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Can State-of-the-Art Batteries Fuel a Clean, Renewable Energy and Transport Future?

Can State-of-the-Art Batteries Fuel a Clean, Renew...

In late 2019 images of Australia in flames spread around the world. Record weather extremes related to global heating had created conditions in which vast areas of forest and brush easily caught fire. The poignancy of the plight of so many Australians was heightened by having a Prime Minister who was initially absent from the country when the fires were taking hold, and was a strong supporter of the coal industry, who also...
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What Would It Take for the US to Become an Energy Storage Manufacturing Powerhouse?

What Would It Take for the US to Become an Energy ...

After “missed opportunity” in solar, Trump administration wants a domestic supply chain for energy storage. Is that realistic? U.S. entrepreneurs have led the world in creating new technologies for storing grid power, but they largely rely on other countries for their core ingredients. Tesla’s famous car and grid batteries use cells from Japanese manufacturer Panasonic. When companies like Fluence or NextEra integrate large...
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Cheap at Last, Batteries Are Making a Solar Dream Come True

Cheap at Last, Batteries Are Making a Solar Dream ...

Todd Karin was prepared when California’s largest utility shut off power to millions of people to avoid the risk of wildfires last month. He’s got rooftop solar panels connected to a single Tesla Powerwall in his rural home near Fairfield, California. “We had backup power the whole time,” Karin says. “We ran the fridge and watched movies.” Californians worried about an insecure energy future are increasingly looking to this...
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Fast Times for the US Residential Solar Market

Fast Times for the US Residential Solar Market

Rooftop solar deployments now rival massive utility-scale plants By definition, residential solar is small and utility-scale is very large. But recently, the annual output of the most prolific rooftop solar installers is starting to rival utility-scale plants. Sunrun leads the pack; it is on track to install more than 400 megawatts this year through its in-house crews and installer partners. That puts it on par with, for...
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Watt It Takes: Form Energy’s Mateo Jaramillo on His Mission to Build Long-Duration Batteries

Watt It Takes: Form Energy’s Mateo Jaramillo on Hi...

In this edition of our founder interview series, we profile a battery veteran who’s looking to the next big leap for storage. Mateo Jaramillo reflects on his long career in battery storage. This week on Watt It Takes: Powerhouse CEO Emily Kirsch sits down with Mateo Jaramillo, the CEO and co-founder of Form Energy. Form is working on a new kind of long-duration battery. And Mateo has one of the longer-duration careers in the...
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Will Your EV Keep the Lights On When the Grid Goes Down?

Will Your EV Keep the Lights On When the Grid Goes...

Home battery systems can help during power outages. So can the battery packs rolling around in electric vehicles. EV battery packs are functionally similar to stationary systems but much larger. Last month’s preventative power shutoffs in California highlighted the vulnerability of the electricity grid to threats exacerbated by a changing climate. In the wake of the forced outages, much has been written about the ability of...
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Huge Battery Investments Drop Energy-Storage Costs Faster Than Expected, Threatening Natural Gas

Huge Battery Investments Drop Energy-Storage Costs...

The global energy transition is happening faster than the models predicted, according to a report released today by the Rocky Mountain Institute, thanks to massive investments in the advanced-battery technology ecosystem. Previous and planned investments total $150 billion through 2023, RMI calculates—the equivalent of every person in the world chipping in $20. In the first half of 2019 alone, venture-capital firms...
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Can Solar and Batteries Outlast an Extended Power Outage?

Can Solar and Batteries Outlast an Extended Power ...

It depends, experts say. Just expect to make a few sacrifices. Even by the standards of the generally well-informed clean-energy customers in California’s Bay Area, Todd Karin is a savvy one. Karin works as a postdoctoral researcher in the energy storage and distributed resources division at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Last year, he chose to add solar and storage to his home, first buying an array of...
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Solar-plus-storage projects spreading across the U.S.

Solar-plus-storage projects spreading across the U...

A new wave of solar farm development, pairing solar photovoltaics with battery storage, is accelerating across the United States, most notably in California, Hawaii, Florida and the Northeast. Roughly 40 such systems were in operation in the U.S. as of late September, combining about 533 MW of storage with 1,242 MW of solar capacity. Meanwhile, companies are developing at least another 85 co-located solar and storage...
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An Unusual Plan for Lowering Solar’s Customer Acquisition Costs: Infomercials

An Unusual Plan for Lowering Solar’s Customer Acqu...

Recent solar and storage entrant Generac believes it can generate sales leads on the cheap through the old-fashioned TV ad. “No one has unleashed the power of TV on the space,” says Generac’s Russ Minick. SALT LAKE CITY — Generac Power Systems, a Fortune 1000 company that sells residential backup power generators, is making a play for the residential solar and storage market. This spring the Wisconsin-based...
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Electric vehicle companies considering engineering hub in the Valley

Electric vehicle companies considering engineering...

CEO working with groups on site selection; Lordstown group sticks to ambitious timetable WARREN — Lordstown Motors Corp.’s CEO Steve Burns is sticking to an ambitious timeline to launch the company’s battery-powered electric pickup truck in late 2020 should the tech startup buy the idled General Motors assembly plant. And if he’s successful, Burns said expect to see prototypes of the yet-to-be-named pickup on local roads by...
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Get on the road to a solar solution!

Get on the road to a solar solution!

The 2019 Green Energy Ohio — Licking County Solar Tour will take place Friday and Saturday, September 27th and 28th at various photovoltaic solar installations throughout the county. Installations range in size from a residential 2.4 kilowatts to a utility scale 2.3 megawatts. All twelve sites are open FREE to the public at the hours designated on the Green Energy Ohio website: https://greenenergyohiotour.org/, which also...
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A 100% renewable grid isn’t just feasible, it’s in the works in Europe

A 100% renewable grid isn’t just feasible, it’s in...

Europe will be 90% renewable powered in two decades, experts say. The myth that a very high level of renewables can’t be integrated into the electric grid is being demolished by the clean tech and battery storage revolution. “By 2040, renewables make up 90% of the electricity mix in Europe, with wind and solar accounting for 80%,” predict the experts at Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF) in their annual energy outlook...
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Electric vehicles (EVs) and batteries can drive growth in rooftop solar

Electric vehicles (EVs) and batteries can drive gr...

Falling battery and EV costs with equal grid market access can accelerate transition to renewables: lessons from UK and Germany (LONDON) – The falling costs of batteries and electric vehicles can help drive the next phase of growth in renewables including rooftop solar power, provided small-scale renewables and storage have the same access to electricity and grid services markets as conventional power plants, according to a...
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10 Mistakes I’ve Made Selling and Installing Battery Storage Systems

10 Mistakes I’ve Made Selling and Installing Batte...

The CEO of Silicon Valley’s Cinnamon Energy Systems boils down his biggest lessons from the residential battery business—from buggy software and interconnection delays to understanding customers’ emotions. In many regards, batteries are safer to install than rooftop solar, the author says. Upcoming electric rate changes in parts of the U.S. mean that almost every home and business here will eventually benefit from a battery...
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