WASHINGTON, D.C. — The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) today announced the selection of eleven projects to receive $34 million for tools to advance a clean, reliable electricity grid run on wind and solar energy. DOE also announced a new $10 million funding opportunity to streamline the interconnection of clean energy to the grid. Together, these initiatives will enable grid planners, grid operators, and utility companies to optimally connect and manage renewable energy and battery storage resources on the electric grid, resulting in a reduction of extreme weather-related outages. This funding will cut wait times for projects to connect to the grid and help accelerate the reliable deployment of clean energy resources to achieve President Biden’s goal of 100% clean electricity by 2035.  

“We can’t deploy clean energy if we can’t get renewable sources connected onto our grid,” said U.S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer M. Granholm. “Thanks to support from the Biden-Harris Administration, we are developing new, state-of-the-art tools to break up logjams to connect more clean energy sources to the grid even faster,  giving Americans access to more affordable and resilient sources of clean energy.” 

Projects selected for the Solar Energy Technologies Office’s Operation and Planning Tools for Inverter-Based Resource Management and Availability for the Future Power System (OPTIMA) funding program will advance tools that help grid planners and operators optimize the integration of these technologies.

Bogotá, 10 de abril de 2024. Con el fin de crear mecanismos que faciliten el funcionamiento y la prestación del servicio a los usuarios en estaciones de carga para vehículos eléctricos e híbridos, el Ministerio de Minas y Energía expidió la Resolución 40123 de 2024

Con la entrada en vigencia de esta reglamentación, los usuarios podrán cargar sus vehículos en las diferentes estaciones de carga a nivel nacional, sin que se presenten restricciones para su acceso y posterior pago.

Así mismo, las estaciones tendrán como obligación informar de manera clara y previa a los usuarios los precios de carga, estacionamiento y otros costos asociados, exhibiendo estos detalles de forma desagregada y visible.

“La expedición de esta política pública es un avance como país que impulsa la electromovilidad, promueve la transparencia de la información y fomenta la democratización de la energía.” Afirmó, el Ministro de Minas y Energía, Omar Andrés Camacho.

This article discusses the Green Deal Industrial Plan. We explore the objectives of this EU strategy and consider the operating mechanism of two of its principal pillars, the Critical Raw Materials Act and the Nez-Zero Industry Act. 

While the European Green Deal’s objective of a transition to a net-zero economy should lead to a decrease in the EU’s fossil fuel imports, the rapid roll-out of many clean energy technologies required to reach carbon neutrality by 2050 will lead to significant increases in demand for other resources and technologies, not all of which can be produced within the European Union. Against this background, the European Commission has developed the so-called Green Deal Industrial Plan, which aims to maintain or even enhance the EU’s competitiveness and security of supply as it pursues the European Green Deal. Two principal legislative pillars of this strategy have made their way through the legislative process and are now nearing entry into force. The Council of the EU and the European Parliament reached political agreement on the Net-Zero Industry Act in February 2024. The Critical Raw Materials Act, meanwhile, was formally adopted on 18 March 2024. In this cover the basics article, we ask: what is the Green Deal Industrial Plan? What are critical raw materials and why do they matter? Where is the EU currently standing on critical raw materials? What is the EU doing about critical raw materials? Where is the EU currently standing on clean tech? How is the EU attempting to boost its domestic clean tech sector? Can the EU compete with other global players?

A Western regional transmission organization could emerge through a three-step process proposed Wednesday by the West-Wide Governance Pathways Initiative, an effort that includes state utility regulators, utilities, advocacy groups and others.

In a first step, the proposal calls for increasing the independence of the Western Energy Imbalance Market’s governing body away from the California Independent System Operator’s board. Next, an independent regional organization would be created to oversee the EIM and CAISO’s emerging regional enhanced day-ahead market.

The Pathways Initiative aims to implement step one by early September and, after refining its proposal, launch a regional organization late this year, Kathleen Staks, Western Freedom executive director and co-chair of the initiative’s launch committee, said at a Nevada Public Utilities Commission workshop Wednesday. Creating a regional organization will require changes to California law, a step that would be pursued next year, she said.

Quantum, often called quantum mechanics, deals with the granular and fuzzy nature of the universe and the physical behavior of its smallest particles.

The idea of physical granularity is like your TV image. If you zoom in on the image, you will see it is made of individual pixels. The quantum world is similar. If you zoom in on the details of matter, you will eventually see elementary units of matter and energy with their own unique characteristics.  

In the physical world, matter is made up of atoms as building blocks. Atoms, in turn, are made up of electrons that surround a nucleus. Nuclear particles, such as protons and neutrons, are made up of quarks.  

If you look at an individual pixel, you know nearly nothing about the larger image. However, pixels working together can create enormous complexity in color, shape and even movement from just the pixels’ colors: red, blue, green and off.  The same is true of the quantum building blocks in physics.

In fact, the properties of all matter are defined by quantum physics. This is because the physical forces in the atom that bind it together — including the quantum properties of the elementary particles inside the atom — determine the physical and electronic structure of individual atoms.  

