Recovery takes hold as Q3 solar installations rose, SEIA says
U.S. solar companies installed 3.8 GW of new solar PV capacity in Q3 as the industry worked to recover from some of the worst impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic.
WoodMac responds: investment in residential solar still strong, asset performance is healthy
Wood Mackenzie has responded to a criticized report, clarifying that Covid-19 impacts on residential solar finance are much less significant than initially expected — and that faster-than-expected recovery for investments in the industry have kept investor confidence high.
Slideshow: Crash course on US energy storage market, 168 MW of storage deployed in Q2
WoodMac’s Daniel Finn-Foley talks longer battery life and lower operational costs. According to the analyst’s most recent data, 168 MW/288 MWh of electrochemical storage was deployed in Q2.
The battery chemistry schism is imminent
According to a new report from Wood Mackenzie, lithium-iron-phosphate is poised to overtake lithium-manganese-cobalt-oxide as the dominant stationary storage chemistry within the decade, making footholds in battery storage before moving onto EV dominance.
The U.S. installed more microgrids in 2019 than ever before
While then vast majority of microgrid projects are still for distributed fossil generation, the share of renewable microgrids is rising, driven by high-volume adopters, like The Red Cross.
PV module prices are falling faster than all predictions
New research from Wood Mackenzie shows that overall system costs for installations using mono PERC modules are set to fall by as much as 20% by 2025.
US behind-the-meter storage forecast drops 31% over Corona concerns
Wood Mackenzie has dropped the 2020 outlook down to 430 MW, still a more than 100% increase over 2019, amid concerns over the role of sales and commissioning and interconnection in a period of shelter-in-place ordinances.
The futurology of solar power: robots, hackers, 5G, cheaper modules, repowering, and really cheap electricity
Module efficiencies will continue to increase, while the price of an individual module will stay the same. Not only will this hardware produce more power, it’ll work far longer — with predictions of 30-year module warranties, roughly the projected lifetime of gas assets.
SEIA calls for “radical market transformation”
The largest solar trade show in the Western Hemisphere opened last night with a political program by SEIA to push what it describes as radical market transformation, and an alliance with wind. But there are questions about what ambitious means, and what can be achieved.
The solar wave rises
Wood Mackenzie and SEIA report that a record 37.9 GWdc of utility-scale solar was under contract at the end of Q2 – the largest volume ever recorded – with 8.7 GWdc of that under construction. However, installation levels were down slightly year-over-year.
