Independent power producer Silicon Ranch and Green Power EMC, the renewable energy supplier for 38 Georgia electric membership cooperatives (EMCs), are celebrating the completion of the 106 MW AC Clay Solar Project at White Oak Pastures in Bluffton, Ga. The energy generated by the project is shared by 30 EMCs from across the state.

Silicon Ranch selected IEA as the EPC contractor, which hired more than 400 workers to construct the project, with preference given to the local labor pool and the military veteran community. 

When the project in Clay County was first announced in 2018, White Oak Pastures owner Will Harris invited Silicon Ranch to visit Bluffton. Harris introduced Silicon Ranch leadership to the methods of planned livestock grazing and regenerative agricultural practices that his family had been deploying at White Oak Pastures for more than two decades. The result was a new partnership and an innovative model for the solar industry that Silicon Ranch calls Regenerative Energy, its holistic approach to project design, construction, and land management that is now deployed across thousands of acres it owns and manages across the country.

The Clay Solar Project is the ninth utility-scale solar project to reach operational status for Green Power EMC and Silicon Ranch. Collectively, the partners’ portfolio generates more than 550 MW AC of energy. Last year, they announced an additional collaboration to develop three more projects, totaling an additional 252 MW AC, online by the end of 2024.

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Generac’s SBE Series BESS. Image: Generac Power Systems

Utility Xcel Energy has launched a ‘no money down’ resiliency offering for commercial and industrial (C&I) customers in Minnesota, promising 99.9% power reliability with technologies including batteries.

Meanwhile technology and equipment providers Generac and Urban Electric Power are also targeting what has traditionally been the slowest moving segment of the US energy storage market.  

The US industry installed 1,067MW of energy storage in Q4 2022, but just 48MW of those were categorised as commercial and industrial (C&I) or community-scale projects, according to a recent report from Wood Mackenzie Power & Renewables.

Adding up to 195MW total in that category for the whole of 2022, versus 593MW of residential deployments and 4,006MW of grid-scale, illustrating the contrasting fortunes of the segments. Wood Mackenzie has said that while it will remain the smallest segment, all segments of the market are set to grow and has forecast 1.4GW of annual installs for C&I or community projects in the US by 2030.

Minnesota Public Utilities Commission approves Xcel programme

Xcel Energy’s new ‘energy-as-a-service’ resiliency offering targets large heavy commercial and industrial users of electricity in its Minnesota service area, where Xcel acts as one of four investor-owned utilities in the state.

The utility said yesterday (24 April) that it has been granted approval to offer its programme to own, install, operate and maintain microgrids and other resiliency projects for C&I electricity users with high requirements for service reliability, such as factories, water treatment centres or even hospitals and schools.

Xcel’s projects will include battery energy storage, onsite renewables and thermal backup generators. Called Empower Resiliency, the utility will provide a turnkey solution and finance the upfront cost. Customers will pay that money back over an agreed period of time, which was not disclosed in a release but is typically 10 years for Xcel’s Empower Resiliency offering in neighbouring Wisconsin.    

Xcel Energy VP of customer solutions and innovation Emmett Romine said the programme “greatly reduces the upfront cost for customers who would benefit from resiliency assets and provides our extensive support to operate and maintain these systems, so they are available if they are needed”.

Xcel has been exploring using microgrids powered by solar and batteries through pilots for a while and executives have spoken in favour of the technological combination, including this quote from CEO and chairman Ben Fowke being included in a 2021 US National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) briefing report on microgrids for resiliency.

“We do want to see the role that microgrids can play on the bigger grid, supporting the bigger grid,” Fowke said.

“I would say that what we’re learning is just that—how we can integrate microgrids into the larger grid and do that seamlessly.”

Zinc batteries picked for C&I virtual power plants

In related news, zinc-manganese dioxide battery storage company Urban Electric Power’s technology has been signed up by commercial and industrial virtual power plant (VPP) provider Maplewell Energy.

Maplewell offers energy-as-a-service (EaaS) to C&I customers through aggregating their distributed energy resources (DERs) into fleets, unlocking flexible demand from DERs that include battery storage, solar PV, HVAC, demand response, refrigeration and more.

Starting with three pilot projects, the VPP operator will onboard Urban Electric Power’s rechargeable zinc batteries with Maplewell’s energy management system (EMS), called JANiiT. JANiiT provides integrated forecasting, predictive control, and real-time optimisation based on gathered data feedback.

