#New Construction Solar in California

[dandelionsresilience]

Dandelion News - January 15-21

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1. Landmark debt swap to protect Indonesia’s coral reefs

“The government of Indonesia announced this week a deal to redirect more than US$ 35 million it owes to the United States into the conservation of coral reefs in the most biodiverse ocean area on Earth.”

2. [FWS] Provides Over $1.3 Billion to Support Fish and Wildlife Conservation and Outdoor Access

“Through these combined funds, agencies have supported monitoring and management of over 500 species of wild mammals and birds, annual stocking of over 1 billion fish, operations of fish and wildlife disease laboratories around the country, and provided hunter and aquatic education to millions of students.”

3. Philippine Indigenous communities restore a mountain forest to prevent urban flooding

“Indigenous knowledge systems and practices are considered in the project design, and its leaders and members have been involved throughout the process, from agreeing to participate to identifying suitable land and selecting plant species that naturally grow in the area.”

4. Responsible Offshore Wind Development is a Clear Win for Birds, the U.S. Economy, and our Climate

“[T]he total feasible offshore wind capacity along U.S. coasts is more than three times the total electricity generated nationwide in 2023. […] Proven strategies, such as reducing visible lights on turbines and using perching deterrents on turbines, have been effective in addressing bird impacts.”

5. Illinois awards $100M for electric truck charging corridor, Tesla to get $40M

“The project will facilitate the construction of 345 electric truck charging ports and pull-through truck charging stalls across 14 sites throughout Illinois[…. E]lectrifying [the 30,000 daily long-haul] trucks would make a huge impact in the public health and quality of life along the heavily populated roadways.”

6. Reinventing the South Florida seawall to help marine life, buffer rising seas

“[The new seawall] features raised areas inspired by mangrove roots that are intended to both provide nooks and crannies for fish and crabs and other marine creatures and also better absorb some of the impact from waves and storm surges.”

7. Long Beach Commits to 100% All-Electric Garbage Trucks

“[Diesel garbage trucks] produce around a quarter of all diesel pollution in California and contribute to 1,400 premature deaths every year. Electric options, on the other hand, are quieter than their diesel counterparts and produce zero tailpipe emissions.”

8. ‘This Is a Victory': Biden Affirms ERA Has Been 'Ratified' and Law of the Land

“President Joe Biden on Friday announced his administration's official opinion that the amendment is ratified and its protections against sex-based discrimination are enshrined in the U.S. Constitution.”

9. A Little-Known Clean Energy Solution Could Soon Reach ‘Liftoff’

“Ground source heat pumps could heat and cool the equivalent of 7 million homes by 2035—up from just over 1 million today[…. G]eothermal energy is generally considered to be more popular among Republicans than other forms of clean energy, such as wind and solar.”

10. Researchers combine citizens' help and cutting-edge tech to track biodiversity

“Researchers in the project, which runs from 2022 to 2026, are experimenting with tools like drones, cameras and sensors to collect detailed data on different species, [… and] Observation.org, a global biodiversity platform where people submit pictures of animals and plants, helping to identify and monitor them.”

January 8-14 news here | (all credit for images and written material can be found at the source linked; I don’t claim credit for anything but curating.)

[reasonsforhope]

"In drought-stricken areas, communities facing water shortages, or even in residential and commercial buildings eager to improve their environmental footprints, atmospheric water generators represent a new frontier in water production.

While it might sound like a tidbit from a science fiction movie, even the driest places on earth have moisture in the air that can be extracted and used for everyday necessities like plumbing and drinking. 

Unlike traditional dehumidifiers, which also pull moisture from the air, AWGs utilize filtration and sterilization technology to make water safe to drink. 

And while there are plenty of AWG companies out there — and the science itself isn’t novel — AWGs are becoming more efficient, affordable, and revolutionary in combating water scarcity in a myriad of communities.

Aquaria Technologies, a San Francisco-based AWG startup, was founded in 2022 to help provide affordable and clean drinking water in areas most affected by climate change. 

Using heat exchange and condensation, Aquaria’s generators draw air into their systems, cool that air below its dew point, and as it condenses, capture that water and filter it for consumption. 

As the cycle continues, the generator’s refrigerant vaporizes and goes through a process that cools it back into a liquid, meaning the heat transfer cycle repeats continuously in an energy-efficient and self-sustaining system.

“I’m sure you’ve had the experience in the summer, you take a glass of a cold drink out of the fridge and then water droplets form on the side of the bottle,” Aquaria’s co-founder and CEO Brian Sheng, said in a podcast episode. “That’s actually condensation.”

Sheng continued: “The question is, how do we create condensation? How do we extract water out of the air in large volume and using little energy? That’s what our technology does. We have created both active and passive cooling methods where we use special materials, and we’ve created heat exchange and recovery systems and airflow design, such that we’re maximizing heat exchange, and then we’re able to extract large volumes of water.”

Aquaria has created a number of generators, but its stand-alone model — the Hydropack X — can replace an entire home’s dependence on municipal water, producing as much as 264 gallons of potable water per day. 

Other models, like the Hydrostation, can provide water for up to 1,500 people at parks, construction sites, or other outdoor public areas. The Hydropixel can make 24 gallons of water per day for a seamless at-home application, requiring a simple outlet for power. 

“Atmospheric water generators present a groundbreaking solution to the global challenge of clean water scarcity, leveraging the humidity present in the air to produce potable water,” the company’s website explains.

