SteveKLord

BRAINERD — The nonprofit group Solar United Neighbors announced the launch of the Fields and Forest Solar Co-op to help northcentral Minnesota residents go solar together.

The co-op is an opportunity for homeowners and small businesses in Cass, Crow Wing, Morrison, Todd and Wadena counties to learn about solar energy and if it is right for them.

“If you’ve ever thought about going solar, now’s your chance,” said John Anderson, Minnesota program director for Solar United Neighbors, in a news release. “As energy costs continue to climb, going solar is a way to get a handle on your electric bill by taking control of where your energy comes from.”

The solar co-op is free to join and open to homeowners and business owners in the five-county region. Together, solar co-op members will learn about solar energy and leverage their numbers to purchase individual solar systems at a competitive price and top quality.

Jigar Shah, the former director of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Loan Programs office, maintains that scaling virtual power plants is the quickest way for state leaders to stabilize electric rates, in a report he co-authored with Deploy Action Executive Director Arnab Pal, published by Deploy Action.

The report, which describes virtual power plants as aggregations of distributed energy resources such as electric vehicles, distributed batteries and smart thermostats, says they can be deployed “within months, not years.” VPPs can shift some electricity consumption to non-peak hours, and a VPP’s batteries can help serve remaining peak demand. As a result, there is less need for costly new generating capacity.

The report cites a virtual power plant “liftoff” study, published by the U.S. Department of Energy, which found that scaling VPPs three to five times by 2030 to reach 80 to 100 GW of enrolled capacity could serve 10% to 20% of peak load and save power systems $10 billion per year. Shah presented those findings at the 2023 RE+ conference.

I am going to tell you that all genuine revolutions are built on the same basic foundation, but you shouldn’t believe anyone who makes sweeping generalizations like that.

I am going to tell you that all genuine revolutions are built by local decisionmaking bodies (councils, let’s call them) that then network or federate together to build a larger, revolutionary society.

And I’ll start with the saddest example I can think of.

All power to the soviets.

More than a quarter of US electricity came from renewable sources in 2025, up from 10% the prior year, the EIA found. Solar and wind, both of which lost their federal tax credits last year and have been frequent targets of US President Donald Trump’s broadsides, remained the fastest-growing electricity source in the country. Although a surge in energy demand has driven up power generated from fossil fuels, renewables are accelerating beyond those gains, mostly for economic reasons. The cost of photovoltaic panels, wind turbines, and grid-scale batteries has fallen low enough that building new renewable capacity remains cheaper than most alternatives, with or without government subsidies. Investors have evidently caught on: Nearly 80% of the power plant capacity planned over the next decade is tied to renewable sources.

As utility bills climb and contribute to broader cost-of-living challenges across the United States, legislators see the portable tech as an affordability tool. It literally empowers people, said New York Assemblymember Emily Gallagher, a Democrat who in September introduced a bill to pave the way for small-scale solar.

“People are extremely enthusiastic about it,” noted Gallagher, a renter who longs for a plug-in system of her own.

An 800-watt unit that costs $1,099 is capable of powering a fridge or a few small appliances for a sunny fraction of the day. That’s enough power to reduce bills for a New York household by $279 per year on average, Gallagher said. Assuming utility costs continue to rise, those savings could increase to $327 per year by 2035.

Plug-in solar is already booming in Europe. As many as 4 million households in Germany have installed the systems, which people can order through Ikea.

But in the U.S., outside of Utah, the tech is stuck in regulatory limbo. While the systems aren’t illegal, utilities often require users to sign an interconnection agreement before plugging in solar — just as they would for a large rooftop array. And those agreements can require fees and take weeks to months to get.

Utah did away with that interconnection requirement, so long as a nationally recognized testing laboratory certifies the solar device is safe to use. All the other legislation introduced since would do the same.

“The technology has evolved, and the law hasn’t caught up yet,” Phillips said. Putting up her own system might be ​“an act of solar civil disobedience,” she mused.

Let’s look for a moment at Cuba, which seems like it might well be next on the Trump hit list. The president said yesterday that he was looking for a “friendly takeover” of the island nation, and it’s clear that the tool he’s using is energy: after cutting off Venezuelan supplies, he’s also pressured Mexico to stop sending crude to Havana. As a result, he explained, “They have no money. They have no anything right now.”

As it happens, I went to Cuba to do some reporting the last time the country was in such a fix, following the collapse of the Soviet Union and with it Havana’s economic lifeline. In those days the country’s biggest problem was food, and it survived in part with a fairly remarkable turn towards urban agriculture. I was endlessly impressed with the Cubans I met who were learning how to grow the food their neighbors needed, even as I was depressed by the police state they were inhabiting.

Now the overwhelming problem is energy, and it’s here that something else quite profound has been happening: an almost unbelievable surge in the production of solar power.

