Renewable Energy Focus
PV-Tech - Aug 20
During a scheduled visit to a SolarCity factory under construction in South Buffalo, New York, U.S. Senator Charles E. Schumer (D-NY) announced his campaign to push for new legislation focused on extending and amending the current federal solar investment tax credit (ITC) in order to support jobs and development in the PV market. Specifically, Schumer noted that he is focused on addressing eligibility rules in the current ITC that prohibit businesses from taking advantage of the tax credit until the panels that they install are “placed in service."
San Jose Mercury News - Aug 19
California lawmakers from both parties are calling for more stringent oversight of a clean jobs initiative after an Associated Press report found that a fraction of the promised jobs have been created. The report also found that the state has no comprehensive list to show how much work has been done or energy saved, three years after voters approved a ballot measure to raise taxes on corporations and generate clean energy jobs. The Legislature decided to send half the money to fund clean energy projects in schools, promising to generate more than 11,000 jobs each year. Instead, only 1,700 jobs have been created in three years.
Bloomberg - Aug 17
SunEdison Inc. is getting $1 billion in cash and loans to build and buy clean power plants. The world’s biggest renewable energy developer is forming an investment vehicle with a Goldman Sachs Group Inc.-managed fund, according to a statement released Monday. The Goldman-managed fund, West Street Infrastructure Partners III, will provide $300 million in equity, and a group of banks that includes Bank of America Corp. and Deutsche Bank AG will supply $700 million in debt.
Greentech Media - Aug 20
Vivint Solar was expecting aggressive expansion in Nevada starting in July. The company leased a warehouse in Las Vegas and hired more than 30 salespeople, some of who relocated for the position. Two weeks later, Vivint had closed up shop in Nevada. The company, along with other solar installers, believed that the cap of 235 megawatts for residential solar projects eligible for net metering would not expire until early 2016. The net metering cap was put in place in late May by the state legislature, after a bitter fight between the solar industry and the local utility, NV Energy.
Greentech Media - Aug 18
SolarCity has an idea for how to help California utilities tap their own customers as an integral part of their billion-dollar distribution grid plans: put them first in line. The plan is called a “distribution loading order,” a variation of the state’s longstanding loading order that puts renewables and efficiency ahead of fossil fuel-fired power for large-scale power procurements and transmission planning. In a white paper released this week, SolarCity wrote that the structure could be a key lever for customer-owned distributed energy resources to compete for billions of dollars of distribution grid projects being planned by the state’s big three utilities.
Notable Renewable Energy Projects and Deals
San Diego Union-Tribune - Aug 14
The Navy will buy power from a sprawling solar farm in the Arizona desert to help power 14 military installations in California, in the largest renewable energy purchase by the U.S. government to date. San Diego-based Sempra Energy expects to have the Mesquite 3 solar facility online in 2016. The 150-megawatt solar array is being built at a power complex 60 miles west of Phoenix, and it has the capacity to power nearly 100,000 California households at one time by one common measure.
PV Magazine - Aug 20
Coachella Energy Storage Partners has contracted GE to supply it with a 30-megawatt Li-ion energy storage system, as part of its contract with the Imperial Irrigation District. Commercial operation is scheduled for Q3 2016.
Solar Industry Magazine - Aug 20
REC Solar has interconnected a 1-megawatt solar energy system for Windset Farms in Santa Barbara County, California. REC Solar installed the 4,032-panel array on the roof of the farm's shipping and packing building. The system was designed to maximize energy production and offset consumption when utility electricity rates are highest.
Fortune - Aug 20
Most of the large, sprawling solar farms have been built in sun-soaked states like California, Nevada, and Arizona. But this week, SunEdison broke ground on, and secured financing for, the biggest solar farm in the U.S. east of the Rocky Mountains, just south of Pueblo, Colorado. When completed next summer, the “Comanche Solar project” will use at least 450,000 panels across 900 acres of land and deliver 156 megawatts of energy, which is enough power for 30,000 Colorado homes.