Customers will be offered a turnkey battery energy storage system (BESS) solution which will perform demand charge management and demand response in real-time. Maplewell CEO and co-founder Matt Irvin said the selection of Urban Electric Power’s battery came “after an exhaustive review of battery technology”.

Urban Electric Power’s battery is described by the company as an improved version of the typical alkaline electrochemistry found in AA batteries which overcomes some of the limitations of the common consumer electronic battery.

One of those limitations is lifetime, and the startup claimed its patented chemistry enhancements make the batteries rechargeable for lifetimes of 10 years or more. They are also certified safe for indoor installation, and unlike lithium-ion batteries do not risk thermal runaway and contain no cobalt.

In May 2022, Urban Electric Power signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with US large-scale project developer Pine Gate Renewables to supply up to 4,550MWh of its battery storage over five years, giving Pine Gate preferential terms for acquiring the patented zinc batteries for co-located or standalone grid-scale projects.

Generac launches 200kW to 1,000kWh C&I BESS

Meanwhile, backup generator and portable power specialist Generac earlier this month launched its first BESS solution aimed at medium to large C&I electricity users.

Called the SBE series, the systems range in available energy capacity from 200kWh to 1,000kWh. They will be suitable for applications including demand charge reduction a.k.a peak shaving to reduce a facility’s exposure to peak electricity costs and load shifting to benefit from utility time-of-use electricity tariffs.

At the same time, they will be able to provide some resilience and backup in the event of grid outages or other electrical service disruptions. It is designed to be able to pair with Generac’s existing range of gas and diesel generators to ride out long outages.

It’s the latest move into the energy storage space from Generac, which in addition to a residential range of battery storage products also has its own grid services divison, formed after the acquisition of distributed energy resources (DER) aggregation software provider Enbala.

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The project was turned online in 2015. Image: Glidepath.

Vertically integrated energy storage company Kore Power will replace the batteries in a battery energy storage system (BESS) originally turned online with BYD batteries in 2015.

Kore, which is building a lithium-ion gigafactory and recently became a BESS integrator too, announced the deal with project owner Cordelio Power earlier this month.

Kore Power will ‘repower’ Cordelio’s 20 MW/44MWh McHenry standalone energy storage facility in the grid territory operated by PJM Interconnection, one of the US’ independent system operators (ISOs). Repowering means replacing the battery system entirely, and Kore will provide its deep-rack battery systems which will “increase the power, safety and flexibility of the facility”.

“The need to stabilise the grid and integrate renewable energy sources is set to grow rapidly in PJM, and we will need the most advanced energy storage technology available,” said Dan Foley, innovation leader at Cordelio Power.

The announcement did not give the location or even the state of the McHenry facility, only saying it was within the service territory of PJM, which covers all or part of through all or parts of 12 states including Illinois.

It is identical in name, size and ISO territory to one of the longest-operating BESS projects of its size in the world. The McHenry storage facility, in McHenry County, Illinois, was originally developed by GlidePath Power which then sold it a few months before construction started, to EDF Renewables in the first quarter of 2015.

The McHenry project then came online on 20 December, 2015, built using batteries and power electronics from BYD, one of the largest lithium-ion battery manufacturers globally today.

A re-post of Kore Power’s LinkedIn announcement by David Braun, who spent two years at Glidepath from 2018-2020, appeared to confirm it is the same project: “Congratulations to Dan Foley and his BESS development team at Cordelio on the repower of one of the early independent utility scale battery installations in PJM”.

A spokesperson for Kore Power confirmed the McHenry project is owned by Cordelio Power. Energy-Storage.news asked spokespersons for both Cordelio Power and EDF to clarify when the project changed hands between it and EDF Renewables, which still lists it on its website (while Cordelio does not) but has yet to receive a response.

Some outlets have misreported McHenry’s location as Waterbury, Vermont. In fact, that is where Kore Power has a facility where it will manufacture the BESS solution for the McHenry project. Vermont is part of the service territory of ISO New England (ISO-NE), not PJM.

We also asked the spokespersons whether the batteries at McHenry are the same BYD ones originally installed and why the decision was taken to repower them entirely.

The McHenry project went online in 2015 during a boom in PJM frequency response markets. However, frequency response should not degrade batteries fast as it is not a deep cycle application like energy trading or proving capacity to an offtaker under a power purchase agreement (PPA).

