Morning Brief: Nextracker rebrands, Stem signs a storage management contract

The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee Tuesday approved Energy Under Secretary Mark Menezes’ nomination as deputy secretary. Source: RTO Insider

Citing the evolution that the company has gone through in the last five years, Nextracker has decided to rebrand. The company has moved from a logo that had a tracker embedded in the typography to one with a newly separated brandmark. According to a release touting the change: “The circular mark captures the arc of the sun’s movement above—our when—and earth—our where—below, transected by a powerful slash that suggests a solar module and the strength of the steel and concrete structures that buttress our tracker systems.” Nextracker has also changed the company’s logotype (how the word Nextracker is displayed). Previously, the first half of the word “NEXTracker” was capitalized in written usage, but that is no more. The company calls this change an allusion to smart software and sophisticated analytics producing the clearest insights. Source: Nextracker

Stem has been awarded an exclusive contract to provide its intelligent software for managing a portfolio of storage assets owned in partnership by SK E&S and SUSI Partners. The portfolio consists of 345 MWh and adds 25 new commercial and municipal Southern California Edison customers in the Los Angeles area. This brings Stem’s operating portfolio to 1,000 systems. Stem’s Athena AI platform will provide the intelligence and real-time decision making to optimize the storage system and energy use for these new portfolio customers while providing local controllable capacity to Southern California Edison. Source: Stem

Ginlong Technologies is set to debut its latest hybrid energy storage inverter across Europe and beyond. The three-phase Solis-HVES (High Voltage Energy Storage) will be rolled out to homeowners in Italy, UK, Germany, the Netherlands, Poland, Sweden, South Africa and Australia this July and August. According to the company, the new hybrid inverter brings a high conversion efficiency of 98.4% to solar-plus-storage, and the 1.6 PV-to-battery ratio supports load and battery supply, improves system utilization and boosts generation. The inverter is compatible with various applications, including bifacial modules, boasts 10kW in charging and discharging power and has flexible operating modes such as time-of-use and off-grid backup, enabling smart time shifting to leverage time-of-use schedules and optimize energy use. Source: Ginlong Technologies

The Midwest Renewable Energy Association, in partnership with the Straubel Foundation, has awarded eight Clean Energy Leadership Award scholarships to students studying renewable energy, energy efficiency, sustainability, and clean technology. Since 2018, the partnership has awarded scholarships to a total of 23 high school seniors, college students, non-traditional students, and graduate students, assisting them in pursuing their higher education aspirations. This year’s recipients include Zara Akkuly, MaKayla Erdmann, Molly McGuire, Jonah Messinger, Rebekah Nagy, Haley Ritchie, Jonathan Spencer, and Brittany Weber. Source: Midwest Renewable Energy Association