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In the back of Black Seed Bagels in northern Brooklyn is a giant catering kitchen filled with industrial-size condiments and freezers full of dough. A tall, silver electric oven, named the Baconator, stands in a far corner, cooking thousands of pounds of meat every week to accompany Black Seed’s hand-rolled, wood-fired bagels. The Baconator is connected to a battery the size of a carry-on suitcase, which is plugged into the wall. While the morning rush is underway, the 2.8-kilowatt-hour battery can directly power the commercial oven to reduce the company’s reliance on the electric grid, Noah Bernamoff, Black Seed’s co-owner, explained recently at the company’s Bushwick shop. Two more batteries are paired with energy-intensive refrigerators in the front.

Electric Hydrogen is relying on proving out its lower-cost claims to win advantage. The company, which has raised over $600 million, has built a factory in Devens, Massachusetts, to make its electrolyzer stacks — the core parts of the proton exchange membrane (PEM) systems that use electricity to split water into hydrogen and oxygen. It has also partnered with other component manufacturers and engineering firms to streamline and standardize building the many other working parts of a green hydrogen plant — including power conversion, gas processing, water treatment, and thermal management — in a more modular way, Garabedian said. Overall, Electric Hydrogen claims its total installed costs are less than half those of systems using electrolyzers from PEM competitors such as Germany’s Siemens Energy and Thyssenkrupp Nucera, as well as those of lower-cost alkaline electrolysis systems built by Chinese companies, which make up the majority of installed capacity today.

As new technologies consume more power and alternative energy sources become increasingly necessary to fuel Iowans’ lives, Iowa State University researchers are working to create new batteries from accessible materials to store power from variable sources. Steve Martin and Patrick Johnson, both materials science and engineering professors at ISU, have earned a nearly $459,000 grant from the Iowa Energy Center to develop batteries using sodium, waste glass, biochar and sulfur — materials they’ve already tested and found viable.

An unwanted byproduct of North Dakota’s oil field could be the key to unlocking a new industry in the state within the next few years. An international company is proposing to begin extracting lithium, a key component of batteries produced for smartphones and other technology, from produced water by the end of 2027. It’s one of at least four similar projects in development in the state.

The discussions started roughly a decade ago, when an account manager at Xcel Energy, the electricity and gas utility provider, expressed confusion, officials at Colorado Mesa University recalled. A public school on the state’s remote western slope, Colorado Mesa had recently doubled in size, but its energy usage had hardly budged as it began installing an advanced geothermal heating and cooling system. Since its geothermal buildout began in 2008, the university has saved more than $15 million in energy costs, money it has passed on to students through lower tuition and more scholarship funding. Hundreds of boreholes drilled approximately 500 feet beneath athletic fields and parking lots tap low-temperature thermal energy to help heat and cool campus buildings in what is now one of the largest such networks in the nation.

Hitachi Energy has plans to create 825 new jobs at its South Boston facility. With those new jobs comes the need for additional housing in the community. Developers at Monday evening’s Halifax County Board of Supervisors meeting outlined a plan to build 136 new workforce housing units a mile down the road from the Hitachi plant off U.S. 58.

Startup NineDot Energy just raised $431 million to build batteries in New York City’s vacant nooks and crannies — an endeavor that will help the metropolis fend off looming electricity shortages. The debt financing announced Monday will support the Brooklyn firm’s plan to develop 28 battery projects totaling 494 megawatt-hours of energy storage capacity over the next two years. NineDot estimates that’s enough storage to meet the peak energy needs of about 100,000 households.

In December, the Trump administration issued a sweeping stop-work order to every single offshore wind installation underway in America. But, as of today, all five projects have either resumed construction or received the green light from judges to do so. A federal judge ruled Monday that the 924-megawatt Sunrise Wind project, located off the coast of New York, can resume construction. The wind farm is nearly halfway complete and, before the stop-work order, was expected to begin producing electricity this year. Ørsted said in a statement that it will ​“restart impacted activities immediately.”

Sunvapor, Inc. and Southeast New Mexico College (SENMC) have launched the first solar-powered desalination plant at a facility about 10 miles southeast of Carlsbad, the college announced. The pilot project aims to make use of the salty wastewater, called “produced water,” generated during oil extraction.

Today, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced Delta-Montrose Electric Association (DMEA) was one of two Colorado recipients of its Powering Affordable Clean Energy (PACE) program. DMEA was selected to receive a partially forgivable $72 million loan to fund the construction of a 20-megawatt (MW) solar photovoltaic array with an additional 80 megawatt hours (MWh) of battery storage.