President Biden has authorized the use of the Defense Production Act (DPA) to accelerate domestic production of clean energy technologies, including solar panel parts. He has put the full power of federal procurement to work spurring additional domestic solar manufacturing capacity by directing the development of master supply agreements, including “super preference” status. In addition, he has created a 24-month bridge as domestic manufacturing rapidly scales up to ensure the reliable supply of components that U.S. solar deployers need to construct clean energy projects and an electric grid for the 21st century, while reinforcing the integrity of trade laws and processes.

Together, these actions will spur domestic manufacturing, construction projects and good-paying jobs – all while cutting energy costs for families, strengthening the grid, and tackling climate change and environmental injustice.

Specifically, the President is authorizing the Department of Energy (DOE) to use the DPA to rapidly expand American manufacturing of five critical clean energy technologies: solar panel parts like photovoltaic modules and module components; building insulation; heat pumps; equipment for making and using clean electricity-generated fuels, including electrolyzers, fuel cells and related platinum group metals; and critical power grid infrastructure like transformers.

In deploying the DPA, the Biden-Harris Administration will strongly encourage the use of strong labor standards, including project labor agreements and community benefits agreements that offer wages at or above the prevailing rate and include local hire provisions. The administration also will strongly encourage projects with environmental justice outcomes that empower the clean energy transition in low-income communities historically overburdened by legacy pollution.

The White House and DOE will convene relevant industry, labor, environmental justice and other key stakeholders as they maximize the impact of the DPA tools made available by President Biden’s actions and strengthen domestic clean energy manufacturing.

President Biden is also putting the full power of federal procurement to work spurring additional domestic solar manufacturing capacity. The President directed the development of two innovative tools to accelerate Made-in-America clean energy. The master supply agreements for domestically manufactured solar systems will increase the speed and efficiency with which domestic clean electricity providers can sell their products to the U.S. government. The so-called “Super Preferences” will apply to domestic content standards for federal procurement of solar systems, including domestically manufactured solar photovoltaic components, consistent with the Buy American Act.

These federal procurement measures can stimulate demand for up to 1 GW of domestically produced solar modules in the near term, and up to 10 GW over the next decade from U.S. government demand alone. To further increase the impact of these actions, the administration will also partner with state and local governments and municipal utilities in these innovative arrangements – increasing the potential market impact over the next decade to as much as over 100 GW. These procurement actions will provide a significant demand anchor for a revitalized domestic solar manufacturing industry.

President Biden is using his powers to create a 24-month bridge for certain solar imports while reinforcing the integrity of our trade laws and processes. Specifically, the President is temporarily facilitating U.S. solar deployers’ ability to source solar modules and cells from Cambodia, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam by providing that those components can be imported free of certain duties for 24 months in order to ensure the U.S. has access to a sufficient supply of solar modules to meet electricity generation needs while domestic manufacturing scales up.

As part of the Biden-Harris Permitting Action Plan, a new five-agency collaboration is expediting reviews of clean energy projects on public lands through the Department of the Interior, helping us race ahead toward permitting at least 25 GW by 2025. These actions have already increased clean energy permitting activities by 35%, including major solar project approvals and leases. The department has also launched five new Renewable Energy Coordination Offices and reduced rents and fees by more than 50% for solar and wind projects on public lands.

The Biden-Harris Administration is helping 17 local communities remove red tape with the SolarAPP+ online tool to enable same-day approvals for residential solar installation permits, and an additional 400 interested communities are in the pipeline. The National Climate Task Force launched new initiatives on increasing deployment of Distributed Energy Resources, including rooftop solar, with a focus on bringing the benefits of these projects to underserved communities. The United States Department of Agriculture provided the largest-ever investment in rural renewable energy last year. In addition, the Department of Energy and the Department of Health and Human Services are partnering to develop and pilot a digital platform that will connect customers who are eligible for the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program with community solar subscriptions, to further reduce customer energy costs. Likewise, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development is working with municipalities to enable residents of affordable housing to directly benefit from low-cost community solar power without seeing a rent increase or adjustment to their utility allowance.

The government is supporting a diverse solar workforce with good-paying jobs, including pathways to stable careers with the free and fair choice to join a union. Solar industry jobs consistently rank among the top fastest growing in the nation, and many require only a high school education or GED. The Economic Development Administration recently awarded funding to support solar employment training in tribal and coal-impacted communities.

