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Enlarge / Saturn stars in this near-infrared image taken June 25 by the James Webb Space Telescope. (credit: NASA/ESA/CSA/STSci)
The James Webb Space Telescope has observed Saturn for the first time, completing a family portrait of the Solar System’s ringed planets nearly a year after the mission’s first jaw-dropping image release.
Webb’s near-infrared camera took the picture of Saturn on June 25. Scientists added orange color to the monochrome picture to produce the image released Friday.
The picture shows Saturn’s iconic icy rings shining around the disk of the gas giant, which appears much darker in near-infrared due to the absorption of sunlight by methane particles suspended high in the planet’s atmosphere.
Why AirBnb when you can bring your own comfortably personalized accommodations nearly anywhere and everywhere you go? That’s the premise behind the Bowlus Volterra, the world’s first all-electric RV, a luxuriously appointed 25-foot-long aerodynamic silver bullet designed for travelers seeking adventure sans the “roughing it” part of the equation.
The Volterra stores up to 50-gallons of water to keep occupants hydrated, while capable of extending the range of an EV tow vehicle up to 65 miles.
You may remember the Bowlus Terra Firma Limited Edition, a similarly styled luxury liner on two wheels outfitted with a laundry list of contemporary technologies and accoutrements delivering glamping galore. The new Bowlus Volterra is basically the same deal as the Terra Firma, but with twice the mobile electric power and few additional updates.
The heart of the new Volterra’s power is its Volterra Battery Management System, a lithium battery management system powered by the brand’s AeroSolar Solar System, resulting in a 17 kWh of all-electric power capacity (for comparison, a Tesla Powerwall offers 13.5kW of storage capacity).
Induction with two cooktops means meals prepared faster and safer.
And it needs every bit of this extended electric and solar power, with the interior cabin outfitted with creature comforts such as in-floor heating, air conditioning and heating, continuous hot water for showering, hot drinking water on-demand, LED lighting, wi-fi networking, and the option to add high-speed satellite connectivity anywhere the RV dares to venture.
Because navigating a 25-foot trailer isn’t always easy, especially at night, Bowlus thoughtfully includes a full-color night vision camera.
This being the brand’s most luxurious and expensive model (the Volterra starts at $310,000), the RV is offered with a limited-edition La Cumbre earthen color palette inspired by the mountain peak behind Santa Barbara, California. The limited-edition interior seating – fully vegan – supposedly draws inspiration from the California sunset, with complementary hues in the bedding area executed in 100% linen duvets.
If this isn’t all luxurious enough, Bowlus also offers a Bespoke Customization Program to allow buyers to tinker and tailor the silver bullet RV trailer to their exact specifications (*Rivian not included.)
Enlarge / Each of those white structures contains lots of batteries that were built for cars. (credit: B2U)
Last week, a company called B2U Storage Solutions announced that it had started operations at a 25 Megawatt-hour battery facility in California. On its own, that isn't really news, as California is adding a lot of battery power. But in this case, the source of the batteries was unusual: Many of them had spent an earlier life powering electric vehicles.
The idea of repurposing electric vehicle batteries has been around for a while. To work in a car, the batteries need to be able to meet certain standards in terms of capacity and rate of discharge, but that performance declines with use. Even after a battery no longer meets the needs of a car, however, it can still store enough energy to be useful on the electric grid. So it was suggested that grid storage might be an intermediate destination between vehicles and recycling.
But there are some significant technical and economic challenges to implementing the idea. So we talked with B2U's CEO, Freeman Hall, to find out why the company decided it was the right time to put the concept into action.
Enlarge / In Texas, solar facilities compete for space with a whole lot of nothing.
Earlier this week, the US' Energy Information Agency (EIA) gave a preview of the changes the nation's electrical grid is likely to see over the coming year. The data is based on information submitted to the Department of Energy by utilities and power plant owners, who are asked to estimate when generating facilities that are planned or under construction will come online. Using that information, the EIA estimates the total new capacity expected to be activated over the coming year.
