Renewables

Solar panels on the roof of South Miami Mayor Philip Stoddard’s energy-efficient home in South Miami on Saturday, April 13, 2019. Stoddard went off the grid for seven days to test the house’s readiness for hurricane season and used only solar panels and two Tesla wall batteries to power his home. Daniel A. Varela ***@***.***

miamiherald.com - by Linda Robertson - April 15, 2019

Hurricane season is coming and Philip Stoddard is ready . . .

. . . Stoddard, a champion of solar energy and green living, took his family on a trial run in preparation for the next Irma or Andrew . . .

. . . He turned off the main power switch located in a panel on the side of his house . . . For the next seven days, he and his family were able to operate the central air-conditioning unit during an unseasonably hot March week, all appliances, computers, lights, TV, solar water heater with an electric on-demand booster, and backyard pond pump, and charge the car without once running out of juice.

(CLICK HERE - READ COMPLETE ARTICLE)

New solar flow battery with a 14.1 percent efficiency. Photo: David Tenenbaum, UW-Madison

CLICK HERE - STUDY - Chem - 14.1% Efficient Monolithically Integrated Solar Flow Battery

theverge.com - by Angela Chen - September 27, 2018

Solar energy is becoming more and more popular as prices drop, yet a home powered by the Sun isn’t free from the grid because solar panels don’t store energy for later. Now, researchers have refined a device that can both harvest and store solar energy, and they hope it will one day bring electricity to rural and underdeveloped areas.

The problem of energy storage has led to many creative solutions, like giant batteries. For a paper published today in the journal Chem, scientists trying to improve the solar cells themselves developed an integrated battery that works in three different ways.

(CLICK HERE - READ COMPLETE ARTICLE)

Figure 1. Average estimated annual residential rooftop PV market capacity potential from 2017 – 2030 (Source: NREL)

sepapower.org - by Jeffrey Cook - August 16, 2018

If the solar industry reaches this Department of Energy (DOE) target, it could dramatically alter the energy market and present a future where residential PV becomes a standard, cost-effective home installation, versus a luxury or long-term investment. A recent NREL report — Cost-Reduction Roadmap for Residential Solar Photovoltaics (PV), 2017-2030 — models a set of pathways that the industry could follow to realize this future. The analysis focuses on two key markets for residential PV cost reduction: installing PV at time of roof replacement and installing PV at time of new construction. These two market segments were selected because each offers significant cost reduction opportunities while representing a 30 gigawatt (GW) annual market nationwide (see Figure 1).

DC just proposed a first-of-its-kind regulatory body—and utilities should pay close attention.

CLICK HERE - Joint Release: Councilmembers Allen and Cheh to introduce bill modernizing DC’s energy grid

icf.com - by Steve Fine and Matt Robison - April 17, 2018

Two Washington, D.C. City Council members proposed a remarkable change in utility regulation last week. Mary Cheh and Charles Allen introduced a bill to create a Distributed Energy Resource Authority (DER Authority): a first-of-its-kind regulatory body that would be empowered to undertake traditional utility planning functions, and with a specific mandate to assess any proposed utility grid investment greater than $25 million and open it up to competitive bids.