When does a commitment become real enough to hold a place
A one-dollar credit posting, a planning rule that makes data centres bring their own supply, and a queue protection that protected the wrong thing.
Victoria Shinder
Contributing writer
Writes about energy policy and the distance between what a decision says and what it does to a bill.
Signed pieces
An ingestible paper battery ran for days inside a pig
MIT's cell powered metre-scale wireless communication and continuous stimulation in the gastrointestinal tract, then is designed to break down safely.
New England's states back Maine against the RTO adder
An incentive cannot induce behaviour a state already mandates, NESCOE argues - and the transmission owners answer that this is a state reaching into federal rates.
Ofgem asks batteries for money to unblock the connection queue
Protections for projects at a given development stage left the front of the queue unchanged, and batteries clear planning fast enough to fill it.
Victoria will make new data centres bring their own power
Rules released on 22 September require new data centres to match new electricity demand with new renewable generation and storage rather than drawing on the existing grid.
A fusion startup is testing magnetic mirrors with salvaged MRI magnets
Terra Fusion of Baltimore is reviving a confinement approach sidelined for fifty years, on an experimental reactor at the University of Maryland built from secondhand MRI scanners and repurposed brewing equipment.
A 918MWh battery goes up in Romania as CEE storage deals cluster
Greenvolt owns it, Renovatio Solar is building it and CATL supplies the technology, with completion reported within 12 months. Another 500MWh of projects moved elsewhere in Central and Eastern Europe the same week.
DOE orders PJM to dispatch reserves ahead of a forecast heat spike
A 202(c) emergency order let PJM call on specified resources and use backup generation as a last resort before or during an EEA 3, in force for one day.
California signs seven laws making data centres carry their grid costs
Newsom approved bills directing the CPUC to examine data centre energy use, requiring payment of infrastructure upgrade costs and removing blanket environmental exemptions.
Adelaide study: past a few kilowatts, face the panels east and west
Analysis of 70 dwellings and a 42-apartment building in South Australia finds north-facing maximises self-sufficiency only below about 1.4 kW, with east-west better above it.