PG&E picks six community microgrids, three using water as the battery
A $30 million second-window award under California's Microgrid Incentive Programme includes three Lake County projects pairing solar with pumped hydro in firefighting water tanks.
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
Court vacates the EPA's termination of the $7bn Solar for All programme
A federal judge in Rhode Island ruled the EPA acted outside its statutory authority in ending already obligated Solar for All grants, in violation of the Administrative Procedure Act.
Texas drops the per-megawatt interconnection fee for large loads
The PUCT adopted large-load rules without the proposed $50,000/MW non-refundable fee, set a flat $100,000 study fee and extended the missed-milestone notification window to 24 months.
New York approves a $3.26bn, 90-mile line despite offshore wind setbacks
The New York PSC cleared the Propel NY transmission project on 17 September; opponents argued cancelled offshore wind made it unnecessary, but regulators said the state's statutory targets were unchanged.
Two Australian batteries holding 1.8 GWh entered AEMO's system on one day
Tailem Bend BESS 3 and Wooreen registered in the market management system on 15 September — a step towards testing, not the same thing as commercial operation.
Nuward aims to start building the first of ten European SMRs in 2030
EDF's SMR subsidiary set out a schedule in Vienna: commercialisation before 2029, construction from 2030, first power in 2035, with a 48-month build assumed.
Curtailment is a price signal that nobody is allowed to receive
Australia spilled 11.1GW on Sunday. Brazil's utility-scale module imports fell 82%. These are the same event, eighteen months apart.
Australia's grid hit 80.5% renewables while curtailing 8.4GW
Two records in two days on the NEM, and the same weekend set a curtailment record of 11.1GW. Both numbers describe the same system.
Brazil's utility-scale module imports fall 82% as curtailment bites
Total imports halved to 5.48GW in the first half. The centralised segment collapsed from 2.3GW to 430MW, and prices went up 12.9% while volumes fell.
Investment-grade notes now sit behind operating batteries in Texas
Jupiter Power closed $1.4bn across four deals for 1,500MW/3,600MWh — including a BBB− rated private placement secured on three plants already running.