Peninsula Clean Energy says it can deliver affordable clean energy to its Bay Area territory nearly every hour of the year by 2025.

24/7 carbon-free energy is about to become a reality in California

Five years ago, California community energy provider Peninsula Clean Energy decided that buying enough clean energy to match its average annual electricity demand wasn’t enough. Instead, it wanted to deliver clean energy to its customers during every hour of every day — what it calls ​“24/7 carbon-free energy.” And last week, Peninsula explained how it plans to get there.

The goal of 24/7 carbon-free electricity is also being pursued by corporate giants Google and Microsoft, cities including Los Angeles and Des Moines, Iowa, and a growing number of other companies and communities across the world. But Peninsula Clean Energy appears to be the first energy provider to set a target of getting there by 2025, well ahead of other zero-carbon mandates at the utility or state level.

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Source: Canary Media

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Solar panels over parking lots produce clean electricity without wasting space and provide shade in sunny, warm weather for drivers.

Why not cover ugly parking lots with solar panels?

A BACKLASH AGAINST industrial-size solar farms is brewing. At least 75 big solar projects were vetoed across the United States last year, compared to 19 in 2021. And between January 2021 and July 2022, planning permission for 23 new solar farms was rejected across England, Wales, and Scotland, when only four projects were refused between 2017 and 2020—representing the highest rejection rate in five years. Decarbonization, to some extent, risks getting bogged down by planning objections. People very often don’t want solar farms in their backyard.

France, though, appears to have a solution: transforming its parking lots into solar farms nationwide. The French Senate has approved a bill requiring new and existing lots with more than 80 spaces to be at least half covered with canopies of solar panels that sit over the parking spaces. Assuming the bill comes into effect later this year, parking lots with more than 400 spaces must be compliant by 2026; smaller ones with 80 to 400 spaces will be given until 2028.

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Source: WIRED

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Newly developed software allows the management of thousands of residential batteries, which, if used collectively, become a virtual power plant.

Residential batteries linked over internet could soon help California’s electrical grid

It has been less than a year since Andrea Divis moved back to San Diego County into a two-story Oceanside home.

“It’s comfortable and cozy, and really, the backyard is kind of like my oasis,” Divis said.

She deals with a chronic medical condition that does not allow her to go without air conditioning or refrigeration for her medicines.

“When I was in Oregon, I was paying, I don’t know, $150 a month for my utilities,” Divis said. “And now I come here, and on the lowest month, it was $200, and I got upwards of $450, $480.”

Divis saw solar as a solution. She added power-generating panels to her roof, and just inside her garage, there is a new Sonnen battery.

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Source: kpbs

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The severe electricity shortages due to deep energy crisis have forced a Syrian dentist to use solar power to maintain his clinic in Damascus.

Amidst energy crisis, Syrians turn to solar energy

Severe electricity shortages have forced Ibrahim al-Akzam, a Syrian dentist, to use solar power to maintain his Damascus clinic. This is a reflection on the country’s deep energy crisis after 11 years of war.

This has protected Akzam from the continual blackouts caused by the state grid’s crumbling infrastructure and the rising costs of diesel for a private generator.

The 41-year-old said that moving to alternative energy was the best solution right now. He spent almost $7,000 on the installation.

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Source: Solar Quarter

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In the US, if you are on iOS 16, you can now set your phone to charge on clean, green energy as much as possible.

How to make your iPhone charge on clean energy

Writing about Apple’s deep decarbonization efforts recently, I discovered something about my iPhone that I didn’t realize. In the US, if you are on iOS 16, you can now set your phone to charge on clean, green energy as much as possible.

What does that mean? If you go to “Battery Health & Charging” and turn on “Clean Energy Charging,” Apple tries to track your charging patterns and then, when plugged in, only actually charge your phone when relatively low-carbon-emission electricity is being produced (whether than be solar energy, wind energy, or nuclear energy). This new option or feature is part of Apple’s new partnership with the CoolClimate Network at the University of California–Berkeley.