In addition, DOE has issued a Request for Information and hosted six workshops to determine common goals and needs from stakeholders, including industry, unions and training organizations. DOE will continue to explore these issues, including by providing funding, new collaborations with industry, other federal agencies and state-based job boards to develop equitable worker-centric training and education programs, work-based learning opportunities, and support services such as career counseling, mentorship, and job readiness programs.

The Export-Import Bank of the United States (EXIM) Make More in America Initiative, approved by the EXIM board in April, will prioritize investments to expand clean energy manufacturing to promote clean energy domestic manufacturing for export and building capacity in allied nations. The U.S. International Development Finance Corporation supports building resilient clean energy manufacturing supply chains in allied nations around the world, reducing global dependence on China.

The Biden-Harris Administration has joined forces with the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico to advance dozens of solar energy projects that will enable Puerto Rico to meet its target of 100% renewable electricity, while improving power sector resilience and increasing access to more affordable energy and cleaner air.

Read the full statement here.

Image: Andreas Gücklhorn on Unsplash

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Scatec is growing its footprint in South Africa, with several solar parks already operational in the country. Image: Scatec.

Renewable energy power producer Scatec has signed power purchase agreements (PPA) for three co-located solar and storage projects with 1.1GWh of energy storage in South Africa.

The Norway-based company has signed the PPAs for the three Kenhardt projects in Northern Cape. The projects are providing dispatchable energy resources to grid operator ESKOM to help reduce shortfalls in capacity on the grid, procured under the Risk Mitigation Independent Power Producer Procurement Programme (RMIPPPP).

Scatec’s three projects, which pair 540MW of solar PV with 1.1GWh of battery energy storage system (BESS) capacity, will provide 150MW of dispatchable energy from 5 a.m. to 9.30 p.m. The BESS will enable the flexible dispatch of energy and allow ESKOM and Scatec to reduce the size of the grid connection needed to integrate the new resources.

The company’s announcement does not spell out the power of the BESS, while an announcement last year when it was awarded preferred bidder status said it would be a 225MW system.

They are the only fully renewable resources awarded PPAs under the RMIPPPP tender, and will provide power under a 20-year agreement. Scatec will cover all engineering, procurement and construction (EPC), operation & maintenance (O&M) and asset management services for the project.

Financial close is expected within 60 days of the PPA signature date (2 June) and construction will begin thereafter although an expected commissioning date hasn’t been revealed. When Scatec was awarded preferred bidder status, the resources were expected to be up and running by the middle of this year.

Scatec will own 51% of the equity in the project while H1 Holdings, its local Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) partner will own the remaining 49%. BEE is a government programme to facilitate broader participation of the black population in the economy to redress the lingering inequalities of apartheid. Standard Bank Group was lead arranger and debt provider.

Gas resources were the big winner in RMIPPPP, although up to 430MW/1,300MWh of energy storage was successful according to consultancy Clean Horizon’s analyst Corentin Baschet. The South African government is seeking to add more storage to the grid through other programmes too.

A separate programme by ESKOM, the Renewable Energy IPP Procurement Programme (REIPPPP), is solely for renewable energy resources and the two programmes together are expected to add about 1GW of storage to the South African grid.

Some 200MW/832MWh of standalone BESS projects at eight sites through REIPPPP were in final stage pre-contract discussions in March this year. And an even bigger round of procurement is expected to start in the next few months, Adam Terry, technical director at Harmattan Renewables, which is working with IPPs on projects in the country, said in a recent interview with Energy-Storage.news.

The standalone assets will provide national peak shaving services for four hours a day plus ancillary services and local support, Eskom said.

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Rendering of a solar microgrid project Ameresco is working on for the US Coast Guard in Petaluma, California. Image: Ameresco.

A large-scale solar PV plant with four-hour duration battery storage could be built on 132 acres of underutilised land at a US Armed Forces Base in Hawaii.

Renewable energy and energy efficiency project integrator Ameresco has partnered with developer Bright Canyon to propose the project, which would pair 42MW of solar PV with 42MW/168MWh of batteries.

If it goes ahead, construction will start in 2024 at the Navy West Loch Annex of Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam on the Hawaiian island of Oahu. The three aims of the Kūpono Solar project, as it will be known, are to increase local use of renewable energy and to increase its energy resiliency and energy security, Ameresco said.

