SEIA, the American Clean Power Association and Advanced Energy Economy offered up supplemental comments with FERC to underscore the need and opportunity for near-term interconnection improvements. They’re hoping to influence events as FERC works on comprehensive transmission planning reform. The goals? Reduce costs and resolve significant backlogs of projects waiting to connect to the grid. Check out the full comments here.
CED Greentech and Enel X cover how you might expand into EV charging in this webinar. They talk about: 1) How EV charging helps increase the lifetime project value for customers, 2) Value-engineering EV charging into solar projects best practices, 3) Leveraging fed and state incentives to lower equipment and installation costs, and 4) Regulatory trends and EV-friendly building codes you need to know about.
The majority shareholder of SunPower, TotalEnergies, has purchased SunPower’s C&I install biz for $250 million. This further solidifies SunPower’s segue into focusing solely on their residential dealer network, begun when they acquired residential installer Blue Raven Solar. It also allows them to boost their investment in product and digital innovation.
More and more states are ramping up their energy storage target numbers. Connecticut recently joined the list with its commitment to deploying 1,000 MW of energy storage by 2030. Other states include New York with 6 GW of storage by 2030, Maine with 400 MW by 2030 and Virginia with a 3,100 MW mandate by 2035. Additional states toying with supportive policies are Illinois and Vermont. However, the unique role of storage on the grid sometimes makes developing these policies tricky.
This clean energy podcast shares insights from solar and other renewables entrepreneurs in off-grid applications and emerging markets. Distributing Solar has interviewed company leaders such as Cameron Smith of ZOLA Electric on project management, Brave Mhonie of SunnyMoney on innovative solar biz models, and Tobias Engelmeier of VIDA regarding data-analysis and digitalization in off-grid energy. The podcasts run 40-50 minutes long.
In PJM territory, 13 Mid-Atlantic and Midwest states plus DC, there were 136,293 MW of solar in the interconnection queue at the end of December – a significant backlog. However, one of their committees endorsed a plan to reform the process using a study aimed at speeding things up. The plan includes a two-year freeze on new interconnection applications to allow for catchup and would go into effect Oct. 1, if approved.
Briggs & Stratton, the outdoor power equipment provider, is one of a number of household brands entering the renewables market. In this interview they discuss what prompted them to acquire energy storage biz SimpliPhi Power. They describe the desire to expand their offerings and amplify their backup generator capabilities for a larger customer base. Another company to jump on the bandwagon is appliance and wind energy giant GE who is white-labeling inverters made by GoodWe.
NREL, SEIA and the DOE held a free webinar on Thursday 2-3 ET to share the results of the pilot trials of SolarAPP+, the new resi solar permitting app. Panelists from NREL and SEIA discussed how the app helped the 5 test AHJs, showed ways attendees can get get involved this year, and gave an inside peek into NREL’s research on the state of permitting, inspection, and interconnection.
As part of a trend in the relatively fragmented industry sector – commercial solar asset ownership – CleanCapital has grabbed another 65MW, 39 project portfolio spanning 12 states from BR Group Holdings. WoodMac says there are only a few commercial solar assets owners with 100MW+ portfolios like this, representing a slow consolidation of that market. CleanCapital’s annual market share of the top commercial solar asset owners has risen from 26% in 2019 to 34% in 2021 through Q3.
We met with Greg Sellers of Stable Solar once again, this time to discuss solar monitoring and meters. Greg begins with a little background about the rise of monitoring in the industry and then delves into what to keep in mind around tracking system performance and ROI as well as actual energy use by the homeowner. The video is particularly useful for system owners and installers. The 7 min video is just below and you can click to this post to see the full transcription of the video.