Grid modernization investments are creating a construction boom across America — largely driven by the deployment of solar.

According to the Department of Energy’s latest report on jobs in the energy sector, employment in the electric power sector rose 13 percent in 2016 as utilities and developers built new power plants, replaced aging equipment, and invested in new technologies to manage an increasingly complicated distribution grid. 

There are now 860,869 people employed in the electric power sector, an increase of more than 101,000 jobs from 2015. Workers in the construction industry building solar, natural gas and wind power plants accounted for most of the increase, reported DOE. The coming year will likely bring a 7 percent bump in employment across power generation.

Coal has long been the dominant fuel for America’s electric grid, but no longer. Utilities are burning less of it, and miners are digging less of it. Many politicians — including the incoming president — believe the decline of coal is wrecking America’s economy.

But the opposite is happening. Jobs are being created in new areas of the economy.

There were 26,000 megawatts of new power plant capacity installed last year in the U.S. Wind provided 6,800 megawatts of new capacity, natural gas provided 8,000 megawatts, and solar provided 9,500 megawatts, according to the Energy Information Administration.

“The electric generation mix in the United States is changing, driven by the transition of coal-fired power plants to natural gas and the increase in low-carbon sources of energy. This transition has required significant build-out of new power generation facilities and technologies in the United States,” writes the DOE.

In fact, 10 percent of all U.S. construction jobs are now serving the electric power sector. And the majority of those jobs are being created by building out renewable power plants.

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Responding to Ofgem’s call for evidence on A Smart, Flexible Energy System [1], which closed on Thursday, the Solar Trade Association (STA) has called on the Government to remove all barriers to deployment of energy storage [2]. Following substantial recent reductions in costs associated with storage – especially lithium-ion batteries – the industry are ready now to deliver smarter alternatives for a clean energy system that will save money for the consumer.

Research conducted by independent analysts Aurora Energy Research, commissioned by the STA, has shown that batteries work particularly well with variable generation, such as solar [3]. The research, published last year, showed that a high deployment of solar in our future energy system would come with only modest integration costs associated with its variable output. However, the addition of storage removes this cost and in its place delivers a net economic benefit. By enabling the provision of cheap, clean, energy for longer periods of the day there would be downward pressure on prices for the consumer, and reduce the need for other more expensive forms of generation.

Leonie Greene, STA Head of External Affairs, commented:

“Solar power has turned the grid on its head, it provides unique opportunities for energy consumers of all types to take control of their bills and produce their own energy, sitting at the heart of a smart, flexible energy system. Storage has a multiplier effect for renewable energy: whether it’s helping a homeowner get the most efficient use of their solar panels, or a solar farm match its output with demand, storage will benefit the whole system.”

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A document created for the recent investor event at Tesla’s under-construction Gigafactory facility in Nevada recently made its way into our hands here at CleanTechnica, revealing that the company’s planned solar PV infrastructure for the facility will total 70 megawatts (MW) in nameplate capacity once complete.

Also notable is that the rooftop portion of this planned 70 MW rooftop + ground-installation will apparently be ~7 times larger “than the largest rooftop solar system installed today.”

The document reiterates the point that the Gigafactory will be powered entirely without direct consumption of fossil fuels — on-site electricity use will be provided entirely by on-site solar PV systems and waste heat recovery.

A couple of other things worth noting:

• The Gigafactory’s closed-loop water supply system utilizes 6 “different treatment systems to efficiently re-circulate about 1.5 million liters of water, representing an 80% reduction in fresh water usage compared with standard processes.”
• Work has already begun on the site’s recycling facility, which will reprocess “all types of Tesla battery cells, modules, and packs, into various metal products for reuse in new cells.”

To go over a couple of often discussed figures again, once Phase 2 construction is completed (it’s currently underway) annualized battery cell production capacity will total 35 gigawatt-hours (GWh) and annualized battery pack production will total 50 GWh.

The battery cell figures will reportedly allow Tesla to produce around 500,000 all-electric cars, according to the document. The pack production, on the other hand, relates not just to electric vehicles but also to energy storage products — so it sounds like the company is leaving things open to continue relying on third-party cells for its energy storage products if need be (if demand is too high for current production).

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The rise of renewable power has created a need for energy storage that companies are fulfilling with underwater balloons, multi-tonne flywheels and decades-old designs.

“Where renewables go, storage will follow,” said John Wright, project manager at Northland Power.

The need for energy storage comes from the temporary and sometimes unpredictable nature of renewable energy. The wind doesn’t always blow and the sun doesn’t always shine.

Power companies and utilities have been looking to compensate for that with what amount to giant batteries and smooth out delivery, storing energy in times of low demand and distributing it when demand is high.

Watch below from November 2015: The Alberta NDP has come out with an update to their plans to transition the province to renewable energy. Global’s Jenna Freeman reports.

Northland has been developing a 400-megawatt pumped storage project that takes the form of an old flooded mine, sitting on a plateau just outside of Marmora, Ont.

The roughly $900-million project in eastern Ontario pumps water up into the mine pit when there’s extra energy, and then lets it run out through a turbine when more energy is needed.

