One of the UK’s leading clean tech advocates yesterday launched a new charitable campaign to save the lives of babies admitted to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit at the Government Hospital in the city of Bo, Sierra Leone, where they are currently at risk from frequent blackouts. Michael Liebreich, founder of Bloomberg New Energy Finance, officially kicked off Project Bo this week with the goal of raising £100,000 to install a 20kW solar and storage system that will provide uninterrupted power supply to the ward. The campaign was triggered last year by a Tweet from Dr Niall Conroy who was working at the hospital. “Three of our oxygen-dependent babies died last night when the power went off,” he wrote. “Not good enough in 2017. Low-cost tech eg affordable solar power must be a priority for saving newborn lives”. https://www.projectbo.org/
Business Green 13th Feb 2018 read more »
US solar manufacturer and developer First Solar is to build a 65MW solar farm and a 50MW/135MWh battery storage facility in Arizona – after beating out peaking gas plants to provide power into the evening peak. The win by First Solar – in its first big foray into solar plus storage – confirms the swing point in “dispatchable power” is rapidly moving away from fossil fuel generators to wind and solar technologies paired with storage. The facility will take advantage of Arizona’s excellent solar resources to deliver power – either directly from its solar facility or via its solar-fuelled battery – between 3pm and 8pm, hitting the local peaks on the grid in summer. The local utility, Arizona Public Service (APS), called for proposals from any technology to deliver the power in the afternoon and evening peak. And despite the prevalence of so-called “cheap” gas in the US, the solar plus storage facility won out over proposals from conventional renewables, standalone batteries and natural-gas peaking plants. Greentech Media said the joint system “suggests a new paradigm for solar-rich markets: the solar peak power plant.” It said the solar plant will charge up the battery during the day and deliver power during the first few hours of the peak window, until the sun sets. Then the battery will kick in and discharge stored power through the rest of the window.
Renew Economy 14th Feb 2018 read more »