SolarAcademy

10 Things Worth Reading This Week (5/7/21)

There are three important considerations when choosing solar software: integration with your existing tools (like your CRM), running the gamut of the entire sales to design process, and automatic design features (i.e. determining building height or predicting weather patterns).

Commercial and community solar continues to thrive in the house of worship market (temples and churches alike). Buildings built for large capacity + high power bills + creation care philosophy + high visibility with congregants = sales opportunities for solar installers.

In 2023 NREL will hand over management and deployment of SolarAPP to the global company UL. SolarAPP was built to completely automate res solar and storage permitting. NREL will continue to develop it until then, and UL plans to expand it to other renewable tech when it takes over.

In 2020 the US solar industry employed 231,474 workers, a 6.7% drop from 2019. The cause was pandemic restrictions and increased labor productivity. The industry did open up to more women (currently 30% of the workforce) and continued strong around employing vets. 

The US ranks first with the most attractive market for investment in 2020 due to robust support apparatuses and strong market fundamentals. Germany ranked second and China, though it is the largest market of opportunity along with the US, ranked third (due to difficulties in accessing the market).

There’s a handy, user-friendly series of SPW short videos to refer prospects/clients to that educate on the basics of solar panel ownership. These include videos on high efficiency solar panels (why they thrive in rooftop), how to clean a rooftop array (avoid soap like the plague!), and solar inverters.  

There is a nationwide effort by utilities to push back against state and local government attempts to restrict natural gas and shift to electrification. 14 electricity and natural gas utilities are members of a lobbying group called the “Consortium to Combat Electrification.”

Solar+storage continues to see strong growth due to increasingly attractive system pricing. Battery innovation around EV is helping to push the growth of energy storage in large and small scale commercial applications. Barriers for EV growth come from difficulties around effective charging.

O&M for the complex world of commercial solar (that often involves more than one equipment type and loads of regulations) requires hardware agnostic, customized monitoring solutions that are centralized in order to provide streamlined monitoring and invoicing for better site management.

REW discussed the need for transmission planning engineers to make Biden’s infrastructure plan work. Now they look at the need for additional market systems and distribution planning engineers so as to move beyond just focusing on regulatory policy.

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