Solar plus storage prices plunge, Spruce raises $50 million: pvMB 05/17/19

It’s a good time to be in solar power, especially with Friday’s brief as California has approved NeoVolta’s home battery, 16.5 MW of community solar moves forward in Minnesota, and pricing for polysilicon, cells and modules stayed relatively flat last week.

May 17, 2019 Christian Roselund

Spruce raises another $50 million – “Spruce Finance, a leading owner and operator of distributed generation solar and residential energy assets in the U.S., announced it has received a $50 million equity investment from its owner HPS Investment Partners”. Source: Spruce Finance

Nokomis, Excelsior Energy Capital to partner on 16.5 MW community project in MN – Excelsior Energy Capital and Nokomis have announced a partnership on a 16.5 MW community solar project to be located in Minnesota, with construction set to begin this quarter. Source: Excelsior Energy Capital

US solar-plus-storage prices plunge in utility contracting surge (above image): “Contracting activity for what one project developer, AES Corp., has called “PV peakers” has taken off in the southwestern U.S., for both PPAs and utility-owned projects. This trend is most apparent in Hawaii and the western U.S., where multiplying solar-plus-storage power purchase agreements, or PPAs, reflect a maturing class of competitively priced peak-power assets, according to an S&P Global Market Intelligence review of state regulatory filings, publicly available contracts and independent analysis.” Source: S&P Global

California Energy Commission approves NeoVolta’s new home battery – “NeoVolta Inc. has received approval from the California Energy Commission to connect its NV14 home energy storage system to California’s state regulated electricity grid. Approval immediately opens NeoVolta’s energy storage solutions to California’s existing 940,000 solar installations that generate nearly 17 percent of all of California’s electricity. By storing energy instead of sending it back to the grid, consumers can protect themselves against blackouts and avoid expensive nighttime ‘peak’ rates charged by the utility companies when solar isn’t producing.” Source: NeoVolta

Some manufacturers of solar modules have suggested that increased demand from China will push module prices up 15% in the second half of 2019, for now though, pricing is flat:

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