Obviously, not everything will go as planned, and the capacity estimates represent the production that would result if a plant ran non-stop at full power—something no form of power is able to do. Still, the data tends to indicate what utilities are spending their money on and helps highlight trends in energy economics. And this year, those trends are looking very sunny.
Last year, the equivalent report highlighted that solar power would provide nearly half of the 46 gigawatts of new capacity added to the US grid. This year, the grid will add more power (just under 55 GW), and solar will be over half of it, at 54 percent. In most areas of the country, solar is now the cheapest way to generate power, and the grid additions reflect that. The EIA also indicates that at least some of these are projects that were delayed due to pandemic-induced supply chain disruptions.
After sparking California’s second-largest wildfire ever, and dozens more in recent years, it’s no secret that Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) — one of the nation’s largest utilities — is interested in alternatives to aboveground transmission lines.
One option touted by PG&E is to bury thousands of miles of power lines in “high fire-threat areas.” That effort is underway, and it will cost billions and take a decade or more to complete, per the utility’s projections. Yet, another piece of the puzzle may be microgrids.
BoxPower, a startup working on such tech, says its mini power stations can do a better job of delivering reliable, low-carbon energy to folks who live “on the edges of distribution lines.”
Neither route will scrub away PG&E’s horrid environmental track record, but as climate change drives more extreme heat waves, solar-powered microgrids could help remote communities keep the lights on even when the macrogrid goes down, while eliminating some dangerous power lines in the process. That’s the idea, and it’s why Grass Valley, California–based BoxPower raised a $5 million Series A round from Swell Energy backer Aligned Climate Capital.
“By placing the Microgrid within ~250ft of the customer, BoxPower eliminates all overhead power lines,” BoxPower co-founder and CEO Angelo Campus said in a statement to TechCrunch. Featuring solar arrays, big batteries and backup propane generators, the power generated by the startup ultimately reaches rural residents “via low-voltage underground wires,” said Campus.
Along with utilities, BoxPower says it has also worked on residential, commercial, and agricultural projects, which are typically “islanded” or not connected to the main grid. In all, the startup says it currently operates more than 35 microgrids across California, Puerto Rico, Alaska and Hawaii.
“BoxPower is on track to deploy an additional 25–30 micro grid systems this year,” Campus added.
BoxPower wants to cut emissions, wildfire risk by taking power off the main grid by Harri Weber originally published on TechCrunch
SunFi, the Nigerian clean tech startup that connects people and businesses who want solar energy access to payment plans that match their needs, has raised $2.325 million in seed funding.
The self-described energy financial tech platform received backing from lead investors Nairobi-based Factor[e] and SCM Capital Asset Management and participating investors such as Voltron Capital, Norrsken Impact Accelerator, Ventures Platform and Sovereign Capital.
On a call with TechCrunch, CEO Rotimi Thomas said the investment will help SunFi grow its operations and improve its capabilities to recommend the best systems at the lowest cost to customers.
SunFi isn’t Thomas’ first rodeo at the helm of an energy startup. In 2018, he co-founded Aspire, a solar installation company based on the knowledge he acquired in college on renewable energy and working in several roles relating to energy, gas and power projects across Nigeria and other African countries, including a five-year stint at Siemens as head of market development. Though this business morphed into SunFi three years later, launching Aspire was the first of a lifelong journey that Thomas had envisioned in trying to fix the electricity issues individuals and businesses face in Nigeria, he said on the call.
Nigerian households and businesses have little or no access to affordable and reliable solar technology, which reduces their reliance on grid-based power that suffers from insufficient generation capacity and fails to serve most of Nigeria’s 200 million people who live in rural areas. Turning to off-grid solutions that use solar energy is an option for these people who need electricity for simple necessities like lighting, heating and communication. And that’s what Rotimi’s previous upstart did. Aspire ran a power-as-a-service business model that helped install more than 500 solar systems for individuals and businesses. But despite being marketed as a cheap option, rural electrification in the form of microgrids and solar systems can be expensive to these sub-consumers because of their low spending power.
