Morning Brief: New events at Intersolar, Nexamp bringing community solar to New Jersey

Nexampt to develop three community projects in New Jersey: Remember those 77 MW of community solar approved in New Jersey just before the new year? We now know who will be developing some of that capacity, as Nexamp reports that the company has been awarded three new projects totaling around 11 MW. Nexamp’s projects are comprised of two 5 MW arrays that will be constructed on a closed Woodbine landfill and a 1.24 MW facility on a rooftop in South Brunswick Township. Source: Nexamp

New events at Intersolar: Intersolar North America announced a lineup of interactive, industry-specific events scheduled to take place on the floor of the San Diego Convention Center expo hall. The new exhibit hall activities include:

• Solar Games 2020 – a live installation competition that spotlights talented installer teams by tasking them with building a residential rooftop solar + storage system in front of a live audience in a stadium setting.
• Dynamic short-form presentations on the show floor in Innovation & Application and Energy Storage theaters, hosted by industry associations (including California Hydrogen Business Council, Solar Energy International, and WRISE) and exhibitors (including Alencon Systems, Everest Solar Systems, and Solahart Industries).
• An Insight Session developed and moderated by pv magazine that invites industry experts to the stage to discuss timely topics, including the solar + storage industry’s ecological footprint and more.
• An informative presentation on the Wood Mackenzie special report titled, “Solar + Energy Storage + e-Mobility: Betting on the New Energy Trifecta” by Ravi Manghani, head of solar at Wood Mackenzie.
• Dynamic keynotes in the General Session by David Hochschild, Chairman of the California Energy Commission, and Danny Kennedy, Chief Energy Officer at New Energy Nexus
• Free happy hours featuring locally-made beer and wine
  Source: Intersolar North America 

Construction begins on 12 MW in Virginia: Ringgold Road is soon to be the home of 12 MW of a solar farm. The project is expected to be completed in May. Two additional projects are being developed alongside and when the three are completed, Danville will become 6% solar powered. Source: ABC 13

$2 million will bring 1.5 MW to an Arkansas school district: “The Stuttgart School District in Arkansas County will partner with solar energy developer Scenic Hill Solar in Little Rock to build two solar power plants that will meet 100% of the school district’s electricity demand. Combined, the 1.5-megawatt solar project can produce more than 2.5 million kilowatt-hours of renewable energy annually. A 1.3-megawatt plant will include a single-axis tracking system and be built in Stuttgart, and a 200-kilowatt plant will be built near the school district’s main campus. The more than $2 million project is expected to be completed in the fourth quarter of 2020. Construction of the power plants is expected to start in the second quarter of 2020.” Source: ABC 7

Demand fee causes 33% drop in East Kansas solar installations: “The number of customers seeking to connect solar panels in eastern Kansas plunged in the year after the region’s utility placed a new fee on solar customers. Evergy, the state’s largest electric utility, instituted a demand fee on residential solar customers in October 2018. The customers now pay an additional charge each month based on their peak electricity use during a billing period. A spokesperson for Evergy said the company had received 201 solar interconnection requests in 2019 through the end of October. That put it on pace to finish the year down by more than a third from 2018, when it received 385 requests.” Source: Energy News