Good morning and happy Friday,

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Unless you were hanging out under a rock this week, you know that a solar eclipse plunged a large swath of the U.S. into momentary darkness. Grid planners in the path of totality were well prepared for dips in solar production, however, and scientists at NREL welcomed the eclipse as “a valuable test run.”

The impacts may have been greatest in ERCOT, which briefly lost 10,000 MW of capacity, an event made even more noteworthy by the fact that last month, for the first time in ERCOT’s history, solar, er, eclipsed coal in terms of total electricity produced. Natural gas is still the biggest source of power in Texas, but solar is taking a run at it, too.

Speaking of taking runs at things, the Washington Post’s editorial board says environmental concerns are stalling the clean-energy transition by preventing transmission from getting built. 

Read on for more.

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This week Fox News featured an anti-renewables rant from Robert Bryce (trigger warning: it trots out several “tired and not true” old wives’ tales). As luck would have it, the opinion piece coincides with Columbia Law’s release of a report that rebuts 33 of the “most pervasive false claims” about wind, solar, and EVs.

• Bryce’s blather asserts that wind turbines are noisy, renewable energy projects kill property values, the entire industry is a massive tax boondoggle, solar farms use prime agricultural land, and oh by the way, renewables create the risk of rolling blackouts. 
• Researchers at Columbia University’s Sabin Center for Climate Change Law reviewed anti-renewable sources to find claims to rebut, “then used peer-reviewed academic literature and government publications to find information disputing those claims.” 
• Myths addressed in the report include the environmental impacts of solar, the effects of wind energy on terrestrial and marine wildlife, safety, and waste generated by both technologies, as well as their (negligible) impacts on home values.

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Crazy like a fox. While articles like Bryce’s can be frustrating, they underscore the importance of building a bench of clean energy advocates who will be perceived as trustworthy and credible by stakeholders who have been exposed to substantial amounts of misinformation. More of the same messages from the same messengers probably isn’t going to move the needle much among folks who are already dug in.

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America’s power sector is facing two related and tough-to-solve issues: on one hand, the EIA predicts U.S. power demand will reach record highs in 2024 and 2025. On the other, U.S. interconnection queues are backed up like crazy. Fortunately, there are solutions that could help – one even involves a magic ball.

• LBNL’s latest Queued Up report (2024 edition), finds that 2.6 terawatts of projects – >95% of them “zero-carbon resources like solar, wind, and battery storage” – are languishing in our nation’s interconnection queues. A webinar on April 23 will offer a deeper dive. 
• The lines are long, and the waits are getting longer: on average, projects built in 2000-2007 waited less than two years between connection request and commercial operation; for projects built in 2018-2023, that increased to more than 4 years, “with a median of 5 years for projects built in 2023.” 

The 2.6 TW equates to nearly 12,000 projects and represents double the installed capacity of the existing U.S. power plant fleet (~1,280 GW), and more than peak load and installed capacity in all ISOs.

...Lower the River. One possible solution? Advanced reconductoring. This technique involves “replacing existing power lines with cables made from state-of-the-art materials,” and has the potential to “nearly double the capacity of the electric grid in many parts of the country, making room for much more wind and solar power.” Two reports released this week make a strong case for this approach. As promised, another potential solution is a magic ball.

• Making Easements a Bit Easier: New report summarizes state-specific requirements for land contracts
• Renewable Rendezvous: Wind and solar wait in yearslong lines to put clean energy on the grid and face huge interconnection fees
• To Infinity and Beyond: Solar and wind is surging in the Mountain West but there’s room to grow
• Out with the Old, In with the ReNEWables: This California city is trading an old gas plant for a giant grid battery
• Crude Awakening: Former Texas oil engineer devotes life to clean energy

PA’s Power Play: Pennsylvania issues guidelines on using energy storage to boost distribution grid reliability

• AZ: After blocking new solar projects, Mohave County paves way for gas-fired power plant
• MI: Developers withdraw rezoning request to bring solar farm to Grass Lake area
• OK: Concerned residents voice opposition to Enid-area solar farm
• TX: Largest urban solar farm in the U.S. ready to break ground in Sunnyside
• IA: Moratorium putting Henry County wind farm project on year-long pause
• IA: Clinton Co. approves permit for met tower in first step toward proposed wind farm

NY: Tully-Otisco residents express concerns for proposed wind turbine farm

A few weeks ago we told you about the massive energy demands and outsized environmental impacts associated with cryptocurrency. We can neither confirm nor deny if any Bitcoin billionaires (or even just regular crypto bros) read the Developer Dispatch, but we are pleased to report that some crypto miners are looking to green their operations by using renewable energy.

This shift may be prompted in part by an upcoming Bitcoin “halving,” which is expected to happen this month. According to Coinbase, “Bitcoin halving drives miners to optimize energy consumption and increase hash power, contributing to the sustainability and long-term viability of the Bitcoin ecosystem.”

Industry observers say the event could precipitate increased competition among miners, prompting some to power their activities with carbon-free energy sources in a bid to lower operating costs and be more sustainable in the eyes of investors and the public – Gryphon Digital Mining is one such example.

Gryphon CEO Rob Chang says the halving could increase the production cost of Bitcoin, eating into miner profitability if the price of Bitcoin doesn't increase correspondingly. That could lead to miners with higher production costs shutting down or reducing operations and slowing the rate of Bitcoin production. These pressures will engineer the “survival of the fittest” – and perhaps, the survival of the greenets.

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