Puerto Rico. There have been some developments over the holidays but over 1 million Americans in Puerto Rico are going on over 100 days without power. This is now a political failure at the highest levels, this has little to do with logistics and preparation at this point but more with money and power. It’s sad to see this happening and I’m a bit shocked that EEI and utilities across the Country let it go on this long. Imagine going 20 days without power, then quintuple that.
Guess Who’s Back. Now that Terraform Global has been acquired by Brookfield, SunEdison is exiting bankruptcy proceedings and is now a private company once again. It took somewhere around 14 years for SunEdison to go from birth and back to its beginnings. Co-Founder, Jigar Shah, recently posted the first website,check it out here.
Stories To Watch. Next week’s podcast will feature Amy Harder of Axios, a conversation we recorded during SolarWakeup Live! DC. (You can get NYC tickets here). She has a look ahead of the top energy news coming up which obviously includes the trade case with the January 26th deadline. Frank Andorka has an update on the USITC memo about the trade reps questions in today’s rundown.
Corporate Renewables. Part of offsite renewables is getting consumers and renewable generation into the same grid system. With a lot of generation capacity in the Western States, it makes sense to increase the geographic scale of the Western grid system. More open markets means more opportunity for renewables to match with customers.
Energy R&D. This is a Bill Gates concept from one of his memos a few years back. Solving energy problems with new technology is a lofty goal but fails the commercialization test. New technologies, even those that seem popular, need to go through years of pilot projects before entering bankability and independent engineering so it can be deployed at the billion dollar scale. This is a game of step sized improvements that will be unlikely to be solved by a silver bullet. More customers, buying more renewable energy, is the risk that the market needs to take on.
- GreenBiz: Here’s how clean energy could help Puerto Rico navigate out of the dark
- Greentech Media: SunEdison Emerges From Bankruptcy a Shadow of Its Former Self
- Axios: Eight energy and climate issues to watch in 2018
- Rocky Mountain Institute: Expanding the Western Electricity Grid
- Bloomberg: Solar’s Bright Future Is Further Away Than It Seems
- PV-Magazine: China,aiming to dominate global solar production? Inconceivable
- Crain’s Detroit Business: Southeast Michigan’s premier source for business news
- Renewable Energy World: India’s Electricity Regulator Approves Automatic Generation Control Pilot Project
Opinion
Have a great day!
Yann