A household-scale virtual power plant has arrived
Aiming for 70% clean energy by 2030, Colorado’s Holy Cross Energy is piloting a household-scale virtual power plant technology that will help integrate more rooftop solar and storage. A device in each home optimizes provision of power to the grid, as well as grid services.
Vivint Solar bounces back
The third party residential solar company showed its highest volume of quarterly installations since late 2016 and record revenues. However losses rose as well, driven by an industry-wide trend of rising customer acquisition costs.
Everything is growing at Sunrun – including customer acquisition costs
Sunrun saw growth in deployments, revenues, cash and funding, as it expands its solar + storage business and pursues capacity sales. But the company and the larger third-party solar space are facing a sticky problem.
Sunrun opposes utility plan to control all new distributed energy resources
A regulatory proceeding raises issues of monopoly control; whether distributed resources will be compensated for providing grid services; and the capability of smart inverters to operate autonomously, without external controls, in response to signals on price, voltage and frequency.
Federal PV cost projections spin gold into straw
The same report that expects utility-scale PV costs to fall 54% from 2017 to 2021 also presents a constant-cost scenario from 2018 onward, on an equal footing with the “mid” and “low” cost scenarios. Utilities could be tempted to use the constant (high) cost scenario in their resource plans, and thus plan little or no added solar.
Empire Electric catches renewable fever, spreads it to neighbors
The small Missouri utility has proposed massive solar and wind development under its new integrated resource plan, with a focus on distributed solar.
Batteries to sell into ISO-NE wholesale market, Chattanooga’s 100% solar-powered airport: pvMB 07/31/19
Hello and welcome to today’s pvMB. Sunrun is bringing its solar + storage solution to Dallas and Houston, Elon Musk hopes that Solar Roof production will hit 1K per week, 63% of poll respondents think the Green New Deal is a “good idea”, and more!
California could restrict who can install energy storage
CALSSA says that a pending vote by the Contractors State License Board which could restrict most solar contractors from installing batteries could have “catastrophic” impacts on the state’s energy storage market.
California gas plant to be re-powered with batteries + solar
For the second time in a month a fossil fuel-fired power plant in California is set to be replaced by a battery powered by a solar, including distributed solar. A small portion of the former plant will be retained.
Sunnova nets $158 million in IPO
The fourth-largest third-party solar company is now a public entity and while the results of its offering are only half of what it predicted, the stock bounced back on Friday.
