Solar tax exemption passes in California, POWERHOME hiring and expanding in SC: pvMB 9/10/19
Welcome one and all to a very special Tuesday pvMB. Today we’ll be looking at the Connecticut governor’s push to go 100% CO2 free by 2040, CPS’ tariff response plan, Sunpower’s solar design studio and more!
Residential energy storage broke records in Q2
More residential storage went on-line in Q2 2019 than ever before, helping to soften the blow of a quarter that just didn’t compare in the face of the previous one.
Louisiana regulators will vote on whether or not to kill net metering
On Wednesday regulators will vote on a proposal to replace retail-rate net metering with a two-channel billing system based on avoided cost, which could wipe out the state’s solar market.
Louisiana regulators could give the green light to utilities to milk customers with solar
The state’s Public Service Commission is preparing to vote on a proposal to gut net metering for distributed solar, based on a highly questionable study by the oil and gas industry’s pet consultant.
In lab secrets, Tesla is talking about 20-year lithium ion batteries
Researchers have found that over three years of testing lithium ion NMC532 graphite battery cells have the potential to stay structurally sound long enough for cars to reach greater than 1 million miles, and grid connected energy storage to last more than 20 years under daily use.
San Francisco offers for PG&E electricity infrastructure, Urban Grid closes on $100 million: pvmb 9/9/19
Welcome back to the workweek and the pvMB. Today we’ll be taking a look at a collaboration between ArcVera Renewables, NRG Systems and Harness Energy, NextEra selling $1.5 bil in equity units, Sierra Club’s ad campaign calling out Duke Energy and more!
States could save consumers billions with solar, by requiring transparent utility modeling
Many utilities prepare resource plans using biased modeling choices that disadvantage low-cost solar. With transparent utility modeling, states and intervenors could easily see the bias. And if they also have access to the same model used by the utility, they can fix the errors by running the model themselves.
Michigan has its first massive solar contract
Consumers Energy has agreed to a deal with Ranger Power to purchase the output of 100 MW of Ranger’s planned 149 MW River Fork Solar project, the first deal of its kind known to pv magazine in the state.
Radio killed the solar power operations and maintenance contract
Enel’s vision of future inverters include individual sub component health monitoring, while Southern Power spoke of paying closer attention to onsite transformers while presenting at O&M conference PV Operations Dallas 2019.
Can solar policy get SMART(er) in Massachusetts?
The Baker Administration is proposing a number of tweaks to the leading solar policy, and while the biggest conflict is over how big the program should be, siting is also a significant issue.
