SolarAcademy

10 Things Worth Reading This Week (11/5/21)

Handy marketing articles for contractors all in one place: strategically building and managing company brand, 4 strategies that help the beginner jumpstart their marketing, using Facebook to showcase services and communicate with prospectives, and securing online reviews for strong relationships that highlight company value.

Canary is coproducing new, original weekly podcasts with two renewables influencers: Stephen Lacey and Shayle Kann. The Carbon Copy is a narrative news program while Catalyst with Shale Kann is a long-form interview show. The podcasts will look at “how the carbon-based economy is getting reworked into a clean economy in real time.” First episodes debut next week.

SOLV Inc and Swinerton Renewable Energy are merging and rebranding as SOLV Energy. SOLV Energy will offer EPC and O&M services in the US. They also plan to branch out into construction management services and tech applications plus continue current work in advocacy.

Community solar is a rare renewables solution that both parties can get behind. Particuarly, conservatives like that it’s available to a host of traditionally Republican constituents like farmers and other rural residents who benefit from leasing their land for community solar projects. This attitude is a sharp contrast to their feelings about incentives based legislation for rooftop systems.

Aurora has launched an article series on things their platform can do (that you didn’t know about). #10 talks about how it handles code and setback requirements to avoid aggressive design and change orders and #9 covers the important horizon shading factor during system design (particularly re accounting for losses during early morning and evening).

Concerns about battery storage and its components are apparently unfounded. Lithium and cobalt supplies will more than meet market needs, and developers are actively pursuing solutions that will replace challenging raw materials like cobalt in batteries. Plus EV batteries can be repurposed as stationary batteries.

Leadership and followership have the potential to make changes in how countries around the globe address climate change. There are four mechanisms that can help empower leaders all along the global system as well as non-state actors around this: certification schemes, demand aggregation, climate-aligned finance and national alliances.

Solar Builder did a video interview with Preston Booker, Head of Key Accounts at Baywa.re. He talked about how partnerships can help solar businesses meet or exceed their growth trajectories for 2022, touching on the role of communication, managing market complexity, tools and platforms and the problem with lack of transparency.

NREL reports that the installed cost of US solar PV, solar+storage and standalone battery energy storage went down across all market segments from 2020 to 2021 (the biggest drop was in utility-scale solar). Installed costs for a 60MW / 240MWh standalone BESS fell by 13.14% while utility-scale PV+BESS system, DC-coupled with 100MW PV and 60MW / 240MWh BESS fell by 11.55%.

SEPA interviewed three industry leaders about how utilities and other stakeholders can create equity and make community solar accessible to all (including LMI and multi-family housing). They discuss overcoming challenges and offer case studies of real programs and best practices.

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