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Yesterday β€” 17 May 2024Main stream

In a Milestone, the US Exceeds 5 Million Solar Installations

βœ‡Slashdot
By: BeauHD
16 May 2024 at 21:25
According to the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA), the U.S. has officially surpassed 5 million solar installations. "The 5 million milestone comes just eight years after the U.S. achieved its first million in 2016 -- a stark contrast to the four decades it took to reach that initial milestone since the first grid-connected solar project in 1973," reports Electrek. From the report: Since the beginning of 2020, more than half of all U.S. solar installations have come online, and over 25% have been activated since the Inflation Reduction Act became law 20 months ago. Solar arrays have been installed on homes and businesses and as utility-scale solar farms. The U.S. solar market was valued at $51 billion in 2023. Even with changes in state policies, market trends indicate robust growth in solar installations across the U.S. According to SEIA forecasts, the number of solar installations is expected to double to 10 million by 2030 and triple to 15 million by 2034. The residential sector represents 97% of all U.S. solar installations. This sector has consistently set new records for annual installations over the past several years, achieving new highs for five straight years and in 10 out of the last 12 years. The significant growth in residential solar can be attributed to its proven value as an investment for homeowners who wish to manage their energy costs more effectively. California is the frontrunner with 2 million solar installations, though recent state policies have significantly damaged its rooftop solar market. Meanwhile, other states are experiencing rapid growth. For example, Illinois, which had only 2,500 solar installations in 2017, now boasts over 87,000. Similarly, Florida has seen its solar installations surge from 22,000 in 2017 to 235,000 today. By 2030, 22 states or territories are anticipated to surpass 100,000 solar installations. The U.S. has enough solar installed to cover every residential rooftop in the Four Corners states of Colorado, Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Before yesterdayMain stream

US Regulators Approve Rule That Could Speed Renewables

βœ‡Slashdot
By: BeauHD
15 May 2024 at 20:45
Longtime Slashdot reader necro81 writes: The U.S. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), which controls interstate energy infrastructure, approved a rule Monday that should boost new transmission infrastructure and make it easier to connect renewable energy projects. (More coverage here, here, and here.) Some 11,000 projects totaling 2,600 GW of capacity are in planning, waiting to break ground, or connect to the grid. But they're stymied by the need for costly upgrades, or simply waiting for review. The frustrations are many. Each proposed project undergoes a lengthy grid-impact study and assessed the cost of necessary upgrades. Each project is considered in isolation, regardless of whether similar projects are happening nearby that could share the upgrade costs or auger different improvements. The planning process tends to be reactive -- examining only the applications in front of them -- rather than considering trends over the coming years. It's a first-come, first-served queue: if one project is ready to break ground, it must wait behind another project that's still securing funding or permitting. Two years in development, the dryly-named Improvements to Generator Interconnection Procedures and Agreements directs utility operators to plan infrastructure improvements with a 20-yr forecast of new energy sources and increased demand. Rather than examining each project in isolation, similar projects will be clustered and examined together. Instead of a First-Come, First-Served serial process, operators will instead examine First-Ready, allowing shovel-ready projects to jump the queue. The expectation is that these new rules will speed up and streamline the process of developing and connecting new energy projects through more holistic planning, penalties for delays, sensible cost-sharing for upgrades, and justification for long-term investments.

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Sauron’s dark rise is front and center in The Rings of Power S2 teaser

βœ‡Ars Technica
By: Jennifer Ouellette
14 May 2024 at 18:09

Charlie Vicker's Sauron is front and center in the teaser for S2 of Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power.

Amazon's Prime Video made a major investment in The Rings of Power when it acquired the rights to the source material from the Tolkien estate, even committing to multiple seasons upfront. The casting was strong and the visuals were quite spectacular (including the opening credits). But while the first season had its moments, personally I found it a bit plodding, often more concerned with establishing this rich fictional world and the characters within it than moving the story forward.

Showrunners J.D. Payne and Patrick McKay have said that this was deliberate. They wanted to avoid a "villain-centric" story in S1 but promised they would be delving more deeply into "the lore and the stories people have been waiting to hear." That would be the rise of Sauron (Charlie Vickers), the forging of the titular rings of power, and the last alliance between elves and men to defeat Sauron's evil machinations. Judging by the teaser that dropped today, we'll be getting lots more action in S2, with the shape-shifting Sauron now handily disguised as an elf. Bonus: There's an accompanying behind-the-scenes preview of the second season.

(Spoilers for the S1 finale below.)

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New Rules to Overhaul Electric Grids Could Boost Wind and Solar Power

βœ‡NYT: Science
By: Brad Plumer
13 May 2024 at 18:22
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission approved the biggest changes in more than a decade to the way U.S. power lines are planned and funded.

Β© Renaud Philippe for The New York Times

A transmission line construction project near Bingham, Maine, in 2022.

Could Atomically Thin Layers Bring A 19x Energy Jump In Battery Capacitors?

