Morning Brief: solar for South Carolina and batteries for Texas

Also in the brief: SolarEdge is expanding its residential and commercial power optimizer portfolio, Monterey Bay Community Power will help local school districts buy electric buses, L7 Drive has launched an energy management platform and more.

June 10, 2020 Eric Wesoff and Tim Sylvia

South Carolina Electricity & Gas

Utility customers in South Carolina will soon be getting more of their electricity from solar. Central Electric Power Cooperative — the wholesale power aggregator for the state’s cooperatives — and Santee Cooper — one of Central’s suppliers — joined forces in seeking proposals from developers that could produce as much as 500 MW of new solar-generated electricity. Santee Cooper is leading the effort, sending an RFP to 30 solar developers. Contracts will target power projects of 25 to 125 MW, with the developers owning the projects and Santee Cooper and Central purchasing the electric output. Source: WRDW

Broad Reach Power to build 150 MW of battery storage projects across Texas by end of 2020: Broad Reach Power, an energy storage independent power producer based in Houston which owns a three gigawatt portfolio of utility scale solar and energy storage power projects, will build 15 utility-scale battery storage plants near Houston and Odessa by the end of 2020. Each site will contain battery systems capable of storing and distributing up to 10 megawatts of power. Broad Reach was formed in July 2019 and is backed by energy investors EnCap Investments, Yorktown Partners, and Mercuria Energy. Source: Broad Reach

SolarEdge is expanding its residential and commercial power optimizer portfolio. For larger-scale projects, the company is adding two products designed to increase installation flexibility and profitability:

The multi-input M1600 power optimizer for ground-mount installations improves the economic scalability of MLPE in utility PV installations. The new power optimizer has two MPP trackers, connected to four panels in multiples of two rows.
A cost-effective solution for serial arrays, the new P801 power optimizer for 72-cell modules enables the connection to 2 x 72-cell modules rated at up to 800W.
SolarEdge is further strengthening its residential power optimizer portfolio with a wider variety of module connectivity.

On the residential side SolarEdge has added to its offerings the P401 power optimizer that connects to high power 60/72-cell modules up to 400W and 11.75A short circuit current. In addition, the maximum short circuit of the, P405, and P485 power optimizers have been increased to 11A, supporting modules requiring higher input currents. Source: SolarEdge

Monterey Bay Community Power has allocated a total of $1.2 million to incentivize the purchase of electric buses for public schools within Monterey, San Benito and Santa Cruz counties. Monterey Bay Community Power will provide up to $200,000 per bus, for a total of six buses, during the current fiscal year, while also reserving up to $20,000 for charging infrastructure available to applicants in need of a charging station. The program will begin accepting applicants on June 17, 2020. Source: Monterey Bay Community Power

L7 Drive has launched an energy management platform that the company claims enables an ‘Internet of Energy’ by connecting batteries and other energy sources to a secure cloud management platform. The core of the offering is its innovation in battery management, CAN Gateway and an industrial-grade security cloud data processing application, monitoring and controlling batteries within milliseconds. The L7 Drive solution includes the support of advanced battery analytics, e.g. the construction of VPP systems. This also allows for intricate load balancing. Source: L7 Drive

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