Longtime solar developer Cypress Creek Energy has not only broken ground on what could be the largest solar-plus-storage plant in the country, but also secured a blue-chip customer to pay for the clean power. Google will buy all the electricity from the first two phases of the forthcoming Steel River Energy Center…

Startup Peak Energy launched in 2023 with a promise to bring the up-and-coming sodium-ion battery chemistry to American shores. Now, it’s building a gigafactory in Sacramento, California, that will be the country’s first to produce sodium-ion battery storage plants for the grid. If Peak Energy succeeds in its…

This story was reported and published in collaboration with Hawaiʻi Public Radio . On June 8, 2015, Gov. David Ige sat under the great seal of the state of Hawaiʻi and signed the nation’s first legal commitment to run an entire state’s grid system on 100% renewable electricity. Ige, a Democrat, lamented that…

PJM Interconnection, which serves 67 million people across 13 states from the mid-Atlantic to the Midwest, has become a poster child for how not to keep up with soaring energy demand. Startup Base Power is taking a whack at that problem by installing a network of unusually large home batteries in one corner of that…

This year has been full of dramatic rivalries. World Cup matchups, Knicks versus Spurs, One Battle After Another versus Sinners at the Oscars, and now California solar power versus natural gas. For years, natural gas has dominated electricity production in the climate-conscious Golden State, just as it has…

As spring gives way to summer, many parts of the U.S. are already feeling the heat. It’s a good moment to take stock of the energy breakthroughs that transpired this past “shoulder season.” That’s the period of time between the chill of winter and the high temperatures of July and August, when renewable energy…

Qcells has officially begun commercial production of silicon solar cells at its factory in Cartersville, Georgia, the company said Tuesday. That factory is the largest of its kind in the country — and a long-awaited boost to the U.S. solar supply chain. For five years straight , the U.S. power sector has built more…

On June 1, the Tumbleweed project in California’s Kern County became the first major battery installation in the U.S. that can discharge power for up to eight hours at a time — twice as long as typical energy-storage facilities. The U.S. power sector now builds more battery storage capacity than any other form of…