powering on

Houston firm's portfolio co. goes online with solar, energy storage facility in Nevada

Primergy says Gemini is the biggest solar-and-storage duo in the U.S. Photo via primergysolar.com

A portfolio company of Quinbrook Infrastructure Partners, an energy-focused investment manager with U.S. offices in Houston and New York, has flipped the switch on its solar power and battery energy storage system in Nevada’s Mojave Desert.

The portfolio company, Oakland, California-based Primergy Solar, says its Gemini Solar + Storage project near Las Vegas is now fully operational.

Gemini’s 1.8 million solar panels can generate up to 690 megawatts of power, enough to meet 10 percent of Nevada’s peak power demand. The panels are paired with 380 megawatts of four-hour battery storage.

“Gemini creates a blueprint for holistic and innovative clean energy development at mega scale, and we are proud to have brought this milestone project to life and to have delivered so many positive impacts across job creation, environmental stewardship, and local community engagement,” David Scaysbrook, co-founder and managing partner of Quinbrook, says in a news release.

Primergy says Gemini is the biggest solar-and-storage duo in the U.S.

“Achieving full commercial operations marks a significant technical and financial milestone for our team. We successfully navigated challenging supply chain and inflation issues through proactive planning and collaboration to bring this project online,” Primergy CEO Ty Daul says.

Primergy develops, owns, and operates utility-scale solar power and battery storage projects across the U.S. It manages projects in several U.S. energy markets, including the one served by the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT).

As Gemini was taking shape, Primergy and Quinbrook closed on $1.9 billion in debt and tax equity financing for construction and development.

In October 2022, APG, the largest pension asset manager in the Netherlands, acquired a 49 percent ownership stake in Gemini on behalf of pension fund client ABP.

In April 2024, the remaining 51 percent share of the project was acquired by the $600 million Quinbrook Valley of Fire Fund. Funds associated with Blackstone Strategic Partners and Ares Management Infrastructure Secondaries were the lead investors.

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A View From HETI

Researchers from Rice University say their recent findings could revolutionize power grids, making energy transmission more efficient. Image via Getty Images.

A new study from researchers at Rice University, published in Nature Communications, could lead to future advances in superconductors with the potential to transform energy use.

The study revealed that electrons in strange metals, which exhibit unusual resistance to electricity and behave strangely at low temperatures, become more entangled at a specific tipping point, shedding new light on these materials.

A team led by Rice’s Qimiao Si, the Harry C. and Olga K. Wiess Professor of Physics and Astronomy, used quantum Fisher information (QFI), a concept from quantum metrology, to measure how electron interactions evolve under extreme conditions. The research team also included Rice’s Yuan Fang, Yiming Wang, Mounica Mahankali and Lei Chen along with Haoyu Hu of the Donostia International Physics Center and Silke Paschen of the Vienna University of Technology. Their work showed that the quantum phenomenon of electron entanglement peaks at a quantum critical point, which is the transition between two states of matter.

“Our findings reveal that strange metals exhibit a unique entanglement pattern, which offers a new lens to understand their exotic behavior,” Si said in a news release. “By leveraging quantum information theory, we are uncovering deep quantum correlations that were previously inaccessible.”

The researchers examined a theoretical framework known as the Kondo lattice, which explains how magnetic moments interact with surrounding electrons. At a critical transition point, these interactions intensify to the extent that the quasiparticles—key to understanding electrical behavior—disappear. Using QFI, the team traced this loss of quasiparticles to the growing entanglement of electron spins, which peaks precisely at the quantum critical point.

In terms of future use, the materials share a close connection with high-temperature superconductors, which have the potential to transmit electricity without energy loss, according to the researchers. By unblocking their properties, researchers believe this could revolutionize power grids and make energy transmission more efficient.

The team also found that quantum information tools can be applied to other “exotic materials” and quantum technologies.

“By integrating quantum information science with condensed matter physics, we are pivoting in a new direction in materials research,” Si said in the release.

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