John Fitzgerald Weaver
Repowering solar power plants for need and greed
Alencon’s silicon carbide-based SPOT allows for repowering solar power plants that need to replace 600V inverters with newer 1000V/1500V gear, or for those that wish to maximize electricity generation at ageing and imperfect facilities with creative engineering techniques.
Hardware brief: mobile military microgrid, $2500 EV tax credit, solar module pricing down, more!
It’s the start of the near year, it’s the start of new gear! Solpad offers an on-the-roof energy storage solution that can easily be scaled upward; Northern Reliability has been chosen to develop a easily movable battery and controllers for the US Navy; Solarrainframe has a mechanical solution to keeping dry under carports, more!
Pragmatic projection sees solar power nearly tripling in roaring 2020s
NREL’s 2019 Standard Scenarios Report looks at 36 models to project what energy sources the USA might use going forward, and what variables might drive that – with the mid-case projections suggesting wind+solar power meeting 28% of all electricity demand.
New York seeks successor to solar power net metering
The state commission is seeking to wean solar customers off of pure net metering charges, while starting to provide motivation to consider demand charges and time-of-use. Current net metering was extended by a year, so expect these changes to be in effect starting in 2021.
New Mexico senator seeks solar sales tax to fund early childhood program
Senator Michael Padilla (D) of New Mexico has submitted the Renewable Energy Production Tax for consideration by the state. The 2.5% tax would fund early childhood education and care services, while exempting government and personal generation.
Six-year-old solar power plant partially repowered with new trackers and bifacial solar modules
OCI Solar Power has upgraded a portion of its Alamo 1 solar power plant in Texas from 295 watt solar modules on ERCAM single- and dual-axis trackers to bifacial modules on Array Technologies trackers.
Enphase prepping commercial inverters and a small-scale, off-grid solar-plus-storage box
Enphase also showed off a 640-watt, two-module commercial inverter and a solar-plus-storage package for two solar modules at its analyst day.
Three new types of solar power plants emerge in 2019
2019 was a year of change for the solar and energy storage industry, as we shifted from deploying pure wattage to making projects a lot smarter with oversized DC-AC ratios, up to 60% capacity factors, and solar plants that shine only at night.
FERC appointees want 4¢/kWh clean energy tax to fund fossil fuel welfare
FERC’s PJM Interconnection ruling: all utility scale nuclear and renewable energy bids must meet a new “minimum offer price rule” equivalent to any state-level incentives in order to “level the playing field” with fossil fuels.
Utility scale solar power as cheap as 70¢ per watt and still falling
Government researchers find that Florida has dethroned California as the largest market, trackers dominate, solar+storage compensation diversity, and a lot more in Berkeley Labs annual utility-scale solar power report.
