Happy Birthday. We have a special happy birthday mention from a great SolarWakeup friend, John Murphy, who passes along a happy 50th to operations guru Chris Perron. Let this be the start of the SolarWakeup birthday mentions!

Halfway Leaderboard. Catherine Heigher and Joseph Abel are leading our women’s and men’s brackets as we head to the final stages. Still feeling pretty good about my chances, hopefully breaking the streak of never having won the SolarWakeup bracket challenge.

• Bloomberg: Shell and BP See Trading Edges in Clean-Energy Stakes
• Energy Storage News: ‘BESS to help ERCOT manage doubling of demand by 2030’: Energy Storage Summit USA 2025 kicks off
• PV-magazine: Texas Senate passes bill to expedite permits for home solar, battery systems
• Associated presses: Renewable energy jumps to new high, powered by China solar boom
• UTility Dive: PJM fast-track interconnection process draws 26.6 GW in proposals
• Reuters: Shell scraps solar, onshore wind power projects in Brazil
• PV-Tech: JinkoSolar ships 99.6GW of modules in 2024, endures operational losses
• Canary Media: Span’s new smart electrical panel can plug right into utility meters
   

Opinion

• Axios: Renewables surged globally in 2024, new data shows

Best, Yann

• Bloomberg: Altman-Backed Oklo Sees Trump Cutting Red Tape for Nuclear Power
• PV-Tech: European PV market will ‘consolidate’ amid economic uncertainty
• Axios: Exclusive: Carbon removal gets farm-friendly boost
• Reuters: Exclusive: UAE renewables firm Masdar weighs possible IPO, sources say
• PV-Magazine: Minnesota legislation aims to sunset community solar program
• Energy Storage News: Ex-Tesla and Freyr team launch sodium-ion ESS startup for ‘distributed hybridisation’ with solar
• Canary Media: Hyundai to make ​‘low-carbon’ steel at $6B plant in Louisiana

Opinion

• Utility Dive: New England could connect 9.6 GW of offshore wind without new infrastructure: report

Best, Yann

• New York Times: The Vicious Cycle of Extreme Heat Leading to More Fossil Fuel Use
• Utility Dive: Texas Senate passes bill to establish ‘dispatchable’ power credits trading program
• BLoomberg: Ardian Agrees to Acquire ICG-Backed Renewable Developer Akuo
• Axios: The mystery of Trump’s tariff bomb
• Reuters: Rule change to drive up clean energy project costs in India’s top solar state
• PV-Tech: OCI Holdings to build 2GW solar cell plant in Texas
• Solar Power World: Sunrun home energy storage owners will help PG&E with load relief again this year
• Energy Storage News: US energy storage market saw ‘first year of double-digit deployment’ in 2024: Wood Mac
• PV-Magazine: Distributed energy resource management enables a new paradigm for grid operators

Opinion

• Canary Media: How Massachusetts is trying to turn EVs into grid batteries

Best, Yann

March Madness Last Call. Make sure to get involved, last call this morning! It’s back for another year, you can join your fellow SolarWakeup readers in this year’s March Madness bracket challenge. Click here for the Men’s bracket and click here for the Women’s tourney, password is solar, and you guess the bracket. Winner as always gets to write the content for a day. 

• Axios: Exclusive – UAE, U.S. partnership to invest to power data centers
• Bloomberg: Solar Generation Surge Sends European Power Prices Below Zero
• Reuters: Head of Trump’s energy loan office departs this week
• Solar Power World: US energy storage installation market grows 34% in 2024
• Utility Dive: EPA yanks air quality permit for 1.5-GW Atlantic Shores offshore wind project
• PV-Tech: Dimension Energy upsizes credit facility to support 3.5GW community solar portfolio
• Energy Storage News: Local residents lose legal battle against NextEra over 1GWh BESS in US state of Georgia
• PV-Magazine: Supply deal struck between U.S. steel frame maker and Texas solar module manufacturer

Opinion

• Canary Media: Indiana utilities want ratepayers to fork out for small nuclear reactors

Best, Yann