“This technology is versatile, functioning efficiently across diverse climates — from arid regions to tropical settings. From rural communities in developing countries to advanced cities facing unexpected droughts, atmospheric water generators have a wide range of applications… transforming lives and providing secure, clean water sources.”

Considering an estimated 2.2 billion people lack access to clean water globally — including in American cities like Flint, Michigan, or Modesto, California — innovative solutions like AWGs are vital to maintaining the basic human right to clean water. 

The World Economic Forum has begun to dip its toes into this technology as well, implementing public and private partnerships to introduce AWG units in Arizona’s Navajo Nation, where the machines produce about 200 gallons of clean water per day.

“When combined with an appropriate level of community engagement and triple-bottom-line business (people, planet, profit),” a blog post for WE Forum said, “this model can be a powerful stopgap solution where few exist today.”

Similarly, according to New Atlas, Aquaria has a partnership with developers to supply its technology to a 1,000-home community in Hawaii later this year, relying entirely on atmospherically generated water.

The company also has a “Frontier Access Program,” which partners with water-related NGOs, community project developers, and sustainable development groups to deploy this technology in areas most in need.

Regardless of their use cases — in homes, in communities facing water shortages, or at aid sites navigating natural disasters — AWGs have a minimal environmental impact. Sourcing water “from thin air,” requires no plastic bottles, no large-scale plants using up loads of energy, and no byproducts that can harm the environment."

-via GoodGoodGood, August 27, 2024

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Greg Sargent at TNR:

There are still nearly two months to go before Donald Trump assumes the presidency again, but Republicans or GOP-adjacent industries have already begun to admit out loud that some of his most important policy promises could prove disastrous in their parts of the country. These folks don’t say this too directly, out of fear of offending the MAGA God King. Instead, they suggest gingerly that a slight rethink might be in order. But unpack what they’re saying, and you’ll see that they’re in effect acknowledging that some of Trump’s biggest campaign promises were basically scams.

In Georgia, for instance, some local Republicans are openly worried about Trump’s threat to roll back President Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act. The IRA is pouring hundreds of billions of dollars into incentives for the manufacture and purchase of green energy technologies, from electric vehicles to batteries to solar power. Trump endlessly derided this as the “green new scam” and pledged to repeal all uncommitted funds. But now The New York Times reports that Trump supporters like state Representative Beth Camp fear that repeal could destroy jobs related to new investments in green manufacturing plants in the state. Camp worries that this could leave factories in Georgia “sitting empty.” You heard that right: This Republican is declaring that Trump’s threatened actions could leave factories sitting empty. 

[...]

Something similar is also already happening with Trump’s threat to deport millions of undocumented immigrants. Reuters reports that agriculture interests, which are heavily concentrated in GOP areas, are urging the incoming Trump administration to refrain from removing untold numbers of migrants working throughout the food supply chain, including in farming, dairy, and meatpacking. 

Notably, GOP Representative John Duarte, who just lost his seat in the elections, explicitly tells Reuters that farming interests in his California district depend on undocumented immigrants—and that Trump should exempt many from removal. Duarte and industry representatives want more avenues created for migrants to work here legally—the precise opposite of what Trump promised. Now over to Texas. NPR reports that various industries there fear that mass deportations could cripple them, particularly in construction, where nearly 300,000 undocumented immigrants toiled as of 2022. Those workers enable the state to keep growing despite a native population that isn’t supplying a large enough workforce. Local analysts and executives want Trump to refrain from removing all these people or create new ways for them to work here legally. Even the Republican mayor of McKinney, Texas, is loudly sounding the alarm.

Meanwhile, back in Georgia, Trump’s threat of mass deportations is awakening new awareness that undocumented immigrants drive industries like construction, landscaping, and agriculture, reports The Wall Street Journal. In Dalton, a town that backed Trump, fear is spreading that removals could “upend its economy and workforce.” At this point, someone will argue that all this confirms Trump’s arguments—that these industries and their representatives merely fear losing cheap migrant labor that enables them to avoid paying Americans higher wages. When JD Vance and Trump pushed their lie about Haitians eating pets in Springfield, Ohio, Vance insisted that he opposed the Haitian influx into Midwestern towns because they’re undercutting U.S. workers. But all these disparate examples of Republicans and GOP areas lamenting coming mass deportations suggest an alternate story, one detailed well by the Times’ Lydia DePillis. In the MAGA worldview, a large reserve of untapped native-born Americans in prime working age are languishing in joblessness throughout Trump country—and will stream into all these industries once migrants are removed en masse, boosting wages.  

But DePillis documents that things like poor health and disability are more important drivers of unemployment among this subset of non-college working-age men. Besides, migrants living and working here don’t just perform labor that Americans will not. They also consume and boost demand, creating more jobs. As Paul Krugman puts it, in all these ways, migrant laborers are “complements” to U.S. workers. Importantly, that’s the argument that these Republicans and industries in GOP areas are really making when they lament mass deportations: Migrant labor isn’t displacing U.S. workers; it’s helping drive our post-Covid recovery and growth. This directly challenges Trump’s zero-sum worldview.

[...] Here’s another possibility: In the end, Trump’s deportation forces may selectively spare certain localities and industries from mass removals. Trump’s incoming “border czar,” Tom Homan, suggests this won’t happen. But a hallmark of MAGA is corruptly selective governance in the interests of MAGA nation and expressly against those who are designated MAGA’s enemies, U.S. citizens included. One can see mass deportations becoming a selective tool, in which blue localities are targeted for high-profile raids—even as Trump triumphantly rants that they are cesspools of “migrant crime” that he is pacifying with military-style force—while GOP-connected industries and Trump-allied Republicans tacitly secure some forbearance.