However, in 2017 changes were made by PJM to its frequency regulation markets which were inconsistent with participating storage resources’ original design and operational parameter, “significantly impacting” them, the trade body for the energy storage sector said at the time.

Because lithium-ion batteries degrade as they are cycled over time, developers will increasingly need to make decisions about augmentation as their projects age. Augmentation means adding additional new batteries to make up for lost capacity.

McHenry is the second project of a similar size that Kore has announced through its system integrator arm in quick succession. Last month, it revealed it would deploy a 41MWh system at a rice processing facility in Arkansas.

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Peter Bay

Standard Solar has acquired the Knox solar+storage project from developer EDF Renewables North America: a 1.5 MW solar / 2 MWh project for the Acton Water District in Acton, Mass.

The project will directly supply the Acton Water District’s microfiltration treatment plant – its largest electrical load – and will allow it to benefit from discounted clean power and lease revenues from the solar and storage system. The system is expected to generate approximately 1,872 MWh of energy each year.

Knox is the second solar installation Standard Solar owns and operates for the Acton Water District. The first is the 4.7 MW solar and 4 MWh storage Lawsbrook project, also developed by EDF Renewables. The system was constructed on land owned by the Acton Water District, previously disturbed from gravel extraction and part of the W.R. Grace Superfund Site.

The Knox project is part of Standard Solar’s rapidly expanding portfolio in Massachusetts and the U.S. It currently owns and operates nearly 20 MW in the state and 300 MW of commercial and community solar projects throughout the United States.

“EDF Renewables is proud to deliver a second project to the Acton Water District in support of their ambitious clean energy goals while also reducing costs,” says EDF’s Peter Bay. “Beyond the significant economic benefits the project will bring to the district, it embodies the intentions of Massachusetts’ SMART Program, as it’s located on a superfund site while interconnecting directly to the South Acton Water Treatment Plant.”

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A bi-directional electric vehicle charging unit. Image: Fermata Energy.

All electric vehicle (EV) manufacturers should make bi-directional charging possible to allow their batteries to be used as energy storage devices for homes or businesses, according to a California Senator.

Senator Nancy Skinner spoke at the California Senate Energy, Utilities and Communications Committee last week (18 April) in support of Senate Bill 233 (SB 233), which would require most EVs and EV supply equipment in California to have bi-directional charging capabilities.

California is going to see “many, many more EVs” on its roads in the coming years. With the stage set for so much increased reliance on EVs, “we need to also set the stage to be able to utilise EVs to their full potential,” Skinner said at the hearing.

The Senator, representing California’s Senate District 9, noted that she had been behind 2010 legislation that set up a purchasing policy for utility-scale battery energy storage systems (BESS) in the state. Despite scepticism at the time, California has since become a “world leader” in large-scale BESS deployment.

When it comes to installing batteries at households or businesses, the battery in an average electric vehicle (EV) will likely have a far greater capacity. For example, while Tesla’s Powerwall residential battery system comes with 12.5kWh capacity as standard (although they can be stacked together to make larger capacities), even Tesla’s entry-level Model 3 rear-wheel drive EV has 57.5kWh usable battery capacity.

Another example is the Ford F-150 Lightning truck. A long-range electric F-150 has 130kWh battery capacity, and the automaker has partnered with US residential solar installer Sunrun to add bi-directional charging.

At the moment, the partnership only covers vehicle-to-home (V2H) charging, i.e., plugging a Ford truck into the house to cover domestic loads, but could later add vehicle-to-grid (V2G) capabilities.

“At this point, you don’t necessarily need to buy an extra battery pack for your house, you could potentially use your EV, it has that capacity,” Skinner said.

‘Customers will save money, state will reduce power outages’

In an interview last year, Sunrun VP of policy Chris Rauscher said that 200,000 F-150 Lightnings could have provided enough energy for the California grid to ride out the surges in demand for power on the grid caused by record-breaking summer heatwaves.

“It sounds like a lot, but Ford sold 125,000 internal combustion F150s last year in Texas alone. They sold around 850,000 nationwide, so it’s really not that many trucks that would have been able to keep the California grid up, and those trucks could have done that for 13 hours,” Rauscher said.

However, as Skinner pointed out, while Nissan makes all its EVs bi-directional as standard, and Tesla is adding those capabilities to future models, they and Ford are largely outliers among automakers.

