By:
Reporter, Solar Power Portal
On 1 January 2020 – just over a year ago today - the Smart Export Guarantee (SEG) went live. A brand spanking new incentive scheme, the SEG was intended to replace the feed-in tariff (FiT) but with one major difference: this time the rate would be set by energy suppliers, resulting in a wide spread of prices.
To really understand what happened when it was implemented – and the following year of operation – a look at the events from the closure of the FiT to the end of 2019 is required. The small scale solar sector had truly ridden the solarcoaster with the FiT, seeing such a boom that in 2015 the government unveiled sweeping – and at the time execeptionally unpopular – changes that saw a cap introduced to limit how much solar could be installed as well as a proposed reduction from 12.47p/kWh to 1.63p/kWh that was later upped to 4.39p/kWh following a number of industry protests. Whilst this certainly had an impact, with the initial rate
socaltech.com
Aliso Viejo-based utility-scale energy storage project developer
esVolta has received an investment from Macquarie s Green Investment Group (GIG), Macquarie announced this morning. Size of the investment was not announced. According to Macquarie, the investment will support the continued North American expansion of esVolta and finance its portfolio of over 600 MWh of contracted energy storage projects, plus an additional pipeline of more than 2 GWh of projects. Most of esVolta s projects are in California, which is in the midst of rapidly expanding its energy storage efforts to help de-carbonize its energy. esVolta said the deal requires approval of The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. esVolta is one of the companies looking to help California meet its target of 60% renewable power by 2030 and 100% by 2045, which requires energy storage overnight when solar power is not available.