Brian McCowan, Zondits staff, 2/29/2024 Image: The Edwards & Sanborn solar and storage project in Kern County, California. (Mortenson) The new California facility makes grid-scale solar energy available even when the sun doesn’t shine. Two million solar PV panels and over 120,000 batteries have come online on a combination of public and private land in … Read more
Camryn Hansen, Zondits guest, 7/25/2023 After years of considering heat pumps and hearing from a series of contractors that my house was not a good candidate, I took the plunge and installed them anyway. I’ve now lived with my heat pumps for a full year, and here’s the rundown. I live in Portland, Maine in … Read more
Brian McCowan, Zondits staff, 11/1/2022 In the Greater Boston area, electric school buses are doing more than taking students to and from school. Energy stored in the buses’ batteries is transferred back to the grid during times of demand stress on the regional electric generation and distribution systems. In the town of Beverly, a Boston … Read more
Brian McCowan, Zondits staff, 10/13/2022 Wind energy is often criticized as being intermittent and unpredictable. Large-scale energy storage is just as often touted as the solution to that problem. According to a piece published on CNBC’s website, the British firm Centrica is teaming with US-based General Electric to replace an old decommissioned natural gas-fired power … Read more
Brian McCowan, Zondits staff, 4/27/2022 A recent report published by the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) on the status of utility-scale energy storage illustrates that battery storage is a proven technology for the shifting of electrical loads and improving grid stability. It also makes it clear that storage systems must continue to grow along with … Read more
theguardian.com, 6/28/21. Earlier this month, the water level in Lake Oroville – California’s second-largest reservoir – was so low that dozens of houseboats were hauled out. There wasn’t enough water to hold them. In a few weeks, officials say, the lake’s water levels are likely to dip even lower – forcing them to shut down … Read more
This article was published on energycentral.com on July 1, 2020. Portland General Electric Company (NYSE: POR) is set to launch a pilot program that will incentivize installation and connection of 525 residential energy storage batteries that PGE will dispatch, contributing up to four megawatts of energy to PGE’s grid. The distributed assets will create a … Read more
This article was written by Brian McCowan, ERS, on April 1, 2020. New Hampshire history buff repurposes Trebuchets for peak load shaving energy storage Florent “Fritzy” Fritterman was hurling pumpkins at the reproduction castles he had built when he was struck by an idea. “I had read on Zondits,” said Fritterman, “about the growing need … Read more
This article was originally published on PNNL on Oct. 9, 2019. NANTUCKET, Mass. – With the simple cutting of a ribbon this week, residents of Nantucket Island, joined by state and local officials and representatives from National Grid, the U.S Department of Energy’s Office of Electricity (OE), and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), ushered in … Read more
Written by Julian Spector, Greentechmedia.com, August 13, 2019 Montana Developer Ready to Build Modern-Day Pumped Hydro Storage Absaroka Energy and Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners plan to update an old storage technology for the 21st century. All they need is a customer. A former Navy prosecutor turned Montana-based clean energy developer wants to build the first pumped … Read more