“We’re already moving in this direction. But we need all of our vehicle manufacturers to move their EVs to bi-directional so that we have that capability,” Skinner said.

“And then we could potentially utilise the EV say when the electricity demand is highest, and rates are highest. If you’ve charged your EV at night, when the rates are lower, and when demand is not as great, you could then utilise your EV to power your house for a couple hours while those rates are the highest. And thus saving you a great deal of money and pulling off the demand, which of course will help us reduce power outages.”

Automaker General Motors (GM) started a trial project in December last year with San Diego Gas & Electric (SDG&E), one of California’s three main investor-owned utilities (IOUs), to explore the potential of vehicle-to-grid and vehicle-to-home integration.

While technically feasible, bi-directional vehicle charging faces barriers to adoption in the consumer space that include manufacturer warranties and customer acquisition. In a feature article a few months ago for our quarterly journal PV Tech Power (Vol.33), three V2X projects that get around some of those challenges were profiled.

Ford’s F-150 Lightning EV can be used as a V2H resource through the company’s partnership with Sunrun. Image: Sunrun / Ford.

Concerns around cost, battery life and compulsory aspect of Senate Bill

Various witnesses spoke up in support of Skinner’s SB 233, including representatives of non-profit group Climate Center which is sponsoring the bill, as well as numerous other clean energy and environment advocacy groups, and EV charging technology providers.

However, two Senators in the committee expressed reservations, as did a representative of trade association and lobbying group Alliance for Automotive Innovation.

Alliance for Automotive Innovation chief legislative representative Curt Augustine said he was “perplexed” about amendments Skinner had made to the bill, which exempted utilities, service providers and charging units but placed a mandate on automakers to add bi-directional technology within a short timeframe.

While the trade association supported bi-directional charging, it disagreed that all vehicles should be required to offer it, and said there remain some concerns about the impact of V2X technologies on battery life. The group would not support the bill without further amendment, Augustine said.

Meanwhile one of the two Senators in opposition said that there were a “lot of moving pieces” involved with implementing a hard 2027 mandate, and the other noted that the requirement could artificially inflate the cost of EVs and therefore the energy transition for California, particularly its low-income communities.

The bill next goes to the Senate Transportation Committee, today (25 April). The full bill text for SB 233 can be seen here.

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Lithium brine evaporation ponds in Chile’s Atacama desert. Image: Coordenação-Geral de Observação da Terra/INPE.

The president of Chile has proposed boosting state control over its lithium reserves, sending the share prices of companies involved in the extraction of the battery metal tumbling.

President Gabriel Boric said late on Thursday last week (20 April) that the government was seeking to move to a model where it would hold a controlling interest in all lithium projects through a public company, he said in a televised address.

The company would partner with private mining firms, which together do the bulk of lithium extraction through long-term concessions.

Lithium is an essential metal for lithium-ion battery technology, the chemistry of choice for the vast majority of energy storage system (ESS) projects and electric vehicle (EV) batteries today, and Chile is the next-largest exporter after Australia. The need for lithium is set to soar in the coming decade making reserves of the metal, the largest of which are in South America and Australia, a highly strategic asset.

By the end of the next day’s trading, two of the main companies involved in lithium extraction in Chile had suffered substantial stock market losses. Chilean firm SQM’s US-listed shares were down 18% while Albemarle’s had fallen nearly 9%. SQM has a contract ending in 2030 while Albemarle’s ends in 2043.

That is despite Boric saying that the government would not cancel existing contracts but rather try to negotiate with mining firms to shift to the public-private model. In fact, he has publicly taken issue with the use of the word ‘nationalisation’ to describe the policy move.

Albemarle’s share price has recovered about half of those losses since, sitting at US$182.71 at the time of writing today (25 April), compared with US$195 prior to Boric’s announcement. The firm said the development would have “no material impact on our business” while SQM said it was “analysing the strategy delivered by the government”.

Mexico nationalised its lithium deposits last year amidst a wider wave of economic nationalism across Latin America.

Boric also said that the country intends to move into higher-margin industries associated with battery production. However, this poses numerous challenges, particularly in Latin America, as Energy-Storage.news reported last year after interviewing an analyst from Fitch.

For one thing, simply having access to reserves is not enough – lithium refining is needed before it can be used in battery production, and China has a virtually complete monopoly on this capital-intensive process today.

