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Less coal, sunnier skies increasing solar project value
In many regions around the world, the skies are getting cleaner thanks to controls on air pollution designed to benefit public health. The Eastern U.S. and Europe have seen dramatic improvements in air quality since the 1980s. Coal plant retirements and stricter...
Clean Power Research and EPRI win NYSERDA clean-energy challenge
We’re pleased to announce that Clean Power Research and Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) have been selected as winners of the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority’s (NYSERDA’s) “Future Grid Challenge.” The project will demonstrate...
Leveraging GOES-17 for more accurate solar data
In February 2018, we blogged about the future of solar forecasting with the new NOAA/NASA GOES-16 satellite. The launch of the GOES-17 satellite held similar promise, but bringing it online ended up being problematic for NOAA/NASA—and provided a few wrinkles for those...
SolarAnywhere® 2019 weather report: Midwest solar energy resource downturn continues for second year
In July 2019 we posted an article about unprecedented weather affecting the solar energy resource across much of the U.S. during 2018 and the first half of 2019. In that article, we anticipated a rebound during the second half of 2019. So now that 2019 is over, where...
A long history of data is key to solar project bankability
While the average power purchase agreement (PPA) price falls to keep solar competitive, the amount of global solar capacity developed in the past two-years has increased at a rate of roughly 30% year-over-year. This means that project developers are being forced to...
SolarAnywhere now-casts to support EDD-led U.S. DOE project to improve grid resiliency with interconnected DERs
Clean Power Research was selected to participate in a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) research and development (R&D) project focused on increasing behind-the-meter solar situational awareness and grid resiliency. SolarAnywhere® historical, now-cast and forecast...
Empowering customers with backup power protection during outages
Reliability is a core mission of electric utilities. Utilities are typically so effective at providing reliable service that customers are accustomed to having power available whenever they want it. As might be expected, when power is unavailable, customers become...
All top 10 U.S. utilities trust Clean Power Research
At Clean Power Research, we think of ourselves as a modestly sized company doing big work. We are a passionate team of engineers, scientists and customer-obsessed service professionals focused on delivering world-class software solutions to utilities and the solar...
Could distributed solar + storage protect Californians from precautionary power outages?
Wildfires & California: A major concern California has experienced multiple devastating wildfires over the past two years. The Wine Country Fires that started on October 8, 2017, in Napa County killed 44 people and cost $15 billion. The Camp Fire, an even more...
Accolades for Austin Energy’s Value of Solar tariff continue
Austin Energy’s innovative approach to compensating distributed solar owners is continuing to receive accolades across the country. In September, Austin Energy received an Innovation Award from the Interstate Renewable Energy Council (IREC). Earlier in the year Austin...
Gearing up for Solar Power International (SPI) 2012 in Orlando
SPI is next week in Orlando! Six of us will be there from our Kirkland, WA and Napa, CA offices. If you’re attending, please stop by Clean Power Research at booth #4058, right next to the “Energy Networking Station” in Hall B. Areas of emphasis for Clean...
29 million answers to the question “What can solar do for me?”
The calculations to determine whether or not solar is a good investment are not simple—unless you’re using the Clean Power Estimator® solar calculator. Since we started counting 10 years ago, Clean Power Estimator has performed more than 29 million solar savings...
The solar value proposition part 2: Charting a new path using data and analytics
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...
The solar value proposition part 1: A fork in the road
Much like Kermit the Frog and Fozzie the Bear passing a fork in the road , the explosive growth of solar has many in and around the solar industry exclaiming in Kermit-like fashion, "I don't believe it." No longer is solar relegated to being the energy option when no...
2014 solar trends episode 3: Solar Financing – A New Hope
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...
Flexibility meets reliability: PVWatts and NSRDB now available through Clean Power Research API services
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...
Growing solar beyond California: financial intelligence for every state
Solar is rapidly growing beyond California. As described in the Men’s Journal article “Why Now Is the Time To Go Solar,” this growth is being driven by the availability of inexpensive panels, tax breaks, and options to lease or buy PV systems. While a recent...
Georgia blazing new trails with its value-based FiT
California and New Jersey are known for solar policy innovation, while the states of the Southeast have tended to stay on the sidelines despite having abundant sunshine. Until now, that is. Georgia is quickly emerging as a solar power innovator. Over the past 12...
USC 2013 insights: illuminating key utility solar issues
The Solar Electric Power Association (SEPA) Utility Solar Conference (USC) was held last month in Portland, Ore. This was convenient for our Kirkland, Wash., software team, so we sent four people down to join Tom Hoff from our Napa, Calif., office at the event. It was...
Electric vehicles + solar: an idea whose time has come
You’ve likely heard about the partnerships springing up between electric vehicle (EV) manufacturers and solar (PV) system providers. Most recently, Honda and SolarCity announced a plan that allows Honda customers to install solar with a low upfront cost and see an...
