r/Renewable

The Esmeralda 7 development would have been the largest solar farm in the U.S. But it was sited on federal land, so it needed an OK from the Trump admin.

Esmeralda 7 was unique for its size: It would have installed 6.2 gigawatts of solar generation and 5.2 gigawatts of battery capacity across 62,300 acres of Nevada desert. No other solar project in the U.S. comes close to that scale. It was also a test case for a new, more efficient approach to federal permitting, one that promised to get clean energy infrastructure built more quickly.

Fortescue has long argued that the switch to wind, solar, battery storage and electric trucks and other mining equipment has been an economic necessity as well as an environmental one. This electrification will provide them with a long term cost advantage over their competitors forcing others to electrify to stay competitive. This is going to happen very rapidly across many industries not just mining.

Fortesque is quite amazing, building the largest off grid renewable energy system with auto lifting wind turbines and automated solar piling and module racking systems that can install panels at scale and at speed. GW of solar, GW of BESS, 100s MW wind.

China’s offshore wind-powered underwater data centre just went live, here’s why the governance gap matters more than the technology
China switched on the world’s first underwater data centre powered by offshore wind in late May 2026, off Shanghai. A US startup, Aikido Technologies, is developing a similar concept in the North Sea, embedding compute inside floating wind turbine ballast tanks, with a potential UK project by 2028.
The engineering case is genuinely interesting: offshore wind provides the power, cold seawater handles cooling for free, and the whole operation avoids the community opposition that has blocked $64 billion in land-based projects in under a year (Gallup found 71% of Americans oppose data centres in their local area).
But a University of Warsaw legal scholar found that underwater data centres fall into a genuine gap in international law, no clear liability framework, no agreed environmental standards.
This is a familiar pattern in industrial history. New technology gets deployed at speed because the people funding it want returns sooner rather than later, and the full consequences only become clear once policy is forced to catch up.

I'm a final-year renewable energy engineering student looking for a project that's actually meaningful instead of another typical PV optimization or hybrid system.

Some ideas I've been considering are:

• Investigating new materials/coatings so wind turbines themselves can harvest solar energy (not just attaching conventional PV panels).
• Using wind turbine towers or other structural parts as solar collectors.
• Developing multifunctional surfaces that combine structural and energy-harvesting roles.
• Looking for overlooked design assumptions in wind, solar, or thermal systems rather than just optimizing existing ones.

I also have a strong interest in nuclear energy and think it has huge long-term potential, but my country doesn't currently have nuclear power plants, so it doesn't seem very feasible as a final-year project.

Which of these ideas sounds the most promising? More importantly, are there any overlooked research directions or engineering concepts that you think deserve much more attention and could make for a strong final-year project?

I'm looking for ideas that are practical enough for a university project but also have genuine research potential rather than small incremental improvements.

Hi All, I run a tokenization company that tokenizes solar energy generation data. There are a few companies in this arena now. I founded my company in 2025. I focus on decentralized solar projects in the USA. I’ve worked in the solar energy industry for 15 years but only the blockchain world the last year. Any advice on building a community, launching tokens and marketing? Also, I’ve explored REC/Carbon Credits and even doing the electricity. I may develop that further and have a vision for it but right now I’m tokenizing solar generation as Outflow tokens. 1 mwh = 1 Outflow token. I’ve circled the idea of saying their RECs (since my system owners own their RECs) but I’m concerned about certain claims I’m making even if it’s in the voluntary market. My concern was double counting. I still might pivot back to RECs instead of collectibles. It’s more of a story to own a piece of Americas solar energy history and Americas transition towards renewable energy. I capture that history and create Outflow tokens with it. Also, I make art from the solar projects too. The NFTs hold the tokens and mint historical solar generation and future generation to come. The Outflow tokens can then trade on DEX. I just relaunched the Outflow tokens this week and have 4,000~ solar panels under pilot agreement. About 10 mwh tokenized as of today though. Let me know what you think.