How solar power operations and maintenance costs fell 50%
Robb Wilson of sPower has seen the field evolve along with technology, and shared some of the institutional knowledge he has gained over the years.
Hardware brief: Tesla solar patents, RBI’s “Underground Surety”, solar+storage+SCADA, more!
Hey, when you see me at SPI in Salt Lake City – make sure to show me things to take a picture of so I can get it into the brief! Otherwise, enjoy your weekend and some gear: small scale solar from Morningstar’s SureSine, module pricing trending downward, more!
Yotta gotta lotta $$, module pricing down, insurance for C&I, SMA’s 4.6 MW inverter, more!
As SPI approaches and hardware announcements speed up – we’ll work to keep you up! NREL speeds up ultra-efficiency solar cell manufacturing, SolaRack has a new rooftop attachment seal technique – and it uses 18% less product , APA Solar Racking’s Titan system doing well this year, more!
There are –data missing– solar power fires per year
International data suggests that fires caused by rooftop solar power systems are rare; however, the United States doesn’t centrally track this information – with the National Fire Data Center classifying them in the “other” category.
The view from above: Heliolytics on the evolution of solar site inspection
In this interview Heliolytics CEO Rob Andrews talks about the factors behind the emergence of piloted aerial inspection as the dominant form of site inspection, and also the unique challenges posed by wind damage.
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.
As corporate renewable energy purchases expand, so do the risks
Rocky Mountain Institute offers insight into five corporate renewable energy procurement risks – price, shape, basis, volume, and operation – and follows with mitigation strategies and tools to widen the discussion within boardrooms.
Insuring the sunrise with Wall Street finance
kWh Analytics and Swiss Re have structured a deal with GCL New Energy and PNC Bank for 50 MW of solar projects financed using the Solar Revenue Put to guarantee 95% of solar generation.
How to install solar power strong enough for a hurricane
The 2017 hurricane season gave analysts at the Rocky Mountain Institute a broad dataset of storm-related solar power plant outcomes, from which they have delivered a list failures and specification for high wind speed survival.
NABCEP offering three new “specialist” certifications
The PV Design, PV Installer and PV Commissioning and Maintenance Specialist certifications will be available at over 500 U.S. testing sites.