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Source: Clean Technica

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California’s new solar policy leaves low-income families behind. Community energy providers, nonprofits and vendors have come up with some creative workarounds.

These California programs steer solar+batteries to low-income households

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Rooftop solar and home batteries are already too expensive for most low-income California residents. Last week’s decision by the California Public Utilities Commission to radically alter the state’s net-metering policy will put them even further out of reach.

Last week Canary Media explained how California’s new rooftop-solar policy will dramatically reduce the moneymaking potential of stand-alone rooftop solar and incentivize customers to install batteries that can store and shift their output to the grid when it’s most needed. We also explored how solar and battery vendors, utilities, community energy providers and state agencies are looking for ways to expand access to these technologies for low-income and disadvantaged communities.

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Source: Canary Media

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Eichten’s solar purchase 10yrs ago was similarly the start of something big. Neighbors and clean energy companies began to see opportunities.

One farmer set off a solar energy boom in rural Minnesota; 10 years later, here’s how it worked out

It sounded absurd, the idea of spending a large sum of money to install solar panels in a Minnesota farm field that is covered in snow for much of the year.

But Ed Eichten’s family had gotten used to his wild ideas that turned out to work, like raising bison to sell or turning a small cheese-making business into a retail operation.

His solar purchase 10 years ago was similarly the start of something big. Neighbors and clean energy companies began to see opportunities that led to Chisago County, Minnesota, becoming a hub for solar power development, with dozens of projects including the largest one in the state, North Star Solar.

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Source: Inside Climate News

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Community-owned community solar provides an example of what a more equitable, decentralized clean energy transition could look like.

For energy transition equity, communities must run community solar

In 2021, the median income of a rooftop solar adapter was $110,000 a year. That same year, the U.S. median income was $63,000.

The gap is closing — in 2010, the median rooftop solar adapter made $138,000 compared to just under $50,000 for the median American — but it’s not closing fast enough to get enough solar to the people who need it most. Low-income families who need their bills cut fast, communities of color historically choked by ash and soot, people who don’t own their homes or who don’t have the cash to put panels on the roof are all left out of this transition. And it’s a lost opportunity during a climate crisis that demands we get as many renewables on the grid as fast as possible.

Not just community solar, but specifically community-owned community solar, provides an example of what a more equitable, decentralized clean energy transition could look like.

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Source: Utility Dive

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State policymakers and utility regulators can put more consumers and communities on a path to long-term energy affordability and mitigate the impact of future energy price spikes.

How states and utilities can lower consumer bills and accelerate the clean energy transition

Last year’s shocking winter heating prices are back with a vengeance: Natural gas heating costs are expected to rise 28% compared to recent winters. One in six households are already behind on their utility bills, and national utility bill debt doubled from December 2019 to June 2022, according to the National Energy Assistance Directors Association.

While household energy cost price spikes across the United States feel like déjà vu, the overall energy picture has changed drastically since last year. The Inflation Reduction Act’s historic clean energy investments will accelerate deployment of utility-scale renewable energy and energy storage, distributed clean energy resources, and high-efficiency electric technologies.

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Source: Utility Dive

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Floating panels are placed in human-made bodies of water, not taking up land that could be used for nature preserves or food production.

Floating solar panels could unlock clean power without wasting land

Many countries bet on solar panels when engaging in the switch to cleaner energy. But the technology requires much larger areas than conventional fossil fuel plants to generate the same amount of electricity. An emerging solution to save space is to float the panels on bodies of water, an approach dubbed ​“floatovoltaics.” Scientists believe this new approach could help solar energy to scale globally and fight climate change, but its environmental impacts are largely unexplored.

The world’s first commercial floatovoltaic system was installed on an irrigation pond at a California winery in 2008. Since then, bigger plants with capacities in the hundreds of megawatts have been built on lakes and hydropower reservoirs in China, and more are planned in Southeast Asia and Brazil.

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Source: Canary Media

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