The Open PV Project goes offline
The U.S. Department of Energy has shut down the site for its Open PV Project, which supplied cost and installation data. Is this the winding down of a project whose time had come, or part of a more disturbing trend?
TVA deceives the public and the press with misleading claim of solar commitment
This op-ed from Southern Alliance for Clean Energy argues that the utility does not have any intention of installing 14 gigawatts (GW) of solar over the next 20 years, and notes that the power company has only budgeted for 5.5 GW of solar during that time period.
The blackest black for more efficient solar cells
MIT scientists claim to have created a material 10 times more black than anything witnessed to date. It is said to be able to absorb more than 99.96% of incoming light and reflect 10 times less light than other superblack materials. The invention may be interesting for the development of black silicon PV technology and carbon nanotube-based solar cells.
Solar power installation techniques – don’t do this! (w/pictures)
Solar installation inspection results of 100 sites in Rhode Island found 50% of large-scale projects had issues, while 83% of small projects had them – with 30% and 26% of those systems having “critical” issues, respectively.
Nexamp announces 6 storage projects, Solar FlexRack closes on half a GW in 2019: pvMB 9/19/19
Hello one and all and welcome to the last MB of the week. Today we’ve got our sights set on the 100 international CEOs who signed a Climate Action support statement, Solar Frontier Americas acquiring a 50.5 MW project, Constellation signing 175 MW of purchase agreements and more!
Residential solar is getting cheaper – except for third-party
EnergySage has found that the average price for PV systems quoted through its site has fallen under $3 per watt, echoing findings by Lawrence Berkeley National Labs. However, prices are increasing for the big third-party solar companies.
San Diego demands clean community energy
The San Diego City Council has voted 7-2 to bring community choice aggregation to the city, becoming the 26th local government in California known to pv magazine to do so.
Two high is too high
In this op-ed for pv magazine, Matt Schneider, chief product officer at Sunfolding, explains how bifacial modules in a two-portrait (2P) configuration must be installed at impractical heights to avoid irradiance mismatch on the back-side
Soltec achieves 16.2% Bifacial Gain, Ohio State makes a potassium battery breakthrough: pvMB 9/18/19
Happy Wednesday, folks and welcome to the pvMB. Today we’ll be checking out 7 Michigan school districts moving to electric bus fleets, Extensible Energy’s virtual battery, net metering protests in The Big Easy and more.
Is there more spin than solar in Duke’s zero-carbon goal?
The power giant’s zero-carbon plan is contradicted by its rush to gas, and the numbers bear watching.