“Customers would always ask us if there was a way for them to pay for the solar systems in installments,” Thomas said. “Because of that, we went to the banks and tried to work with them to finance this kind of payment, but we realized that banks also had a problem: they couldn’t dash out credit to customers to finance retail solar systems when they didn’t understand the technical risks involved in owning them.”
Further market research revealed that other solar providers faced the same issue of customers requesting to pay in installments. Thomas and his co-founders — COO Tomiwa Igun and CTO Olaoluwa Faniyi — decided to provide credit and began leasing these systems in what later became SunFi. They believed that as an outfit, they could manage the technical risk involved with solar systems and that it was highly likely that customers would pay because they valued solar systems and saw them as critical pieces of power infrastructure.
Think about it. Retail solar systems are marketed via word of mouth, but with distribution being fragmented and minimal avenues to provide financing, platforms like SunFi that act as aggregators become appealing to customers.
“The challenge customers face with solar providers is that they want solutions they can pay small for; however, these solar platforms can’t offer. Because banks are afraid of the technical risk involved, they need something in between to talk with good solar providers and do the installation work while providing good capital to customers looking for the right solution. We’re the guys in the middle of all this,” Thomas said.
SunFi creates value for these clean energy investors by de-risking the technical and credit risk involved in financing portfolios of solar solutions, opening avenues for lending as a service play for clean energy providers. Since its official launch last February, SunFi has onboarded over 40 solar system vendors to its platform at various stages of vetting; 10 are its core providers, which have served more than 129 customers. Within the past year, the one-year-old energy startup has deployed more than $600,000 to these customers via its partnerships with financial institutions.
The Nigeria-based energy company provides customers with two payment methods: a lease to own, where after an initial deposit, customers make payments in installments before owing the solar system, and a subscription model, where customers pay to use the solar system monthly. SunFi’s revenues are from the margin on the lease-to-own model and subscription fees from the latter. The company said it is working on a third revenue stream where it will assist solar providers with inventory financing.
Some startups already finance solar systems with one or multiple entities, such as Carbon. But Thomas doesn’t regard them as competitors; the same goes for solar system providers. Instead, most of these platforms are partners since they already fill a need in the market and SunFi’s job aggregates them. “Because we have a unique experience having been a solar provider initially and seeing the frustration and challenges of installations in Nigeria, we’ve taken all that technical and credit knowledge to build a system that hopefully works for customers, solar providers and banks,” said the chief executive.
“SunFi also has a portal for the solar provider to log in, track and manage their business of building several types of products to market to customers and get access to financing. Investors have their dashboard to manage their portal to track how their money is spent in terms of being deployed to manage portfolios or retail customers. So we’re built as a fintech for the clean tech space, which doesn’t exist in Nigeria.”
The SunFi team. Image Credits: SunFi
The clean tech with fintech features will be looking to enhance its platform over the next 12-18 months with this financing. It also intends to convert more than 4,000 customers within that same time frame as the 29-person team continues to grow. The clean tech is in talks to raise additional third-party capital, most likely debt, from commercial banks and other financing partners to channel that money through the system and finance all the energy platform’s demands to take care of this year.
“SunFi has the ability to transform the way clean energy is accessed by households and businesses across Nigeria by creating a marketplace of clean energy products combined with flexible payment options — all of which are personalized to the customer’s financial and energy needs,” said Lyndsay Holley-Handler, partner and chief venture builder at Factor[e] on the investment. “Platforms like these have unlocked access to clean energy in other markets but don’t yet exist in Africa. This type of innovation and disruption is why we decided to be part of SunFi’s journey…”
SunFi aims to be the fastest way for Nigerians to find, finance and manage solar by Tage Kene-Okafor originally published on TechCrunch
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