Morning Brief: Home Depot and Enel signa power contract, National Grid rebrands its renewable arm
Also in the brief: CollectiveSun raises $4 million for San Diego nonprofits to go solar, EDP has closed on a power contract for 100 MW of solar generated by two projects in Ohio and more.
Nobel Prize-winning auction geniuses want to apply their findings to renewables
Stanford professors Paul R. Milgrom and Robert B. Wilson were awarded the 2020 Nobel Prize in economics for developing a new auction theory and new auction formats for goods and services. Their findings were already successfully used in the electricity energy sector and may now meet the challenge on how to better shape clean energy procurements.
IPO update: Solar tracker builder Array Technologies increases number of shares in largest PV IPO of 2020
The reception in the financial community on the eve of the Array Technologies IPO must have been enthusiastic.
Morning Brief: Solar power will be ‘the new king’ by 2030, fuel cell SPAC, advanced reactors get $160M
Even the profitless fuel cell industry can launch a SPAC, cheered on by the current mania for hydrogen technology. Lots more in today’s brief.
America’s highways have significant solar potential
A report just released by the University of Texas at Austin’s Webber Energy Group has tackled how much solar each state could develop along interstate interchange and exit locations and how much this solar could potentially be worth.
Solar-plus-storage replaces coal plant in New Mexico, makes carbon-capture retrofit moot
The utility is planning on replacing the San Juan coal-fired station’s 847 MW of capacity with 650 MW of solar generation and 300 MW/1,200 MWh of accompanying energy storage. The new plan all but kills a proposal from San Juan’s owner and the City of Farmington to add a carbon-capture retrofit to the station.
Trump pulls tariff exemption for bifacial panels — again
Proclamation issued Oct. 10 cites impact of imported bifacial panels on U.S. solar manufacturing, while also raising the scheduled fourth-year tariff rate from 15% to 18%.
Agrivoltaic project with vertically mounted bifacial panels goes online in Germany
The 4.1 MW array, developed by Next2Sun, was constricted with roughly 11,000 bifacial panels, provided by Chinese manufacturer Jolywood.
Utility-scale solar roundup: PV-powered steel from Lightsource, Savion in Ohio and Michigan
Dean Solon, CEO of Shoals: “A lot of people thought that the 100 MW fields were all dead, but those suckers are coming back with a vengeance.”
Shoals, solar balance-of-system player, had a strong 2020 and sees an even stronger 2021
Dean Solon of Shoals Technologies Group: “The short version is that it’s been a damned good year.” An interview with Shoals covers the growth of large solar projects in the U.S., high AC/DC ratios and the real costs of using cheap components.
