Electrek Green Energy Brief

Geothermal supplies just 0.4% of the world’s energy today, but it could potentially supply up to 50% of the world’s energy by 2050, according to Carlos Araque, cofounder and CEO of Quaise Energy, who made that prediction at the SOSV Climate Tech Summit 2022 last week during a panel discussion called, “Is this geothermal’s moment?”

First Solar, the largest solar panel maker in the United States, today announced that it will invest around $270 million in a dedicated thin film PV R&D innovation center. The new facility, which will be in Perrysburg, Ohio, is expected to be the first of its scale in the United States.

The UN Environment Programme (UNEP) just released its Emissions Gap Report 2022 – and let’s just say, the news isn’t good. So brace yourselves: You’re likely to see a slew of frightening, doom-mongering headlines about it today, unleashing a fresh wave of terror over those of us who care about the planet. But rather than panicking, here’s what to do instead.

General Motors (GM) today announced that it has finalized agreements to power all of its US sites with clean energy by 2025. 

Renewable energy – solar, wind, geothermal, hydropower, biomass – provided almost a quarter of electrical generation in the US during the first two-thirds of 2022, according to data just released by the US Energy Information Administration (EIA), which was reviewed by the SUN DAY Campaign.

You may not currently think much about subsea export cables or even know what they are. But as the offshore wind revolution ramps up for Americans in particular, all the components that transport clean energy from wind turbines to US households will become more familiar. That’s where Nexans comes in. The Paris-based global cable company is going to provide vital subsea export cables to three offshore wind projects in the United States, and those cables will bring the power to the mainland.

Electrek spoke with Ragnhild Katteland, executive vice president, subsea & land systems business group at Nexans and CEO of Nexans Norway, about the big US offshore wind projects the company is a part of, what she thinks makes the US offshore wind market unique, and what she predicts will happen in the US offshore wind market in 2023.

The city of Chaozhou, in China’s Guangdong province, is going to build an offshore wind farm so large that it is expected to provide more power than all of Norway’s power plants combined.

On October 14, Maksim Timchenko, the CEO of DTEK, Ukraine’s largest private power generator, updated Economichna Pravda on the status of Ukraine’s electrical grid in the face of Russian strikes against the country’s power installations. He also talked about what the company’s future plans are for implementing renewables, despite the Russian attacks. DTEK shared that interview today with Electrek, and we have edited the English translation sent to us below for length and clarity.

LineVision, based in Somerville, Massachusetts, provides “electric utilities with the real-time monitoring and analytics needed to accelerate the net zero grid.” Here’s how this company is playing a crucial role in helping to upgrade the US and international grids to ensure that the electrification revolution is a success.

Meet Crimson Storage, the world’s largest single-phase battery, which is now live in the California desert.

The US Department of the Interior today announced that the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) will hold an offshore wind energy lease sale on December 6, 2022, off central and northern California. It’s also the first-ever US sale to support potential commercial-scale floating offshore wind energy development.

A 13.6 megawatt (MW) offshore wind turbine with a record-breaking rotor diameter of 252 meters (827 feet) has debuted in China ahead of the country’s 20th Party Congress in Beijing, which opened yesterday.

Aeromine Technologies claims that its new rooftop bladeless wind energy unit provides the same amount of power as up to 16 solar panels. Could it become a game changer for generating clean energy on commercial buildings?

San Francisco-headquartered Sunrun, the largest residential solar and battery storage installer in the US, has launched a home electric vehicle (EV) charger.

The US offshore wind industry has hit the ground running: Coastal states increased their long-term offshore wind targets by 58% in the third quarter of 2022. That sets a record for quarterly growth, according to the Business Network for Offshore Wind’s inaugural “US Offshore Wind Quarterly Market Report.”

Greece was powered entirely by renewables for the first time ever last week, according to the country’s independent power transmission operator (IPTO).

The total global pipeline of floating offshore wind projects has more than doubled in the past 12 months in terms of capacity, from 91 gigawatts (GW) to 185 GW.

Global sustainable energy giant Hitachi Energy today announced that it will spend more than $37 million to expand and upgrade its power transformer factory in South Boston, Virginia. This is in response to soaring demand for power transformers from utility companies that are scrambling to accommodate the renewable energy boom after the Biden administration passed the Inflation Reduction Act in August.

The Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam West Loch Annex just broke ground for the Kūpono Solar Project, a solar-plus-storage system in O‘ahu, Hawai‘i.

Siemens Gamesa’s 14-222 DD offshore wind turbine prototype has, according to the Spanish-German wind giant today, set a world record for the most power output by a single wind turbine in a 24-hour period: 359 megawatt-hours.

There are plans in place to develop the UK’s Dogger Bank offshore wind farm in three phases: A, B, and C. It will become the world’s largest offshore wind farm upon completion, with an installed capacity of 3.6 gigawatts (GW). And it looks likely that it will get a fourth phase, Dogger Bank D, making it even more massive.