Samples of news and expertise from RenewComm and our clients
pv magazine: Building to last in the global South
Paul Wormser, VP for technology at Clean Energy Associates, says PV initiatives should be designed to last, as several well-meaning off-grid solar projects for the developing world have floundered over the years.
BLOG: AI in public relations: the human element is key
Every day now, PR pros rely on AI to help them craft pitches, write press releases and generate ideas for social media copy. But other types of predictive AI models have the potential to be equally, if not more impactful on the profession.
BLOG: AI in public relations: how language models go wrong
Artificial intelligence has been all over the news in recent months since the public launch of chatGPT and other large language models based on OpenAI’s Generative Pretrained Transformer (GPT) model. While these tools have the potential to change the way public relations is performed, there are many pitfalls to watch out for in the short term.
North American Clean Energy: Maplewell and Urban Electric Power Form Strategic Partnership to Develop Virtual Power Plants
The new partnership will enable Maplewell and Urban Electric Power to provide commercial and industrial customers a turnkey battery energy storage system combined with the JANiiT platform. The solution will deliver demand charge management, demand response, and other grid services with load shifting, shedding, and modulation.
Data Center Dynamics: Everything data center operators need to know about Power Purchase Agreements (PPAs)
To ensure their green credentials, many companies are signing power purchase agreements (PPAs), which help bring new renewable energy projects online and help organizations claim their operations are sustainable. Edison Energy’s Joey Lange explains.
USA Today: Reverse global warming by scrubbing the air? That's what carbon capture aims to do.
Get ready to hear a lot about climate-change-fighting "carbon capture" in the coming months as private businesses and nonprofits race to qualify for tens of billions of dollars in new federal tax credits and funding. The new Global Thermostat plant near Denver can capture about 1,000 tons of CO2 a year,
Electrek: Here’s why the first commercial spiral-welded wind turbine tower is a game-changer
The first commercial spiral-welded wind turbine tower has begun operation – here’s what it is and why it matters.
Axios: Forced-labor crackdown hamstrings solar industry
"There has been limited information from Customs about what documentation is acceptable, and no one seems to know how to navigate UFLPA, regardless of the provenance of the polysilicon," Christian Roselund, senior policy analyst at consulting firm Clean Energy Associates, tells Axios.
Utility Dive: US can reach 100% clean power by 2035, DOE finds, but tough reliability and land use questions lie ahead
New aggressive planning is needed to identify the long-duration storage technologies and find the land to grow enough resources to reach the Biden administration’s net zero emissions goals, a DOE national lab reports.
Wall Street Journal: Companies Race To Build Solar Industry in U.S.
Spurred by the incentives outlined in the Inflation Reduction Act, more than 40 gigawatts of new solar-panel plants are in various stages of planning in the U.S., almost five times what the U.S. has now, said Andy Klump, chief executive of Clean Energy Associates.
POWER interview: A Renewed Shift in Energy Investing
Ahmad Atwan, the Houston, Texas-based founder and CEO of VC Fuel and Clean Energy Services, provides his insight on today’s investing environment.
pv magazine: Five strategies for battery procurement
As the cost of raw materials such as lithium climb, battery prices are being driven materially higher, on some accounts by 20% to 30%, rendering some projects uneconomical.
pv magazine: Mining for gold in legacy PPAs
As the pace of solar installations quickens, developers are racing to find the best remaining sites and advance in interconnection queues. But what if the best investment opportunity is hidden in a site built a decade or more ago, which sells power at prices today’s developers can only dream of?
Wall Street Journal: U.S. Solar Shipments Are Hit by Import Ban on China’s Xinjiang Region
U.S. customs has detained shipments from some of the biggest solar-panel producers, as authorities enforce a new law targeting goods made with forced labor in China.
Canary Media: Utilities are planning to shift to clean energy — just not too quickly
“In the last three years, you have seen major energy companies in the U.S. publicly declare net-zero” targets, said Arshad Mansoor, CEO of the Electric Power Research Institute. “I think that has been a sea change.”
pv magazine: Alkaline batteries power off-grid home in Navajo Nation
A family living off grid in the Navajo Nation in Arizona is using a new 13 kWh energy storage system to provide power whenever the sun isn’t shining, thanks to a demonstration project conducted by Urban Electric Power for Sandia National Laboratories and the Department of Energy. What’s unique about this energy storage system is that it uses the common alkaline battery.
Renewable Energy World: Corporate sustainability requires impactful clean energy investments
By Hannah Badrei, Vice President of Energy Supply Advisory, Edison Energy
As climate impacts continue to ramp up, so too has the global response, particularly from the private sector.
Specifically, corporates have been addressing their Scope 2 emissions by entering into Virtual Power Purchase Agreements (VPPAs)—wholesale financial contracts to buy renewable electrons anywhere in the grid. Opportunities for companies to buy financially settled products such as VPPAs have been a critical step towards weaning society from our reliance on carbon fuels and reducing our collective carbon footprint.
CleanTechnica: No More Excuses: Spiral Welding Can Bring Taller Wind Turbines To US Southeast
Wind energy fans have been eyeballing vast swaths of the US southeast for new opportunities, only to be thwarted by relatively thin wind resources and unfavorable political winds, too. Not too much can be done about the latter, but the former problem could be resolved by taller wind turbines that can harvest more optimal wind speeds at higher altitudes. After that, it’s only a matter of time before the political cookie crumbles.
“With more than $7 million from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), Keystone Tower Systems has developed a solution: a spiral-welding technique, borrowed from the steel-pipeline industry, to build some of the largest turbine towers on the market. Spiral welding is when the steel used to make the tower is curled into a cylinder; essentially, these towers are built from meters-wide steel plates,” NREL explains.