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Tesla and Panasonic’s Gigafactory in the Nevada desert has now started making high performance cylindrical battery cells of the type used in its stationary storage and forthcoming Model 3.

Ahead of the availability of the Model 3, the 200 mile+ charge ‘affordable’ car expected later this year with a claimed 400,000 pre-orders, the factory – which will have the largest footprint of any building anywhere when completed – began producing the cells yesterday. It had already been producing battery packs for Tesla’s Powerwall 2 residential storage and Powerpack 3 commercial and industrial scale storage solutions, but has now also added the capability to mass produce the so-called 2170 cells, which go in the battery packs and which it has been making in a “qualification” phase since December.

Tesla did point out however that while the cells will go straight into Powerwall 2 and Powerpack 2 systems, they will not be ready for the US$35,000 Model 3 until the second quarter of this year. The company said that by 2018 the Gigafactory will be producing 35GWh of battery packs a year. Future expansions should take the facility up to 50GWh a year by 2020, according to the original plans announced in 2014. This would equate to 500,000 car battery packs. Research firm Baird Equity Research said in a note that it appeared Tesla was therefore also on track to achieve a more than 30% reduction in battery cell production costs as the factory ramps up into 2018, through better design, leveraging consolidation of supply chains and the vertical integration the Gigafactory enabled. 

The 2170 lithium-ion cell has been jointly engineered by Tesla and Japan’s Panasonic, which also makes its own stationary storage products for markets including Australia. Panasonic is thought to be making a US$1.6 billion investment in the Gigfactory, which Tesla CEO Elon Musk has claimed could help Tesla rake in US$20 million a year in revenues and US$5 a year profit from Model 3 sales.

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As of January 1, all new buildings of 10 stories or fewer in San Francisco must be built with solar panels included.

Since that local measure passed last spring, its author, Scott Wiener, moved from the San Francisco Board of Supervisors to the state senate. Now, he’s bringing the conceptto Sacramento, first in summary form, with the full proposed legislation expected in four to six weeks.

If adopted, mandatory rooftop solar legislation would set a groundbreaking example of how a legislature can expand distributed solar through less conventional means, diverging from the default models of renewable portfolio standards and tax credits. That outcome is by no means guaranteed, though.

The process of passing the legislation through the state legislature will likely raise new questions about how the policy would impact the entirety of the massive Golden State. There are more legislators to convince than in San Francisco, and more interest groups and industry lobbyists who may try to stop it. 

“The state, of course, is much bigger and much more diverse geographically and in every other respect,” Wiener told GTM. “We are actively soliciting input to make sure we’re crafting legislation that will work for the whole state.”

For any other state, requiring solar photovoltaics or solar thermal on most new buildings would seem dramatic, if not unthinkable. For California, however, it’s the latest iteration of a legislative program years in the making.

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The San Diego County Water Authority and the City of San Diego announced Wednesday that they haven taken steps towards developing a new 500MW pumped energy storage project at the the San Vicente Reservoir.

If developed, the installation will offer electric grid stability to the region during both peak times and on days where demand is high and other renewable-energy outlets are scarce.

Both the City of San Diego and the Water Authority announced that a joint Request for Letters of Interest were released Wednesday, with the companies reaching out to electric utilities, developers, investors and energy off-takers in an effort to find groups willing to purchase power generated from the site.

The request will also help determine what possible next steps are in the best interests of regional ratepayers and stakeholders.

Mark Muir, chair of the Water Authority board of directors, “When we filled San Vicente Reservoir last summer, we filled it with more than just water – we filled it with huge potential for energy benefits. Given this new potential for energy from a recently expanded water resource, it’s only prudent to continue to research the potential benefits to our region’s ratepayers.”

The main piece of the project would comprise of an interconnection and pumping system located between the existing San Vicente Reservoir and a new, smaller reservoir located uphill. The pumping system would be used during off-peak energy-use periods to pump water from the existing San Vicente Reservoir to the new reservoir.

Proposals in response to the Request for Letters of Interest are due to the Water Authority by 2 p.m. on Feb. 15, and questions regarding the request must be emailed to the Water Authority no later than 2 p.m. on Jan. 31, 2017.

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When a very big international company buys a very small company in an emerging area like energy storage and microgrids, you’ve got to ask, ‘What’s up?’

This week Italian energy giant Enel swooped in to take 100 percent ownership of Demand Energy, an entrepreneurial U.S. energy storage company based in Washington state.

Pay attention U.S. utilities, says Rob Thornton, president & CEO of the International District Energy Association, which includes the Microgrid Resources Coalition. It appears European utilities get it.

The acquisition, Thornton said, “underscores how our European utility counterparts are ahead of the curve on utility transformation from central station generation to more distributed, cleaner generation closer to the customer.”

These European companies are “assigning greater value to effective tools like Demand Energy for decarbonizing and delivering enhanced customer control and resiliency,” he said.

An $80 billion energy company operating in 30 countries, Enel is striving to be carbon neutral by 2050.

“In my opinion, US utilities that embrace this paradigm shift towards cleaner, more efficient decentralized solutions will likely prosper in the years ahead while those clinging to status quo, rate base monopolistic models may find themselves gone the way of Wang or Digital Equipment Corp.,” Thornton warned.

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