Good Morning
What we’re reading this week:Â
Testing ways to deflect the sun (NYT)
The GreendicatorÂ
Top Deals of the Week
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Alsym Energy, a startup developing affordable energy storage solutions, raised a $78M Series C co-led by Tata Limited and General Catalyst(FN)
Torus, a firm specializing in energy storage and management products, raised a $67M round led by Origin Ventures (AX)
Onego Bio, a 1.5-year-old Finnish animal-free egg protein startup, has raised $40 million in Series A funding. The Japanese-Nordic venture capital firm NordicNinja led the investment, joined by Tesi and EIT Food, along with earlier backers Agronomics, Maki.vc, Holdix and Turret, among others. TechCrunch has more here.
OROS Labs, a materials tech company specializing in advanced thermal insulation, raised a $22MÂ Series B led by Airbus Ventures (FN)
Mission Zero, a developer of direct air capture technology, raised a $27.5M Series A from 2150, Breakthrough Energy Ventures, and more (FN)
BurnBot, a startup providing mechanized vegetation management and fuel treatment solutions, raised a $20M Series A led by ReGen Ventures(FN)
Renewable fuels startup Raven SRÂ raised $15M in financing led by Ascent Funds (VC)
Wase, a seven-year-old startup based in Bristol, UK, that harnesses the power of microbes to break down wastewater into biogas, raised a $10.7 million round led by Extantia Capital, withElbow Beach Capital, Empirical Ventures, Engie New Ventures, Hitachi Ventures, and WEPA Ventures also investing. TechCrunch has more here.
Terragia Biofuel, a two-year-old startup based in Hanover, NH, that is developing technology to produce low-cost, low-carbon biofuels from plant-based materials, raised a $6 million seed round. Engine Ventures and Energy Impact Partners co-led the deal. More here.
Ionobell, a seven-year-old San Francisco startup that is using recycled silicon to enhance electric vehicle battery capacity, raised a $3.9 million seed extension. Investors included Dynamo Ventures and Trucks VC. TechCrunch has more here.
Green Theory
Total Eclipse off the Chart
In late summer, 2017, Oregon birds searched the morning sky for their night’s resting place. It was unusually early, if you were looking at a watch, but for those sensing the day’s cycle by sunlight, it sure felt like bedtime.Â
Cows belted their evening moos and laid down for the night, just as birds found the way to their nests. In about ten minutes, the eerie sunny day suddenly switched to night. Though the darkness must have brought a sense of validation to these creatures, they were about to be rudely awakened from the shortest night they’d ever seen.Â
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Just a few minutes later, the starry night sky vanished as the sun rose in a near instant. The nearby animals in Oregon jumped awake, while others in Idaho were only beginning their surprise nighttime routines, as the circadian disruption rolled east out across the continent, disappearing into the Atlantic.Â
This unusual event was none other than a total solar eclipse, where the moon passes between the sun and earth so perfectly that the shadow of the moon falls on us, creating a brief night, midday. Scientists and philosophers have leveraged solar eclipses to advance scientific collaboration and understanding over the generations, but now these moon shadows orchestrate a new science puzzle for which to prepare: how much solar power generation will the moon deny us, on the next total solar eclipse in North America, on Monday, April 8th, 2024?
50 shades of rays
Even though the path of the totality (moon’s full shadow) carves a transcontinental path of only about 70 miles wide, the impacts of the surrounding partial eclipse—stretching coast to coast—will dampen solar production nationwide. Looking at data from recent partial eclipses, and from 2017, we can observe the exact eclipse losses for solar production.Â
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2017 gave US grid operators a relatively recent experience with a total eclipse, but 2024 presents a different challenge in three key ways: capacity growth, direction, and technology.Â
The US consumes about 3 times the amount of solar power as we did in 2017, making this predictable but unusual sunlight interruption all the more important. Eyes point to the Texas grid, which lives on its own interconnection, with fewer options for importing energy, and vast solar resources installed since 2017. Operators say they’re ready for the eclipse, despite the near total loss of solar power that will briefly ensue.
The direction of the eclipse also marks a distinction from 7 years ago. While 2017’s eclipse traveled from west to east, this one will arc from Texas in the southwest, up through Ohio, and finally bend east through New York, Vermont, and New Hampshire. In fact, the two paths make an X that meets in the town of Carbondale, Illinois. But why does the direction matter so much?
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If we take a look at the map of normal solar radiation (above), we see a clear pattern where the further south and west you go, the sunnier it gets. We can create a similar map that illustrates the impacts of a lunar shadow (below), with complete darkness at the center, and unobstructed sun at the farthest edge.Â
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When the eclipse moved within a solar radiation band in 2017 (roughly in a southeastern direction) the shadow caused a disruption that spread more evenly across our range of solar radiation levels, at any given time. This year, the eclipse will start by taking down some of the sunniest states’ solar, and then pick on less and less sunny spots as the day progresses, creating a more dynamic challenge for grid operators.Â
Luckily, a third major change—grid technology—can help further insulate us and our power systems from the shroud of this celestial event. With nimbler methods for sensing energy needs, and more robust markets for moving energy around, grid operators have a larger toolkit, including new forecasting software, to leverage against the moon shadow. From Camus to EnergyHub, there’s tons of players with growing portfolios of demand response and other grid management solutions for operators to choose and learn from.Â
So how much energy are we losing?
First off, unless you’re using an off-grid solar system, you likely won’t notice any change in your eclipse energy supply. Grid operators will ramp up other sources of power, in anticipation of the diminished sunshine, and just like on a cloudy day, the weather will play a role in how much sunlight we are truly denied.Â
![A map of the contiguous U.S. shows the path of the 2024 total solar eclipse stretching on a narrow band from Texas to Maine. A map of the contiguous U.S. shows the path of the 2024 total solar eclipse stretching on a narrow band from Texas to Maine.](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F2c980f2b-9423-4a50-8f64-a4ce857bb3cf_1920x960.png)
With any solar eclipse-ocalypse doomerism out of the way, let’s get down to numbers. Compared to a regular April day, the eclipse is forecasted to drop our solar energy production by about 40 gigawatt hours on April 8th.Â
To put a national, 1-day dip of this size in perspective, that’s nearly as much solar energy as Florida produces in a day, or enough to power all of San Francisco’s electrical needs for about 3 days. In total, this is about 4.5% of the total solar we would have expected the US to harvest and put to use on April 8th, otherwise.Â
Net energy gains
While a solar eclipse is merely an anomaly to a solar panel, and a headache to a grid operator, we can still harness this event for a more renewable future, just by marveling at it.
Even if you’re not in the path of the eclipse totality on Monday, April 8th, there are tons of fun experiments you can perform, and we won’t get as total a chance in the continental US for about 20 years.Â
Whether observing light phenomena outside your place of work, or watching an animal livestream from the comfort of the internet, however you choose to celebrate the eclipse this year, we hope it brings you closer with all living beings, sharing in smallness and celestial reveling, while trying to wisely manage our resources.
The Closer
A Nat Geo photo of the week.