It would feed power into the local grid, enabling the use of dispatchable solar energy when it is most needed and a 37-year land lease has already been signed by Ameresco and Bright Canyon’s joint venture (JV) company, Kūpono Solar Development Company with the US Navy in support of a Department of Defense long-term initiative on energy security.

Meanwhile, electricity would be sold to utility Hawaiian Electric under a 20-year power purchase agreement (PPA) while Kūpono Solar would own, operate, and maintain the solar and battery project.

Public works officer at the base, Captain Randall E. Harmeyer, said that Kūpono Solar “enables us to put 131 acres of underutilised land to long-term, sustainable use for Hawaii at a time when the cost and reliability of worldwide energy supplies is of great concern and reflects the Navy’s core commitment to energy security and resiliency for America”.

Hawaii’s position as one of the US’ leading states for solar adoption comes partly because of its history and situation as an archipelago that needs to import expensive and polluting fossil fuels. The switch to solar – and latterly battery storage – has seen renewable energy technologies undercut the cost of thermal generation for some time.

In addition to a lot of rooftop as well as utility-scale solar, interest in battery storage has grown and Hawaiian Electric has introduced a ‘Battery Bonus’ scheme to incentivise investment in residential batteries as well as including battery storage in its Requests for Proposals (RfPs) to procure renewable energy capacity.

The utility has already signed contracts for several gigawatts of utility-scale solar-plus-storage and some standalone storage and a draft RFP published in October 2021 ahead of its next procurement stipulated that all solar projects bidding should include energy storage.

The utility is currently seeking to contract for clean energy resources in an ‘all-source’ procurement for Oahu and Maui islands that would enable the further retirement of oil-based generation.

According to figures published towards the start of this year from the American Clean Power Association (ACP), there was a pipeline of 0.6GW of large-scale battery storage in development in Hawaii, which ranked it fourth among US states, at the end of 2021.

As the state’s most populated island, Oahu is a focus on much development, not least of all because it is home to Hawaii’s last coal power station – scheduled for retirement and decommissioning soon. Developer Plus Power closed financing last November for a 565MWh standalone battery energy storage system (BESS) project on the island, which was among the facilities contracted for through Hawaiian Electric’s (HECO’s) RFPs.

Meanwhile Ameresco, which has worked on a number of projects in collaboration with US federal agencies including the military and public facilities like hospitals and education facilities, has executed projects in Hawaii of various types since 2004.

Elsewhere in the US, the company got one of the biggest BESS project awards to date when it was contracted by California utility San Diego Gas & Electric (SDG&E) to deliver three sites totalling more than 2.1GWh of battery capacity.

Ameresco has said that it is currently facing some delays to that project based on global supply chain issues which are affecting battery storage and many other industries. The technology integrator recently signed a 2.5GWh BESS supply deal for projects going forwards with Powin Energy. Supply chain issues – albeit those pertaining to solar rather than storage – were cited as a reason why Engie recently abandoned an awarded solar-plus-storage project in development on Hawaii’s Big Island which would have included 240MWh of BESS. Engie said higher-than-expected grid connection costs were also a factor.

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StoTera’s lithium sulfur flow battery, SLIQ 2. Image: StorTera.

The UK has become an undisputed global leader in energy storage deployments, driven on in the past six years by the growing business case for batteries on the grid.

As of the end March 2022, there were a cumulative 1,700MW of battery storage installations in the country and 446MW of that total was installed during the preceding year, according to figures from our colleagues at Solar Media Market Research.

As noted in a recent feature article for our quarterly journal PV Tech Power (Vol.31), batteries play a number of different key roles in helping to balance the network, from frequency response to the Balancing Mechanism and Capacity Market.

However, the applications they perform are largely heavy on power, not energy delivered.

“They are on standby in case something happens – so the actual utilisation of the batteries in terms of how much energy they charge and discharge in services like dynamic containment is really very low,” Robyn Lucas, chief analytics officer at market intelligence firm Modo Energy said in that article.

Meanwhile, many argue that batteries or storage with duration long enough to cover periods of low solar or wind production will be needed – in other words, more energy than power – if the UK is to achieve decarbonisation and integrate much higher shares of renewable energy on its grid while maintaining reliability and perhaps even arresting the alarming rise of electricity prices.

