I often hear complaints that solar tradeshows aren’t offering much that is new and exciting—but I beg to differ. Every year I see trends emerging—trends that are often overlooked until months after the show. Intersolar North America was no exception. This year I was...
In a recent NREL report, interviews of 13 operating entities in the Western Interconnection found that “Variable generation (VG) forecasting is widely considered to be a key means of integrating wind and solar power efficiently and reliably as these resources become...
2013 marked the driest year on record in most regions of California. While this weather pattern led to many brown lawns and thirsty reservoirs, clear skies allowed many locations to experience well above-average PV energy generation potential. To better understand...
In Part 1 in our series on the solar value proposition, we looked at a new approach to valuing PV. With this new approach, there is a need to quantify deferred and avoided generation, as well as transmission and distribution capacity increases through peak-load...
What do NASA and NOAA’s Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites (GOES) have to do with balancing the power grid? Plenty, it turns out, for areas with a high penetration of solar energy production. Read about the link in NASA’s Energy Innovations blog...
Solar energy output is predominantly affected by seasonal solar variations and weather. The angle of the sun to the solar panel changes with the time of day and seasonal variations, changing the available solar resource in predictable ways. Weather also affects the...
Financing has been with solar since its earliest days. Before the lease and the power purchase agreement (PPA), residential solar customers would often purchase systems with cash. Cash payments are a form of financing, as the customer is choosing to purchase a solar...
In keeping with our mission of powering intelligent energy decisions, Clean Power Research is introducing a 10 km Typical Meteorological Year (TMY) dataset for use in Clean Power Research API services. Programmatic access to this high-resolution dataset and the...
Determining whether solar is right for you depends in large part on the amount of solar resource available where you live. Each month, we generate the PV Power Map using SolarAnywhere® irradiance data. These maps provide more than just an indication of the solar...