Month: June 2022

Tesla’s “Crowdsourced Solar” Could Help California Block Out Blackouts

TheVerge:

Tesla and California utility PG&E launched a new program that will pay eligible Powerwall owners to send extra electricity to the grid when it’s vulnerable to blackouts. Working together, the Powerwalls create a “virtual power plant” that can help keep the lights on during emergencies or energy shortages. 

By signing up, Powerwall owners will receive $2 for every additional kilowatt-hour they feed to the grid during designated “events” when the grid is under a lot of stress. That includes any time the California grid operator, CAISO, issues an energy alert, warning or emergency.

Tesla started a similar beta program with PG&E and a couple of other utilities last July, but that was a voluntary program with no payouts. Now, with a monetary incentive to entice participants, the program could grow large enough to become a significant backup energy source in California — and a clean one at that. 

Participants would “help form the largest distributed battery in the world — potentially over 50,000 Powerwalls,” according to Tesla. That distributed battery — or virtual power plant, in other words — can replace gas-fired power plants that typically come online to provide extra juice whenever power demand starts to outpace supply.

Tesla already has experience with this in other places. The company has been building out a virtual power plant in Australia over the last several years. And it wants to expand more in the US. Tesla is pushing the grid operator in Texas to change rules that would allow its customers to earn money for participating in a virtual power plant program. The company launched a demonstration project earlier this year that asks Powerwall owners to volunteer to participate to show the grid operator how such a program might work. For now, without any rule changes, Tesla is offering the volunteers a $40 Tesla gift card “as a token of appreciation.”

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Sunshine to Cash: Making Solar an Investment Platform

Is it Sunshine or Moonshine? We’ll have to find out.

PV Magazine:

Brooklyn-based startup Legends Solar has unveiled a new early-access product, Legends Rooftop, an online “on demand” solar investment platform. The platform allows users to purchase anywhere from one solar panel to an entire array located on a remote commercial rooftop. It is pitched as a way for millennial investors or those who are locked out of the housing market to access the benefits of the buildout of solar energy across the nation.

Users select how many panels they want to invest in in an “on demand” fashion, with the smallest investment starting at a few hundred dollars. The platform tracks the performance of the panels and banks the energy savings created by the solar project in the user’s account. Withdrawals can be made at any time, said Legends Solar.

The company said it chooses rooftop solar projects based on two criteria: an energy offtaker, typically the physical host of the panels, that has low financial risk; and projects that are built with high-quality components. It lists an estimated minimal investment of about $250 for one panel, with an estimated return of 7.3%.

The company notes there are some risks in the investment, including poor weather conditions, failure of payment by the “offtaker” or power purchaser, unexpected maintenance, or natural disasters and physical damage. It said that typically hospitals and universities are very consistent offtakers, and as such are a key customer area for Legends.

“With Legends Solar, you can invest in a single remotely located panel, or a whole rooftop’s worth, even without the suburban minimansion and white picket fence,” said Legends founder and CEO Lassor Feasley.

SDC Energy will serve as financial partner for Legends. The company has performed hundreds of solar financings in the past. “The team at Legends Solar has challenged us to reimagine our approach to raising equity for new solar facilities,” said SDC Energy President Charles Schaffer. “We look forward to unlocking the solar asset class for a wider and more diverse set of retail investors. By doing this, we will accelerate the transition to a carbon free society and spread its financial benefits more equitably.”

Legends said the product offers convenience, side-stepping hurdles to rooftop solar adoption. Users purchase the panels after they have been sited, permitted, built and interconnected with the power grid. Buyers can earn dividends from the panels immediately and the platform helps investors right-size their exposure, expanding access to the energy transition in a way that is not prohibitively expensive.

The tool tracks solar production, the amount of carbon abated, total cash earned, and tracks dividend payments.

Taking the Cake for Bad Coal Takes

Alex Epstein, aka “the smartest guy at the Frat House Kegger” is a self styled, expertise-free “philosopher” of energy, and current darling on the shriveling climate denial circuit.
He demonstrates his breadth of understanding here, claiming that a little exposure to toxic air is good for us the way a little dirt is good for a child’s immune system. I know, I know. You just have to watch it.

The “Other Side” of Canada’s 2021 Heat Wave was Massive Flooding

A year-long analysis of massive flooding that took place in Southeast Michigan has been completed.
Not included in the press report is that Detroit’s flood was the result of a “stuck” jet stream pattern that, on the other side of North America, caused the deadly and catastrophic heat wave that delivered Death Valley-like temperatures to the Glacial valleys of British Columbia. (121 F in Lytton Canada – see video above)

Although the study by a panel of experts concluded that some pumping stations were not performing as designed, the flooding would have overwhelmed them in any case.
Continuing to the learn the lesson that infrastructure built for a different planet is not up to the challenge of a warming world. Expensive lessons ahead.

