California

A 500 MW project is being considered today by the Kern County Board of Supervisors, the latest in the ever-growing list of mind-bogglingly large projects in California.

Good morning and welcome to today’s pvMB. We also bring you on this fine morning Midsummer’s new solar metal roof, a new iteration of S-5!’s clamps, a collaboration between Soligent and Pika Energy, and more!

Sunrun has proposed that the City of Los Angeles set its sights on 75,000 residential solar+storage systems (860 MWdc of solar plus 1.2 GWh of energy storage) by 2030 with the goal of replacing one of the region’s three retiring gas plants, while saving $60 million in electricity costs.

Advocates say the choice of hiring a CEO from a power company openly hostile to renewables is a bad look for the bankrupt utility, and comes as CCAs are organizing for a greater role in the state’s power system.

Happy Thursday and welcome to the pvMB. Today we’ll be looking at SMUD joining the EIM (those words may mean nothing to you now but will soon), a new New Jersey brownfield project (not a Futurama joke), a new solar powered anti-theft backpack (with a built-in boombox model) and everything else you need to tackle the solar industry today.

The quarterly intel report also showed Enphase winning back market share from SolarEdge, falling costs and bigger rooftop PV systems.

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.

Macquarie has closed on funding for a third portion of a 340 MWh project in Southern California, and LADWP is planning 1.8 GW of batteries.

An analysis by Station A shows a potential for siting 48 GW of solar plus 22 GW / 42 GWh of energy storage in California commercial and industrial locations, meeting 19% of the state grid operator’s legally binding “Resource Adequacy” requirements.

Sunrun made a splash at the BNEF Summit in New York City at a time when utilities are increasingly struggling to adapt to new realities. But distributed energy resources have a long way to go to play a major role, and we will still need additional energy sources in future power systems.