Can ISOs rely on PV fleet forecasts?
PV fleet forecasts Solar forecasts are traditionally concerned with predicting the output of solar PV systems at particular locations. Consequently, much of what is known about solar forecast accuracy is centered on point validations. Fleet forecasts consider the...
How to validate PV fleet forecast accuracy when you cannot directly measure it
The capacity of behind-the-meter PV systems is growing steadily. Figure 1 illustrates that there is over 5 GW of PV in California alone. The number is continuing to increase. The result is that behind-the-meter PV fleet forecasts are becoming increasingly important...
Infographic: Five factors defining bankable solar irradiance data
Bankable solar irradiance data is crucial to minimizing cost of capital for solar projects. Check out this infographic to find out what you need to know when selecting resource data. Want to see the infographic in full size? Download it now: Download...
Quantifying the “variability” in variable solar energy forecasts
Utilities and grid operators need to procure and provide generation sources for anticipated load demands. As both grid connected and behind-the-meter photovoltaic (PV) systems continue to grow in number, total system load, including the load being served by solar, is...
The proof is in: Integrating PV into the grid is better with behind-the-meter solar forecasts
In recent years, Clean Power Research created a solar forecast method to accurately predict power production of “invisible,” behind-the-meter PV systems—typically those found on homes and commercial buildings. In our approach, forecasts are generated by simulating the...
Solar Power International 2015: Solar in Disneyland
Disneyland provided the backdrop for the Solar Power International (SPI) conference in Anaheim this year. As the biggest solar-focused conference in the U.S., exhibiting at SPI provides a great opportunity to find out firsthand what is on the mind of the industry—that...
West vs. south: Why change the orientation of your solar PV system
Originally published in the March/April issue of Solar Today. Within the solar industry, it's common knowledge that the optimal orientation of solar photovoltaic (PV) panels in the Northern Hemisphere is typically south, to maximize electricity production over the...
UVIG technical achievement award presented to Tom Hoff
Last week, the Utility Variable-Generation Integration Group (UVIG) recognized Tom Hoff, Clean Power Research founder and president of Research and Consulting, with an award for his ongoing contributions to solar forecasting. The ability to forecast the output of tens...
When it comes to solar resources, 2014 was anything but average
Solar resources naturally vary from year to year, and 2014 was no exception. While the 2014 average monthly solar resource map shows expected patterns, with the greatest energy output in the southwest, the real story is revealed by the PV power variance map. The PV...
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MN Solar Pathways: Illuminating pathways to 10% solar
On March 30, 2017, the Minnesota Department of Commerce along with its core team, kicked off its Department of Energy-funded MN Solar Pathways project aimed at finding the least-risk, best-value solutions for MN to achieve its solar energy goals. Clean Power Research...
Can a simple model predict future PV adoption? (Yes—if done right)
Utilities across the U.S. are eager to know how much PV their customers will adopt, as this adoption can impact both revenues (from reduction in energy purchases) and costs (linked to distribution operation and intermittency mitigation). Having seen the explosive...
DERs take center stage at DistribuTECH
At the recent DistribuTECH Conference in San Diego, more than 13,000 attendees spent three engaging days discussing the biggest issues facing utilities today. One of the hottest topics, judging by session attendance and exhibit floor conversations, was Distributed...
SolarAnywhere detects calibration error in nation’s most trusted ground site
How accurate are SolarAnywhere® irradiance data? They are accurate enough to identify an undetected calibration error at one of the nation’s most trusted ground truth stations. Figure 1 presents Direct Normal Irradiance (DNI) and Global Horizontal Irradiance (GHI)...
NARUC aims to level the playing field for cloud software
In November 2016, the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners (NARUC) approved a resolution encouraging State regulators to level the playing field for cloud software and on-premise software. Why is this resolution critically important for utilities?...
Electric vehicles provide large GHG reductions in Minnesota
This week’s blog post is a contribution from our guest author Dane McFarlane, of Great Plains Institute (GPI) and was originally published on GPI's Better Energy, Better World. To learn more about how Clean Power Research is helping customers understand the value of...
100K applications in PowerClerk Interconnect & 500K in all PowerClerk products
The proliferation of distributed energy resource (DER) adoption, particularly solar, across the U.S. in recent years has led to a common pattern of records being set for utilities, installers and more. Along those lines, last week marked an important achievement for...
Version control: Your bankable signpost in a digital world
If you own an iPhone, you’ve seen the familiar message “iOS 9.3.3 is available for your iPhone and is ready to install.” If you’re like me, you hit “Remind me later” a few dozen times before you actually install the update. Call me paranoid, but I always have to take...
Paradigm shift for U.S. utilities: “Energy” efficiency, not “electric” efficiency
Stagnant load stinks If you're a regulated utility in the United States, stagnant or declining load stinks. Policies like decoupling help a little, but like any other business, no utility really wants to face the economics of declining use of their product. If one...