January 12
Xcel Retires Coal Unit at Minnesota’s Largest Power Plant
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A new milestone achievement this week kept Xcel Energy on track to detangle itself from coal usage by 2030, with the retirement of one of three coal units at Sherco, Minnesota’s largest power plant. Sherco, or the Sherburne County Generating Plant, has been operating for decades, and in that time, it has been the state’s largest power plant. Thus, getting it out of fossil fuels is one of Xcel’s best ways to transition to cleaner energy – and the company plans to retire Sherco’s remaining coal-fired units in 2026 and 2030, respectively.
Utilities faced a relatively static energy landscape for decades, with comparatively predictable load curves and demand. Global electrification and decarbonization efforts have upended that paradigm by shifting utilities away from reliable, but incredibly dirty sources like fossil fuels to an increasingly diversified energy portfolio. This represents but one of the challenges facing utilities.
Puget Sound Energy and energy storage developer Form Energy have entered into a memorandum of understanding to look into deploying a multiday energy storage system in the utility’s footprint, the two companies announced last week. The collaboration will explore the potential of deploying a 10-MW, 100-hour energy storage pilot in PSE’s service territory — tentatively scheduled to be deployed by the end of 2026 — using Form Energy’s iron-air battery technology.
EPRI is hosting the Electrification 2024 International Conference & Exposition, scheduled for March 12-14 in Savannah, Georgia. It features immersive pre-conference workshops, agenda sessions, a collaborative Exposition Hall and multiple networking functions. Electrification 2024 will bring together thought leaders and innovators from across the electrification spectrum, providing a wide range of opportunities for education and collaboration.
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Industry News
To cool the planet, homes will need clean energy makeovers. That entails households making the switch from fossil-fueled cars and appliances to electric vehicles, heat-pump AC/heaters, heat-pump water heaters and electric stoves, with some even opting for their own clean energy sources — solar panels and batteries. The historic Inflation Reduction Act makes this transformation easier than ever with generous federal tax credits and $8.8 billion in forthcoming rebates.
The battery storage industry continues to make significant gains in the United States, with the Energy Information Administration (EIA) this week stating it expects storage capacity to nearly double to more than 30 GW by the end of 2024. Developers have announced more than 300 utility-scale battery storage projects slated to enter service by 2025. Texas will account for about half of that, but California will join it on the list of top biggest deployments to come.
The EIA expects electric generation from solar to be the leading source of growth in the U.S. power sector through the end of 2025, with 79 GW of new solar capacity projected to come online over the next two years. In the EIA’s latest Short-Term Energy Outlook, released Tuesday, the agency said it expects renewable energy’s overall share of electricity generation to rise to 26 percent by the end of 2025, while natural gas drops from 42 percent in 2023 to 41 percent in 2025.
It’s hard to get EV chargers to bloom in “charging deserts.” More than seven in 10 EV chargers in the U.S. are in the country’s wealthiest counties, according to recent research, while many rural, low-income and disadvantaged communities have few if any places for EV drivers to plug in. There’s a reason that EV chargers are concentrated in the richest, and whitest, parts of the country: That’s where most EV owners live today.
