Energy Weekly Review 2026-05-22

Week In Review

The defining theme this week was capital and policy moving from rhetoric into firm commitments. The U.S. Department of Energy distributed $94 million across eight Tier 2 awards to push Generation III+ small modular reactors toward construction-ready status, while Holtec signed a development agreement with Rwanda’s Atomic Energy Board for up to five gigawatts of SMR-300 capacity. Public markets piled on as well, with Deep Fission filing for a $150 million IPO on a novel borehole-sited reactor design. Three years ago none of these things would have been considered investable on this timeline.

Long-duration storage shed its “promising lab project” framing this week and shipped commercial product. Antora and POET commissioned a 5 GWh solid-carbon thermal battery in South Dakota — among the largest thermal storage installations in the world. Ford’s new battery subsidiary committed to up to 20 GWh of BESS deliveries to EDF Power Solutions over five years. In Inner Mongolia, China’s first commercial-scale renewable-to-hydrogen hybrid plant approached grid connection, pairing a 90 MW battery system with 10 MW of electrolyzer capacity to absorb wind and solar curtailment.

On the photovoltaic side, two new efficiency records arrived within days of each other. A team publishing in Matter pushed certified perovskite-silicon tandem efficiency to 32.89% using a peak-selective passivation strategy, while Tokyo City University set a 25.14% world record for the perovskite-CIGS tandem architecture. Both results matter not because they push the absolute ceiling — silicon tandems sit closer to 35% — but because they demonstrate manufacturable routes toward the 30%-plus regime that would reshape utility-scale economics.

Two analyst-grade reports framed where the larger arc points. The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation argued that advanced geothermal — Enhanced, Advanced, and Superhot Rock variants — is becoming widely available, clean, and potentially cheap enough to be a significant contributor to the U.S. mix. BloombergNEF’s New Energy Outlook 2026 projected solar will become the world’s single largest source of electricity within six years, and that storage will grow seventeen-fold by 2035. The week’s deployments and records are the concrete first steps along that curve.

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DOE Awards $94 Million to Accelerate Light-Water SMR Deployment

The U.S. Department of Energy announced selections for eight companies to receive cost-shared funding aimed at clearing the licensing, supply-chain, and site-preparation bottlenecks that stand between Generation III+ small modular reactors and breaking ground. The Tier 2 awards follow Tier 1 selections in December for first-of-a-kind projects in Tennessee and Michigan, and target deployment in the 2030s.

The single largest award — $27.86 million — went to Nebraska Public Power District to pursue an NRC-approved Early Site Permit for a Nebraska location. Constellation SMR Development received $17.26 million for an Early Site Permit in New York. BWXT Nuclear Energy was awarded $21.42 million to procure equipment for its Mount Vernon, Indiana facility, which will perform final assembly of reactor pressure vessels — addressing one of the supply-chain pinch points that has historically slowed U.S. nuclear builds.

Other recipients include Container Technologies Industries, Framatome U.S. Government Solutions, Global Nuclear Fuel Americas, American Forgemasters, and Scot Forge — a list that telegraphs the breadth of the SMR industrial base the program is trying to stand up. Forged components for reactor pressure vessels and steam generators have for decades been a single-source bottleneck centered in Japan and South Korea.

Source: U.S. Department of Energy

Holtec and Rwanda Sign Development Agreement for SMR-300 Deployment

Rwanda signed a civil nuclear cooperation agreement with the United States and a separate development agreement with Holtec International to evaluate deployment of the SMR-300 pressurized water reactor — potentially scaling to roughly five gigawatts of capacity over time. Rwanda’s stated target is to have its first SMR operational in the early 2030s, an aggressive timeline for a country with no current nuclear infrastructure.

The SMR-300 produces approximately 300 MW of electrical power, or 1,050 MW of thermal power for industrial process heat applications. Holtec’s near-term focus under the agreement is technical and feasibility work — site assessment, technology maturation, and grid integration analysis — rather than construction commitment, which is the appropriate sequencing for a first-of-a-kind country deployment.

The deal slots into a broader pattern of African nations seeking firm low-carbon power to underpin industrialization without locking into multi-decade coal or gas commitments. Rwanda is roughly the size of Maryland but with a population approaching 14 million; its current grid is dominated by hydro and methane from Lake Kivu, both of which face structural growth limits. SMRs offer a path to firm baseload that scales in 300 MW units rather than the 1+ GW blocks that dominate the legacy reactor catalog.

Source: World Nuclear News

Antora and POET Commission 5 GWh Thermal Battery in South Dakota

Antora Energy and POET, the largest U.S. biofuels producer, brought online a 5 gigawatt-hour solid-carbon thermal battery system at POET’s bioethanol facility in Big Stone City, South Dakota. The deployment ranks among the largest thermal energy storage projects worldwide and represents the first commercial-scale integration of Antora’s technology at a U.S. biofuels facility — a sector with steady, predictable industrial heat demand and ample land for storage modules.

