The Energy Fair. Meet me next week in Custer, Wisconsin for the famous Energy Fair as I host a special edition of SolarWakeup Live! sponsored by Panasonic with leaders in Wisconsin’s solar market. This is my first time to this event and would love to meet many of you! More info on the event here
EVs And Stationary Storage. The Tesla business model is one that Rivian likes and is emulating. Not just making electric cars, and I hope Rivian comes out with the EV SUV because it looks pretty awesome, but stationary power micrograms as well. Rivian is looking to create a market for their second life batteries, which sounds good in theory but given where I see battery costs, that will likely be a foolish idea in 5-10 years.
Hacking The Grid. Power outages scare me, every time I am affected by one I realize how dependent I am on electricity. I’m close to the PG&E outage zones and worry about the shutdowns much as I worried about outages post hurricanes in Florida. Worse than both of those situations is a prolonged attack by hackers on the electric grid and potentially power plants.
GE Ventures For Sale. The venture group from General Electric is looking for an investor to buy the portfolio from the corporate. Some of the names you’d know are Stem, Sonnen (exited), AMS, FlexGen Power Systems and others.
Oh PTC, Stay With Me. PTC and ITC are inherently different but if the wind industry has loud voices asking for the PTC to go away, why don’t they simply choose to not use it? Given where wind is being installed, see below, wouldn’t the PTC going away eliminate some of the other markets from growing?
Wind’s Political Power. Wind is being installed in areas that look like a pipeline proposal, right through the middle of the Country. It’s helping farmers, ranchers, landowners and rural America more than any other part of the Country. Looking at the map and the members of Congress that represent the areas shows how big the potential political power is in the wind sector.
- TechCrunch: Rivian and ‘Free Solo’ star Alex Honnold team up to build solar microgrid with used EV batteries
- Axios: Hacker group Xenotime doing recon on U.S. electric utilities
- Crunchbase: Here’s What An Acquirer Could Get Out Of GE Ventures
- Greentech Media: Another Wind PTC Extension? No Thanks, Many in Industry Say
- Utility Dive: Bloomberg – Waiting on climate action ‘isn’t good enough’
- Vox: 4 maps that show who’s being left behind in America’s wind-power boom
- Grist: The problem with Biden’s plan to push China on climate
Opinion
Have a great day!
Yann