A lack of domestic EV market and high risk associated with LatAm has also prevented investments into the lithium-ion production space. However, China-based EV and battery manufacturer BYD recently announced it would build a US$290 million lithium cathode factory in Chile’s Antofagasta region.

Boric said: “In Chile we can add value, we can produce batteries, here in our country, we just don’t have to extract the raw material.”

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Dutch energy minister Tinne Van der Straeten (centre) inaugurating a 25MW/100MWh project in Belgium recently. Image: Tinne Van der Straeten via Twitter.

The Belgium arm of France-headquartered multinational utility Engie is proposing three battery storage projects totalling 380MW.

Engie Belgium announced it had submitted the permit applications last week in a post on business social network LinkedIn, saying the country’s growing renewable production meant an increased need for energy storage.

The battery energy storage system (BESS) projects are being proposed for sites in Drogenbos (80MW), Kallo (100MW) and Vilvorde (200MW).

Engie said they will help the power grid to manage peak demand by absorbing excess energy when renewables are abundant and discharging that back to the grid when needed, supporting the integration of more renewables and dampening price volatility.

It concluded the post by saying the projects would be in collaboration with its subsidiaries research centre and engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) arm Tractebel.

Whilst cutting the ribbon on a recently-commissioned 25MW/100MWh project last month, the Belgian Minister of Energy Tinne Van der Straeten said that more than 550MW of battery storage projects would be deployed in Belgium in the next few years. It is not clear if that includes the 380MW of projects proposed by Engie.

Another 100MWh project, this time with a nameplate power of 50MW, came online just before the turn of the year. Renewable energy company Yuso was involved in the development of both 100MWh projects and is optimising the systems’ discharge going forward.

BESS projects in Belgium can be monetised through energy trading, as Engie indicated its projects would target, or other revenue streams like flexibility services to grid operator Elia.

Harold Potvliege, product manager at optimiser Flexcity, recently said that distributed energy assets in Belgium can now provide all flexibility services needed by Elia, namely FCR and aFRR frequency response services. This means all utility scaled gas-fired power plants (CCGTs) in the country can be shut down.

Part of that flexibility can be provided by a residential energy storage virtual power plant (VPP), which Elia last year said can provide 15% of its flexibility needs.

Engie is active in battery storage markets across the world. Late last year, it ordered a 638MWh BESS from inverter and energy storage solution firm Sungrow for a Chile project, and acquired a 6GW pipeline of solar and storage projects in the US.

See more coverage of the Belgian energy storage market here.

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Victorian Big Battery. Image: Victoria State government.

The Australian government is funding a trial of grid inertia measurement at the Victorian Big Battery, aiming to develop real-time, accurate assessments of the status of the network.

Thermal power plants – mainly coal – are due for widespread retirement across the country in the coming years. As well as replacing their energy capacity, one of their secondary functions, to provide inertia to maintain stability of the grid, also needs to be replaced.

Reactive Technologies, provider of a claimed ‘first-of-its-kind’ suite of measurement tools for grid function, has been awarded AU$1.43 million (US$0.96 million) by the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) for the trial, which will run until March 2024.

The tech company, founded in Finland and the UK with offices in the US and Australia, is equipping the Victorian Big Battery with its GridMetrix data analysis software, and placing its Extensible Measurement Units (XMUs) on the grid.

Signals will be sent into the grid from the battery energy storage system (BESS), which at 300MW/450MWh is currently Australia’s largest asset of its type. The Reactive Technologies software will analyse data from the signals the XMUs measure, and the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO), overseer of the National Electricity Market (NEM) will be able to view real-time inertia values.

The Victorian Big Battery utilises Tesla Megapack BESS units and went online in December 2021.

The trial will be conducted in partnership with AEMO, supported by the Victorian state government’s Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action (DEECA), University of Melbourne’s Melbourne Energy Institute, as well as the BESS’ developer-owner, French independent power producer (IPP) Neoen.

‘Inertia measurements vital to enable more renewables’

The project ties in neatly with another, much bigger programme ARENA is currently running.

Inverter-based energy technologies like solar PV and wind can provide so-called ‘synthetic inertia’ or ‘virtual inertia’ to the grid: instead of the inertia coming physically from the large rotating mass of synchronous generators at thermal power plants, it can be delivered through inverters.

In a February 2022 Guest Blog for Energy-Storage.news, Blair Reynolds then-product manager for SMA Americas, explained how it works:

Reynolds said inertia “refers to the natural resistance of the system to changes in frequency which could drop if a large power plant or transmission fails”.

