BELECTRIC expanding in the U.S. with two new service agreements – “BELECTRIC has been awarded as the long-term service provider for the preventive and corrective maintenance of solar plants in the US. The solar plants are located in Maryland, Washington DC, Indiana, Michigan and New Jersey. The two portfolios consist of commercial and utility scale ground mounted solar plants as well as rooftop and carport PV plants with a combined capacity of around 53.5 MWp in total. Inovateus Solar is the site manager for a portfolio throughout the Midwest and Northeast with a separate contract adding plants in a regional portfolio around Washington DC and Maryland. Including these plants, BELECTRIC is operating and maintaining a solar portfolio with an installed capacity of 138 MWp in the US.” Source: BELECTRIC
Solar Freedom Bill dies in Virginia – Virginia’s Solar Freedom Bill, also known as HB 2329 (Keam) and as SB 1456 (McClellan and Edwards) has been defeated. The bill was focused on a core of ‘Easy 8’ reforms, which, among other initiatives would have removed the 1% cap on net metered solar and allowed local governments to install solar facilities of up to 5 MW on government-owned property. Both the House and Senate versions were defeated in the Commerce and Labor Committee, with Republicans voting party-line to kill the bills. Source: Power for the People of VA
Sunworks putting up a 1.5 MW solar + storage project at Kingston Technology HQ – Kingston Technology’s Fountain Valley, California headquarters will be receiving a 1.5 MW solar + storage system to be constructed by Sunworks. Construction is expected to commence in mid-2019 and will include a 730kW ballast roof mount system and a 772kW solar carport. The storage aspect will be comprised of 10-30 kW inverters, 10-40 kWh battery banks and control management software. Source: Sunworks
Growatt inverters earn Tigo rapid shutdown – “Tigo Energy, Inc., today announced the new Underwriter Laboratories (UL) certification of its TS4 Platform Rapid Shutdown Systems (RSS) with Growatt, a global provider of residential & commercial inverters. The eleven Growatt inverters listed below were successfully certified with Tigo’s RSS solutions: TS4-F (Fire Safety), TS4-O (Optimization), and TS4-L (Long Strings).” Model numbers 4000 through 40,000 in the MTLP-US line all received the above certification. Source: Tigo Energy
Michigan School adds solar curriculum – Thanks in part to a $15,000 grant, Northside Elementary School will implement a solar curriculum for students in kindergarten through eighth grade to support the education of clean energy. The road to the curriculum began last year, when the school’s A2 STEAM program began fundraising for the installation a rooftop PV system and created the Solar at STEAM Project. The school plans on eventually covering the entire roof with a PV system. As for the educational program, each grade will spend 2-3 weeks researching different energy and sustainability projects that will educate students on solar energy and help grow the school’s garden. Source: The Michigan Daily
“You guys are going to be the ones who fix the mess we made:” Six NY Schools to go solar – “The Steinway school in Astoria will soon be a part of a cohort of solar-powered schools in New York City. On Jan. 30., City Councilman Costa Constantinides announced that solar panels will be installed in the Astoria middle school with construction set to begin this spring. The middle school will the be the first of six schools within the councilman’s district to receive solar panels in an attempt to mitigate the destructive impact of climate change.” Source: The Times Ledger
Pushback over environmental impact of Georgetown University solar project – Residents and environmentalists in Charles County, Maryland are raising concerns that Georgetown University’s proposed 32.5 MW solar farm would do more harm for the environment than good. This is because the project would require the clear-cutting of 240 acres of woodland. It’s interesting that this is the cause for issue for a solar project in Maryland. The state has been known to host uncertainty over solar farms encroaching on land, but the prior issues have been largely over agricultural land rather than forest. Source: The Baltimore Sun
Oh and let’s end the pvMB with some not-so-surprising climate change news, courtesy of David Roberts (No not the Red Sox David Roberts):
https://twitter.com/drvox/status/1090342058731044865
This content is protected by copyright and may not be reused. If you want to cooperate with us and would like to reuse some of our content, please contact: editors@pv-magazine.com.
By submitting this form you agree to pv magazine using your data for the purposes of publishing your comment.
Your personal data will only be disclosed or otherwise transmitted to third parties for the purposes of spam filtering or if this is necessary for technical maintenance of the website. Any other transfer to third parties will not take place unless this is justified on the basis of applicable data protection regulations or if pv magazine is legally obliged to do so.
You may revoke this consent at any time with effect for the future, in which case your personal data will be deleted immediately. Otherwise, your data will be deleted if pv magazine has processed your request or the purpose of data storage is fulfilled.
Further information on data privacy can be found in our Data Protection Policy.