Power generation firm Drax recently submitted a plan to expand a pumped hydro energy storage (PHES) plant in Scotland, but also said a final investment decision will be contingent on whether or not policies supportive of long-duration energy storage (LDES) are introduced by the UK government.

A recent report by energy research group Aurora highlighted that up to 24GW of LDES, defined as technologies storing four hours or more of energy, could be needed by 2035 to achieve the targeted goal of net zero emissions from the electricity system by that year.

Longer Duration Energy Storage Demonstration programme

One area where the government has pledged its support is for LDES technology innovation: as reported by Energy-Storage.news in February, the first tranches of funding for a number of LDES demonstration, pilot and prototype projects were committed to.

This came through the government Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) and is being called the Longer Duration Energy Storage Demonstration competition.

Our sister site Current± published two blogs in May which took a deep dive look at some of the five demonstration projects and 19 of the earlier stage pre-commercialisation projects which were awarded a share of the initial £7 million (US$8.78 million) awards, part of a total £68 million the government wants to award through its Net Zero Innovation Portfolio (NZIP).

On 4 May’s first instalment, Current± spoke to awardees through Stream One – the five demonstration projects – which were a “membrane free green hydrogen electrolyser, gravity-based energy storage, vanadium redox flow battery, advanced compressed air energy storage (A-CAES) and a bundled solution of pressurised seawater and compressed air”.

One, Ballylumford Power-to-X green hydrogen project in Northern Ireland, will electrolyse hydrogen using local wind energy which would otherwise be curtailed. Hydrogen will be stored in underground salt caverns and the outputted gas will be blended with 30% natural gas, the managing director of B9 Storage, the company behind the project, said.

Another is a 40MWh vanadium redox flow battery (VRFB) project by Anglo-American VRFB company Invinity Energy Systems, with EDF-owned developer Pivot Power.   

The pair worked together previously on a lithium-vanadium hybrid project, the world’s biggest of its kind to date, in Oxford, England.

“To be included as one of the leading participants in a programme whose explicit purpose is to underline the important role longer duration energy storage technologies will play in our increasingly low-carbon energy system is a great honour,” Invinity CCO Matt Harper told Current±.

Also featured in that first blog was gravity storage startup Gravitricity, which is looking to scale-up from an initial 250kW demonstrator that it has put into action near its headquarters in Edinburgh, Scotland.

The company builds a storage system which essentially lifts and lowers weights, releasing potential energy as it does so. Its next project is expected to be 4MW to 8MW of storage at a site to be determined.

You can read the full blog with the demonstration funding winners’ interviews here.

Later last month, on 24 May, the site ran interviews and a look at some of the 19 pre-commercial funding winners, which as might be expected sounds like a more exotic list of novel technologies than the demonstration projects, which largely feature tech our readers might already be familiar with.

A lithium sulfur flow battery which maker StorTera claimed could be the most energy dense flow battery design ever, metal hydride in depleted uranium as a storage medium and a copper-zinc battery are among the winners there.

You can read the full blog with prototype funding winners’ interviews here.

Chart showing the different applications Invinity believes the VRFB tech can provide, alongside other technologies like lithium and pumped hydro. Image: Invinity.

That’s the technology on one hand but on the other it was highlighted last week just how far the UK market still has to go in developing the right framework making for longer durations of energy storage economically viable.

Current± reported that one of the biggest investors in the UK market and a developer-owner of projects, Gore Street Energy Storage Fund, said the optimal revenue mix for energy storage in the UK remains grid balancing services.

As such, its investments will still likely be directed towards battery storage assets with a duration of one hour for the time being. Gore Street said the much lower Capex of shorter duration batteries allows for much higher profits, in the absence of significant commercial opportunities for shifting multiple hours of stored energy.  

“Long-duration storage is one of the last unsolved challenges of the energy transition,” Matt Allen, CEO and co-founder of Longer Duration Energy Storage Demonstration Programme participant Pivot Power told Current± in one of the May blogs.

“While we already have much of the technology to store renewable energy for short periods of time, storing it across monthly and even yearly intervals will play a fundamental role in creating strong, secure and sustainable power systems. This year could be the turning point where long-duration storage finally receives the support it requires to scale at pace, and we look forward to working with our project partners to deliver vital pilot projects and accelerate the UK’s journey to net zero.”

Additional reporting by Molly Lempriere, UK editor, Solar Media.