Donald Trump’s threats to green energy initiatives and resistance to his mass deportation proposals are facing headwinds against him, even from local Republicans who fear losses of jobs in their communities.

Even if Trump does get to implement his mass deportation policy, he’ll likely create several exemption carveouts (mainly for industries likely to favor him) and use selective enforcement (light touch for red states, heavy and punitive for blue states).

[spacetimewithstuartgary]

New beam waveguide antenna being constructed in California

A crane lowers the 112-foot-wide (34-meter-wide) steel framework for the Deep Space Station 23 (DSS-23) reflector dish into position on Dec. 18, 2024, at the Deep Space Network's (DSN) Goldstone Space Communications Complex near Barstow, California.

Once online in 2026, DSS-23 will be the fifth of six new beam waveguide antennas to be added to the network; DSS-23 will boost the DSN's capacity and enhance NASA's deep space communications capabilities for decades to come.

The DSN allows missions to track, send commands to, and receive scientific data from faraway spacecraft. More than 100 NASA and non-NASA missions rely on the DSN and Near Space Network, including supporting astronauts aboard the International Space Station and future Artemis missions, supporting lunar exploration, and uncovering the solar system and beyond.

[rjzimmerman]

Excerpt from this story from Canary Media:

In northeastern Oregon, nearly 9,500 acres of farmland will soon be transformed into a 1,200-megawatt solar project. State regulators approved Sunstone Solar, the nation’s largest proposed solar-plus-storage facility, last fall. Once up and running, the project will include up to 7,200 megawatt-hours of storage, and its nearly four million solar panels will produce enough clean electricity to power around 800,000 homes each year. Pine Gate Renewables, the North Carolina–based developer behind the project, touted a first-of-a-kind initiative to invest up to $11 million in local wheat farms to offset economic impacts on the region’s agriculture. Construction will begin in��2026.

Sunstone is the latest — and largest — in a slew of giant solar installations cropping up around the country. As states including Oregon pursue ambitious clean energy targets, developers are building more and more massive solar plants to keep pace — and increasingly pairing them with batteries to soak up any excess power.

Solar installations reached record levels in the U.S. last year, led by a surge in Texas and California. In 2024, 34 gigawatts of utility-scale solar were added to the grid — up 74 percent from the previous peak in 2023. Battery storage also leapt to new heights, with 13 gigawatts — nearly double the record set in 2023 — built last year.

Solar and storage projects aren’t just multiplying — they’re also getting bigger. Once constructed, Sunstone Solar will overshadow the current largest solar-plus-storage project operating in the U.S., which began providing up to 875 megawatts of solar and 3,287 megawatt-hours of battery storage last January. It’s also a big step up from existing solar farms in Oregon: The state’s largest operational solar project came online in April 2023, with 162 megawatts of solar capacity.

According to a data analysis by climate journalist Michael Thomas, the average size of a solar farm in the U.S. grew sixfold from 2014 to 2024, from 10 megawatts to 65 megawatts. Battery projects are expanding at an even faster pace, with 15 times the average storage capacity last year compared with 2019. One major reason for building bigger is that developers are reaping greater returns on investment by capitalizing on economies of scale. Large-scale projects cost significantly less per watt than smaller ones to build, according to data from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

Sunstone Solar is also one of a growing number of combined solar-and-storage facilities, which allow greater amounts of power produced at peak sunny hours to be stored and dispensed later in the day.

[anonymusbosch]

idk, a lot of the time CA housing politics are like

right-auth: it should be illegal to be poor next to my ranch house

staunch environmentalists: if we build housing on this one patch of rare moss i will commit seppuku

misguided journalists: we should do everything we can at any cost to make sure every building is maximally earthquake-safe [implicitly: even if that means spending billions upon billions of dollars to retrofit buildings of a construction type which has never actually failed in an earthquake, at the cost of not using that money to e.g. build new safe housing or feed people]

local mayor: we've made it easier to build affordable housing by accelerating the permitting process from 2 years to 1.6 years for construction with at least 20% affordable units between 17th and 21st street if the neighbors all say it's ok, no one has solar panels, and no groundhogs on the lot see their shadows when disturbed by construction equipment

developers: we are excited to announce the opening of a new 4-over-1 luxury apartment complex where the apartments aren't big or laid out sensibly but they DO have smart fridges, smart light switches, a rent payment system that harvests your data, and ground-floor retail (bespoke reclaimed-wood furniture store, very walkable)

silicon valley: we've invented a new cheap housing with automated construction enabled by AI and the cloud to bring affordable housing to everyone. by making... prefab ADUs. it's the tesla of housing. no we haven't talked to anyone who works in construction why do you ask. mobile home? rv? what's that

someone on twitter: the solution is firebombing walmart and revolution

local news outlet: PROGRESS! 247 units of housing approved for construction! [California is, by some measures, 3.5 million units short.]

[notbeingnoticed]

No one running California’s government today—starting with the impervious Governor Gavin Newsom, who wants to “solve this climate crisis”—would ever admit cause-and-effect realities of climate policies and the state’s blizzard of economic and quality-of-life problems. Such policies include restricting oil and gas development and refineries, mandating all electric or plug-in hybrid vehicles by 2035, renewable energy usage requirements, including solar installation on new home and building construction, no new reservoirs constructed in 45 years, and much more.

