The costs of most existing coal-fired power plants in the US are now more expensive than the total costs of wind and solar as a result of their plunging costs, according to a new study.
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In today’s Electrek Green Energy Brief (EGEB):
Enel Green Power North America, headquartered in Andover, Massachusetts, has started construction on five new clean energy projects in the US. The new wind, solar, and hybrid projects announced today represent more than 1.5 gigawatts (GW) of new capacity and 319 megawatts (MW) of battery storage capacity.
The five new projects under construction in Texas, Illinois, and Oklahoma will generate over 4.1 TWh of renewable electricity per year, capable of powering more than 525,000 US households annually. All five projects announced today have offtake agreements for a portion of their output.
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Danish clean energy giant Ørsted has just completed its very first utility-scale solar plus battery storage project, and it’s in the US.
Its Permian Energy Center project (pictured above), a 460 MW solar and 40 MW battery storage facility, is in Andrews County, Texas.
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In today’s Electrek Green Energy Brief (EGEB):
In today’s Electrek Green Energy Brief (EGEB):
In today’s Electrek Green Energy Brief (EGEB):
In today’s Electrek Green Energy Brief (EGEB):
In today’s Electrek Green Energy Brief (EGEB):
In today’s Electrek Green Energy Brief (EGEB):
The US Department of Energy announced the winners of its collegiate competition, the Solar Decathlon, yesterday. The contest, which has been running since 2002, challenges student teams to design and build highly efficient and innovative buildings powered by clean energy.
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In today’s Electrek Green Energy Brief (EGEB):
In today’s Electrek Green Energy Brief (EGEB):
In the early 2010s, Pat Collins, a 7th-grade life science teacher at Chisago Lakes Middle School — in Lindstrom, Minnesota, about 35 miles northeast of the Twin Cities — was having a discussion about solar panels with his students. One asked why they couldn’t just use solar power at the school, so Collins said he would look into it and see.
A few school board meetings that eventually included student speakers (one of whom made her grandfather, a longtime school bus driver, cry from pride), several inventive fundraisers that included janitors paying students by the pound for gum spit into a bucket rather than stuck under desks, and several years later, the Chisago Lakes School District is now 100% solar.
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In today’s Electrek Green Energy Brief (EGEB):
In today’s Electrek Green Energy Brief (EGEB):
California-headquartered green power solutions company Jackery is officially releasing the Explorer 1500 on April 5 – its largest solar generator yet. The company asked Electrek if we’d like to try it out, so Jackery sent me a review unit, and I happily put it to the test. Here’s what I found.
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The US Department of Energy (DOE) announced yesterday that it intends to “cut the cost of solar energy by 60% within the next 10 years, in addition to nearly $128 million in funding to lower costs, improve performance, and speed the deployment of solar energy technologies.”
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Singapore-based solar energy provider Sunseap says it has completed construction of a 5MW peak offshore floating solar farm in the Straits of Johor, between Singapore and Malaysia. It’s one of the world’s largest floating solar farms on sea water.
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In today’s Electrek Green Energy Brief (EGEB):
In today’s Electrek Green Energy Brief (EGEB):
Pennsylvania’s state government will source 50% of its electricity from seven new solar energy arrays. It will go into operation on January 1, 2023.
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The Duane Arnold Energy Center in eastern Iowa, the current site of a now-idle nuclear power plant, will soon host a 690-megawatt solar farm. The new solar farm plus storage will replace the single-unit, 615-megawatt nuclear plant, which powered more than 600,000 homes.
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Duke Energy Florida has announced that it will build two more new solar farms in the Sunshine State. This time, they’ll be in Citrus and Hardee counties.
The utility reported in February that it is investing an estimated $1 billion to construct or acquire a total of 700 MW of solar farms from 2018 through 2022 in Florida and will more than quadruple the amount of in-service solar on the system over the next four years.
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