More specifically, how the electronic charge is distributed in the atom decides the atom’s electrical properties. The atom’s electronic properties determine how atoms bond to other atoms to create molecules.  

Atoms with similar electronic properties are listed in the same column of the periodic table, which describes the chemistry of those elements. The electrical structure of molecules decides how molecules work and bond together to create more complex materials, such as metals, liquids, gases and organic compounds. This even includes … you! Yes, you are quantum!  

Replicating everything you already have in your current GIS in the Utility Network, Esri’s modern network management, is the easiest thing to do. However, simply lifting & shifting what you already have in a new, state-of-the-art platform leaves enormous business value on the table. The real business value lies in solving a new set of business challenges at the utility. Solving these challenges requires looking beyond what has been done in the past to everything possible with the power of the UN. As the business drivers for GIS have evolved, so must the system itself.

Your move to the UN provides an opportunity to move beyond traditional GIS capabilities to advanced data analytics. The modern utility needs actionable information, at a pace that matches demand, in a format that is accessible and easy to understand. The UN is the perfect platform for performing complex analyses that translate to fast, effective operational decisions.

he electric power system is under near-constant attack by cybercriminals. Over the last several years, cyberattacks have resulted in the disablement of remote controls for wind farms and data breaches involving utility customers’ personal and financial information. The number of hacking attempts targeted at the California Independent System Operator (CAISO) number in the millions per day. According to Verizon’s 2023 Data Breach Investigations report, nearly three-quarters of attacks involve a human element in the form of error, stolen security credentials, and social engineering.

While some cyberattacks go unreported, the International Energy Agency (IEA) reports there is an abundance of evidence that attacks have been on a dramatic upswing since 2018. The IEA believes that the increasing number of cyberattacks is due to a combination of factors, including the increased use of digital technologies to manage grids and power plants and the accelerating influx of distributed energy resources (DER) that provide power system entry points that criminals can exploit.

Why Workforce Development Matters

EPRI has also conducted extensive research and collaborated with members and industry stakeholders on identifying cyber vulnerabilities and developing tools to address them. This has included a broad range of activities, including a series of educational and training videos on topics such as the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in electric sector cyber security as well as videos detailing cyber security first principles. EPRI also conducted surveys and research to identify cyber security knowledge gaps training should address.

The electrification of U.S. automobile culture has hit quite a few speed bumps lately — some from market events and some inadvertently put up by the very movement trying to promote electric vehicles (EVs).

A surprising story in Politico recently revealed that almost $100 million of the $265 million awarded through the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act has been awarded to conventional truck stop and gas station chains (using EVAdoption data). Now, of course, this is the same real estate that the EV industry wants to utilize for charging stations, but it’s an eye opener on the Highway to Net Zero, nonetheless.

The American Petroleum Institute has pointed out that there are more than 145,000 fossil fuel filling stations nationwide with more than 1 million gas and/or diesel pumps. Conversely, the U.S. has less than 35,000 electric charging stations in place.

The challenges to transportation electrification are manifold, so to speak. In addition to taking a long time to charge your EV, finding a station to do it is equally difficult, if not worse.

It’s not going to be zero to 60 in six seconds flat, yet the solutions in the forward view mirror are closer than they appear, even if not simple or fast. Electric power is not like fuel, which can lay in a storage tank; electrons must keep moving, and distribution lines and the grid must maintain a certain frequency or risk outage issues. Microgrids and aggregated distributed energy resources (DERs) can drive the transition.

South Carolina regulators should adopt nine “guardrails” around the development of electric vehicle charging stations and be skeptical of utilities spending ratepayer funds on them, according to the state’s Office of Regulatory Staff, which represents consumers in public service commission proceedings.

The guardrails were outlined in an April 4 report published by the PSC, examining regulatory challenges and opportunities associated with transportation electrification in South Carolina.

Private developers typically say utility ownership of charging stations represents unfair competition, and some states are moving to limit the practice. However, “there’s not been a one-size-fits-all [solution] across the country,” said Jay Smith, executive director of the Charge Ahead Partnership, which represents businesses interested in providing EV infrastructure.

Virtual power plant (VPP) capacity in California could potentially exceed more than 7,500 MW by 2035, according to new research released by The Brattle Group and GridLab. That’s more capacity than the largest physical power plant in the state and higher than the peak demand of the city of Los Angeles.

The Brattle Group also found that by 2035 VPPs will have the potential to save consumers more than $550 million each year, avoid more than $750 million annually in traditional power system costs, ease current energy challenges, improve grid reliability and advance the state’s efforts to create a sustainable and reliable energy system.

VPPs use an intelligent control system and bidirectional technology to aggregate energy from networked resources located at multiple sites, such as solar plus storage systems, electric vehicles (EVs) and other distributed energy resources (DERs). The technology creates a reliable power network by bundling together what could be hundreds of discrete power sources into one that can be dispatched during times of peak demand, just as a centralized power plant would.