[collapsedsquid]

McAuliffe is, by her own admission, lucky to have the option to live someplace else. All the renters have moved, she says, but for most of the homeowners in Last Chance, moving isn’t financially viable.    The residents of  Last Chance are not the only fire victims in the county stuck living in trailers and tents as they wait on building permits. Rural communities like Bonny Doon and Ben Lomand are also struggling to get cleared for permits: in Bonny Doon, the biggest hurdle is residents getting septic clearances, while in Ben Lomand people are struggling to receive geological clearances, according to Shaw and county officials.    Following the fires in Oct. of 2020, the county made multiple promises that CZU fire victims would be able to benefit from streamlined permitting processes and relaxed building codes. But the people I spoke with say a number of roadblocks are preventing residents from rebuilding.    The county even told Last Chance residents that they could be part of a pilot program that would streamline the building process, and allow them to use alternative means of construction, as long as the homes were found to be structurally sound and meet basic health and safety requirements. But because CalFire has not approved the road as fire safe, residents haven’t had a chance to put the pilot program into action. “The codes are killing us,” McAuliffe says. 

[...] After the fires ravished Santa Cruz County, California’s Office of Emergency Services (Cal OES), hired San Francisco-based construction company Anvil Builders Inc. to help clear debris from the CZU fire, as part of a $225 million contract. But come last November, it became clear that in the debris removal process, Anvil had caused millions of dollars in damage to county and private roads, as well as to septic and storm drainage systems. To Last Chance Road alone, Anvil caused an estimated $2.7 million in damages down 7.8 miles of the road. 

[...] The biggest sticking point for them as they work with the county to acquire their permits is getting their septic cleared. In the past two years, McKenzie and her husband have sunk around $10,000 on the permitting process, but you wouldn’t have guessed that from looking at their land; they haven’t been able to start the building process at all, as they apply and reapply to get their septic clearance.  McKenzie doesn’t understand why this is the roadblock that is stopping them from rebuilding. For more than 34 years, she says, they have lived without issues with their septic tank; now, the county requires they move it further away from the creek that runs near her property. Already, she and her husband will have to adhere to new building codes, like indoor sprinkles, solar panels and a litany of other updates that their home that burned in the fire didn’t have. “It’s frustrating,” McKenzie says. 

Paradise was an actual town, this is for weirdos who live in isolated houses in the middle of nowhere

[quotesfrommyreading]

Americans are deeply polarized; that much is obvious. Less obvious, and more important for our purposes, is how polarization might complicate material progress today. One big problem the country faces is that as coastal, educated elites have come to largely identify as Democrats, Republicans have come to feel ignored or condescended to by the institutions populated by the former group. As if recoiling from the rise of a liberal scientific and managerial class, the GOP has become almost proudly anti-expertise, anti-science, and anti-establishment. Cranks and conspiracy theorists have gained prominence in the party. It is hard to imagine scientific institutions flourishing within right-wing governments averse to both science and institutions. But this is only part of the problem, culturally speaking.

The other part is that some Democrats—many of whom call themselves progressives—have in meaningful ways become anti-progress, at least where material improvement is concerned. Progress depends on a society’s ability to build what it knows. But very often, it’s progressives who stand against building what we’ve already invented, including relatively ancient technology like nuclear power or even apartment buildings. Cities and states run by Democrats have erected so many barriers to construction that blue metro areas are now where the housing crisis is worst. The five states with the highest rates of homelessness are New York, Hawaii, California, Oregon, and Washington; all are run by Democrats. Meanwhile, it is often left-leaning environmentalist groups that use onerous rules to delay the construction of wind and solar farms that would reduce our dependency on oil and gas. The left owns all the backpack pins denouncing the oil industry, but Texas produces more renewable energy than deep-blue California, and Oklahoma and Iowa produce more renewable energy than New York.

One possible explanation is that progressives have become too focused on what are essentially negative prescriptions for improving the world, including an emphasis on preservation and sacrifice (“reduce, reuse, recycle”) over growth (“build, build, build”). At the extreme, this ascetic style leads to calls for permanent declines in modern living standards, a philosophy known as “degrowtherism.” The aim is noble: to save our descendants from climate change by flying less, traveling less, buying less, and using less. But it is a profound departure from progressivism’s history, which is one of optimism about the ability of society to improve lives on a big scale through bold action. It’s self-defeating to tell voters: “My opponent wants to raise your living standards, but I promise I won’t let that happen.” It’s far better—and, arguably, more realistic—to tell voters that building more renewable power is a win-win that will make energy cheaper and more abundant.

When you add the anti-science bias of the Republican Party to the anti-build skepticism of liberal urbanites and the environmentalist left, the U.S. seems to have accidentally assembled a kind of bipartisan coalition against some of the most important drivers of human progress. To correct this, we need more than improvements in our laws and rules; we need a new culture of progress.

  —  Why the Age of American Progress Ended

[unidentifiedwhistlingobject]

So I think I found the right article.

The thumbnail quote in the original tweet is the second paragraph:

And like, unless I'm missing something, the article ... isn't talking about grids getting damaged because of overload. I do think that what @crazy-pages said is correct, because I've heard parts of it often enough before, but the article is pretty much just talking about market economics. Do I have the wrong article?

MIT Tech Review has limited free articles, so I've copied and pasted the full text below the cut. It isn't a super long read.

