Artificial Intelligence

Also on the rise: Enel may bring heterojunction solar module manufacturing to the US. Stem awarded 110MWh energy storage portfolio in New York. PG&E plans 1.6GW/6.4GWh battery storage portfolio through 2024. The 100,000 big box stores in the US could generate 84TWh of electricity from solar power on their rooftops. Greenbacker enters the world of floatovoltaics. Powin enters partnership with Celestica at its Monterrey, Mexico facility. Sol Systems to invest over $1 million in 2022 in five initial partner organizations. 

Also on the rise: LBNL report looks at increased panel density and electrical generation in utility-scale plants with trackers and fixed racking. Mississippi net metering rules boost low-income incentives. Microgrid on Prince Edward Island moves forward. NREL’s REopt platform helps optimize energy use in buildings. Learn how AI helps find defects in solar panels. CIT arranges $50 million New York community solar investment with Amp Energy. And more.

To speed up the inspection process and improve accuracy, solar farm operators are turning to AI-powered inspection, using algorithms that can automatically detect solar panel defects from images.

The integrated battery and control system with built-in adaptive learning algorithms is inverter-agnostic, comes EV charger ready, and turns a home into a micro-grid when the grid is down.

A mountain home community in Colorado will connect to the cloud based “foresee” platform, which will autonomously control an internet-of-things comprised of solar PV, heating, EV charging, water heating, AC, and more.

Heliogen’s technology is a modular concentrated solar energy system that will use computer vision software to align mirrors to reflect sunlight to a single target on the top of a solar tower.

Also on the rise: NB Power adds more solar in the Canadian Maritimes, Leyline Renewable finances solar in Washington, D.C., big cuts reported in CO2 emissions from power production, and Schlumberger and Panasonic partner on a novel lithium extraction process.

Also on the rise: DOE funds university hydrogen research, Canadian Solar backs an AI-based energy storage tech provider, Mitsubishi partners to develop hydrogen storage for U.S. markets, and two Canadian companies float a ‘blue’ hydrogen plan.

Yuki Hamada, an Argonne remote-sensing scientist is leading a three-year study with the end goal of creating a program that can analyze video of solar projects, identify birds that interact with projects from said video and draw conclusions into the solar-bird relationship.

Enel Green Power North America and Raptor Maps will develop AI-based drones to reduce O&M costs. Kicking off this month, the project will see its first batch of 30 field workers trained by the end of the year. Both companies already have the relevant technology in their portfolios.