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Good morning and happy Friday,
Next week marks the 45-day deadline for the Treasury Department to issue guidance on the definition of “start of construction,” critical to determining which projects qualify for IRA tax credits. As the clean energy industry waits with bated breath, experts warn that tighter rules could derail 60 GW of solar projects. Amid the uncertainty, states are stepping up to help expedite projects – more on that in Must Read, below.
Meanwhile, the U.S. Energy Information Administration predicts American electricity consumption will hit record highs in 2025 and 2026; for its part, EPRI estimates AI could need 50 GW of power by 2030, equivalent to more than half of the current U.S. nuclear fleet.
But while artificial intelligence is driving this trend, the impacts are very real: customers in PJM may see bill increases of as much as 20%, and states are “under pressure to insulate regular household and business ratepayers from the costs of feeding Big Tech’s” insatiable appetite.
And although everyone agrees electricity rates are rising, if New Jersey’s any example, not everyone is clear on who’s to blame, with attribution often mapping along partisan lines, or falling at the feet of utilities (which don’t set rates).
Read on for more.
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States Step Up
With the passage of the OBBBA on July 4, clean energy developers were plunged into a world of uncertainty with dramatically shortened deadlines to qualify for federal tax credits. Faced with surging power demand, several Democrat-led states are stepping up to help expedite development and ensure projects can get built in time with the goal of locking in as much low-cost generation as possible to lessen the blow for ratepayers. Here are a few examples:
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In New England, Connecticut offers “concierge permit assistance services” to help developers meet tight deadlines, Maine issued an RFP for nearly 1,600 GWh of clean energy, and advocates in New York are looking at ways the Empire State can cut red tape to get “26 permitted but unbuilt wind and solar projects” over the finish line.
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Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro is thinking long-term, and has proposed a “Lightning Plan” that would “streamline energy siting decisions” by creating a Reliable Energy Siting and Electric Transition, or RESET, Board.
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The standout winner in the tax credit sprint is Colorado, where Governor Jared Polis issued a letter committing to use “all of the Colorado State Government to prioritize deployment of clean energy projects;” it calls for eliminating “administrative barriers and bottlenecks” and “prioritizing expeditious review of projects as they come into the queue for state consultation and permitting.”
⚡️ The Takeaway
Enlightened self interest. Forward-thinking states are focused on ensuring “real opportunities” represented by projects already in interconnection queues make their deadlines; one observer noted that “Ironically, one of the impacts of the phaseout is that there’s a rush to speed up the development of some projects in the short run.” A Minnesota Commissioner says wind and solar remain the cheapest way to add power; the loss of federal tax incentives is “a blow, but it doesn’t change our energy policy, it doesn’t change what is economically the right thing to do.”
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Better by Design
The Moss Landing battery fire in January of this year was a pivotal event for the energy storage industry. While the event raised concerns about BESS safety among the general public, it’s important to remember the facility – which was built back in 2019, practically the Stone Age in terms of energy storage – had features that are no longer standard in modern BESS installations. pv magazine takes a closer look at some of the lessons learned:
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First up is the obvious issue of battery chemistry. Moss Landing used nickel manganese cobalt (NMC) batteries; the industry has since transitioned to lithium iron phosphate (LFP) batteries. While LFP batteries can still “reach the thermal runaway state that is the first step toward a large-scale fire incident,” they’re much less likely to do so than NMC batteries.
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In terms of fire risks, “a full fire test is the only sure way to determine, for example, a safe distance to set battery containers apart and ensure that a fire or explosion in one will not spread to others,” according to a senior fire test engineer at Fluence, a battery manufacturer. While such testing is not currently a requirement, that may change.
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And of course, it’s essential that local emergency response teams have the appropriate knowledge, training and equipment. Everyone – manufacturers, installers, site owners, and local authorities – must be on the same page regarding “how the system is designed, what the appropriate response is to any situation, and how to ensure that first responders can do their job safely if something does occur.”
⚡️ The Takeaway
Managing and mitigating risk. Among project owners and insurers alike, there’s a “growing acceptance that today’s batteries carry inherent risks,” although those risks are “relatively low.” Nevertheless, efforts are underway to find “solutions not only to reduce the risk of fire breaking out in the first place, but to contain and mitigate the risk of injury or damage should it happen.” One practice that’s proving helpful is spacing things out “so that if a fire breaks out it won’t spread to the whole site, and some parts may even be able to continue operating safely.” Sites that use this approach are likely to “see benefits in their insurance, because they’ve spread their risk and built in some redundancies.”
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Peeing on Them Won’t Help
The next time you’re having a bad day at work, take comfort in the knowledge that at least your day won’t be derailed by a bunch of jellyfish. Workers at the Gravelines Nuclear Power Station in northern France – one of the largest in Western Europe – weren’t quite so lucky last weekend.
Between Sunday night and Monday morning, the plant’s four operating reactors automatically shut down because the seawater cooling system became clogged by a “massive and unforeseeable” swarm of jellyfish.
It turns out there’s such a thing as a “jellyfish bloom,” which can occur when key factors such as water temperature and salinity are just right for putting gelatinous invertebrates in the mood. It also turns out that this happens often enough to warrant an early warning tool for jellyfish blooms (is there an app for that?).
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Further complicating matters, jellyfish aren’t strong swimmers…so if a bloom occurs, it can quickly turn into a gigantic blob. In this incident, that blob got sucked into the water intake systems used to cool the reactors. To be clear, this was a “non-nuclear event,” but there’s definitely going to be some cleanup involved.
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Thanks for diving into the Developer Dispatch with us.
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Building American power requires a powerful team. |
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