SPW digs into racking companies’ need to be compliant with UL 3741: Standard for Safety for Photovoltaic Hazard Control, a route for making rooftop solar projects meet fire safety requirements. They define the parameters for compliance and discuss what both resi and commercial racking companies are doing to meet standards.

Scientists are proposing a bifacial flexible PV cell that offers 27% efficiency. They simulated dozens of electron transport layer-free cell structures for flexibility and ID’d the optimal design for thickness and bandgap.

Here’s a preview of some tech being unveiled at the upcoming RE+ 2024: SMA America will be showing off its resi energy solutions encompassed by the SMA Home Storage system – a modular, customizable battery. It will include the SPAN Smart Panel and the Sunny Boy Smart Energy inverter with a hybrid solution for both immediate energy use and storage in one device.

This Utility Dive opinion piece looks at the problems caused by surging data center power demand, that regulators and policymakers must tackle risks brought by big tech’s acquisition of renewables that could lead to the subtraction of clean energy from the grid. They must, in short, drive investment in new dispatchable energy and capacity.

The American Alliance for Solar Manufacturing Trade Committee (the same group that requested an AD/CVD investigation earlier this year) filed what is called a “critical circumstances allegations” with Commerce re surges of solar imports from Vietnam and Thailand that they say are hurting domestic manufacturing (39% increase in imports from Vietnam and a 17% increase from Thailand between April and June 2024).

Greentech Media takes a walk with SolarEdge to bring us up to speed on their latest products/promotions. They discuss their Re-Energize Upgrade program, SolarEdge PCS, Fast Mount, MHome Load Controller, and more. The video is below.

SunCast Media brings our attention to The BESS Book: A Cell to Grid Guide to Utility-Scale Battery Energy Storage Systems. Host Nico Johnson interviews two of the book’s authors re the evolving sector of utility-scale batteries. They discuss navigating the technical challenges of integrating BESS with solar projects, understanding the financial complexities of large-scale energy storage, and more. The video is below.