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Good morning and happy Friday,
This week got off to a chaotic start as the new administration purged 18 agency inspectors general, issued a memo freezing trillions of dollars of federal grants and loans, and urged the mass resignation of federal employees; by Wednesday, the funding freeze had been rescinded “after legal challenges and widespread condemnation and confusion.”
It’s perhaps a sign of the times that these may not even have been the biggest stories of the week, at least for the energy industry: that honor arguably goes to the DeepSeek debut / debacle, which upended Wall Street’s AI power play and sent IPP and advanced nuclear stocks reeling on the supposition that AI-driven energy demand might not materialize.
And after last week’s assault on wind, some industry observers are wondering if solar is next...but take heart, because the EIA forecasts that new solar will power the majority of U.S. generation growth over the next two years (although they also predict that US wholesale power prices will rise about 7% in most regions in 2025).
Read on for more.
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Not Your Grandma’s BESS
In the space of just a few years, energy storage has taken off in the U.S., surging from 1.5 GW of installed capacity in 2020 to nearly 12 GW by the end of 2024. While 2020 may not seem that long ago, it’s the olden days in terms of utility-scale battery systems – and as such, the recent fire at Moss Landing should be considered in perspective, argues a recent article in Canary Media:
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The first phase of Moss Landing was brought online in December 2020; it was “conceived and designed before modern safety standards were adopted for large grid batteries,” and it’s important to know that “battery safety standards have been updated multiple times since it was built.”
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Notably, that phase of the project used nickel-manganese-cobalt (NMC) chemistry, which is energy-dense, but also vulnerable to thermal runaway. The industry has since transitioned away from NMC batteries to batteries that use lithium iron phosphate (LFP), “a chemistry with better safety metrics.”
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A second, “defining factor specific to Moss Landing” is that the first phase of the project used an existing building to house the rows of battery racks. The industry has also moved away from this practice, opting instead for modular battery containers that prevent the propagation of fire among modules.
⚡️ The Takeaway
Onward and upward. In the aftermath of the fire, the CPUC has issued proposed updates to the state’s BESS regs in addition to beginning an investigation of what happened. The key takeaway for developers and advocates is that the legacy equipment and project design at Moss Landing were vastly different from what’s used in newer BESS. For its part, SEIA has announced a target of 700 GWh of U.S. energy storage by 2030; we’re looking forward to seeing this vital clean energy technology continue to expand, supporting the deployment of renewables and enhancing the reliability and security of the electrical grid.
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Lonestar Motherlode
Dispatch readers, particularly those with an interest in Texas’ clean energy markets, may already be familiar with The Economic Impact of Renewable Energy and Energy Storage Investments Across Texas. An updated version that includes 2024 data has just been released – here are some key deets:
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The report calculates the impact of existing projects, as well as development projects with executed interconnection agreements; it finds that if all the planned projects are built, clean energy facilities will pay nearly $50 billion in local taxes and lease payments to landowners over the projects’ lifetimes.
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Dr. Joshua Rhodes, a Research Scientist at The University of Texas at Austin, authored the report and observes that “In many cases, the long-term revenue streams renewable energy and energy storage lease agreements provide are helping rural Texans hold on to land that has been in their families for generations.”
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These payments are welcomed by landowners, local elected officials, and community leaders; the report notes that “Landowners who exercise their private property rights by hosting renewable energy and energy storage projects are receiving ‘stable, reliable, multigenerational income’ for their families.”
⚡️ The Takeaway
A joint effort. The report was released by the Advanced Power Alliance, Conservative Texans for Energy Innovation, the Solar Energy Industries Association, and the Texas Solar + Storage Association. Another important finding is that it’s anticipated that more than 75% of Texas counties will receive tax revenues from either wind, solar, or energy storage projects. An interactive map showing project size, tax, and landowner payment data per county and legislative district is also available.
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The Sun Rises in the EAST…
As regular readers know, here at the Dispatch we love us some fusion, so when we heard about a nuclear fusion reactor in China that set a new record this week, we certainly couldn’t pass that up.
China’s Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST) nuclear fusion reactor shattered its previous record for maintaining a steady, highly confined loop of plasma, achieving an amazing 1,066 seconds (almost 18 minutes).
Fusion has been dubbed the Holy Grail of clean energy because it has the potential to deliver “nearly unlimited” power without any pesky emissions and without creating much nuclear waste, either.
Scientists have been working to crack the code for decades, but no fusion reactor has ever achieved ignition, “the point at which nuclear fusion creates its own energy and sustains its own reaction” – which is key to “maintaining prolonged, confined plasma loops that future reactors will need to generate electricity.”
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EAST’s achievement – maintaining a temperature of 158 million degrees Fahrenheit for 1,066 seconds – was nevertheless “a small yet significant step.”
As you may know, plasma is “the high-energy fourth state of matter;” but did you know you can generate plasma by nuking grapes? If you’ve been affected by a return-to-office mandate, using the breakroom microwave to check this out seems like an appropriate way to commemorate this turn of events.
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Building American power requires a powerful team. |
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