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Department of Energy Unleashes $53 Milliion To Further Solar Research

By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent

One recent project of mine was to edit a book for a client on climate change. The book focuses on promoting the policies that historically help clean energy in the hopes of showing policymakers what they can do to mitigate climate change on a global scale.

One of the policies that continually came up was government investment in early-stage technologies designed to decarbonize different segments of the economy. In the Trump Administration, you would assume that such government investment would come to a screeching halt given their outsized disdain for technologies like solar and wind. And in fact, some of their actions (like their insane plan, now seemingly shelved, to bailout failing nuclear and coal plants) are in line with that disdain.

Still, when the Trump Administration looked over the budget, they missed a Department of Energy program that has now awarded millions of dollars to support early-stage solar technology development.

The U.S. Department of Energy announced selections for up to $53 million in new projects. Through the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Solar Energy Technologies Office, the Department of Energy will fund 53 innovative research projects that will lower solar electricity costs and support a growing solar workforce.

“Innovation is key to solar’s continued growth in our nation’s energy portfolio. It increases our energy diversity and reinforces our ‘all-of-the-above’ energy strategy,” said U.S. Secretary of Energy Rick Perry. “Developing new skills through workforce training is critical to expanding job opportunities in the renewable sector, which is why we are following through on our program to reach out to military veterans with new projects that will target this committed workforce.”

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These selections will advance research and development in photovoltaics (PV) and concentrating solar-thermal power (CSP). While PV materials convert sunlight directly to electricity, CSP concentrates the incoming sunlight to heat that then generates electricity like a traditional power plant. The projects announced today span across 21 states plus the District of Columbia, and include PV research to increase grid resiliency in Puerto Rico. Selections are in the following areas:

Photovoltaics Research and Development: $27.7 million for 31 projects that will support early-stage research to advance new PV materials, like perovskites, which can essentially be painted on a surface to generate electricity. More innovation is needed to achieve high efficiency and stable performance over a long-time.
Concentrating Solar Power Research and Development: $12.4 million for 15 research projects that will advance the high-temperature components of CSP systems such as heat exchangers. These projects will develop materials and designs for collectors, power cycles, and thermal transport systems that can withstand temperatures greater than 700 °C while being corrosion-resistant. Next-generation CSP systems operating at higher temperatures will be able to store more heat and dispatch solar electricity at any time, day or night.
Improving and Expanding the Solar Industry through Workforce Initiatives: $12.7 million for 7 projects that will pursue initiatives to grow and train the solar workforce. These projects will support training and curriculum development at community colleges and advanced training for a more digital electric power system, which includes communications technology. This includes programs to prepare veterans and interested transitioning military personnel to join the solar workforce, building on Department of Energy’s pilot program, Solar Ready Vets.

DoE Grants Aim To Find Longer-Duration Batteries

By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent

Utility Dive (UD) had an interesting piece on the recent Department of Energy (DoE) grants that are aimed at finding longer-duration batteries, which are important as more renewables join the grid.

Right now, according to UD, lithium ion batteries don’t provide enough storage capacity (typically four hours) to really be a sufficient for the widespread battery storage that is necessary as renewables increase their penetration throughout the country.

As they should, the DoE is now investing government funds in research-and-development (R&D) to find alternatives.

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UD reports:

Last month, the DOE’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) awarded just over $28 million to 10 projects that aim to push the limits of energy storage duration. ARPA-E’s Duration Addition to electricitY Storage (DAYS) program aims to push the duration of energy storage systems out to 100 hours.

One hundred hours, just a little more than four days, is an exponential leap from current durations but the role of ARPA-E is to focus on early stage technologies that are not yet commercial or quite ready for the private sector.

“Wind and solar will clearly be the cheapest forms of electric energy in the future,” Paul Albertus, the director of the DAYS program, told Utility Dive. So, “it is pretty clear that over the next 10 years or so” the need for longer duration energy storage is going to grow, he said.

What’s most interesting, however, is a point made later in the article about the grid. People tend to forget that until battery storage catches up, the grid is still the “storage device” of choice for most renewable energy users. As Alex Eller, senior research analyst at Navigant Research, told Utility Dive:

“It comes back to the fact that grid is built on plants that can run forever, given enough fuel. Until they are not there anymore, that is your long term storage,” Eller said.