A few lonely academics have been warning for years that solar power faces a fundamental challenge that could halt the industry’s breakneck growth. Simply put: the more solar you add to the grid, the less valuable it becomes.

The problem is that solar panels generate lots of electricity in the middle of sunny days, frequently more than what’s required, driving down prices—sometimes even into negative territory.

Unlike a natural gas plant, solar plant operators can’t easily throttle electricity up and down as needed, or space generation out through the day, night and dark winter. It’s available when it’s available, which is when the sun is shining. And that’s when all the other solar plants are cranking out electricity at maximum levels as well.

A new report finds that California, which produces one of the largest shares of solar power in the world, is already acutely experiencing this phenomenon, known as solar value deflation.

The state’s average solar wholesale prices have fallen 37% relative to the average electricity prices for other sources since 2014, according to the Breakthrough Institute analysis, which will be published on July 14. In other words, utilities are increasingly paying solar plants less than other sources overall, due to their fluctuating generation patterns.

Wholesale prices are basically the amount that utilities pay power plants for the electricity they deliver to households and businesses. They shift throughout the day and year, edging back up for solar operators during the mornings, afternoons and other times when there isn’t excess supply. But as more solar plants come online, the periods of excess supply that drive down those costs will become more frequent and more pronounced.

Lower prices may sound great for consumers. But it presents troubling implications for the world’s hopes of rapidly expanding solar capacity and meeting climate goals.It could become difficult to convince developers and investors to continue building ever more solar plants if they stand to make less money or even lose it. In fact, California construction has already been flat since 2018, the study notes. But the state will need the industry to significantly ramp up development if it hopes to pull off its ambitious clean energy targets.

This could soon become a broader problem as well.

“California is a little sneak peek of what is in store for the rest of the world as we dramatically scale up solar,” says Zeke Hausfather, director of climate and energy at the Breakthrough Institute, and author of the report.

That’s because while solar accounts for about 19% of the electricity California generates, other regions are rapidly installing photovoltaic panels as well. In Nevada and Hawaii, for instance, the share of solar generation stood at around 13% in 2019, the study found. The levels in Italy, Greece and Germany were at 8.6%, 7.9% and 7.8%, respectively.

The race

So far, heavy solar subsidies and the rapidly declining cost of solar power has offset the falling value of solar in California. So long as it gets ever cheaper to build and operate solar power plants, value deflation is less of a problem.

But it’s likely to get harder and harder to pull off that trick, as the state’s share of solar generation continues to climb. If the cost declines for building and installing solar panels tapers off, California’s solar deflation could pull ahead in the race against falling costs as soon as 2022 and climb upward from there, the report finds. At that point, wholesale pricing would be below the subsidized costs of solar in California, undermining the pure economic rationale for building more plants, Hausfather notes.The state’s SB 100 law, passed in 2018, requires all of California’s electricity to come from “renewable and zero-carbon resources” by 2045. By that point, some 60% of the state’s electricity could come from solar, based on a California Energy Commission model.

The Breakthrough study estimates that the value of solar–or the wholesale average price relative to other sources–will fall by 85% at that point, decimating the economics of solar farms, at least as California’s grid exists today.

How do we fix it?

There are a variety of ways to ease this effect, though no single one is likely a panacea.The solar sector can continue trying to find ways to push down solar costs, but some researchers have argued it may require shifting to new materials and technologies to get to the dirt-cheap levels required to outpace value deflation.

Grid operators and solar plant developers can add more energy storage—and increasingly they are.Researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory highlighted similarly declining solar values in California in a broader study published in Joule last month. But they also noted that numerous modeling studies showed that the addition of low cost storage options, including so called hybrid plants coupled with lithium-ion batteries, eases value deflation and enables larger shares of renewables to operate economically on the grid.

There are likely limits to this, however, as study after study finds that storage and system costs rise sharply once renewables provide the vast majority of electricity on the grid.

States or nations could also boost subsidies for solar power; add more long-distance transmission lines to allow regions to swap clean electricity as needed; or incentivize customers to move energy use to times of day that better match with periods of high generation.

The good news is that each of these will help to ease the transition to clean electricity sources in other ways as well, but they’ll also all take considerable time and money to get underway.

The California solar market offers a reminder that the climate clock is ticking.

This story was updated to add details from the Joule study.

[dandelionsresilience]

Good News - July 15-21

Like these weekly compilations? Tip me at $kaybarr1735! (Or check out my new(ly repurposed) Patreon!)

1. Thai tiger numbers swell as prey populations stabilize in western forests

“The tiger population density in a series of protected areas in western Thailand has more than doubled over the past two decades, according to new survey data. […] The most recent year of surveys, which concluded in November 2023, photographed 94 individual tigers, up from 75 individuals in the previous year, and from fewer than 40 in 2007. […] A total of 291 individual tigers older than 1 year were recorded, as well as 67 cubs younger than 1 year.”

2. Work starts to rewild former cattle farm

“Ecologists have started work to turn a former livestock farm into a nature reserve [… which] will become a "mosaic of habitats" for insects, birds and mammals. [… R]ewilding farmland could benefit food security locally by encouraging pollinators, improving soil health and soaking up flood water. [… “N]ature restoration doesn't preclude food production. We want to address [food security] by using nature-based solutions."”

