1.9 million solar panels began operating this year in California — at a Mortenson facility with 120,000 installed batteries that give it a storage capacity of 3,280 megawatts. An article in El Pais notes that this helped California pass 10,000 megawatts of photovoltaic storage in April — enough to meet 20% of demand — for the first time ever. (In 2019, the state had just 770 megawatts of storage capacity.)

Mark Rothleder, the vice president of the independent grid operator, California ISO (CAISO), said earlier this year that they will add another 1,134 megawatts in the first eight months of 2024. This is growth on top of the leap made last year. “In 2023 alone, the ISO successfully onboarded 5,660 megawatts of new power to the grid,” Rothleder said at a conference in San Diego…

Renewable production was enough to supply the grid on 40 out of 48 days this spring, compared to seven days in the whole of last year. Lithium batteries appear to be undercutting the use of fossil fuels. Gas accounts for 40% of California’s grid. However, its use in April registered its lowest proportion in seven years. “The data clearly shows that batteries are displacing natural gas when solar generation is ramping up and down each day in CAISO,” notes an analysis by Grid Status, a firm specializing in energy issues. Natural gas was king on the grid in April 2021, 2022 and 2023. CAISO was sending between 9,000 and 10,000 megawatts produced from gas to the grid once solar ran out. Last April, however, it amounted to only 5,000 megawatts… [California’s goal: run on 100% renewable energy by 2045.]
Arizona and Georgia have followed California’s lead. But it is Texas, the other major U.S. giant in this industry, that is snapping at its heels. At the end of April, batteries supplied 4% of the grid’s electricity, enough to power several million homes. Batteries are beginning to look like an alternative to a system heavily dependent on gas and coal.

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The Los Angeles Times spoke to Ryan Kiskis, an environmentally-conscious owner of a hydrogen fuel cell vehicle (the Toyota Mirai):

He soon learned that hydrogen refueling stations are scarce and reliably unreliable. He learned that apps to identify broken stations hand out bad information. He learned that the state of California, which is funding the station buildout, is far behind schedule — 200 stations were supposed to be up and running by 2025, but only 54 exist. And since Kiskis bought his car, the price of hydrogen has more than doubled, currently the equivalent of $15 a gallon of gasoline.

With fueling so expensive and stations so undependable, Kiskis — who lives in Pacific Palisades and works at Google in Playa Vista — drives a gasoline Jeep for everything but short trips around the neighborhood. “I’ve got a great car that sits in the driveway,” he said. Bryan Caluwe can relate. The retired Santa Monican bought a Mirai in 2022. He likes his car too. “But it’s been a total inconvenience.” Hydrogen stations “are either down for mechanical reasons, or they’re out of fuel, or, in the case of Shell, they’ve rolled up the carpet and gone home.” And don’t get Irving Alden started. He runs a commercial print shop in North Hollywood. He leases a Mirai. He too loves the car. But the refueling system? “It’s a frickin’ joke.”

The three are part of a class action lawsuit filed in July against Toyota. They claim that Toyota salespeople misled them about the sorry state of California’s hydrogen refueling system. “They were told the stations were convenient and readily available,” said lawyer Nilofar Nouri of Beverly Hills Trial Attorneys. “That turned out to be far from reality.” The class action now amounts to two dozen plaintiffs and growing, Nouri said. “We have thousands of these individuals in California who are stuck with this vehicle.” Kiskis believes Toyota sales staff duped him — but says, “I’m just as irritated with the state of California” for poor oversight of the program it’s funding…
Hyundai also sells a fuel cell car in California called the Nexo, and although the the suit is aimed only at Toyota, the hydrogen station situation affects Hyundai too.

Toyota told The Times it’s “committed to customer satisfaction and will continue to evaluate how we can best support our customers. We will respond to the allegations in this lawsuit in the appropriate forum.”

The article does note that the California Energy Commission awarded an extra $9.4 million to hydrogen station operators this year to cover “operations and maintenance” — and that hydrogen cars have their advantages. “The full tank range is 350 to 400 miles. A fill-up usually takes no more than five or 10 minutes.

“But unlike electric vehicles, you can’t fill up at home. You have to travel to a dedicated fueling station….”

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The Guardian reports

Sunday, Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, highlighted that Russian forces appeared to have started a fire in one of the cooling towers of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant that it has occupied since the early days of the war. “Radiation levels are within norm,” Zelenskiy said before accusing Russia of using its control of the site, whose six reactors are in shutdown mode, “to blackmail Ukraine, all of Europe, and the world”. A Ukrainian official in Nikopol, the nearest town across the river Dnipro from the nuclear plant, added that according to “unofficial information”, the fire was caused by setting fire to “a large number of automobile tyres” in a cooling tower. Video and pictures showed smoke dramatically billowing from one of the towers, although experts said they are not in use while the reactor is in shutdown mode, prompting some to question whether it was a way of trying raise the stakes over Ukraine’s incursion into Russia.