More:

DOE energy storage grants look to the day when renewables rule the grid

Saving The Bees: The Vital Role Solar Might Play In Keeping Them Alive

By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent

Over the past decade or so, bumble bee populations in the United States have diminished considerably thanks to a phenomenon called “colony collapse” (the author was the editorial director of Pest Management Professional during the height of the controversy).

Most environmental activists have blamed neonicotinoid pesticides (neonicotinoids act like nerve gas on insects and yes, as the name implies they are based on tobacco-like substances), though scientists could never definitively back that up.

Well, the Department of Energy (DOE) is on it.

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According to the DOE e-news service, “DOE Argonne National Laboratory researchers hope that [the United States] can rehabilitate bee and butterfly populations by allowing them to live at solar energy facilities.” To wit:

A team of Argonne researchers has been examining the potential benefits of establishing pollinator habitat at utility-scale solar energy (USSE) facilities to conserve pollinators and restore the ecosystem they provide. Looking at over 2,800 existing and planned USSE facilities in the contiguous United States, researchers in Argonne’s Environmental Science (EVS) division have found that the area around solar panels could provide an ideal location for the plants that attract pollinators.

The researchers point out that the land around utility-scale solar developments often goes unused and could provide the perfect scenario to grow bee-friendly native foliage and plants that would allow bees to thrive without affecting solar plant efficiency.

(There’s a really cool interactive map in the article itself that shows how much utility-scale solar is planned in each state as it relates to how much pollinator-dependent agriculture there is.)

And this statistic made my jaw drop:

[Two researchers] looked at three example crop types to measure the agricultural benefits of increased pollinator habitat. These crops – soybeans, almonds and cranberries – depend on insect pollinators for their annual crop yields. If all existing and planned solar facilities near these crop types included pollinator habitat and increased yield by just one percent, crop values could rise $1.75 million, $4 million and $233,000 for soybeans, almonds and cranberries, respectively.

With that kind of environmental impact, it should give pause to those who argue solar is eating up agricultural land that could otherwise be cultivated. Instead, it could be argued that having a solar array near farms could actually improve crop yields and the overall value of the farm itself.

It should be noted that companies like Connexus Energy and Cypress Creek Renewables are already putting in these types of pollinator-friendly solar arrays – here’s hoping other utility-scale developers will follow their lead.

More:

Can solar energy save the bees?

The Scientists Are Screaming: Union Of Concerned Scientists Chastise U.S. Government On Storage Research Spending

By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent

It’s a stretch to say these scientists sound shrill, but the Union of Concerned Scientists aren’t pulling any punches when it comes to how they feel about energy-storage research in the United States.

The Union of Concerns Scientists are begging the U.S. government to get its act together (haha) and fund energy storage research, not only for the good of the planet but for the good of the country.

They say that only through adequate use of battery storage can the United States achieve true energy independence. They also argue in their blog post that America is falling behind in the technological race, leaving the door open to our competitors like Korea and China to fill the void – something that could threaten national security in the long-run.

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This technology was developed right here in the good ole’ US of A, but unfortunately, the US is now falling behind other countries in this increasingly lucrative global market, and our outdated electric grid is growing more vulnerable to increasing threats like cyber-attacks and extreme weather. So how do we regain our leadership in this critical technology, and how can we increase the development and deployment of energy storage here at home? The answer is innovation.

How we get the innovation is clearly the main concern for the scientists. While they welcome a $10 billion increase in the budget for the Department of Energy’s Energy Storage Program at the Office of Electricity, they point out (correctly) that such a small budget ($51 million with the increase) is not enough to compete with other countries, who are taking the technology we created here and making it even more effective.

The also write:

We all want the US to be the country selling batteries instead of buying batteries in the 21st century. Increasing federal funding for energy storage research development and demonstration will pay big dividends for our economy and national security, while helping to make the US electricity grid cleaner, more reliable, and more affordable. We’re not doing enough; we’ve got to do more. Let’s hope congress seizes the opportunity in the FY19 budget.

Indeed.

More:

Energy Storage Should Be an Urgent National Priority