Advanced Energy Perspectives

Solar panels atop a Sam's Club in California.

What a week, huh? The election of President-elect Donald Trump dominated the headlines everywhere – even here on Advanced Energy Perspectives. Click here to read AEE’s memo to the Trump Transition Committee. There’s a lot of uncertainty about what the future holds, but something that hasn’t changed since Tuesday? Advanced energy is on the march. It’s a market that has grown nearly 30% in the U.S. since we started tracking in 2011, and we expect it to keep on growing. Check out these headlines from this week and last to see how AEE members and other companies are making American energy great every day.

This is a guest post from AEE affiliate member Navigant. To learn more about Navigant, click here. To learn more about membership in AEE, click here.

Storage has long been relegated a trend to watch in the next 10 years – but not a trend of today. Until recently, it was considered too immature (in terms of technology) and too expensive (in terms of capital investment) to be a serious contender in the utility space. Over the past two years, however, a slew of megawatt-scale storage plants started coming online to compete in PJM’s fast-response frequency regulation market. This market development has had two positive consequences for storage: It has helped lower lithium-ion battery pricing, and it has piqued the interest of developers. As a result, storage is now.

The election of Donald J. Trump as President of the United States yesterday surprised us at AEE as much as the rest of the business, political, and media world. Nonetheless, this morning, AEE sent a memo to the Trump Transition Committee, outlining AEE’s recommendations for the incoming administration. Notably, the memo to the Trump team was identical to the one AEE would have sent to the Clinton transition group had the election turned out differently. It has always been AEE’s belief that advanced energy should be seen as a nonpartisan opportunity for the United States to lead the world toward a prosperous future running on secure, clean, affordable energy. Technology innovation, customer choice, and economic growth – these are the benefits the advanced energy industry has to offer. To paraphrase President-elect Trump’s campaign slogan: Advanced energy can make American energy great again. Our transition memo spells out how.

This week, on the former set of “Desperate Housewives,” Elon Musk revealed a new Tesla product. This time around he announced the Tesla version of solar installations that look just like roofs. And, as they often do when Musk makes an announcement, both mainstream and industry news media paid attention and tried to contain their enthusiasm. In this week’s news roundup we’ll try to make sense of the Musk hype and the media’s extensive, if cool, reaction.