3. Harnessing ‘invisible forests in plain view’ to reforest the world

“[… T]he degraded land contained numerous such stumps with intact root systems capable of regenerating themselves, plus millions of tree seeds hidden in the soil, which farmers could simply encourage to grow and reforest the landscape[….] Today, the technique of letting trees resprout and protecting their growth from livestock and wildlife [… has] massive potential to help tackle biodiversity loss and food insecurity through resilient agroforestry systems. [… The UN’s] reported solution includes investing in land restoration, “nature-positive” food production, and rewilding, which could return between $7 and $30 for every dollar spent.”

4. California bars school districts from outing LGBTQ+ kids to their parents

“Gov. Gavin Newsom signed the SAFETY Act today – a bill that prohibits the forced outing of transgender and gay students, making California the first state to explicitly prohibit school districts from doing so. […] Matt Adams, a head of department at a West London state school, told PinkNews at the time: “Teachers and schools do not have all the information about every child’s home environment and instead of supporting a pupil to be themselves in school, we could be putting them at risk of harm.””

5. 85% of new electricity built in 2023 came from renewables

“Electricity supplied by renewables, like hydropower, solar, and wind, has increased gradually over the past few decades — but rapidly in recent years. [… C]lean energy now makes up around 43 percent of global electricity capacity. In terms of generation — the actual power produced by energy sources — renewables were responsible for 30 percent of electricity production last year. […] Along with the rise of renewable sources has come a slowdown in construction of non-renewable power plants as well as a move to decommission more fossil fuel facilities.”

6. Deadly cobra bites to "drastically reduce" as scientists discover new antivenom

“After successful human trials, the snake venom antidote could be rolled out relatively quickly to become a "cheap, safe and effective drug for treating cobra bites" and saving lives around the globe, say scientists. Scientists have found that a commonly used blood thinner known as heparin can be repurposed as an inexpensive antidote for cobra venom. […] Using CRISPR gene-editing technology […] they successfully repurposed heparin, proving that the common blood thinner can stop the necrosis caused by cobra bites.”

7. FruitFlow: a new citizen science initiative unlocks orchard secrets

“"FruitWatch" has significantly refined phenological models by integrating extensive citizen-sourced data, which spans a wider geographical area than traditional methods. These enhanced models offer growers precise, location-specific predictions, essential for optimizing agricultural planning and interventions. […] By improving the accuracy of phenological models, farmers can better align their operations with natural biological cycles, enhancing both yield and quality.”

8. July 4th Means Freedom for Humpback Whale Near Valdez, Alaska

“The NOAA Fisheries Alaska Marine Mammal Stranding Hotline received numerous reports late afternoon on July 3. A young humpback whale was entangled in the middle of the Port of Valdez[….] “The success of this mission was due to the support of the community, as they were the foundation of the effort,” said Moran. [… Members of the community] were able to fill the critical role of acting as first responders to a marine mammal emergency. “Calling in these reports is extremely valuable as it allows us to respond when safe and appropriate, and also helps us gain information on various threats affecting the animals,” said Lyman.”

9. Elephants Receive First of Its Kind Vaccine

“Elephant endotheliotropic herpesvirus is the leading cause of death for Asian elephants (Elephas maximus) born in facilities in North America and also causes calf deaths in the wild in Asia. A 40-year-old female received the new mRNA vaccine, which is expected to help the animal boost immunity[….]”

10. Conservation partners and Indigenous communities working together to restore forests in Guatemala

“The K’iche have successfully managed their natural resources for centuries using their traditional governing body and ancestral knowledge. As a result, Totonicapán is home to Guatemala’s largest remaining stand of conifer forest. […] EcoLogic has spearheaded a large-scale forest restoration project at Totonicapán, where 13 greenhouses now hold about 16,000 plants apiece, including native cypresses, pines, firs, and alders. […] The process begins each November when community members gather seeds. These seeds then go into planters that include upcycled coconut fibers and mycorrhizal fungi, which help kickstart fertilization. When the plantings reach about 12 inches, they’re ready for distribution.”

July 8-14 news here | (all credit for images and written material can be found at the source linked; I don’t claim credit for anything but curating.)

[sunaleisocial]

Building an Antenna - NASA

New Post has been published on https://sunalei.org/news/building-an-antenna-nasa/

Building an Antenna - NASA

A crane lowers the 112-foot-wide (34-meter-wide) steel framework for the Deep Space Station 23 (DSS-23) reflector dish into position on Dec. 18, 2024, at the Deep Space Network’s (DSN) Goldstone Space Communications Complex near Barstow, California. Once online in 2026, DSS-23 will be the fifth of six new beam waveguide antennas to be added to the network; DSS-23 will boost the DSN’s capacity and enhance NASA’s deep space communications capabilities for decades to come.

The DSN allows missions to track, send commands to, and receive scientific data from faraway spacecraft. More than 100 NASA and non-NASA missions rely on the DSN and Near Space Network, including supporting astronauts aboard the International Space Station and future Artemis missions, supporting lunar exploration, and uncovering the solar system and beyond.

Watch a time-lapse video of construction activities on Dec. 18.

Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

[spacetimewithstuartgary]

NASA's new Deep Space Network antenna has its crowning moment

Deep Space Station 23's 133-ton reflector dish was recently installed, marking a key step in strengthening NASA's Deep Space Network.

NASA's Deep Space Network, an array of giant radio antennas, allows agency missions to track, send commands to, and receive scientific data from spacecraft venturing to the moon and beyond. NASA is adding a new antenna, bringing the total to 15, to support increased demand for the world's largest and most sensitive radio frequency telecommunication system.

