Energy Efficiency, Microgrids, Solar, Sourcing Renewables  -  August 24, 2019

Weekend reads: Walmart sues Tesla; the Greenest colleges

It's the weekend! Kick back and catch up with these must-read articles from around the web:

Tesla is getting sued by Walmart who wants them to remove 240 solar systems after fires (Electrek)  Tesla’s relationship with Walmart took a turn, as the latter is suing the former because they want Tesla to remove solar systems installed at 240 stores following several of them catching on fire. Walmart had a partnership with SolarCity before it was acquired by Tesla to install large solar power systems on hundreds of stores around the country. The retail giant has grown dissatisfied with Tesla’s service and installation of the solar system. 

Institutions of Sustainable Learning: Which U.S. Colleges are the Greenest (The Environmental Magazine)  Depending on how deeply you want to go into environmental studies, there are many colleges that could meet your green-minded learning needs. A great place to begin research is the Princeton Review’s annual “Guide to 399 Green Colleges.” The 9th annual version was released late last year and ranked the College of the Atlantic (COA) in Bar Harbor, Maine as the nation’s greenest institution of higher learning. 

Nevada makes progress on clean energy; energy efficiency, not so much (Nevada Current)  Even before this year’s Legislature enacted new standards requiring that half the electricity in the state be generated by renewable resources by 2030, Nevada was making impressive strides in renewable energy generation. Nevada has led the nation in per capita solar power jobs since 2014. And Nevada solar power generation has increased more than 2,500 percent since 2009, the fourth-largest capacity increase in the nation. But Nevada ranks “50th out of 50 in improvements to energy efficiency.” 

Why Microgrid Developers Shouldn’t be Storm Chasers (Microgrid Knowledge)  Don’t follow one-time disasters to find microgrid opportunities; look instead to areas with recurring power outages and businesses interested in resilience, says a new study. Curious about the impact of storms and disasters, Wood Mackenzie, a global research and consultancy business, looked at microgrids sized 100 kW and above that were built after storms and wildfires between 2012 and 2019, said Isaac Maze-Rothstein, research associate with Wood Mackenzie Power and Renewables.

How to have an all-renewable electric grid (The Conversation) The main solution to climate change is well known – stop burning fossil fuels. How to do this is more complicated, but as a scholar who does energy modeling, I and others see the outlines of a post-fossil-fuel future: We make electricity with renewable sources and electrify almost everything. That means running vehicles and trains on electricity, heating buildings with electric heat pumps, electrifying industrial applications such as steel production and using renewable electricity to make hydrogen (similar to natural gas) for other requirements. 

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