian National University (ANU) have broken a new efficiency record for these tandem solar cells.
Already outperforming most commercially available solar cells, which hover around the 20-percent efficiency mark, these are based solely on silicon, and that technology is expected to bump up against its maximum upper limit in the next few years.
Read more: New tandem perovskite-silicon solar cell breaks efficiency record (newatlas.com/energy)
An innovative solar project in Toledo, Ohio, will do triple duty when it’s completed this spring. It will provide renewable power to a nearby axle factory. It will use otherwise unproductive land. And hundreds of thousands of dollars from the sale of the project’s electricity will benefit nearby low-income communities.
A joint project in Toledo by the port authority, a community foundation and local industry earmarks profits for community needs.
Read more: Ohio solar project will benefit low-income communities (energynews.us)
Wind is now the top renewable source of electricity generation in the country, a position previously held by hydroelectricity.
Annual wind generation totaled 300 million megawatthours (MWh) in 2019, exceeding hydroelectric generation by 26 million MWh. Wind generation has increased steadily during the past decade, in part, because the Production Tax Credit (PTC), which drove wind capacity additions, was extended. Annual hydroelectric generation has fluctuated between 250 million MWh and 320 million MWh in the past decade, reflecting a stable capacity base and variable annual precipitation.
It’s difficult to recycle a gigantic wind turbine. The blades are built to withstand extreme weather, from scorching desert heat to hurricane-like winds, and that means their life almost always ends in a landfill. In Europe alone, about 3,800 blades will be removed every year through at least 2022, according to BloombergNEF, as the oldest turbines reach retirement age.
A Danish startup aims to turn old turbines into a material that can address a different environmental threat: noise pollution.
Read more: A Recycling Plan to Clear Wind Turbine Blades From Graveyards (bloomberg.com/news)
The battery backup Elon Musk built has saved South Australia tens of millions of dollars.
Musk’s Australian solar and wind farm powers rural South Australia, with a population density between Wyoming and Alaska.
South Australia experienced a near total blackout in 2016, after 80,000 lightning strikes and at least two tornadoes.
The push for renewable energy was blamed for the extent of the blackouts. As the head of batteries at Tesla, Musk said he was sure the company could do better, and he jumped in to promise his team would.
Read more: Elon Musk’s Battery Farm Is an Undeniable Success (yahoo.com/news | Popular Mechanics)
The TransAlta coal plant in Centralia will fully close down by 2025, as part of an agreement that will see $55 million invested to help the community prepare for the transition.
The Centralia agreement is an example of an unusually well-funded, long-planned transition. Unlike many coal plant closures today, it was forged not because the company was going out of business but as a political deal to address climate change.
The TransAlta coal plant’s closure will be a win for environmentalists and left-leaning lawmakers who want to fight climate change. The town, however, will lose a significant taxpayer. And nearly 200 people will lose their jobs.
Local officials say they are excited about new wind and solar projects backed by TransAlta and others, which have sprung up independently of the agreement, but those will create a fraction of the jobs and tax base that the coal plant has historically provided. And attempts to bring new businesses to the area have so far been disappointing.
Read more: As U.S. coal plants shutter, Centralia tests an off-ramp (columbian.com/news)
Consolidated Edison and National Grid are experimenting with energy storage in New York.
ConEd is in the middle of several major projects to advance the state’s distributed grid, while working to add 300 MW of energy storage by 2023.
Storage is essential to New York’s long-term climate goals, ConEd REV Demonstration specialist Alison Kling said. It can be used as grid support, including for particular feeders, real power, reactive power, or as part of broader non-wires alternative goals, but it will also be important in the long-term as the state continues to add more renewable energy onto its grid.
Read more: How ConEd and National Grid are experimenting with energy storage in New York (utilitydive.com)
A U.S. private equity firm, Hull Street Energy, has sealed a deal to buy a 255-MW portfolio of 31 hydroelectric facilities from a joint venture between Enel Green Power North America and GE Energy Financial Services.
Read more: Enel, GE JV sells 255-MW US hydro portfolio to Hull Street Energy (renewablesnow.com)
Researchers from the University of California, Davis explain in a recent paper, published in the journal ACS Photonics, that if you want to create a solar panel that generates electricity at night, you have to create one that operates the exact opposite way solar panels work during the day.
It’s referred to as the “anti-solar panel.”
Solar panels are cold compared to the Sun, so they absorb the Sun’s light and turn it into energy. Space is very cold, so if you point a panel on Earth that is comparatively warm toward it, it will radiate heat as invisible infrared light. This allows you to generate electricity by capturing that power. The paper claims such a device could generate about a quarter of the electricity at night that a normal solar panel generates during the day.
Read more: Anti-solar panel can generate electricity at night, researchers say