βœ‡Slashdot
By: EditorDavid
12 May 2024 at 14:34
Researchers believe they've discovered a new material structure that can improve the energy storage of capacitors. The structure allows for storage while improving the efficiency of ultrafast charging and discharging. The new find needs optimization but has the potential to help power electric vehicles. * An anonymous reader shared this report from Popular Mechanics: In a study published in Science, lead author Sang-Hoon Bae, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering and materials science, demonstrates a novel heterostructure that curbs energy loss, enabling capacitors to store more energy and charge rapidly without sacrificing durability... Within capacitors, ferroelectric materials offer high maximum polarization. That's useful for ultra-fast charging and discharging, but it can limit the effectiveness of energy storage or the "relaxation time" of a conductor. "This precise control over relaxation time holds promise for a wide array of applications and has the potential to accelerate the development of highly efficient energy storage systems," the study authors write. Bae makes the change β€” one he unearthed while working on something completely different β€” by sandwiching 2D and 3D materials in atomically thin layers, using chemical and nonchemical bonds between each layer. He says a thin 3D core inserts between two outer 2D layers to produce a stack that's only 30 nanometers thick, about 1/10th that of an average virus particle... The sandwich structure isn't quite fully conductive or nonconductive. This semiconducting material, then, allows the energy storage, with a density up to 19 times higher than commercially available ferroelectric capacitors, while still achieving 90 percent efficiency β€” also better than what's currently available. Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 for sharing the article.

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Are Small Modular Nuclear Reactors Costly and Unviable?

βœ‡Slashdot
By: EditorDavid
12 May 2024 at 07:34
The Royal Institution of Australia is a national non-profit hub for science communication, publishing the science magazine Cosmos four times a year. This month they argued that small modular nuclear reactors "don't add up as a viable energy source." Proponents assert that SMRs would cost less to build and thus be more affordable. However, when evaluated on the basis of cost per unit of power capacity, SMRs will actually be more expensive than large reactors. This 'diseconomy of scale' was demonstrated by the now-terminated proposal to build six NuScale Power SMRs (77 megawatts each) in Idaho in the United States. The final cost estimate of the project per megawatt was around 250 percent more than the initial per megawatt cost for the 2,200 megawatts Vogtle nuclear power plant being built in Georgia, US. Previous small reactors built in various parts of America also shut down because they were uneconomical. The cost was four to six times the cost of the same electricity from wind and solar photovoltaic plants, according to estimates from the Australian Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation and the Australian Energy Market Operator. "The money invested in nuclear energy would save far more carbon dioxide if it were instead invested in renewables," the article agues: Small reactors also raise all of the usual concerns associated with nuclear power, including the risk of severe accidents, the linkage to nuclear weapons proliferation, and the production of radioactive waste that has no demonstrated solution because of technical and social challenges. One 2022 study calculated that various radioactive waste streams from SMRs would be larger than the corresponding waste streams from existing light water reactors... Nuclear energy itself has been declining in importance as a source of power: the fraction of the world's electricity supplied by nuclear reactors has declined from a maximum of 17.5 percent in 1996 down to 9.2 percent in 2022. All indications suggest that the trend will continue if not accelerate. The decline in the global share of nuclear power is driven by poor economics: generating power with nuclear reactors is costly compared to other low-carbon, renewable sources of energy and the difference between these costs is widening. Thanks to Slashdot reader ZipNada for sharing the article.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Northern Lights Set to Return Tonight as Extreme Solar Storm Continues

βœ‡NYT: Science
By: Katrina Miller， Ivan Penn and Emmett Lindner
11 May 2024 at 16:00
Electrical utilities said they weathered earlier conditions as persistent geomagnetic storms were expected to cause another light show in evening skies.

Β© NASA/Solar Dynamics Observatory

A NASA satellite recorded the sun releasing a powerful solar flare on Friday night. Elevated solar activity this week has contributed to powerful geomagnetic storms in Earth’s atmosphere.

'Tungsten Wall' Leads To Nuclear Fusion Breakthrough

βœ‡Slashdot
By: BeauHD
11 May 2024 at 03:00
A tokamak in France achieved a new record in fusion plasma by using tungsten to encase its reaction, which enabled the sustainment of hotter and denser plasma for longer periods than previous carbon-based designs. Quartz reports: A tokamak is a torus- (doughnut-) shaped fusion device that confines plasma using magnetic fields, allowing scientists to fiddle with the superheated material and induce fusion reactions. The recent achievement was made in WEST (tungsten (W) Environment in Steady-state Tokamak), a tokamak operated by the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (CEA). WEST was injected with 1.15 gigajoules of power and sustained a plasma of about 50 million degrees Celsius for six minutes. It achieved this record after scientists encased the tokamak's interior in tungsten, a metal with an extraordinarily high melting point. Researchers from Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory used an X-ray detector inside the tokamak to measure aspects of the plasma and the conditions that made it possible. "These are beautiful results," said Xavier Litaudon, a scientist with CEA and chair of the Coordination on International Challenges on Long duration OPeration (CICLOP), in a PPPL release. "We have reached a stationary regime despite being in a challenging environment due to this tungsten wall."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Northern Lights Are Visible as Solar Storm Intensifies: What to Know

βœ‡NYT: Science
By: Katrina Miller and Judson Jones
11 May 2024 at 13:13
Officials warned of potential blackouts or interference with navigation and communication systems this weekend, as well as auroras as far south as Southern California or Texas.

