Huge Solar with Battery Storage Project Complete and Operational

Brian McCowan, Zondits staff, 2/29/2024 Image: The Edwards & Sanborn solar and storage project in Kern County, California. (Mortenson) The new California facility makes grid-scale solar energy available even when the sun doesn’t shine. Two million solar PV panels and over 120,000 batteries have come online on a combination of public and private land in … Read more

Renewable Power Set to Surpass Coal Globally by the End of 2025

Brian McCowan, Zondits staff, 2/29/2024 The International Energy Agency (IEA) forecasts that renewable energy-generated electricity will surpass coal-generated power by the end of 2025. Further, the IEA predicts that by 2026, nuclear power and renewable energy combined will generate almost 50% of the world’s electricity.  The report, titled Electricity 2024, is the current edition of … Read more

United States Set to Expand Solar Energy on Federal Land

Brian McCowan, Zondits staff, 2/28/2024 The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) has revised its goals for expanding solar energy projects on public lands throughout the western United States and introduced a new solar development “roadmap” to help achieve them.  The revised goals and roadmap are part of the Biden administration’s efforts to establish a net-zero … Read more

Don’t Burn Coal – Use it in Semiconductors!

Brian McCowan, Zondits staff, 2/28/2024 Researchers at the University of Illinois are saying that coal may have a future as a component in semiconductors.  Their groundbreaking research is published in the technical journal Communications Engineering, with the somewhat daunting title of Ultrathin quasi-2D amorphous carbon dielectric prepared from solution precursor for nanoelectronics. In simpler terms, … Read more

Hot on the Heels

Brian McCowan, Zondits staff, 2/12/2024 Hot on the heels of COP28 (Was COP28 a Success? It Depends on Who You Ask  | Zondits), two new reports are sounding alarms on climate change. The European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service announced that 2023 was the hottest year ever recorded—and that’s in 173 years of record-keeping. The … Read more

Green Carrot & Stick: How Sweden Became a Heat Pump Success Story

Emily Collins, Zondits guest, 2/1/2024 By now, it’s no secret that heat pumps just might be a key factor in climate solutions. From reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to saving homeowners money on their monthly utility bills, the heat pump continues to increase in popularity. In 2022 alone, even before the U.S. passed the Inflation … Read more

Getting to Fan-Tastic: Overcoming Barriers to Energy Efficiency in the C&I Fan Market

Christopher Dyson, Zondits guest, 1/16/2024 Fans not embedded in HVAC equipment—”stand-alone” fans—are used in many industrial, commercial, and agricultural applications (such as exhaust, ventilation, and manufacturing processes). The U.S. Department of Energy estimates that installed fans in the industrial sector alone consume about 79 billion kilowatt-hours (kWh) annually, which amounts to about 11% of all … Read more

Was COP28 a Success? It Depends on Who You Ask 

Brian McCowan, Zondits staff, 1/9/2024 At the close of 2023, 100,000 individuals representing nearly 200 nations met in Dubai to negotiate an updated climate action agreement at the United Nations COP28 conference. The UN Climate Change Conference – United Arab Emirates | UNFCCC, officially known as the 28th United Nations Climate Change Conference of Parties, … Read more

Utility Analytics Week 2023: Data-Enabled Magic

Nathan Phillips and Connor Barrett, Zondits guests, 1/3/2024 There is a first time for everything and spending Halloween with utility analytics professionals on the Universal Studios campus was just such a first. Utility Analytics Institute’s Utility Analytics Week 2023 was set against the backdrop of a towering rendition of Hogwarts, fueled not by magic but … Read more

Modular Nuke Plant Project Canceled Due to Soaring Costs

Brian McCowan, Zondits staff, 12/19/2023 Just as the Biden administration announced a new international effort to expand nuclear power generation (https://phys.org/news/2023-12-triple-nuclear-power-cop28.html), a key project toward reviving nuclear power in the U.S. has been canceled due to cost overruns. The Carbon Free Power Project (CFPP), designed by NuScale Power, was to be the first of its … Read more