Installation of the latest antenna took place on Dec. 18, when teams at NASA's Goldstone Deep Space Communications Complex near Barstow, California, installed the metal reflector framework for Deep Space Station 23, a multifrequency beam-waveguide antenna.

When operational in 2026, Deep Space Station 23 will receive transmissions from missions such as Perseverance, Psyche, Europa Clipper, Voyager 1, and a growing fleet of future human and robotic spacecraft in deep space.

"This addition to the Deep Space Network represents a crucial communication upgrade for the agency," said Kevin Coggins, deputy associate administrator of NASA's SCaN (Space Communications and Navigation) program.

"The communications infrastructure has been in continuous operation since its creation in 1963, and with this upgrade we are ensuring NASA is ready to support the growing number of missions exploring the moon, Mars, and beyond."

Construction of the new antenna has been under way for more than four years, and during the installation, teams used a crawler crane to lower the 133-ton metal skeleton of the 112-foot-wide (34-meter-wide) parabolic reflector before it was bolted to a 65-foot-high (20-meter-high) alidade, a platform above the antenna's pedestal that will steer the reflector during operations.

"One of the biggest challenges facing us during the lift was to ensure that 40 bolt-holes were perfectly aligned between the structure and alidade," said Germaine Aziz, systems engineer, Deep Space Network Aperture Enhancement Program of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California.

"This required a meticulous emphasis on alignment prior to the lift to guarantee everything went smoothly on the day."

Following the main lift, engineers carried out a lighter lift to place a quadripod, a four-legged support structure weighing 16.5 tons, onto the center of the upward-facing reflector. The quadripod features a curved subreflector that will direct radio frequency signals from deep space that bounce off the main reflector into the antenna's pedestal, where the antenna's receivers are housed.

Engineers will now work to fit panels onto the steel skeleton to create a curved surface to reflect radio frequency signals. Once complete, Deep Space Station 23 will be the fifth of six new beam-waveguide antennas to join the network, following Deep Space Station 53, which was added at the Deep Space Network's Madrid complex in 2022.

"With the Deep Space Network, we are able to explore the Martian landscape with our rovers, see the James Webb Space Telescope's stunning cosmic observations, and so much more," said Laurie Leshin, director of JPL.

"The network enables over 40 deep space missions, including the farthest human-made objects in the universe, Voyager 1 and 2. With upgrades like these, the network will continue to support humanity's exploration of our solar system and beyond, enabling groundbreaking science and discovery far into the future."

NASA's Deep Space Network is managed by JPL, with the oversight of NASA's SCaN Program. More than 100 NASA and non-NASA missions rely on the Deep Space Network and Near Space Network, including supporting astronauts aboard the International Space Station and future Artemis missions, monitoring Earth's weather and the effects of climate change, supporting lunar exploration, and uncovering the solar system and beyond.

IMAGE: A crane lowers the steel reflector framework for Deep Space Station 23 into position Dec. 18 on a 65-foot-high (20-meter) platform above the antenna’s pedestal that will steer the reflector. Panels will be affixed to the structure to create a curved surface to collect radio frequency signals. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

[crazy-pages]

The problem this tweet in particular is referencing is actually a disaster of California policy.

See solar power w/out storage batteries is cheaper per kWh than fossil fuels, but it has a high upfront cost. So one way to promote its use is to have the government pay those upfront costs with low interest loans, which let's people avoid the high upfront cost and just pay per kilowatt hour. This makes solar power cheaper for homeowners to use than fossil fuels, which is a good thing. Now this policy is excessively homeowner centric, as many policies in California are, but there are elements to promote solar panels used for multi family housing and rental units too, which is better than nothing.

The problem is that solar panels plus storage batteries are more expensive per kilowatt hour than fossil fuels. And you can only get away with not having storage batteries so long as the production of solar panels never goes over power usage at any given hour. If it does, you get the problem mentioned above, and it can cause catastrophic power grid failure. Like, the kind you initiate blackouts to prevent because otherwise the grid will be down for months. I don't think most people realize how much disaster planning and prevention goes into making sure this kind of grid failure never happens, because that planning works, but the results would be apocalyptic.

So what the article was talking about, that the MIT technology review was referencing, was that California had done nothing to promote storage batteries at all. Only solar panels. And they kept promoting solar panels all way to the point where solar panels were overloading the grid at noon. Which had such serious potential consequences that California had to pay industrial companies to run power hungry equipment when they usually wouldn't, or to a greater degree than they usually would, to burn the excess power off. And they had to pay them to do it because that puts a lot of wear and tear on components.

(For reference on how much energy we're talking about, if you made a single light bulb which could somehow release all this energy, it would bake the ground into ash for kilometers. These are not small potatoes. It is actually very difficult to discharge that amount of energy safely.)

So what the article was talking about was that this is a failure of the overly market focused approach California was taking to solar panels. (You could even say it was a criticism of overly capitalism oriented state policy, how about that?) California was too focused on their free market success to heed the warnings of solar panel researchers (who were the people who wrote the article by the way) saying that the free market solution would be very effective in building up and initial interest and buy in for solar panels, but would not be able to compete with fossil fuels in the free market once enough of the power grid was solar panels to make storage batteries a concern. And furthermore, that there was a risk of grid failure if California persisted in its policy without allocating state funds for the construction of storage battery farms, or mandating that new solar panel owners purchase storage batteries.

But California hadn't listened to them, to the point where things were already so critically bad that California was having to pay industrial entities to burn off their excess power. A totally unsustainable and risky solution. Hence, solar panels were making energy prices go negative.

