In a few short years, the industry’s concept of a Distributed Energy Resource (DER) has morphed from an uncomplicated rooftop solar PV system that reduces your electricity bill to an incredibly complicated apparatus that does what the old system did plus stores energy, keeps the lights on at night orRead More
The success of widely-adopted technologies is often tied to standardization. From video formats to the Internet, and now to the energy grid, the establishment of standards reduces the cost and complexity of systems and enables broad adoption at a global scale. With standards, distributed energy — and the solar sectorRead More
Every little step in residential solar project planning and design can add hours, days or more to the time that customers sit around and wait for installation to begin. High-volume system integrators reduce the wait by automating manual processes, one step at a time. But think about the time and moneyRead More
The MESA Standards Alliance and the SunSpec Alliance formed a new joint testing and certification program for the MESA-Device specification. This is a strategic move for SunSpec as it allows SunSpec members to participate in “front-of-the-meter” and utility-scale applications. Vendors will now be able to receive certification via third-party authenticators,Read More
Between COVID-19 and escalating trade tensions, especially between the U.S. and China, the global supply chain is experiencing a period of unsteadiness. But rethinking how the supply chain looks can be a challenge, especially for sectors in which the supply chain has been built up over the course of manyRead More
On May 21, 2020, the IEEE 1547.1-2020 standard was officially published, making smart inverters with standard communication interfaces the official U.S. national standard for Distributed Energy Resources (DER). This news comes via the SunSpec Alliance, a trade alliance of more than 100 solar and storage distributed energy industry participants that isRead More
Product choice has been an issue with rapid shutdown requirements since the NEC 2017 update, but that tide is starting to turn. Six additional members within the SunSpec Alliance ranks have announced products and services supporting the SunSpec Communication Signal for Rapid Shutdown standard, bringing the size of the SunSpecRead More
As of March 20, 2020 the California Public Utilities Commission has issued an extension of the CA Rule 21 compliance deadline, pushing the date to June 22, 2020. This includes the Smart Inverter Phase 2 communications requirement and Phase 3 smart inverter requirements. This marks yet another delay in theRead More
The Solar+ Decade is starting off as the module-level power electronics (MLPE) decade. In its most recent U.S. PV Leaderboard, Wood Mackenzie reports SolarEdge inverters and optimizers were used on 60.5 percent of U.S. residential installations through the first three quarters of 2019, with Enphase a distant second at 19.2Read More
The SunSpec Alliance and members Doosan Gridtech, Kitu Systems, and Wivity announced the creation of the SunSpec Blockchain Work Group. The work group will create requirements and specifications for a decentralized application to protect the security credentials of Distributed Energy Resource (DER) systems such as solar PV systems and electricRead More
