This is your SolarWakeup for September 27th, 2021

Infrastructure Bill, First Or Last? Pelosi went on the Sunday shows yesterday and said that the bipartisan infrastructure bill was going to pass the House this week. While the bill doesn’t have the ITC extension it has billions for energy transition funding including EVs and transmission. There will be a bit of a showdown between the progressives and the leadership, though some members of the republican caucus have said that they would support the bill. How Pelosi plans to put pressure on the caucus and Senate for the budget bill is the bigger trick, one which she has not telegraphed yet. With the debt ceiling in play, it would be the forcing issue within their own house to get something done.

FERC Reviews Texas Freeze. FERC published their report on what happened over the multi-day power stress event caused by freezing temperatures in mid-February. It also includes some 28 recommendations, some of which should be put in place prior to next winter.

Going Long Storage. It’s not just about investing in storage but also investing in long duration storage technologies. The technologies are coming to market and now getting support from the team at DOE that also lead the SunShot initiative over the past decade plus. With longer duration technologies showing early signs of success, their interoperability with storage software will create the first marks of their bankability. As we’ve seen with early solar tech, lab to reality is one challenge but also getting project capital approval is another.

Making Storage Run. Taking bankability into storage has multiple levels. The battery is only one part of the equation, getting it to run as desired to the designed use case with inverters and power electronics is another. The most underappreciated technical challenge is the controls and software that actually tell the battery what to do, based on what the trader/owner and grid operator want. This intersection between hardware and software is the energy storage tech bankability challenge that is just getting to the surface but we will talk about much more.

Opinion

Best, Yann