A new copolymer-based battery developed by researchers at Ulm and Jena universities in Germany stores energy from sunlight for days and can release it when required as green hydrogen. The battery is rechargeable, and the charge and discharge process can be activated by flipping a pH switch, a press release said.

With the focus on switching away from fossil fuels, countries are adopting large-scale solar and wind power plants. However, for applications requiring higher energy density, hydrogen is a more viable alternative. It can be burnt, much like a fossil fuel, but produces only water as a byproduct, offering a carbon-free solution for energy-intensive applications.

One of the most popular solarpunk images is taking off in reality. The first recorded mention of solarpunk was in this 2008 blog. The author was inspired by the conceptual image of a cargo ship being pulled by a huge modern kite.

Following on from that the Jessica Woulfe’s artwork depicting blimp turbines (pictured above) won the Atomhawk solarpunk art competition in 2019. Since then Airborne Wind Energy Systems or AWES (love this acronym!) have become some of the most popular solarpunk imagery.

Many have thought this was just a protopian dream but as Matt Ferell explored in this recent video, AWES are getting much closer to reality. As Matt explains, a flying turbine has been successfully deployed by the company Kitepower in Ireland, poweringing the local town of Bangor.

Join us to playtest The Stellar Lunarpunk TTRPG (Table-Top Roleplaying Game) where you find yourself in 2061, in a world where the climate crisis was solved but many social and political issues remain. Choose a Lunarpunk Tarot Card and improvise with your fellow players towards a utopic ending for your chosen setting. Please be 18+! (You may not have time to read all the material, that is expected! We will introduce you!)

​We charge £1 to verify your adulthood and return it at the start of our events unless you want to help compensate the event marketing emissions NOT MANDATORY (event itself Carbon Neutral when combined with Ecosia). If you have a Fastfrwrd.info account, we will give you a "Verified Adult" checkmark!

Game link: https://fastfrwrd.info/the-stellar-%c2%a4-lunarpunk-ttrpg-%e2%98%86/

​Details: The Stellar explores themes of modern day philosophy, futurology, psychology, ecology, magic and romance. Some language, an explicit story book only suitable for 18+ audiences and mentions of alternative history that can be indelicate if improperly handled.

​Campaign: Using The Stellar TTRPG game app on the Fastfrwrd site, you will improvise your way turn by turn with other participants toward a utopic ending. Spectator seats available too! No sign up or download for the site required.

​Technicalities: You need a phone for picking cards so it is ideal to do the video conference on your laptop and pick cards on mobile.

​Ecology and Impact: We will need to compensate the emissions caused by advertising the event on Luma which is not Carbon Neutral according to our knowledge. The event will be carried out on a super ecological video conferencing service, Crewdle Connect.

Our tree-planting partner charges $0.35 USD per tree. Divide 71 by 12, you get 5.9 trees for a month of marketing/views. If we want to overcompensate in case some of that money does not go to planting trees, knowing the cost per tree, it would cost $6.19 to triple compensate each event if you help offset through our Trees.org fundraiser page (more secure and you get an invoice), or if 2 people allow us to keep their verification fee instead of returning it then we can buy 6 trees wholesale through our account (reported monthly on our blog under "Fastfrwrd Updates.") NOT MANDATORY

​How much of that you wish to help us compensate so we can keep making great climate games is up to you!

​Calculator link: https://carbonneutralwebsite.org/calculate

​Join the event! Can’t wait to see you there!

The P280 is a 2,048Wh capacity power station built around an array of 4,000+ recharge cycle, automotive-grade LiFePO4 cells that have a 10-year lifespan and a much better safety record than the older Li-ion cells.

This unit can push out 2,800W continuously (and support peak loads up to 5,600W) through its array of ports. It has five AC outlets, four USB-C ports (two rated for 20W max, the other two for 140W max), two 18W max USB-A ports, a 12V car output port, two 12V/3A DC5521 ports, and a single 12V/25A XT-60 port.

That's a total of 15 ports in all, so all your devices -- from your camping refrigerator and CPAP machine to your earbuds and drones -- can get charged up from the one power station.

The AC output is enough to handle pretty much any mains-powered device you want to throw at it, making it a very versatile backup power solution.

The IEA releases a .csv file of global electricity data every month. It lags a bit due to its comprehensive nature, the latest data runs to November 2025. I maintain a dashboard on my website that updates the data every couple of months and looks at the trends.

The database doesn’t capture every country, Russia and North Korea are missing, but it is pretty comprehensive.

The first four plots show:

– Renewables dominate the growth in electricity consumption since 2016 and in the past 12 months;

– That’s not just because big countries are growing their renewables share, although they are. Perhaps the most important feature of the data is that every country is doing the same thing.

Nebula nominations open until 2.28! Hugo nominations now open!

BSFA: Coriander is already long-listed for the British Science Fiction Awards (voting closes 2.19)

lnk.to/BGFAwards