Big gas to blow, powerline tax credit, Trump dumps Paris, and more: pvMB 11/6/19
This is your midweek pv magazine USA morning brief. A report in Colorado shows how adding electric vehicles and building electrification can clean the state, SEIA highlights an additional 70 groups supporting the ITC extension, and more!
Do you take this battery, through degradation and replacement, till death do you part?
DNV GL has released its 2019 Battery Scorecard, looking at various factors weighing on battery degradation, with a focus on the financeability of energy storage projects.
♪ Just a spoonful of solar panel cleaning, helps the revenue go up – the revenue go up! ♪
Solar panel cleaning involves an analysis of cost versus gain, with a collection of system variables like system size, location, panel angle, local labor costs – and of course the potential gains driving annual cleaning events.
More megawatts, more problems: solar power denial of service attack
sPower was on the receiving end of a cyberattack in March that caused Cisco firewalls to crash, limiting visibility of operations at multiple wind and solar power plants totaling up to 500 MW of capacity. No negative outcomes were observed, and the path to exploit this vulnerability has been patched.
Hardware brief: Module pricing falling, Enphase at 450W, sexy solar panels get $3.2 million, more!
We were gone till November, now we’re here. The US Air Force is researching space based solar power, SimpliPhi has discounts on energy storage products for Californians, and ESS Inc has raised $30 million to help roboticize a 1 GWh/year capacity factory to build flow batteries in Oregon!
California power shutdown certified solar homes from SunPower?
SunPower met or exceeded 3rd quarter guidance, though it fell short of profitability by $15 million on $476 million in revenue. The company revealed that they have ~40,000 new home pre-orders for the California solar mandate market, and their Equinox home storage system launches in Q1.
One gigawatt down, portfolio of gigawatts next
Fluence has been awarded or built more than 1 GW of energy storage capacity in 95 unique projects across 20 countries. Now, the company – a joint venture between Siemens and AES –is modeling the future of the power grid to predict where its expertise will be utilized next.
A penny for your powerlines
Research by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory suggests that overall costs of transmission needed to integrate variable renewables is between 0.1-1¢/kWh, on top of the 2.9-4.6¢/kWh utility scale wind and solar power costs.
Navy engineer wants infrared scanning and disciplined data to stop solar fires
Lawrence Shaw says understanding solar module hotspots via infrared scans can help quell residential rooftop fire risks, while suggesting missing data represents missing work. Shaw also found the missing USA solar fire data.
Residential solar power growing like a “weed”, straining labor
Roth Capital Partners forecasts 25% year on year growth in both 2019 and 2020 for the U.S. residential solar power market. The firm notes that executive interviews are saying Roth’s projections are conservative, suggesting growth in the 30-50% range.