The system uses more than 200 individual thermal batteries that store electricity as heat in insulated solid-carbon blocks at temperatures above 1,500°C. Heat is extracted on demand for process applications. Construction took under 12 months from groundbreaking to first delivery, a tempo more typical of natural gas peakers than first-of-a-kind storage installations.

The economics depend on an innovative electric rate approved by the South Dakota Public Utilities Commission, allowing the system to charge selectively during periods of low-priced surplus generation from regional wind. Otter Tail Power serves as the utility partner. This rate design — exposing storage to real-time wholesale prices rather than averaging them out — is a quietly important policy template that may be more replicable than the headline gigawatt-hour figure.

Source: Business Wire

Ford Energy and EDF Sign Up to 20 GWh BESS Framework

Ford’s newly formed energy storage subsidiary, Ford Energy, signed a five-year framework agreement with EDF Power Solutions North America under which the utility-scale developer can procure up to 4 GWh annually — totalling up to 20 GWh — of containerized battery systems. Deliveries are expected to begin in 2028.

Ford Energy’s product is the DC Block, a standardized 20-foot containerized BESS built around 512 Ah lithium iron phosphate prismatic cells. The pivot leverages Ford’s existing automotive battery supply relationships and manufacturing footprint — most directly, the company’s stake in the BlueOval SK joint venture and adjacent investments in LFP cell capacity. Ford has committed roughly $2 billion over the next two years to scale the new business, targeting 20 GWh of annual production capacity.

For automakers facing slower-than-expected EV adoption curves, stationary storage is increasingly attractive: same cell chemistry, similar pack-level engineering, but a customer base of utilities and IPPs that buys on multi-year purchase orders rather than quarterly retail demand. The EDF framework is notably not a binding offtake — it is an option to procure — but it nevertheless gives Ford Energy a credible launch customer in a market where utility-scale buyers prefer suppliers with proven volume commitments.

Source: pv magazine USA

Perovskite-Silicon Tandem Solar Cell Reaches 32.89% Certified Efficiency

A team of Chinese researchers reported in Matter a perovskite-silicon tandem solar cell with 32.89% certified efficiency, achieved through what the authors describe as a peak-selective passivation strategy. Passivation — chemically saturating defect sites at film surfaces and grain boundaries — has been one of the central engineering levers for perovskite efficiency improvements, but tradeoffs between passivation strength and carrier extraction have historically capped its effectiveness.

The peak-selective approach targets passivation chemistry only at the specific energy levels where defect states accumulate, rather than blanket coverage that suppresses both defects and useful charge transport. The result is improved both efficiency and operational stability — a combination that has historically been hard to optimize jointly. The current world record for this cell type sits at approximately 35%, leaving room for the silicon-based tandem family to extend further before manufacturing-driven efficiency loss becomes the limiting factor.

The economic significance is straightforward: silicon-only modules are bumping against ~27% practical efficiency, and incremental gains there require disproportionate effort. Tandems are the most plausible commercial route to the 30%-plus efficiency regime, which translates to lower balance-of-system costs per installed watt — the dominant share of total project costs in modern utility-scale solar.

Source: Tech Xplore

Tokyo City University Sets 25.14% World Record for Perovskite-CIGS Tandem

A separate Japanese team at Tokyo City University set a certified world record of 25.14% power conversion efficiency for a tandem solar cell pairing a top perovskite layer with a bottom cell based on copper, indium, gallium, and selenium (CIGS). The result was certified by Japan’s National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST).

CIGS-based tandems remain a less-explored architecture than the silicon-based variants but offer real advantages: CIGS is a thin-film technology with bandgap tunable through composition, allowing the bottom cell to be optimized for the spectrum the top perovskite layer leaves unabsorbed. CIGS is also flexible, light, and amenable to roll-to-roll manufacturing — properties that matter for building-integrated photovoltaics, vehicle integration, and other applications where rigid silicon panels are awkward.

The 25.14% figure is well below the silicon-tandem state of the art, but it represents meaningful progress for an architecture whose long-term ceiling is structurally different. A mature CIGS-tandem manufacturing line would not compete head-on with utility-scale silicon farms; it would open form factors silicon cannot occupy efficiently. The continued march of perovskite-based tandems across multiple bottom-cell platforms — silicon, CIGS, all-perovskite — signals an underlying technology platform rather than a single demonstration.

Source: pv magazine International

China’s First Commercial Renewable-to-Hydrogen Hybrid Storage Plant Nears Launch

A 100 MW / 400 MWh hybrid storage project in Huade County, Inner Mongolia approached commercial commissioning this week, billed as China’s first integrated battery-plus-hydrogen storage facility at this scale. The architecture pairs 90 MW / 360 MWh of electrochemical battery storage — sized for second-level frequency regulation and short-duration arbitrage — with 10 MW / 40 MWh of hydrogen-based storage designed for longer-duration absorption of surplus renewable generation.