Detroit Free Press:

But even if all pumps were working fully, widespread basement backups and surface flooding in roadways was “inevitable,” according to investigators who reported their findings at a GLWA Board of Directors meeting Wednesday.

“The intensity of the rainfall far exceeded the designed capacity of the wastewater system and, as a result, some level of both surface flooding and basement backups was unavoidable,” the report reads.
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The rainfall qualified as historic: between a 200-year to 1,000-year storm depending on the area where rain fell, according to investigators. GLWA’s system is designed for a 10-year storm of 1.7 inches of rain falling over an hour or 3.31 inches in 24 hours.  

Costly Nuclear Plant Forcing Investors to Hard Choices

The Vogtle Nuclear plant in Georgia is many years behind schedule and billions over budget. Already one big household-name corporation, Westinghouse, has been forced into bankruptcy by the project.
As construction drags on, smaller investors have to look to their own survival.
Above, upbeat puff piece on the plant from a year ago projected, hopefully, that at least one unit would be online by now. Such is not the case.
I wish them luck – we don’t need this investment to come to nothing, but experience, so far, has been harsh.

Washington Post:

One of the owners of a nuclear power plant being expanded in Georgia says it’s shifting overruns to Georgia Power Co. in exchange for giving up a sliver of its ownership.

Oglethorpe Power Corp. which provides power to 38 electric cooperatives, said Saturday that it has exercised a contractual option to freeze its costs for Plant Vogtle at $8.1 billion.

Oglethorpe Power said it would save members at least $400 million. In exchange, Oglethorpe’s ownership share of the two new reactors being built at the plant east of Augusta would fall from 30% to 28%. That would bump Georgia Power’s share of ownership from 45.7% to 47.7%.

Associated Press calculations show the plant will cost at least $30.34 billion.

If costs rise further, Oglethorpe would save more, but give up a larger share of its ownership.

Georgia Power officials have said they don’t expect regulators with the Georgia Public Service Commission to approve customers paying further costs. That means shareholders of Georgia Power’s parent — Atlanta-based Southern Co. — would pay.

Oglethorpe, Georgia Power and Vogtle’s two other owners — the Municipal Electrical Authority of Georgia and the city of Dalton — have been arguing over Georgia Power’s obligations to start absorbing more costs.

It was supposed to begin after more than $2.1 billion in overruns had occurred following a 2018 agreement. Oglethorpe says costs have risen by $3.4 billion since then. But Georgia Power has said COVID-19 was an act of God that drove up costs and delayed work, and it shouldn’t have to pay for that slowdown.

Southern Co. has acknowledged it will have to pay at least $440 million more to cover what would have been other owners’ costs, and has said another $460 million is in dispute.

In Miami: Raised Streets for Some Mean Raised Taxes, Flooded Yards for Others

A carbon tax, by another name, is what middle income and poor Miamians are paying to raise streets and pump flood waters into Biscayne Bay. And those tax benefits and street fixes have so far been going to some of the most privileged property owners.

Wall Street Journal:

The City of Miami Beach is getting deluged with resident complaints over its effort to keep its roads from flooding.

Faced with rising sea levels, the beachfront city that sits between Biscayne Bay and the Atlantic Ocean has raised 11 miles of roads from a few inches to 2.5 feet since 2017. Miami Beach hopes to raise a further 90 miles of roadway by 2050, when sea levels are expected to be 14 to 30 inches higher than they are today.

Some residents and businesses say the project has improved conditions in flood zones in their neighborhoods. But others say that the water that is being diverted from the elevated roads is winding up in their yards and living rooms.

The outcry has led to lawsuits and delays in the project as some property owners have denied the city the access it needs to move forward. “There’s definitely some competing interests,” said Eric Carpenter, Miami Beach deputy city manager.

Part of the unique challenge faced in Miami Beach is the geology of the bedrock, which is made up of porous limestone that allows the water table to come up from beneath the ground when the tide rises. That means that parts of the city can flood even on sunny days. Once the roads are raised, they often end up at higher elevations than abutting properties.

“Unfortunately we have to plan for rainfall falling from the sky, plus the water that’s coming up from underneath,” Mr. Carpenter said. “The only way to combat that water coming from underneath is to build higher over time.”

Besides raising the roads, the Miami Beach flood-control effort also involves installing pumps. The pumps are part of a complex stormwater system that takes the rainfall that accumulates in low-lying areas, filters it and then pumps it into Biscayne Bay.

Continue reading “In Miami: Raised Streets for Some Mean Raised Taxes, Flooded Yards for Others”

Climate Deniers and Bots Using War, Inflation to Disinform