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TCC, together with another subsidiary, TCC Green Energy, inaugurated Taiwan’s first large-scale energy storage system for frequency regulation, in late March 2021. Image: TCC.

Taiwan Cement Corporation (TCC) has ordered an additional 22MWh of battery storage from NHOA, the energy storage and electric mobility co mpany it acquired a majority shareholding in from ENGIE.

The cement and concrete maker, which has been in business since 1946, acquired a 60.5% stake in NHOA, formerly known as ENGIE EPS, in July last year. In October TCC awarded NHOA a contract for two battery energy storage system (BESS) projects at industrial sites in Taiwan totalling 160MW/420MWh.

Those projects will be split across 110MWh at a cement production plant and 310MWh at an industrial park. Their primary function will be to deliver frequency regulation ancillary services and peak shaving to the grid, through contracts with Taiwan’s transmission system operator TaiPower.

Those awards followed the announcement of an initial 10MWh project at the cement plant, HePing, and TCC said last week that it will be that first HePing project that will be expanded to 32MWh capacity.

The project is scheduled for commissioning later this year, while manufacturing of equipment for the two larger projects has already begun and installation and is set to begin in early 2023. The smaller plant will perform similar applications to the larger ones.

TCC chairman Nelson Chang gave a speech last month at the company’s AGM which emphasised the growing need for energy storage in Taiwan, as well as the growing importance of energy storage to TCC’s own business lines.

Together with an upstream battery manufacturing business that it also owns and related interests, TCC has made clean energy and energy storage a priority area for expansion. Chang said at the AGM that supporting Taiwan’s renewable energy aims to deploy 27GW of renewable energy by 2025 and 45GW by 2030 will require 5GW and 9GW of energy storage respectively.

Taipower’s Automatic Frequency Control (AFC) ancillary services tenders have kickstarted the market into action with other tranches of frequency regulation procurement to come, while the long-term value of battery storage for integrating solar to the grid and managing peak demand is considered a driver that will grow in importance for the market.

So far renowned international players like Fluence and Powin Energy have entered into the Taiwanese market in the past year or two, along with domestic companies

TCC itself is targeting carbon neutrality and is active internationally – Italy-headquartered NHOA has operations in 26 different countries – and Chang said the company and its subsidiaries will deploy 400MWh of energy storage by the end of this year and nearly 3GWh by 2024, while its battery manufacturing arms will arrive at 3.3GWh annual production capacity by that time.  

NHOA, for its part, published a business strategy last year which included the goal of growing its business tenfold by 2025, including targeting 1.7GWh of battery storage deployments, growing its energy storage development pipeline to €10 billion (US$10.73 billion) potential value and increase annual revenues to more than €600 million with an EBITDA margin of >10%.

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Three clean energy organizations have formed a partnership to provide educational resources and training on clean energy technologies for building operators, managers and safety officials. The Interstate Renewable Energy Council (IREC), New Buildings Institute (NBI), and Southface Institute are collaborating to provide these resources on safe and effective deployment of distributed energy resources (DER) in buildings across the country. IREC, NBI and Southface Institute have launched CleanEnergyClearinghouse.org, an interactive learning resource providing unbiased educational resources on solar photovoltaics, electric vehicle supply equipment, battery storage, grid-interactive technologies, and highly efficient building materials.

With each passing month, more clean energy resources are coming online at an exponential clip and a highly skilled U.S. buildings workforce is needed to manage and support this growth. Federal, state and local climate and greenhouse gas reduction goals are accelerating this transition. Meeting these ambitious goals requires building operators, managers and safety officials to understand their roles in this transition.

The organizations are working in concert under the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Empowered program, which is funded by three technology offices within the Office of Energy Efficiency & Renewable Energy: Building Technologies Office (BTO), Solar Energy Technologies Office (SETO) and Vehicle Technologies Office (VTO). The partnership is an arrangement among the offices that leverages the unique skills and strengths to deliver comprehensive resources that support safe and effective distributed energy resource deployment.

“IREC is enthusiastic about this innovative collaboration under DOE leadership, which is consistent with our history of convening diverse stakeholders to tackle complex clean energy challenges,” says Larry Sherwood, IREC’s president and CEO. “Our collective action to accelerate clean energy adoption is needed to reach climate and equity goals.”

