What We’re Reading This Week: Friday, February 3

February 3, 2017

Emily Jiles

Communications

ENERGY STORAGE

Greentech Media: Germany’s Banner Year for Big Batteries

Germany leads Europe — and much of the world — when it comes to battery storage. Domestic storage-plus-solar continues to boom, thanks in part to incentives from KfW, the state-owned bank. And according to a recent study, there’s about to be a surge in larger, grid-scale batteries this year. In fact, the Team Consult study claims that there will be a threefold increase, from around 60 megawatts last year to 200 megawatts in 2017… 

Utility Dive: How behind-the-meter storage could make up 50% of the U.S. market by 2021

…By pairing storage with solar power in BTM applications, customers can take advantage of declining solar power costs and can offset the lack of net metering revenues by using storage to store solar generated power and shift their load to reduce the amount of pricey peak power they buy from their utility. In addition to playing an offsetting role, BTM storage is getting a positive push in states such as Nevada, Arizona and Vermont that are starting to provide mechanisms for BTM storage such as net metering and rate reform…

Greentech Media: India’s First Grid-Scale Battery Project Signals a Coming Boom for Energy Storage

India has launched its first grid-scale battery storage system amid ambitious plans to integrate 175 gigawatts of renewable energy into the power system by 2022. Commissioned and operated by Tata Power Delhi Distribution, the 10-megawatt Advancion energy storage array is a joint project by Mitsubishi and the U.S. energy storage company AES…

UTILITIES

Utility Dive: The lurking surprise for solar in Arizona’s recent ruling to end net metering

…The Resource Comparison Proxy (RCP) methodology will be used in near-term utility rate cases to set compensation for exported solar energy. In subsequent rate cases, when details of the more specific Avoided Cost methodology are settled, it will be applied instead of RCP… Based on information provided by APS, its average compensation rate would be about $0.114/kWh. It would replace the current average residential retail rate of $0.122/kWh…

PV Magazine: Maine PUC issues final ruling on net-metering compromise

Current solar customers in Maine can breathe a sigh of relief. Their net-metering benefits are safe for 15 years – but customers who sign up next year are not so lucky….The story isn’t quite so bright, however, for customers who sign up after Jan. 1, 2018, though the net-metering deal can still be good for the consumer. Each year, the rate will decline by 10% and remain at that rate for 15 years…

DEMAND RESPONSE

Greentech Media: How California Can Shape, Shift and Shimmy to Demand Response Nirvana

California has gigawatt-hours of grid-balancing available in homes, offices, factories and farms that can “shape” and “shift” their energy usage, and a smaller but still valuable market for fast-responding “shimmy” resources. But it has very little demand for “shed,” or conventional demand response — unless it can capture value at the distribution-grid level. These are the findings from a Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory study, now going before energy regulators and the public, which envisions a ground-up reorganization of how California does demand response…

POLICY

Forbes: Green Energy Features Big Among Trump’s Top 50 Infrastructure Projects

…The rest of the energy infrastructure projects are surprisingly green and may give a glimmer of hope to renewable energy fans worried about the potential for Trump to roll back the Clean Power Plan and promote coal and oil over the likes of wind and solar…Taken together, these projects would add about 9 gigawatts of zero-carbon, renewable power to the American grid. That’s about as much power as you’d get out of 5 big coal-fired power plants, or enough for roughly 5 million homes… 

Utility Dive: District of Columbia PSC launches grid modernization proceeding

Utility regulators in Washington, D.C., have launched a formal docket to consider modernizing the city’s electric grid and investigate ways to bring on more renewable effort, mirroring efforts taken in states like California and New York. The commission has issued a report, Modernizing the Energy Delivery System for Increased Sustainability (MEDSIS), to serve as a starting point for discussions on increasing sustainability, and is requesting public comment through March. Efforts will use $25 million earmarked for grid modernization as part of the Pepco-Exelon merger to roll out pilot and demonstration projects…

RENEWABLE ENERGY

Energy.gov: Energy Department Announces up to $30 Million for Projects to Integrate Solar into the Nation’s Electric Grid

Today, the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) SunShot Initiative announced up to $30 million in new projects to support the integration of solar energy into the nation’s electric grid, while diversifying the nation’s electricity sources and improving the reliability and security of the electric grid. SunShot will fund 13 projects with a total of up to $30 million to develop next-generation grid planning and operation tools that help to integrate more solar power with the grid…

KCBD: New Mexico considers more aggressive renewable energy goals 

The New Mexico Legislature will consider increasing by more than four-fold the amount of renewable energy from sources such as wind and solar that utilities need to provide customers by the year 2040… New Mexico’s current renewable energy portfolio peaks at 20 percent in 2020. Electrical cooperatives would ramp up to 70 percent renewables by 2040, under the proposal…

Smart Talk: 100% Renewable Energy by 2050 

In a 2016 report titled “Envisioning Pennsylvania’s Energy Future ,” the Delaware Riverkeeper Network lays out a plan calling for capital investment in wind and solar energy and in increase in energy efficiency standards.  The proper execution of this plan could result in the state using 100% renewable energy sources by 2050, creating 500,000 jobs and saving consumers $134 billion over the next 35 years…

Pacific Business News: Kauai Island Utility Cooperative ups its renewable energy goal

The Kauai Island Utility Cooperative has upped its renewable energy goal to achieving 70 percent renewable energy by 2030, the Lihue-based utility said Wednesday. Previously, KIUC set an initial goal of reaching 50 percent renewable energy by 2023, but it expects to hit that goal in 2018, five years earlier than it expected…

IoT

Forbes: Internet Of Things Market To Reach $267B By 2020

…By 2020, 50% of IoT spending will be driven by discrete manufacturing, transportation and logistics, and utilities BCG predicts that IoT will have the most transformative effect on industries that aren’t technology-based today…