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EGEB: Sunpower solar robots, used EV batteries for sale, solar power under the sea, more

Electrek Green Energy Brief: A daily technical, financial, and political review/analysis of important green energy news.

Solar Power Plant O&M: Robots Offer Smarter Way to Protect and Enhance Your Investment – Two reasons I’m posting this, 1 – They’ve got a great chart that shows the value of having a robot cleaning from a financial sense perspective. In that chart they do use a great price of 1.78¢/kWh in a PPA as their base price. And 2 – They’re pulling the cleaning robots with pickup trucks. Robots cleaning large-scale solar panel installations will get smarter, and will see improved design – but being part automatic and part human is creative maximization of resources. Check out the short video at the end. The hardware requires two people to place it on a double row of solar panels. I wonder if there will be a residential solar panel cleaner that’s really smart at finding the edges of solar panels once you place it on the roof yourself…

System Gives Used EV Batteries a Second Life in the Solar PV Storage Market – The system that is based around a “second life” battery has a nominal capacity of 4.2 kWh and is based around a lithium manganese oxide (LMO) battery chemistry. Systems with a pre-owned battery will carry a 5-year warranty, while system with new batteries will be warrantied for 10 years. These used units could probably be priced by looking at their usable capacity times the going market price per kWh minus the costs of managing the repackaging of the batteries. That value minus the margin is what you, a consumer, should be able to sell your used car/house batteries for.

Australia Set To Export Wind & Solar Energy To Indonesia – Asian Renewable Energy Hub (AREH), a proposed 6 GW (gigawatt) hybrid wind and solar power plant in Western Australia which would then export the electricity north via subsea cables to Indonesia. East Pilbara region of Western Australia, the country’s western-most state, and is expected to begin construction in 2023 and reach full operation by 2029. The project developers talk up subsea cables greatly. We’re already investing time and money in our HVDC expertise. Maybe we’ll actually build one of those power plants in Africa to export to Europe. Interesting that investors would rather build in Australia and ship the electricity.

California Is Plenty Green But Iowa Has the Cleanest Power – Iowa gets 40% of its electricity from wind and solar, Kansas 32% and North Dakota 37%. California swings in at 29%. However, as the image below shows – per capita California is way out in front of these states. I’d also be interested in seeing how much of this electricity has sold its ‘rights’ from an Iowa farm field to a California IT company like Google or Apple.

People meeting early for the solar trade case in Washington DC again this morning for the final public hearing. Trump’s decision deadline has been delayed from early to late January as representatives have requested further information.

Considering residential solar? Understand Solar will connect you with local contractors. Tweet me to pick apart quote.

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