To be, or not to be – a solar facility or a utility?
Iowa solar contractor Eagle Point Solar is suing Wisconsin utility WE Energies for blocking its solar lease with the City of Milwaukee, stating that it would make the contractor an electric utility. The contractor contends that a private agreement does not denote public sale of electricity.
Facebook drives two big solar projects in Texas and Utah
Construction is starting on a 300 MWac solar project in Texas, as a power contract is signed for a 122 MWac solar project in Utah. The social media giant is involved in both, and both use First Solar PV modules.
Duke to decommission a nuke, solar coming to the Centre County jail: pvMB 5/30/19
Hello and welcome to your Thursday pvMB, live from day two of Solar Power Southeast today, along with the aforementioned, we’ll be checking out the Q1 accomplishments of Peak Electric.
Ohio bill to eliminate renewable mandate, bail out coal, nukes
After scratching and clawing its way through, HB 6 has passed out of the Ohio House, and now brings to the Senate its nuclear and coal subsidies and elimination of renewable procurement mandates.
SEIA forms new manufacturing division
Hanwha Q Cells and REC Group have joined the new division, which will be the first time that manufacturers are explicitly represented by the trade group.
Wind+solar trade for coal fails, but shows the path forward
Guzman Energy has proposed to finance the early closure of most of 1.1 GW of coal generation in Colorado and New Mexico, as part of a deal to offer 1.2 GW of wind and solar generation, plus storage backed by gas. Tri-State Generation has declined the offer.
Alabama’s largest solar project has an offtaker, Pedernales Co-op’s first battery project: pvMB 5/29/19
Hello from sunny Atlanta and, more importantly, Solar Power Southeast 2019. Today we’ll be hitting you, figuratively, with Eagle Point Solar’s lawsuit in Wisconsin, Executive changes at PJM Interconnection, Tennessee’s largest landfill project and everything else you can handle.
EDF signs for millions of modules from Canadian Solar
The 1.8 GW supply deal is the largest in Canadian Solar’s history, and includes the company’s new BiHiKu high-efficiency bifacial modules.
Grass-fed beef meets big solar
First Solar has completed the 280 MWac California Flats solar project, co-located with a 73,000-acre cattle ranch which raises grass-fed beef for Whole Foods. This is the biggest demonstration of the synergies between grazing and solar that we’ve seen to date.
New York’s winter time solar duck curve cometh
A site origination exercise and load analysis by Cornell University suggests that 9 GW of solar will reduce peak demand in New York by nearly 10%. However it also finds that solar needs better capacity valuations to make for a stronger market, and will drive a wintertime duck curve during the season of lower electricity demand.