From the CBC:

The Russian management of the facility said emergency workers had contained the fire and that there was no threat of it spreading further. “The fire did not affect the operation of the station,” it said. The six reactors at the plant located close to the front line of the war in Ukraine are not in operation but the facility relies on external power to keep its nuclear material cool and prevent a catastrophic accident.

Moscow and Kyiv have routinely accused each other of endangering safety around it.

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Longtime Slashdot reader Uncle_Meataxe shares a report from the Sacramento Bee: California’s power grid handled a nearly three week long record-setting heat wave with few issues. The heat wave was the hottest 20-day period on record around Sacramento and set an all-time temperature record of 124 degrees in Palm Springs. Emergency alerts and calls for voluntary conservation were avoided this time around. Officials credit years of investment in renewable energy, especially battery storage that store solar power for use when the sun stops shining.

CAISO last issued calls for voluntary conservation two years ago, during a 2022 bout of extreme heat. Since then, roughly 11,600 megawatts of new renewable energy sources have come onto California’s electricity grid. That includes 10,000 megawatts of battery power, enough to power 10 million homes for a few hours. California is now home to the most grid batteries in the world outside of China, [said Elliot Mainzer, president and CEO of California Independent System Operator (CAISO)].

“Batteries performed very well in this event, they were charged and ready at the right times for optimization on the grid,” he added. “That made a big, big difference.” […] Apart from battery storage, Mainzer also credited that success to less extreme temperatures in Southern California as well as noticeable slightly lower electricity consumption in the peak demand hours, from 4 p.m. to 9 p.m.

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Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni plans to revive Italy’s nuclear energy sector, focusing on small modular reactors to be operational within a decade. He said that nuclear energy could constitute at least 11% of the country’s electricity mix by 2050. Semafor reports: Italy’s energy minister told the Financial Times that the government would introduce legislation to support investment in small modular reactors, which could be operational within 10 years. […] In Italy, concerns about energy security since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine have pushed the government to reconsider nuclear power, Bloomberg wrote. Energy minister Pichetto Fratin told the Financial Times he was confident that Italians’ historic “aversion” could be overcome, as nuclear technology now has “different levels of safety and benefits families and businesses.” In Italy, safety is also top of mind: The Chernobyl tragedy of 1986 was the trigger for it to cease nuclear production in the first place, and the 2011 Fukushima disaster reignited those concerns. As of April, only 51% of Italians approved of nuclear power, according to polls shared by Il Sole 24 Ore.

The plan to introduce small modular reactors in Italy could add to the country’s history of failure in nuclear energy, a former Italian lawmaker and researcher argued in Italian outlet Il Fatto Quotidiano, writing that these reactors are expensive and produce too little energy to justify an investment in them.They could also become obsolete within the next decade, the timeline for the government to introduce them, Italian outlet Domani added, and be overtaken by nuclear fusion reactors, which are more efficient and have “virtually no environmental impact.” Italy’s main oil company, Eni, has signed a deal with MIT spinout Commonwealth Fusion System, with the goal of providing the first operational nuclear fusion plant by 2030.

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Today, Amazon announced that it reached its 100% renewable energy goal seven years ahead of schedule. However, as Fast Company’s Adele Peters reports, “a group of Amazon employees argues that the company’s math is misleading.” From the report: A report (PDF) from the group, Amazon Employees for Climate Justice, argues that only 22% of the company’s data centers in the U.S. actually run on clean power. The employees looked at where each data center was located and the mix of power on the regional grids — how much was coming from coal, gas, or oil versus solar or wind. Amazon, like many other companies, buys renewable energy credits (RECs) for a certain amount of clean power that’s produced by a solar plant or wind farm. In theory, RECs are supposed to push new renewable energy to get built. In reality, that doesn’t always happen. The employee research found that 68% of Amazon’s RECs are unbundled, meaning that they didn’t fund new renewable infrastructure, but gave credit for renewables that already existed or were already going to be built.

As new data centers are built, they can mean that fossil-fuel-dependent grids end up building new fossil fuel power plants. “Dominion Energy, which is the utility in Virginia, is expanding because of demand, and Amazon is obviously one of their largest customers,” says Eliza Pan, a representative from Amazon Employees for Climate Justice and a former Amazon employee. “Dominion’s expansion is not renewable expansion. It’s more fossil fuels.” Amazon also doesn’t buy credits that are specifically tied to the grids powering their data centers. The company might purchase RECs from Canada or Arizona, for example, to offset electricity used in Virginia. The credits also aren’t tied to the time that the energy was used; data centers run all day and night, but most renewable energy is only available some of the time. The employee group argues that the company should follow the approach that Google takes. Google aims to use carbon-free energy, 24/7, on every grid where it operates.

