Hello wonderful people, happy Monday and welcome to the pvMB!

The good news is that the world’s largest fund manager, BlackRock, just closed $1 billion of a record $2.5 billion fund dedicated to solar, wind, and energy storage projects. The bad news is that the $2.5 billion fund is a tiny fraction of BlackRock’s $6.96 trillion balance sheet and small change compared to BlackRock’s $17.5 billion investment in coal.

You’re busy, so we keep it simple – only the hardware here folks! Los Angeles simplified its installation requirements, solar+storage install in Vermont, solar walking shoes that spread the force to 1/10th allowable weight, Trina setting bifacial poly records, and polysilicon pricing at the floor!

Tesla was once the unquestioned leader in the residential rooftop market with a market share of around 33 percent, but today, the company is No. 3, and its market share during the first quarter was a little more than 6 percent.

Growing by a third and seeing already one in seven members at 100% renewable electricity, more and more companies are joining RE100 and leading the global switch to renewable energy.

Federal regulators upheld the bifacial solar module import tariff as a public good, and potential protector of irreparable harm against solar developers. Concurrently, the trade courts reviewed the solar module import tariff as a whole, with some groups stating module manufacturing showed success, while solar cell manufacturing hasn’t been helped.

LG Chem and GM have announced an agreement to build a 30 GWh EV battery factory in Lordstown, Ohio which will employ 1,100 people and come online in 2023.

Soltec single axis tracker research shows greater production in a two-in-portrait configuration versus a single module by just over 2%, driven mostly by lower module temperatures as well hardware design adjustments.

Enphase has released training materials and a pre-order page for its home energy storage product – the Ensemble. Here we review the hardware specs and the installation directions.

Happy Thanksgiving y’all, hope you hugged someone this holiday. Friday – means solar hardware (and services!) – Solar Services advertising their inverter and engineering support, Gamechange installing modules really fast with a new clip, Sherin and Lodgen supported their first solar+storage and finance deal, Sungrow+Hanwha+NEXTracker in a Florida install, and a little bit more!

In this op-ed, journalist William Driscoll notes that land across the U.S. generally has at least 70% of the solar potential of land in the desert Southwest, according to data from a federal map. Yet that map needs a different color scheme to better reflect the data, he says.

As a campaign platform, extending renewable energy tax incentives is a vote winner in battleground Congressional districts, regardless of party affiliation, according to a new Global Strategy Group poll.

The Environmental Protection Agency has released data showing the cost per kWh benefit that solar brings to the areas where its health benefits are needed the most. These benefits are based on atmospheric particulate matter reduction benefit assumptions.

In this episode of SunCast, Nico sits down with Green Think Energy founder Mikhail Gofman to discuss the feat of starting a solar design firm while still in graduate school and the future of engineering automation.

Hello wonderful people and welcome to your Thursday pvMB. today we’ve got Savion’s 8 GW project pipeline, Mrs. Butterworth going solar, 3 MW coming to Virginia schools from Standard Solar and more!

National Renewable Energy Lab researchers hourly modeled the whole of the United States, and when more than half of all electricity is coming from solar power, there would be no technical deal killers, but many spring days with free electricity that we would have to learn to use, and a need to financially recognize the predictability and grid stabilizing attributes of solar and storage.

With wide adoption of electric vehicles and heat pumps, Colorado’s least-cost grid would reach 21 GW of solar capacity, 12 GW of wind, and 7 GW of storage by 2040, while electric rates would decline. These modeling results apply to other states as well.

Seven early-stage solar manufacturing firms have won U.S. Department of Energy grants to develop prototypes, which they could use to help attract private investment. DOE’s 21 PV research and development grants may hold more interest for established manufacturers.

Scientists at Princeton have found solar and wind energy offer the added environmental benefit of reducing water usage, by comparison with hydroelectric dams. Their findings, say the researchers, could have a positive impact on groundwater sustainability in drought-prone regions such as California, where they conducted a case study.

DNV GL has released its 2019 Battery Scorecard, looking at various factors weighing on battery degradation, with a focus on the financeability of energy storage projects.