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

With solar power coming to every new home, the solar sector and grid planners in California try to meet in the middle When it comes to driving solar capacity, California is basically the overachieving kid in class who does all of the work and lets other slacker states glance atRead More

It’s gonna break my heart to see it blown to bits. That’s the refrain of the best song of 2019, “Blown to Bits” by Charly Bliss — a catchy rumination on the state of the world right now. It was playing in my headphones as I put this section togetherRead More