What permitting volume tells us about solar deployment during the pandemic
Ohm Analytics has opened up its Weekly Solar Activity Tracker to the public. The tracker aggregates a sampling of solar building and electrical permits from major metro areas across the U.S. — and can be used to measure the impact of Covid-19 on the solar industry.
What can solar learn from the 2008 financial crisis in the age of Covid-19?
Even as global PV forecasts fall, tax equity dries up and unemployment rises, Jim Spano, co-founder of RadiantREIT, believes that the right type of government stimulus could not only help the solar industry recover — but drive it to new heights.
Rosendin: ‘We’ve been able to keep our wind, solar and battery storage projects up and running’
Rosendin is a quiet $2.3 billion EPC — and its large solar project construction is moving forward “We have tended to fly under the radar,” said David Lincoln, senior VP of the renewables group, “You’d be surprised by how many projects we have our hands in.”
Ubiquitous Energy’s clear solar windows harvest UV and IR light — an update
Can an organic solar cell material finally be commercialized? Last year, Ubiquitous Energy claimed a world record for efficiency of a transparent solar cell with a 9.8% efficiency. Can a solar window harvest enough power to be practical?
Morning Brief: 215 MW Fresno County project using First Solar Series 6 panels starts construction
Also in the brief: High albedo ground cover for bifacial installations, Peak Clean Energy sells its solar development pipeline to hep global.
States expand rooftop solar potential with smart inverter rollout
Maryland is the fourth state to require that rooftop solar use smart inverters, to allow more solar on the grid. States aiming for high renewables should do likewise, says a consultancy. A looming question: will smart distributed resources be compensated for providing grid services?
Morning Brief: Oil firms are collapsing, but wind and solar power are growing — even in Texas
Also in the brief: New York is halfway to it’s interim storage target, SolarEdge is planning a virtual solar show, Sunrun is offering solar and storage $1/month for six months and more.
GE’s ‘grid-forming’ inverter aims to make solar, wind look like traditional generators
GE Research plans to test new controls with its PV LV5 inverter platform — aiming to develop “grid-forming” controls to allow wind and solar inverters to form voltage and frequency levels like traditional generators. The company wants to improve coordination and synchronization among multiple grid-forming resources, and is working to improve the transient stability of systems with high renewables penetration.
Indiana’s second-largest utility has its first solar installations
Northern Indiana Public Service Company, in collaboration with Inovateus Solar has installed 420 kilowatts across three “zero-waste” projects at NIPSCO office locations — the first step towards the 2.3 gigawatts the utility has planned by 2023.
6 takeaways from EIA’s Short-Term Energy Outlook
Even EIA expects that U.S. coal generation will fall by 20% in 2020. The agency forecasts the electric power market will add 19.4 gigawatts of new wind capacity and 12.6 gigawatts of utility-scale solar capacity this year.
