The hazy days of unknown delay times for home solar permitting, inspection and interconnection appear finally may be behind the industry now, thanks to the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory’s (NREL) Solar Automated Permit Processing Plus — SolarAPP+ — software. Developed in conjunction with Underwriter Laboratories, SolarAPP+Read More

Solar balance-of-system (BOS) costs are dropping like a stone, thanks in part to the jobsite efficiency gains brought on by new and developing smart technologies. Indeed, solar EPCs have increasingly adopted new jobsite efficiency technology over the past two years, and the trend is headed upward, suppliers say. These improvementsRead More

Solar carports, or canopies, are becoming a dual-purpose component of more microgrids that protect critical services locations from grid shortcomings. While both carports and microgrids individually have long been gaining ground among adopters, the combination of the two enables more site-constrained critical facilities to add solar reliability to microgrids, especiallyRead More

As has been the case with many good science fiction inventions of the last century, we are finally getting around to building virtual power plants (VPPs), or a software-and-wire linked network of small residential and commercial electricity generators, that together resemble a multimillion-dollar utility power plant. While the wires linkingRead More

Improving the electricity yield in photovoltaic solar energy long has been a game of incremental additions of new technology. Over the past few years, bifacial panel adoption has been tested at a utility scale, and designs have been refined to the point that a high single-digit gain from a single-axis trackerRead More

It only takes one hurricane, tornado or wildfire for the value of a resilient home energy system to sink in. Add to such increasing natural disasters the unpopular new utility practice in California of Public Safety Power Shutoffs (PSPS) — a preemptive shut down of swaths of the grid toRead More

The integrated solar roof has long been a solar technology goal — combining solar power with a watertight roof covering — but the category (often seen as just “solar shingles”) is perceived as too expensive or too experimental compared to the cost of separately installing solar and a traditional roof usingRead More

This article appears in the Spring issue of Solar Builder magazine. Get your free subscription (print or digital) here. Sunfolding’s pneumatics One unique tracker design on display at Intersolar 2020 back in February was the bellow-actuated Sunfolding single axis tracker. The bellow, manufactured with a DuPont polymer, uses no motorsRead More

The concept of offering operations and maintenance (O&M) to solar asset holders is not new. A host of O&M companies now provide soup-to-nuts service for commercial and utility-scale PV plants. But none of these service providers is also an inverter manufacturer, much less one that offers a 99 percent inverterRead More

Corporate investors in solar energy are modifying their expectations and demands for future utility-scale solar projects, bolstering the profile of the industry as a long-term asset class, and altering PPA and contract terms that make more deals possible, said financiers at Intersolar 2020 in San Diego. The impact of thisRead More