Since the launch of the clearinghouse in April 2021, more than 25,000 professionals have accessed educational resources and training courses. To develop these and forthcoming resources, hundreds of stakeholders participated in a series of forums hosted by Southface to elicit feedback on the most critical educational and training needs associated with these technologies.

“Building the infrastructure that a net zero future requires depends on a prepared and trained workforce,” comments Peter Carpenter, education project manager at Southface. “Relevant, accessible, timely educational materials and training will accelerate the adoption and implementation of renewable energy and energy efficiency in new and existing buildings, leading to the advancement of the nation’s energy security and efficiency goals.”

The three project leaders unite almost 20 clean energy organizations as additional collaborators. This effort facilitates knowledge sharing and will improve the implementation of renewable energy and energy efficiency technologies in communities across the U.S. Professionals and industry benefit from access to fact-based, industry-vetted educational resources and training that are relevant and responsive to the rapid advancement of distributed energy technologies.

“When diverse and committed organizations collaborate, the combined effort exceeds expectations, and we all move closer to a 100 percent clean energy future that is reliable, resilient, and equitable,” states Madeline Salzman, the partnership’s manager at DOE.

“Working collaboratively with such a wide network of partners and stakeholders to close training gaps and other barriers to implementing distributed energy resources is allowing us to be agile in responding to changing industry needs,” mentions Diana Burk, project manager at NBI. “By cooperatively working to develop, test, and implement education and training, we are able to not only learn from each other, but also capitalize on the breadth of experience and knowledge across technologies and markets.”

Together, the organizations have developed interactive courses and resources about emerging clean energy technologies. This year the group will produce a searchable model codes database and permitting and inspection guides and training for solar, storage and EVSE, all accessible within the clearinghouse.

Project partners include IREC, International Code Council (ICC), Slipstream, International Association of Electrical Inspectors (IAEI), National Association of State Fire Marshals (NASFM), Pacific Northwest National Laboratories (PNNL), Florida Solar Energy Center, NBI, International Code Council (ICC), Forth Mobility, Earth Advantage, Southwest Energy Efficiency Project (SWEEP), Metropolitan Area Planning Council, Southface, International Code Council (ICC), Slipstream, American Institute of Architects (AIA), Energy & Environmental Building Alliance (EEBA), Midwest Energy Efficiency Alliance (MEEA), and Southeast Energy Efficiency Alliance (SEEA).

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The rural community of Castañer, Puerto Rico celebrated the first phase of a solar-plus-storage microgrid installation that will provide continuous and reliable electricity to power local businesses and essential services. The microgrid was developed in a collaborative process led by the Puerto Rican Solar Business Accelerator (PRSBA), along with the nonprofit Cooperativa Hidroeléctrica de la Montaña and the University of Puerto Rico – Mayagüez. The PRSBA program, led by the Interstate Renewable Energy Council (IREC) and Pathstone Corp., is funded by the U.S. Economic Development Administration.

The project is the first to be installed in the central mountain region of Puerto Rico. The first phase of the microgrid will power local businesses and two EV charging stations, totaling 40 kW of solar PV and 35 kWh in battery storage. When the next phases are added, the complete microgrid will include approximately 225 kW in solar PV and 500 kWh in battery storage. Installation and development of the microgrid was led by a local solar company Borintek. 

Castañer is located in an isolated area between the towns of Adjuntas, Lares, Maricao and Yauco, which endured more than six months without power after Hurricane Maria in 2017. The first phase of the microgrid is designed with the goal to provide uninterrupted electric power services during future emergencies. The first real-world test was successful. The microgrid continued to provide electricity to the businesses when a fire at a power plant caused a massive island-wide blackout in April 2022.

“After several months of work with the Cooperativa Hidroeléctrica de la Montaña and the University of Puerto Rico, we can see the result of our collaboration in the well-being of the Castañer community,” says Loraima Jaramillo Nieves, program manager at IREC. “This microgrid is the first of many great projects that are coming up in rural Puerto Rico.”

“I visited the town of Castañer several times after Hurricane Maria, and I could see how the businesses made numerous efforts to maintain services in the community,” comments Maribel Hernández, assistant manager of the project. “The residents were plunged into darkness for more than six months. The lack of electricity affected their quality of life since they could no longer attend to food and medicine needs. This is what motivated us to launch, through the Cooperativa Hidroeléctrica de la Montaña, our first Resiliencia Energética Fotovoltaica Comunitaria (ReEnFoCo) project through the Castañer microgrid.”