Β© NASA/SDO

California Will Add a Fixed Charge to Electric Bills and Reduce Rates

βœ‡NYT: Technology
By: Ivan Penn
10 May 2024 at 11:06
Officials said the decision would lower bills and encourage people to use cars and appliances that did not use fossil fuels, but some experts said it would discourage energy efficiency.

Β© Jim Wilson/The New York Times

Utility companies across the country have long pushed for fixed charges to help cover the cost of maintaining and improving grid equipment like power lines and substations

Texas Spot Power Prices Jump Almost 100-Fold On Tight Supply

βœ‡Slashdot
By: BeauHD
9 May 2024 at 16:40
ArchieBunker quotes a report from Bloomberg: Texas electricity prices soared almost 100-fold as a high number of power-plant outages raised concerns of a potential evening shortfall. Spot prices at the North Hub, which includes Dallas, jumped to more than $3,000 a megawatt-hour just before 7 p.m. local time, versus about $32 at the same time Tuesday, according to data from the Electric Reliability Council of Texas. This morning, Ercot, as the state's main grid operator is known, issued a "watch" for a potential capacity reserve shortage from about 7-9 p.m., meaning the buffer of spare supplies could fall to low enough levels to call on back-up generation, cancel or delay outages or curb usage. The conditions are the tightest of the year so far and raises the risk of prices rising to the $5,000 cap -- which they last did on April 16, when Ercot also warned of a potential shortfall. Unusually hot weather in the region has boosted demand for cooling and lowered the efficiency of many power plants. Wind output has also fallen from a day earlier and there are more outages. "Ercot has not called for conservation this evening," it said by email. "The grid is operating under normal conditions at this time."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Renters get to join in on the solar boom

βœ‡MetaFilter
By: chariot pulled by cassowaries
6 May 2024 at 02:22
On a patch of earth big as a Bunnings car park, renters get to join in on the solar boom. A five-hour drive from Sydney, a community garden of sorts has sprouted. But instead of sharing tomatoes or lettuce, "gardeners" harvest solar energy. And it's already a hit with people otherwise excluded from the rooftop solar boom.

Two seconds of hope for fusion power

βœ‡Ars Technica
By: Jacek Krywko
3 May 2024 at 12:10
image of a person in protective clothing, standing in a circular area with lots of mirrored metal panels.

Enlarge / The interior or the DIII-D tokamak. (credit: General Atomics)

Using nuclear fusion, the process that powers the stars, to produce electricity on Earth has famously been 30 years away for more than 70 years. But now, a breakthrough experiment done at the DIII-D National Fusion Facility in San Diego may finally push nuclear fusion power plants to be roughly 29 years away.

Nuclear fusion ceiling

The DIII-D facility is run by General Atomics for the Department of Energy. It includes an experimental tokamak, a donut-shaped nuclear fusion device that works by trapping astonishingly hot plasma in very strong, toroidal magnetic fields. Tokamaks, compared to other fusion reactor designs like stellarators, are the furthest along in their development; ITER, the world’s first power-plant-size fusion device now under construction in France, is scheduled to run its first tests with plasma in December 2025.

But tokamaks have always had some issues. Back in 1988, Martin Greenwald, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology expert on plasma physics, proposed an equation that described an apparent limit on how dense plasma could get in tokamaks. He argued that maximum attainable density is dictated by the minor radius of a tokamak and the current induced in the plasma to maintain magnetic stability. Going beyond that limit was supposed to make the magnets incapable of holding the plasma, heated up to north of 150 million degrees Celsius away from the walls of the machine.

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Biden’s New Power Plant Rules: 5 Things to Know

βœ‡NYT: Science
By: Coral Davenport and Lisa Friedman
25 April 2024 at 14:00
The administration issued a major climate regulation aimed at virtually eliminating carbon emissions from coal, the dirtiest of the fossil fuels and a driver of global warming.

Β© Chris Carlson/Associated Press

Republican-led states and the coal industry are all but certain to challenge the rules in court.

Energy Dept. Aims to Speed Up Permits for Power Lines

βœ‡NYT: Science
By: Brad Plumer
25 April 2024 at 14:09
The Biden administration has expressed growing alarm that efforts to fight climate change could falter unless the electric grids are quickly expanded.

Β© Nina Riggio for The New York Times

Administration officials worry their plans to fight climate change could falter unless electric grids can quickly expand to handle more wind and solar power.

The U.S. Urgently Needs a Bigger Grid. Here’s a Fast Solution.

βœ‡NYT: Science
By: Brad Plumer
9 April 2024 at 10:15
A rarely used technique to upgrade old power lines could play a big role in fixing one of the largest obstacles facing clean energy, two reports found.

Β© Jim Wilson/The New York Times

Replacing existing power lines with cables made from state-of-the-art materials could roughly double the capacity of the electric grid in many parts of the country.
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