DOE Unveils Resource Hub for Distributed Energy Sector
Eager to support public and private sector organizations focused on meeting the nation’s rapidly growing demand for distributed energy services, the Dept. of Energy (DOE) has released a list of tools and services the agency will make available facilitate their efforts.
With an eye on clean energy production for the massively expanding AI industry, the Secretary of Energy Advisory Board has released its report, ‘Powering AI and Data Center Infrastructure.”
The report includes 16 recommendations detailing ways DOE can support industry’s response to growing demands for reliable, safe, affordable and sustainable power. Among other things, the reports takes into account using AI for modeling power dynamics, the need for operational flexibility in data center and utility operations, and innovating generation and storage technologies.
“A nation powered by clean energy is a goal being brought into reality by the Biden-Harris administration as the country achieves a manufacturing boom not seen in decades and expands new industries, like data centers and AI,” said Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm. “Today we are generating record amounts of carbon-free power – with more projected as the Investing in America agenda comes into full swing….”
Resources included in DOE’s Electricity Demand Growth Hub:
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- 2024 Future of Resource Adequacy outlines a wide array of solutions to address increased electricity demand on the nation’s power grid while continuing to reduce emissions.
- Clean Energy Resources to Meet Data Center Electricity Demand provides additional context about data center load growth during the clean energy transition and lays out the broad portfolio of energy technologies and enabling solutions available today to meet rising demand.
- Pathways to Commercial Liftoff Topic Brief: How Clean Energy is the Solution to Rising Electricity Demand briefly summarizes the opportunity to unlock hundreds of gigawatts of system capacity by accelerating full commercialization for multiple clean energy technologies, advanced grid solutions, and virtual power plants (e.g., aggregated distributed energy resources) covered by DOE’s Pathways to Commercial Liftoff reports.
- How AI Can Help Clean Energy Meet Growing Electricity Demand summarizes the first set of milestones achieved by DOE’s voltAIc initiative, which is focused on building AI-powered tools for environmental permitting to help speed up energy deployments.
- Voices of Experience: Decarbonization Strategies and Grid Planning shares insights from a 2024 summer series for utilities focused on the unique regulatory environment, electricity market, and geographical dynamics to consider for carbon reduction strategies.
- Electrification Resource Library includes a catalog of 300+ DOE and market resources related to electrification, including news articles and resources on electricity demand growth, data centers, electricity solutions, and more.
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We’re excited to announce that Pasture Voltaics LLC and its unique SunTracker technology have joined the PlanitWorks partner family.
Using raised, high-tensile cables positioned nine feet above the ground to control a solar grid array to track the sun, SunTracker enables ranchers, farmers, Native American tribes, and other entities with vested land management interests to:
- Provide green energy development
- Protect their herds from excessive heat
- Regenerate land
- Feed power back to the grid
The elevated, cabled solar canopy is particularly ideal for livestock, because they provide badly needed shade (for animals and the land), thereby reducing stress on the animals and mitigating evaporation.
A typical 1,200-acre installation generates up to 200MW of electricity. Additionally, the cabling systems are based on well-known bridge-building principles, enabling them to withstand the kinds of high winds typical on open ranges.
While Pasture Voltaics does the actual instllations, PlanitWorks is managing all development efforts including planning, permitting, and working with ranchers.
To learn more contact us for a free consultation.
Federal hurdles, including onerous fees and development delays, are seriously hampering tribal nations’ efforts to implement ambitious alternative energy projects that could generate reliable power, new jobs, clean energy, and massive new economic opportunities.
Although the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) committed hundreds of billions to support clean energy initiatives across the country, a perfect storm of interconnection requirements, a high volume of complex interconnection requests, and Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) fees to remain in the development queue have all conspired to create a logjam in the system.
This has proved particularly challenging for many tribes, which are looking to alternative energy solutions,(e.g., solar, wind, and geothermal) as reliable sources of power rather than purely green power initiatives.
“Tribes are unfairly being lumped into the same pool as speculative developers,” says Brian McLaughlin, CEO of PlanitWorks. “At the end of the day, these communities simply want access to reliable power. Understandably, they’d like to take charge of their own energy destinies.”
Big Fees Are Impeding Progress
Per FERC’s Order 2023, within 14 to 30 days, all interconnection requests must be accompanied by a commercial readiness deposit of $5 million (reduced from an original $7.5 million). These fees are designed to limit speculative requests from developers that are actually unprepared to perform the work or that abruptly withdraw (the $5 million would cover withdrawal penalties).
But for most tribes, coming up with that kind of money on such short notice is all but impossible. And to reiterate, the tribes aren’t interested in speculating, they’re interested in generating reliable power.
In its August 2023 report to Congress, DOE’s Office of Indian Energy released the results of a tribal survey showing that 72% of tribes had no ownership or control of their electrical infrastructure. The survey also revealed that tribes suffered an average of 10.5 power outages per year compared to a national average of just 1.6 annual outages.
In other words, far from dabbling in speculative bidding for interconnection opportunities, the tribes simply want access to, and some modicum of control over, a reliable power source.
“If you have homes that don’t have electricity in them, do you believe that they’re really thinking about clean energy,” asks Onna Labeu, the Indigenous Power & Light Fund’s managing director and the former director of the Office of Indian Economic Development at the U.S. Department of the Interior.
Labeu added that while it’s understandable the federal government is focused on reducing emissions, it’s important to remember “there are communities that are way ahead of everybody else, but the tribal communities are significantly behind.”
Reliable Power is the Focus
Ironically, Order 2023 is designed to accelerate the approval process for interconnection requests. According to a report by the Berkeley Lab of the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory, the number of requests in recent years has exploded, most in solar, wind, and storage.
Today more than 10,000 projects (a 40% year over year increase) representing roughly 1,350GW of power generation and another 680GW of storage await approval to connect to the grid. Because part of that effort to speed up things includes the hefty fees to ward off speculative types, tribes are asking for an exemption.
“We have petitioned FERC on behalf of the tribes we serve to waive [or defer] the commercial readiness deposit … and to allow tribes to remain in the interconnection queue,” said Chéri Smith, CEO of the Alliance for Tribal Clean Energy.
She noted that large alternative energy projects are “big economic engines” that not only could produce reliable sources of energy, but also generate new jobs and other economic opportunities.
Despite what may seem like a steady drumbeat of bad news regarding electric vehicle (EV) sales and leases, the industry is actually enjoying sufficient growth to suggest it soon may achieve a 10 percent share of the domestic auto industry.
Kelley Blue Book estimates EV sales in the third quarter hit 346,309 units, reflecting a year over year growth rate of 11%. EV sales also established new volume and market share records. Even Tesla, which struggled in the first half of the year, enjoyed strong growth in Q3.
Stephanie Valdez Streaty, director of Industry Insights at Cox Automotive, acknowledged much of that growth was likely due to an aggressive slate of government and industry incentives and discounts (at 12%, industry incentives for EVs were significantly higher than the 7% offered for other vehicle types).
But Valdez Streaty believes that “as more affordable EVs enter the market and infrastructure improves, we can expect even greater adoption in the coming years.”
What is perhaps most important is that EV’s domestic market share climbed to 8.9% compared to last year’s rate of 7.8%, leading industry observers to believe a 10% market share may not be far off.