It's Wednesday. About 60% of cement's carbon comes out of the limestone itself, which no amount of clean electricity will fix. The other 40% comes from the fire, and one of the world's largest cement makers is about to try running that fire without a flame.
In today's edition:
🧱 Big Story: Firebricks take on a cement calciner
⚡ Quick Hits: a V2G certification first, copper closes in on silver
💰 Capital: $120 million for off-grid data centers
📋 Policy Watch: Philadelphia joins the moratorium list
📊 Chart of the Day: Europe's PPA volume falls
The Big Story
Holcim picks firebrick heat batteries to fire a cement calciner
Boston-based Electrified Thermal Solutions will supply two firebrick heat batteries to Holcim, the companies announced Tuesday, in what chief executive Daniel Stack said will be the first thermal storage feeding heat directly into a cement calciner. The units match the company's first commercial machine in San Antonio, 20 megawatt-hours of heat storage discharging at up to 1,800 degrees Celsius, and come online early next year. Holcim is an investor in Electrified Thermal. The project is announced rather than under construction, and neither company has named the host facility or the cost.
Electrifying high-temperature industrial heat is one of the advanced technologies we are incorporating in our decarbonization strategy, and this deployment allows us to evaluate its potential.
The system runs current through insulated stacks of metal-oxide firebrick, charging on off-peak power and discharging by blowing air across the hot bricks. Calcination needs 900 to 1,500 degrees.
Rondo Energy has run a 33 megawatt-hour thermal battery at a Thai cement plant since November, though it raises steam for a turbine rather than feeding a calciner.
Roughly 60% of cement's emissions come from the limestone reaction itself, so electrified heat addresses the fuel share and leaves the chemistry untouched.
Source: Canary Media
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Quick Hits
Technology milestones from across the grid
Five from across the stack, from a V2G certification first to perovskites under the sea.
UL Solutions launched a certification program for AC bidirectional EV chargers, covering vehicle-to-grid over AC wiring where the car's onboard inverter does the conversion, the missing piece for specifying AC-side V2G. pv magazine USA
Georgia Tech researchers screen-printed copper contacts onto TOPCon cells and averaged 24.14% efficiency against 24.32% for silver controls, on a paste the team said runs on standard production lines. Silver costs around 145 times what copper does. PV Tech
Chinese and Swiss researchers ran perovskite cells 10 metres below the South China Sea and reported about 96% of initial efficiency after 300 days, publishing in Joule. RenewEconomy
The Organization of MISO States paused its annual DER census while it weighs building a centralized DER data-exchange platform for the footprint, a move from counting DERs to plumbing them. RTO Insider
SpaceX is moving gas turbine blade and vane casting in-house at an 830-acre Bastrop, Texas site, claiming it takes up to 18 months out of turbine deployment. Power Engineering
The Capital Stack
$120 million backs a six-month clock on off-grid data center power
Startup TAR raised $120 million to build modular solar-plus-storage plants that power data centers off-grid on a six-month clock, Latitude Media reported, against gas-heavy rivals whose turbine orders stretch years out. Speed is the product, because queues and turbine backlogs set the schedule. Investors were not disclosed.
Source: Latitude Media
Also in the capital stack:
Vantage Data Centers raised $2 billion for early-stage North American portfolio development, on top of roughly $40 billion raised this year. DatacenterDynamics
US community solar drew $370 million in two closings, $260 million to 38 Degrees North from Apterra and $117 million to Generate Capital from MUFG, all in Illinois and New York. PV Tech
Policy Watch
Philadelphia joined the data center moratorium list, with more than 100 people rallying at City Hall on Sept 14 after officials named two sites. TechCrunch
The Scottish Parliament is set to vote on a national moratorium covering data centers of 50 megawatts and above, pausing the largest projects while siting policy catches up. DatacenterDynamics
NYISO proposed a large-load process adding readiness obligations and a non-firm withdrawal service for loads that arrive without new generation behind them. RTO Insider
Chart of the Day
Europe signed 335 MW of PPAs in August, down from 1.1 GW
Announced PPA capacity in Europe fell to roughly 335 megawatts across 14 agreements in August, from 1.1 gigawatts across 24 in July, which Pexapark blamed partly on summer holidays. Prices went the other way, the Euro Composite up 2.2%.
Source: pv magazine · September 15, 2026 · Chart: Pexapark
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