The design directly addresses the renewable curtailment problem that has worsened as China’s wind and solar fleets have outpaced grid build-out, particularly in the windy and sun-rich provinces of the north and northwest. Curtailment rates in some regions have run as high as 15-20% historically; pairing fast batteries with slower hydrogen electrolysis allows the system to absorb both predictable surplus and short-duration overgeneration events.

Hybrid battery-hydrogen architectures remain an unsettled question economically. Hydrogen round-trip efficiency through electrolysis and fuel cells is roughly 35-40%, compared with 85%+ for lithium-ion batteries — meaning hydrogen storage is rarely cost-competitive for diurnal cycling. Its value emerges in the multi-day or seasonal regimes where battery degradation and capital costs make pure lithium systems uneconomic. Huade is a real-world test of where that crossover sits at commercial scale.

Source: Fuel Cells Works

ITIF Report: Advanced Geothermal Is Widely Available, Clean, and Maybe Cheap Enough

The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation published a substantial assessment arguing that three advanced geothermal technologies — Enhanced Geothermal Systems (EGS), closed-loop Advanced Geothermal Systems (AGS), and Superhot Rock (SHR) — are positioned to move geothermal from a niche resource into a significant contributor to the U.S. energy mix. The report builds on the past two years of Fervo Energy’s demonstrated cost reductions at Project Red and Cape Station, and Eavor’s commercial AGS startup in Germany.

The key technical claim is that horizontal drilling and hydraulic stimulation techniques borrowed from the shale industry have made geothermal viable in geological regimes previously considered inaccessible — roughly the western half of the United States rather than the narrow band of natural hydrothermal resources around Yellowstone and the Cascades. This expands addressable resource by orders of magnitude.

The economic argument is more contested. Fervo’s published per-MWh costs have fallen sharply with experience, but the technology is still in the early-deployment phase where surprises tend to drive costs upward as projects scale. The ITIF analysis frames advanced geothermal as a credible competitor to advanced nuclear for the firm, clean baseload role — particularly for the rapidly growing AI data center segment that drove Fervo’s recent IPO demand. Superhot Rock geothermal, which targets temperatures above 400°C and could enable supercritical operation, remains pre-commercial but is the technology with the steepest potential cost curve.

Source: Information Technology and Innovation Foundation

BloombergNEF New Energy Outlook 2026: Solar to Become Largest Electricity Source

BloombergNEF released its 2026 New Energy Outlook, the analyst shop’s flagship long-term modeling exercise. The headline finding: solar will become the world’s single largest source of electricity within roughly six years, driven by a major supply glut, continuing technology cost declines, and falling installed prices. The outlook also raised projections for battery storage deployment, with global capacity expected to grow seventeen-fold from 223 GW in 2025 to 3.8 TW by 2035.

The supply glut framing is important context. Chinese polysilicon, wafer, cell, and module capacity now exceeds global demand by a wide margin, and the resulting price compression has pushed module prices to historic lows. This has crushed manufacturer margins but accelerated installation economics worldwide, particularly in markets without protective tariffs. The NEO models that price environment forward rather than betting on a near-term consolidation.

For storage, the 17x growth figure implies roughly 360 GW of annual additions in the early 2030s — more than 20x current global rates. This requires both manufacturing capacity expansion that is largely already announced or under construction, and grid interconnection processes that scale to absorb the systems. The interconnection queue backlog, particularly in PJM and ERCOT, is currently the binding constraint in the U.S. market rather than capital availability or cell supply.

Source: BloombergNEF

Deep Fission Files for $150M IPO on Underground Reactor Design

Deep Fission, the California-based nuclear startup, filed an S-1 with the SEC for an initial public offering targeting up to $150 million in gross proceeds and a valuation of roughly $1.66 billion. The company’s pitch is unusual: small modular reactors placed in boreholes approximately one mile underground, with the hydrostatic pressure from a mile-deep water column substituting for the heavy steel pressure vessels and containment structures that dominate conventional reactor cost.

The Gravity Nuclear Reactor concept reuses several existing technologies — borehole drilling from the oil-and-gas industry, heat exchangers from geothermal, and standard pressurized water reactor fuel chemistry. The underground siting is meant to address both the capital cost and the public siting challenges that have dominated nuclear deployment economics. The design has not yet been licensed by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and the company is years away from operating hardware.

Deep Fission joins a growing list of nuclear startups going public on unproven technology and large promised payoff timelines, including X-energy’s recent $1 billion upsized IPO and several smaller listings. The capital market thesis is that AI-driven electricity demand justifies aggressive funding even for high-risk technology bets, on the theory that some fraction will succeed and reshape the firm low-carbon power market. Whether that thesis survives a less-friendly capital environment is the open question — but for now, the IPO market is open to nuclear and is rewarding novel approaches.

Source: Axios