The Latitude

In Australia, one in three homes hosts a rooftop solar system. And 20% of those systems are attached to batteries. In February, a major grid outage put those systems to the test. 

Extreme weather caused a series of grid failures in the state of Victoria. And with coal plants tripping offline, solar capacity helped keep the blackouts from cascading further.

So what does the incident tell us about how solar PV can help grid operators during times of stress? And will policies finally catch up to reality that distributed resources are critical for grids facing more extreme events?

In this installment, Editor Lisa Martine Jenkins presents a feature from the pages of Latitude Media on learnings from a massive blackout in Australia.

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There are two critical ingredients fueling the AI boom: energy and chips. 

And NVIDIA, one of the most important companies in AI, is looking to be a power player in both.

NVIDIA was founded in the early 1990s as a chip maker for gaming. It has since evolved into a $2 trillion behemoth building the most sought-after graphics processing units for training AI.

Now, the company is making moves to deploy its technology in equipment at the edge of the grid – and looking to build a framework for deploying AI inside utility operations.

Could the power sector get an upgrade from a critical AI power broker?

In this edition: Editor Lisa Martine Jenkins presents her own story from the pages of Latitude Media on how NVIDIA is looking to spread AI across the grid.

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The US green hydrogen industry is at a critical juncture. 

After months of input and debate, the government put out draft rules for tax credits at the end of last year – setting firm requirements for matching new, local renewables to hydrogen production.

It was seen by many as a big step for ensuring that green hydrogen is actually green. But across the industry, the reaction was more mixed – even among those who want to make the industry as clean as possible. Many projects have already been canceled.

The tax credit guidelines will be finalized this summer. And in the meantime, there’s a looming question: will strict rules derail the market before it gets started, or will they make it better long-term? Or both?

In this installment, we have a double-header: Editor Lisa Martine Jenkins presents two features from the pages of Latitude Media on how the US green hydrogen industry is responding to new rules and canceling some projects. 

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Data center energy use is spiking around the world. The International Energy Agency says that demand could double in the next two years, as artificial intelligence workloads soar.

This increase in demand is alarming environmentalists and clean power advocates, who say AI is making decarbonization harder. 

But many experts in the data center industry see it differently. They say data centers are actually an energy efficiency success story – and that the benefits of AI in the power sector will far outweigh the increase in data center demand.

In this edition: Editor Lisa Martine Jenkins presents a story from the pages of Latitude Media on the reactions from data center experts about the surge of energy demand from AI. 

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As cities around the U.S. ramp up their renewable energy goals, they’re sometimes at odds with the utilities that serve them. Some have tried to break away and form their own utilities. Others are creating community choice aggregators to negotiate clean power supply for residents.

The city of Ann Arbor is trying something different – building microgrid projects to serve local load without the help of the utility. 

The effort could be costly, contentious, and complicated. But if it works, it could create a whole new model for local clean energy supply.

In this edition: Editor Lisa Martine Jenkins presents a story from the pages of Latitude Media on a microgrid project in Michigan that aims to bypass the local utility.

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We have 60 gigawatts of virtual power plant capacity in the US. But that needs to triple in the next decade to support a zero-carbon grid – while also meeting a surge in peak demand.

There are lots of different models for building VPPs that link together solar, batteries, EV chargers, and smart thermostats. Sunrun and PG&E tested a model this summer that uses solar and batteries to create a “permanent load shift” to offset the evening peak in California.

It provided tens of megawatts of capacity to the utility. But there were also some issues with batteries not delivering the expected output. What do the results tell us what it will take to make VPPs a core piece of utility operations?

In this edition: Editor Lisa Martine Jenkins presents a story from the pages of Latitude Media on some surprising results from PG&E and Sunrun’s virtual power plant pilot. 

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Wind and solar projects are relatively simple to build compared with thermal power plants. But there’s a lot of technological innovation going into how those renewable plants are designed, constructed and optimized – driven by robots, artificial intelligence, and data science.

Can these technologies help offset higher labor costs, rising financing costs, and supply chain constraints?

In this edition: Editor Lisa Martine Jenkins presents a story from the pages of Latitude Media called on how the renewables industry is harnessing new technologies to drive efficiency and cost declines.

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The world needs a lot of critical minerals. By the middle of the century, we could be looking at a six-fold increase in demand for lithium, copper, cobalt, nickel, and magnesium to make enough batteries and renewables to decarbonize the global economy.

That means a lot of mining. And it also means we need a lot of geologists to help find new resources. But will a looming shortage of geologists in the US put supply security at risk?

In this edition: Editor Lisa Martine Jenkins presents a story from the pages of Latitude Media on the looming geologist shortage.

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Elon Musk has called lithium “the new oil.” Demand for critical minerals is booming alongside the surge in global battery production. And countries are racing to control as much mining and processing of lithium, cobalt, nickel, manganese, and graphite quickly as possible.

There’s also a race among companies that are exploring artificial intelligence to discover new deposits of critical minerals. It’s yet another area where AI could speed up the energy transition.

Can it help meet tight deadlines for scaling up needed production?

Today: Editor Lisa Martine Jenkins presents a story from the pages of Latitude Media on how AI could alleviate the critical minerals supply crunch.

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Thanks to our partner, Intersolar North America and Energy Storage North America. Latitude listeners are invited to attend the event for free on January 17-19 at the San Diego Convention Center. Visit Intersolar.us and use code LAT to get free expo access and save 20% on a conference pass.

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It’s been another tumultuous year for the clean energy sector in the stock market. 

Even with strong tailwinds from the Inflation Reduction Act, many public companies took a hit this year – thanks to investor concerns over high interest rates, supply chain constraints, uncertainty over policy implementation, and a rush back into oil & gas stocks.

So what does it mean for cleantech investors in 2024?

Today: Editor Lisa Martine Jenkins presents a story from the pages of Latitude Media called “Cleantech’s very weird year.”

For more of Latitude Media’s coverage of the frontiers of clean energy, sign up for our newsletter.

Thanks to our partner, Intersolar North America and Energy Storage North America. Latitude listeners are invited to attend the event for free on January 17-19 at the San Diego Convention Center. Visit Intersolar.us and use code LAT to get free expo access and save 20% on a conference pass.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices