John Fitzgerald Weaver
Solar-powered pollinators for less than a penny a watt
Ernst Pollinator and Prairie Restorations offer the services, as required by various state scorecards for solar siting, to bring your solar site up to the “pollinator standard”, while also saving money on operations and maintenance over the long term.
Tennessee seeks 200 MWac of renewables + energy storage
TVA has launched a solicitation for renewable energy projects with a minimum size of 2 MW, noting a preference for energy storage. The request for proposal pricing structure takes into account energy storage, seasonal and time of day pricing.
Energy storage’s increasingly investment grade status
SUSI Partners has purchased a 50% stake in Macquarie Capital’s 63 MW / 340 MWh distributed energy storage portfolio located in Southern California. Included as part of this purchase is the world’s largest virtual power plant.
Solar insurance needs to “reset benchmark” with higher loss expectancy
Solar insurance company GCube is suggesting that renewable developers in the United States consider slightly higher loss expectancy in the risk models due to accelerated installation times, newer more complex hardware, O&M budget tightening, and great natural disaster risk.
The Illinois “Coal to Solar and Energy Storage Act” is real
The strangely-titled bill has been filed in Illinois, with an aim to transition and repurpose coal plants currently at risk of closure to solar+storage facilities. Vistra Energy, which owns both coal plants in this list and solar+storage facilities elsewhere, is pushing the legislation.
pvMB 3/29: Ameresco wins eight projects through SMART, University of Minnesota to go solar
The eagle flies on Friday, and in today’s pvMB we bring your Fluence’s new CTO, ET Solar making a comeback, Pason & Chint’s integrated energy storage solution, and more…
Enel moves on a 13 gigawatt project pipeline & flips 6 GW of solar+storage
Enel acquired renewable developer Tradewind’s 13 GW portfolio of wind and solar plus storage projects in the United States, and then immediately sold the 6 GW portion of the portfolio that is solar+storage projects to Macquarie.
pvMD 3/28/19: Community solar proposed for Duck Island, NJ, 6 MW of battery systems in Arkansas… and more!
Hello, and welcome to your Thursday pvMB. The weekend is almost here. Today we’ll be looking at BlueCross BlueShield installing 10,000 solar panels at its Chattanooga HQ, Hawaii’s solar trash cans, futuristic Dutch solar houseboats and everything else that matters today.
Solar power situational awareness, future research get $166 million
The Department of Energy announced a new tranche of $130 million to fund research in up to 80 new solar power-related research and development projects. As well, ten projects were announced as winners of $36 million in awards to increase solar situational awareness during power grid disruptions.
New record low solar power price? 2.175¢/kWh in Idaho
Idaho Power has agreed to pay $21.75/MWh for 120 MWac of solar power in a 20-year power purchase agreement with Jackpot Holdings. The solar facility will offset a soon-to-close coal plant in Nevada starting in 2022.