This is the first of two microgrids that will be developed with the support of the PRSBA. The second will be in Maricao.

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Ignacio Sánchez Galán, chairman of Iberdrola, in Boston

Iberdrola USA (Avangrid) has released its investment plan for New York’s energy market. According to the plan, investments could reach close to $6 billion over the next three years. This framework will accelerate the investments needed to continue to improve service and drive a grid that is more resilient to extreme weather events, and smarter to integrate the clean energy needed to meet New York’s decarbonization goals.

With this proposal, NYSEG and RGE customers will continue to maintain one of the lowest rates in the state. Later this year, Iberdrola USA (Avangrid) will negotiate tariff frameworks for its distributors in Maine, Connecticut and Massachusetts. 

The investments in this plan will also contribute to the growth of its network business, where it already has assets of approximately $12 billion, which it expects to increase to $ 20 billion by 2025, including organic and inorganic growth.

This proposal is in addition to Iberdrola USA’s (Avangrid) growth plans in the country.  Iberdrola has been present in the United States for 15 years, and has assets that today exceed 40 billion in 24 states, serving a population of more than 7 million people.

Ibrerdrola USA (Avangrid) is listed on the New York Stock Exchange, with a capitalisation of 18,400 million dollars, which would make it one of the 14 largest companies on the Ibex.

The company currently operates 70 onshore wind farms and solar photovoltaic plants with more than 8,000 MW in operation and close to 1,000 MW under construction. Iberdrola USA (Avangrid) also recently started the construction of the large-scale Vineyard Wind 1 offshore wind project. It has a portfolio of close to 5,000 MW with the Park City Wind project in Connecticut, Commonwealth Wind in Massachusetts and Kitty Hawk in North Carolina.

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Theodore (Ted) Peck

Borqs Technologies Inc. has received strategic funding of $16 million for growth of its solar plus energy storage business in the markets outside of Hawaii, particularly in California, and also for development of 5G mobile devices.

The majority of this financing is led by TDR Capital Pty Ltd., a private equity fund in Australia that focuses on emerging companies in various industries including solar. The funds raised will be used mainly for expansion of the company’s subsidiary, Holu Hou Energy LLC’s (HHE) business in mainland U.S., starting with California, including participation in power purchase agreements (PPA).

HHE, the company’s solar subsidiary, has propriety technology to allow sharing of power at the direct current (DC) level.

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Benjamin Baker

Greenbacker Development Opportunities Fund I LP, which provides flexible capital and technical guidance for growth-stage clean energy companies, has made an investment in Sunrock Distributed Generation (Sunrock DG), a financing and asset aggregation platform for commercial and industrial (C&I) solar and energy storage projects across the country.

The partnership with Greenbacker will increase Sunrock DG’s capacity to provide financing for small and medium businesses (SMBs) transitioning to solar energy. It will also enable Sunrock DG to expand its pipeline of middle-market commercial solar and storage projects. Historically, meeting the clean energy needs of SMBs has been prohibitively expensive to address.

Sunrock DG develops smaller-scale commercial solar projects that allow businesses, municipalities and nonprofits to access the financial and environmental benefits of solar power. Given challenges in achieving economies of scale, many companies have not been able to offer attractive third-party financing products to middle-market owners. Sunrock DG’s proprietary underwriting criteria and technology, novel financing sources and network of over 100 developer partners across the country allow it to offer this market segment both financing and affordable products.

“We believe distributed generation has an inherently long tail, with the best opportunities and highest yields in the smaller end of the market,” says Benjamin Baker, managing director at Greenbacker. “We’re thrilled to partner with Sunrock DG to expand our presence in C&I solar and enable Sunrock DG to accelerate its growth and meet the immense demand for low-cost clean energy solutions, particularly in light of rising power prices.”

“The solar market has been ineffective at serving middle-market commercial customers for the last 20 years,” states founder Claire Broido Johnson. “Through our collaboration with Greenbacker and our deep network of developer partners, we’re looking forward to bringing more thoughtful financing structures to this underserved segment of the market.”

Greenbacker Capital Management established the Greenbacker Development Opportunities Fund I LP in 2020 to invest in companies focused on sustainable infrastructure development.

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