The Clean Power Hour – a weekly clean energy headline review and commentary podcast run by Tim Montague, and yours truly – the CommercialSolarGuy – John Fitzgerald Weaver.
First of course, here’s the podcast – Episode 27.
Now, to the news!
Per the EIA we’re expecting 15.4 GWac of utility scale, and 4.1 GWac of small scale solar (~25 GWdc total between the two) – that would blow up the just over 19 GWdc installed last year, which destroyed the 2016 record of 14 GWdc.
In a “Today in Energy” report, the agency said it expects nearly 40 GW of new utility-scale capacity to start commercial operation this year. Of that, solar power will make up the largest share, 39%, followed by wind power at 31%. Natural gas additions will account for 11%, and a new nuclear reactor at Georgia’s Vogtle site is expected to make up about 3%. Notably, battery energy storage is projected to contribute 11% of expected new capacity. – Source
To compliment this US volume, is the pinned tweet on CommercialSolarGuy’s twitter account, which os projections from respected groups globally for solar deployment capacity in 2021:
Starting things off, @BloombergNEF puts their number somewhere between a conservative 151 GW and an optimistic 194 GW.
An aside, their optimistic 2022 number is 206(!) GW. 🙂https://t.co/EPW9pxBY0K
— Commercial Solar Guy (@SolarInMASS) December 19, 2020
Carbon capture, where the CO2 is used as a base for vitamins and nutrients, that you can then make fuller foods out of.
Archer-Daniels-Midland Co., Barclays Plc and Google’s venture capital unit are leading a $32 million series A funding for Air Protein. The California-based firm combines carbon dioxide, oxygen and nitrogen with water and minerals in a probiotic production process that converts the elements into nutrients. Air Protein’s process creates a source of protein that has all the essential amino acids and is rich in vitamins and minerals including B12, Dyson said. – Source
JinkoSolar’s record solar cell efficiency begets a record solar panel efficiency
23.1% conversion efficiency for an n-type monocrystalline solar PV module based on its TOPCon mono cell technology. New anti-reflection coating, advanced metallization technologies, and Tiling Ribbon (TR) technology was also incorporated into the cell design, which eliminates any inter-cell gap. Source and Source
World’s largest battery – 300 MW/1,200 MWh – comes online right next to the Tesla Megapack we saw under construction last week at Moss Landing. Note the image in this tweet below, the white boxes aren’t the batteries – but are the inverters outside of the building which houses the batteries.
Here's a crazy pic of just the inverters for a 300-MW/1,200-MWh energy storage system that recently came online in California. System is likely the largest in the world currently for lithium-based energy storage. https://t.co/4TFkII63G9 pic.twitter.com/BRH67Oyro9
— Kelly Pickerel (@SolarKellyP) January 6, 2021
Elon Musk was the richest person in the world, then wasn’t, and now is again – but by merely $0.1 billion over Jeff Bezos. Happy to see that a clean energy person in this position, or at least hovering around it. Expect that we will have more than enough car, truck, and battery factories built to meet our transportation and energy storage needs.
Real time Billionaire list – Source
FedEx to accept delivery of first 500 of GM’s new electric delivery van in 2021.
Part of GM’s plan to invest $27 billion in electric and autonomous vehicles by 2025 – will be the first vehicle under a new commercial business unit in GM called BrightDrop. The EV600 will be capable of up to 250 miles per charge. – Source
In 2019, Amazon said it would purchase 100,000 electric vans from electric truck maker Rivian. Amazon said it expects to deploy 10,000 of them by 2022.
And now, the podcast –