“It’s the inertia within the system which gives the power grid time to rebalance supply and demand by reducing the rate of change off frequency following an unexpected event. Inertia is an excellent indicator of the resiliency of the system to sudden changes,” Reynolds wrote.

Not only can inverter-based resources quickly detect frequency deviations and respond to system imbalances, they can also mimick the role of traditional generators in providing that required inertia.

That takes the assets from being ‘grid-following’ i.e., relying on “fast synchronisation with the external grid to tightly control their active and reactive current outputs,” to ‘grid-forming’.

By equipping BESS plants with advanced inverters, battery assets can play that role too. ARENA is helping to fund eight large-scale battery storage projects totalling 2GW/4.2GWh that will be kitted out with grid-forming advanced inverter capabilities.

The agency made that selection in December 2022 from 54 applications received. While it had originally earmarked AU$100 million for the programme, ARENA decide to up that funding level to a total AU$176 million.

Grid-forming capabilities can be retrofitted too. A few months before that, an advanced inverter upgrade of Hornsdale Power Reserve in South Australia, another Neoen-Tesla project, was completed. Hornsdale Power Reserve, a 150MW/193.5MWh asset that does various other applications like frequency control ancillary services (FCAS) can now also provide 2,000MW of inertia which is equivalent to a predicted 15% of the entire South Australian grid’s requirement.

Reactive Technologies said that with two-thirds of Australia’s coal fleet expected to go out of service by 2040, it becomes more difficult to track and assess the grid’s inertia with legacy tools. The company’s measurement tools will be assessed during a range of conditions, including high solar, high wind and high demand periods in Victoria.

“Continuous measurement of inertia will become highly valuable as it will allow less conservative grid operation and ultimately the ability to accommodate more non-synchronous generation such as solar and wind,” ARENA CEO Darren Miller said.

“Reactive Technologies’ measurement tools could change the way the NEM is managed. With real-time data available to AEMO, they could also then optimise customer-side generation which has been proven to contribute as much as 30% of total inertia to the National Grid in the United Kingdom.”

Energy-Storage.news’ publisher Solar Media will host the 1st Energy Storage Summit Asia, 11-12 July 2023 in Singapore. The event will help give clarity on this nascent, yet quickly growing market, bringing together a community of credible independent generators, policymakers, banks, funds, off-takers and technology providers. For more information, go to the website.

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Ameresco Inc. and the City of Missoula, Mont., have completed a 545 kW behind-the-meter, non-export solar photovoltaic array at the city’s wastewater treatment plant.

Missoula selected Ameresco to design, build, own, operate and maintain the 948-panel ground-mounted array under a 25-year solar energy agreement, which required zero upfront capital funding from the city. As the largest behind-the-meter, non-export solar PV array in Montana, the project is expected to produce more than 700,000 kWh each year and offset the city’s wastewater treatment facility’s annual electricity consumption by more than 20%.

“Our city has a long track record of implementing forward-thinking conservation and climate change measures and the completion of the solar PV array at our wastewater treatment facility is another demonstration of our commitment to sustainability,” says Ross Mollenhauer, engineering manager for the City of Missoula. “We are thankful to our partners at Ameresco for helping us maximize our investment in clean energy and for producing work that will enable the city to lower our electricity consumption and emissions, and in turn move us towards our goal of carbon neutrality.”

The city and Ameresco’s local Montana team began construction on the solar array during the summer of 2022.

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Stanley Black & Decker, in partnership with Castillo Engineering and RPG Energy Group today, has unveiled a 4.3 MW solar farm in Hopkinsville, Ky., the state’s largest privately funded on-site solar project that is 100% renewable energy sourced.

Covering nearly 15 acres, the solar field produces enough clean energy to power Stanley Black & Decker’s 280,000 sq. ft onsite production facility while also providing excess energy back to the state. The project is estimated to deliver 5,500 metrics tons of C02 reductions and an annual energy savings of $400,000. 

“As part of Stanley Black & Decker’s global environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG) initiatives, this project, which we are fittingly celebrating on Earth Day, represents an impactful milestone as the organization progresses toward its mission of carbon neutrality by 2030,” says Stanley Black & Decker’s Rob Kirts. “With the help of Castillo Engineering and RPG Energy, we are working to deliver on our sustainability goals and made our purpose – For Those Who Make The World – a reality.”

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