8minute Solar Energy raises $225 million for 18 GW pipeline of solar and storage
Building on what has been a successful 2020 in terms of fundraising, the company has closed on a $225 million letter of credit with partners KeyBank, HSBC, Rabobank and Nomura Holdings.
Engie, Enel X and Tesla head Guidehouse’s list of leading distributed storage integrators
Guidehouse Insights has released a report evaluating 15 DES integrators and ranking the top-10 among them, with a special focus on companies shifting away from origination and development towards acting as pure-play integrators.
Morning Brief: natural gas company to go solar, Duke receives 2 GW of proposals
Also in the brief: Q Cells and Silfab achieve top performer rating in the 2020 PV Module Reliability Scorecard, Tigo sues APS.
Has the rooftop solar tracking market been created by Point Load Power?
Startup Point Load Power is looking to create the market for rooftop trackers, claiming that the company’s PV Booster, paired with bifacial modules, can generate 70% more energy per panel than ordinary racking.
Morning brief: Solar on the family farm, LIPA shutting down steam, PG&E emerging from bankruptcy
Also in the brief: product announcements from GAF Energy, REsurety and Point Load Power.
Renewable energy and the free market economy
How the heavy-handed federal government is straying from its free market ideals and slowing down the renewable energy industry. Take FERC’s recent mandated Minimum Offer Price Rule (MOPR) in the PJM market, for example.
Renewable energy in the US surpassed coal for first time in more than a century
The coal era is officially over in the United States. Not since 1885, when coal replaced wood, have renewables taken the lead.
Record low solar PPAs in the Southwest mean ‘carbon capture is not going to save coal plants’
Recently approved solar PPAs could spell trouble for proponents of retrofitting the state’s San Juan Generating Station to capture the coal-fired plant’s carbon dioxide emissions.
PVEL solar module scorecard: In a rush to innovate, some manufacturers ‘overlooked basic quality control’
PV Evolution Labs (PVEL), a test lab for the downstream solar market, just published its PV Module Reliability Scorecard. The lab notes the high level of innovation in the solar module industry and namechecks the market’s reliability leaders — but also observed a resurgence of known failure mechanisms — such as PID.
The solar industry and consumers both lose with federal ‘MOPR’ rule
Electricity consumers would pay at least $1.1 billion more per year in the 13-state PJM grid region, says a new report, while 8.5 GW of capacity sales from new solar developments would be excluded from the capacity market, and corporate solar purchase agreements could cost 50% more — if courts uphold a federal regulation known as “MOPR.”