A very bad outcome!

This is a failure of thinking overly focused on market economics, but not in the hahaha lol sense, these idiot capitalists think negative energy prices are a bad thing. The negative energy prices are an extremely bad thing. Very very very bad. And the solution has to be a very serious debate about how we are going to deal with the fact that even after all of our development, solar panels and their requisite storage batteries are still more expensive than fossil fuels, and what state policies and additional tax burdens we are going to bear to wean ourselves off of our fossil fuel dependency.

Something which the "haha lol, these idiots think negative energy prices are bad" crowd doesn't like to think is necessary, instead preferring to believe that solar panels are cheaper than fossil fuels and that the only thing preventing us from making the jump is the greed of a few billionaires (not that billionaires aren't causing plenty of problems in this sphere). But there are serious difficulties with renewable technologies which are real, and which make universal adoption much more expensive than small-scale adoption. And if y'all were actually listening to the scientist researching this stuff, the very ones promoting renewable usage, you would know that these issues are real and difficult to overcome and will require significant coordinated effort to manage.

No more "haha lol, these idiots think negative energy prices are bad". This is the era of knuckling down and recognizing that clearing out counterproductive capitalist interests from the energy production space is only the beginning, and that the work which comes after that is also difficult and hard. Trust me, us researchers will be there giving you all the tools we can, but you have to listen to us when we tell you what their limitations are, and you have to put the collective organizing work in to use them.

Only capitalism could turn unlimited free electricity into a problem.

[rjzimmerman]

Excerpt from this story from Canary Media:

Texas has become an all-around clean energy juggernaut, thanks to its lax permitting regime, fast grid-interconnection process, competitive energy market, and ample amount of solar- and wind-friendly land.

Its plans for the next year and a half underscore that status. As of July, the state intended to build 35 gigawatts of clean energy over 18 months, more than the next nine states combined, according to a Cleanview analysis of U.S. Energy Information Agency data.

Texas has long been the biggest player in U.S. wind energy. But in recent years, energy developers have raced to build solar in Texas too. Five years ago, the state had connected just 2.4 gigawatts of utility-scale solar to its grid; as of this past June, it had installed almost 22 GW of solar, per an American Clean Power report released this week. That’s nearly 10 times as much as back in 2019, and enough to propel Texas past California for large-scale solar installations.

Now Texas is writing its next chapter on clean energy: The state has become the nation’s hottest market for grid batteries as energy developers chase after its cheap solar and wind energy.

Given its staggering construction plans, Texas is set to only further solidify its place at the top of the clean energy leaderboard. But the rapid rise of the state’s clean energy sector has not yet yielded an outright energy transition, as the writer Ketan Joshi points out.

Though Texas has built more large-scale clean energy than any other state in absolute terms, it lags behind California — and plenty others — in terms of how clean its grid actually is. The Golden State met over half its electricity needs with renewables in 2023, per Ember data, while clean sources generated just 28 percent of Texas’ power. Electricity produced in the Lone Star State remains slightly more carbon intensive compared with the U.S. average.

Part of the story here is that, largely thanks to data centers and bitcoin mines, Texas is seeing some of the fastest growth in electricity demand of any state. That means much of the new solar, wind, and battery storage it’s building is just meeting new demand and not necessarily booting dirty energy off the grid.

The other hurdle preventing Texas from cleaning up its grid faster is the entrenchment of the fossil fuel industry in its local politics. Last year, the state passed a law creating a taxpayer-funded program to give energy developers billions of dollars in low-interest loans to build several gigawatts’ worth of new fossil-gas power plants.

In other words, the Lone Star state’s fossil fuel buildout isn’t ending even as its clean energy sector takes off. For Texas to be considered a true leader on decarbonizing the power sector — and not just a state that builds lots of everything — that will need to change. 

[yetisidelblog]

On the same day he was sworn back in as President, Donald Trump signed an executive order declaring an ‘energy emergency’ that removes restrictions on extracting oil, natural gas, and coal and supports building new pipelines on federal land and waters from “from coast to coast” and in Alaska. At the same time, he ordered his agencies and Secretaries to “not issue new or renewed approvals, rights of way, permits, leases, or loans” for wind projects.

Trump’s ‘energy emergency’ is a big deal. It expedites the approval of fossil fuel energy projects― and even coal, which is not only dirty, but also more expensive than wind generated power in the U.S. Trump is acting on behalf of his fossil fuel donors, not our energy or economic interests!

Sign now! Show the Trump administration that the people of the United States want wind and solar power included in our energy emergency because our kids are scared about the future we’re handing off to them.

Fossil fuel companies know that they’re running out of time to cash in. The momentum around renewable energy is already too strong―but we need an inclusive approach over the next few years in order to build out the infrastructure we’ll need to achieve our clean energy goals. Fossil fuel CEOs are trying to delay that infrastructure as long as possible―even at the cost of a liveable planet.

Localyst runs local campaigns all over the country to build out clean energy infrastructure. This isn’t some blue state fantasy―the largest producer of wind power in the United States isn’t California, it’s Texas. Kansas also generates nearly half of its power from wind. But we’re hearing from renewable energy developers that they are delaying construction timelines to navigate Trump’s new orders.

In order to live in a nation with clean air, clean water, clean soil, and all the power we need, we must continue to invest in wind and solar power!

Sign now: Tell the Trump administration that wind and solar are essential parts of the American-made energy we need!

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