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Longtime Slashdot reader fahrbot-bot shares a report from CNN, written by Olesya Dmitracova: Nyobolt, based in Cambridge, has developed a new 35kWh lithium-ion battery that was charged from 10% to 80% in just over four and a half minutes in its first live demonstration last week. […] Nyobolt’s technology builds on a decade of research led by University of Cambridge battery scientist Clare Grey and Cambridge-educated Shivareddy, the company said. Key to its batteries’ ability to be charged super-fast without a big impact on their longevity is a design that means they generate less heat. It also makes them safer as overheating can cause a lithium-ion battery to catch fire and explode. In addition, the materials used to make the batteries’ anodes allow for a faster transfer of electrons. Nyobolt is currently in talks to sell its batteries to eight electric car manufacturers. At 35 kWh, the battery is much smaller than the 85 kWh in a more typical American electric vehicle (EV). Yet the technology may be used in larger battery packs in the future.

Independent testing of Nyobolt’s batteries by what it called a leading global manufacturer found that they can achieve over 4,000 fast-charge cycles, equivalent to 600,000 miles (965,600 kilometers), while retaining more than 80% of capacity, Nyobolt said in its Friday statement. William Kephart, an e-mobility specialist at consultancy P3 Group and a former engineer, said EV batteries of the kind Nyobolt has developed could “theoretically” be charged as fast as the firm is promising, but the challenge was manufacturing such batteries on an industrial scale. A crucial chemical element in Nyobolt’s batteries is niobium but, as Kephart pointed out, last year only an estimated 83,000 tons (94,500 tons) was mined worldwide. Compare that with graphite, commonly used as anode material in lithium-ion batteries: an estimated 1.6 million tons (1.8 million tons) was produced in 2023. In addition, there are currently “a lot of unknowns” with the niobium battery technology, he told CNN. “The industry will work it out (but) it’s not seen by the industry as a scalable technology just yet,” he added.

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The Energy Information Administration (EIA) expects Americans’ monthly electricity bills to average $173 between June through August, compared to $168 last summer. “The slight bump in costs comes from consumers cranking up their air conditioning more to cope with a warmer season than last year,” writes The Verge’s Justine Calma. “Bills would have jumped higher, if not for lower residential electricity prices helping to balance out some of the increased energy use from air conditioning.” From the report: Some regions are likely to be harder hit by the weather than others. Because of heat and humidity along the Gulf Coast, residents in Southern states typically use the most electricity in the summer to cool their homes. The Pacific Coast, meanwhile, faces the biggest potential percentage increase in retail electricity prices in the nation — a 7 percent jump since last year. Wholesale electricity costs there have risen since 2022, in part because of a heat and drought-induced shortfall in hydroelectricity generation. Households along the Pacific could see their electricity bills go up an average of $11 per month this summer, according to the EIA.

To be sure, the EIA says that weather is “the main source of uncertainty” in its forecasts for folks’ utility bills. If this summer winds up being hotter than expected, households could wind up paying even more. Residential electricity use typically peaks in the summer for most of the US because of air conditioning. Extreme heat can even trigger power outages if demand suddenly rises too sharply. California, the Southwest, the Midwest, Texas, and New England are at “elevated risk” of electricity supply shortages during any extreme weather this summer, according to an assessment (PDF) by the North American Electric Reliability Corporation.

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Solar power in California has reached a new record output, briefly surpassing 100% of power demand. It comes just days after the state exceeded 100% of energy demand with renewables (wind, solar and hydro) over a record 45 days straight, and 69 out of 75. CleanTechnica reports: As you can see [here], at its peak, solar power was providing 102.1% of electricity demand in California. Together, wind, water, and solar peaked at 136.4% of electricity demand! […] The best news is that California seems to quickly be chopping the duck curve down to size. […] The solution for the duck curve is clear: energy storage. Store that bursting solar energy produced in the middle of the day and gradually use it in the evening as the sun goes down and electricity demand rises. The good news is that California has been making progress on this very fast! Look at the graph [here] regarding electricity generation from natural gas and note the line for 2023 versus the line for 2024. […]

The overall story is that California renewable energy continues to lead the way forward. Solar power is now peaking at more than 100% of electricity demand, renewables as a whole are peaking at 134% electricity demand, the duck curve has been shaved down to basically no duck curve at all (but you could now call the battery charge/discharge curve a duck curve), and the whole state (and world) is benefitting. Get ready for more records in the days to come. We’re still a few weeks away from the summer solstice. Further reading: Battery-Powered California Faces Lower Blackout Risk This Summer

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: California expects to avoid rolling blackouts this summer as new solar plants and large batteries plug into the state’s grid at a rapid clip. The state’s electricity system has been strained by years of drought, wildfires that knock out transmission lines and record-setting heat waves. But officials forecast Wednesday new resources added to the grid in the last four years would give California ample supplies for typical summer weather.

Since 2020, California has added 18.5 gigawatts of new resources. Of that, 6.6 gigawatts were batteries, 6.3 gigawatts were solar and 1.4 gigawatts were a combination of solar and storage. One gigawatt can power about 750,000 homes. In addition, the state’s hydropower plants will be a reliable source of electricity after two wet winters in a row ended California’s most recent drought. Those supplies would hold even if California experiences another heat wave as severe as the one that triggered rolling blackouts across the state in August 2020, officials said in a briefing Wednesday. In the most dire circumstances, the state now has backup resources that can supply an extra 5 gigawatts of electricity, including gas-fired power plants that only run during emergencies.

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