By Frank Andorka By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent At the beginning of June, the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) co-hosted a meeting in San Francisco, the purpose of which was to find ways to reduce extra costs associated with going solar. These costs, known as soft costs, include the cost of permitting, inspections, customer acquisition…
By Frank Andorka By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent Under the radar, something happened last week that could send shockwaves through the renewables’ industry – in a good way. MidAmerican Energy, a division of Berkshire Hathaway Energy (Warren Buffet’s joint), filed an application with the Iowa Utilities Board (IUB) to establish ratemaking principles for a 591…
By Frank Andorka By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent I can’t lie: I’d completely forgotten about poor ol’ Dan Simmons. In a previous engagement, I’d written about Simmons when President Donald J. Trump appointed him as the interim head of Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE), a post in which he’s served ever since….
By Frank Andorka By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent It’s easy to get caught up in a solar + storage discussion that only focuses on batteries – but as independent power producers (IPPs) begin to realize how important solar + storage is going to be in their market, they are quickly realizing the question is far…
By Frank Andorka By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent Another day, another set of new tariffs. In his ongoing attempt to start trade wars with every country around the globe, President Donald J. Trump has decided to impose around $50 billion in new tariffs on products coming in from China. And while initial reports suggested solar…
By Frank Andorka Harrisburg, Pennsylvania By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent Yesterday, Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf signed legislation designed to open up more clean-energy investment in the state by creating a statewide Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) program into law. PACE is a financing mechanism that enables low-cost, long-term funding for energy efficiency, renewable energy, and…
By Frank Andorka By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent It appears Suniva may finally be ready to undergo the sale we’ve all been anticipating for more than a year. SQN Capital Management, the company’s largest creditor and the one who once tried to get a $55 million payment from the Chinese Chamber of Commerce to make…
By Frank Andorka Intersolar and ees North America, the premier solar and energy storage events, will award California Gov. Edmund G. Brown Jr. with the first-ever Intersolar Champion of Change Lifetime Achievement AWARD. Each year, Intersolar recognizes an individuals’ commitment to supporting the development of renewable energy with the Champion of Change AWARD, hosted in…
By Frank Andorka By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent SunPower is proving that you can be everything to everybody without trying to be the expert in everything yourself – a business model that could bode well for the company’s future as the U.S. solar industry continues to grow. First, it purchased mid-tier module maker SolarWorld and…
By Frank Andorka By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent Yesterday, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) commissioners appeared before the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources and told the Senators what the rest of the world already knows: Water is wet. The Pope is still Catholic. And the nuclear and coal plant bailout Trump demanded…
By Frank Andorka By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent After the stock market closed, Enphase Energy – the once-struggling microinverter company that is seeing a resurgence under CEO Badri Kothandaraman, announced it was buying SunPower’s microinverter business for $25 million and 7.5 million shares of common stock. Enphase stock rose 16% after the announcement. The transaction…
By Frank Andorka By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent Perovskites have been the hot solar technology for several years now without, frankly, a lot to show for it. But one company – Solar-Tectic – has reached the patent stage for its thin-film perovskite technology. Could perovskite modules be close behind? The answer is a definite maybe….
By Frank Andorka Solar FlexRack, a division of Northern States Metals and an innovative leader in photovoltaic mounting and solar tracker solutions, has completed shipments of its G3-X fixed tilt racking system to Brantley solar farm, a large-scale solar project in North Carolina. The 71 MWdc project, which is about 30 miles east of Raleigh,…
By Solar wakeup Soltec, a leading manufacturer and supplier of single-axis solar trackers and related services in large ground-mount PV projects, is supplying 2,776 units of its SF7 tracker equipment at an 86.2 MW PV power plant in northern Colombia’s Cesar department. The SF7 trackers will mount around 250,000 solar modules to follow the sun…
By Frank Andorka By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent First the good news: The overall U.S. solar industry grew year over year by 13%, adding 2.5 GW-DC in the first quarter of 2018. Now the bad news: That’s a 37% quarter-over-quarter decrease. So the latest quarterly U.S. Solar Market Insights Report, put out by the Solar…