Canadian Solar (Nasdaq: CSIQ), a global provider of solar modules, energy storage, and other clean energy components and solutions, announced its Q2 2024 earnings

The company posted $1.64 billion in revenues, roughly coming in line with Wall Street expectations. However, revenues are down from $2.36 billion in Q2 2023, and the company’s share price declin.ed about 15% in the trading session following the earnings report.

Canadian Solar attributed the decline in revenues to sharply falling global solar module prices.

Total module shipments recognized as revenues in the second quarter of 2024 were 8.2 GW, up 30% quarter-over-quarter and remained consistent year-over-year. Of the total, 135 MW were shipped to the company’s own utility-scale solar power projects.

“Today, we have reached an optimal scale—large enough to maintain a highly competitive cost structure yet lean enough to adapt swiftly to changes in industry dynamics,” said Dr. Shawn Qu, chairman and chief executive officer, Canadian Solar.

Shares fell as Canadian Solar forecast third quarter revenues of $1.6 billion to $1.8 billion, significantly lower than Wall Street expectations of $2.22 billion. The company now guides $6.5 billion to $7.5 billion for full year revenues, falling short of analyst estimates of $7.66 billion.

The company recorded 17.2% gross margin, in line with guidance of 16% to 18%. Its e-STORAGE order backlog grew to $2.6 billion, backed by a record 66 GWh of pipeline, as of June 30, 2024.

Its solar project development arm Recurrent Energy expanded its total development pipeline to 27 GW of solar and 63 GWh of battery energy storage, as of June 30, 2024. The company also achieved initial closing of BlackRock’s investment in Recurrent Energy, representing the majority of the planned $500 million capital infusion. During the quarter, the company also announced a $200 million private placement of secured convertible notes with PAG.

“In our module business, we continue to apply a disciplined approach to operations, from strategic capacity investments to stringent order management. At the same time, we are positioning ourselves for sustainable medium- and long-term growth through our energy storage business, e-STORAGE, and global project development platform, Recurrent Energy,” said Qu.

The company said Recurrent Energy will continue to increase leverage in the near-term to support its transition to a partial independent power producer (IPP) model. As of June 30, 2024, Recurrent Energy’s total solar project development pipeline was 27.4 GW, including 1.7 GW under construction, 4.8 GW of backlog, and 20.9 GW of projects in advanced and early-stage pipelines.

“While we continue to navigate challenging market conditions, our focus remains on sustainable, profitable growth. We are beginning to see signs of market rationalization, as module pricing and input costs reach record lows. In line with our commitment to strategic future planning, we are adjusting certain capacity investments to ensure a resilient financial profile. We anticipate stabilization in the second half of the year,” said Qu.

Mayfield Renewables announced that Jacob Betcher has been appointed as its new chief executive officer (CEO), effective immediately. Betcher is an accomplished engineering professional and proven business leader having been an engineering manager at Generac Power Systems and COO at Apricity.

First Solar announced that Brian Willis is the new manager, corporate communications & external relations. Will was previously director of communications at Pioneer Public Affairs and at Zero Emission Transportation Association.

Meteomatics, the weather intelligence and technology company , is expanding work with U.S. energy companies and investors with the appointments of Durjoy Mazumdar as North America’s head of sales and Chris Hyde as senior sales manager for North America. Mazumdar and Hyde will lead Meteomatics’ continued expansion into the U.S. energy market, as it equips companies and investors with hyperlocal weather intelligence to predict energy demand and consumption in real-time.

ThinkLabs AI, Inc., a startup focused on developing technology to help enhance electric grid planning and operations through a combination of intelligent automation and AI, announced the appointment of five new senior team members:

As the chief technology officer at Thinklabs AI, Neal Vali drives the company’s overall technology strategy and vision. Prior to Thinklabs AI, Neal was the Head of Data and ML Engineering at GE Vernova, where he played a pivotal role in redefining Grid Orchestration using cloud-native solutions.

Gang Zheng, director of research and development at ThinkLabs, worked as the director of autonomous grid orchestration and senior manager of WAMS at GE. There, he led a software development and delivery team across the U.S. and Canada, focusing on product development, project delivery, and user support. His team successfully delivered key projects such as real-time distribution system state estimation, distribution model validation, and an oscillation source location system for power grids.

Chaitanya Baone, head of product at ThinkLabs brings over 12 years of experience in power and energy management products across T&D grid planning and operations, microgrids, EV smart charging and energy storage optimization. Baone has a proven track record of driving growth through innovation and has held leadership roles in R&D, engineering and product management organizations across GE, Eaton, Rivian and Itron.

Surendranath (Suren) Vallabhajosyula is the head of machine learning & data engineering at ThinkLabs. In this role, he is responsible for defining and building the company’s machine learning platform, overseeing application design, architecture, security practices, and infrastructure for multi-cloud data and machine learning applications. Before joining ThinkLabs, Suren served as the senior director of architecture and data platforms at Toyota Financial Services (TFS). There, he spearheaded the development of a secure, scalable, multi-tenant global data platform to support various data and machine learning initiatives.

Before becoming the Head of Finance at ThinkLabs AI, Vimali Pathmanathan, CPA, CA worked for GE Vernova and Opus One Solutions (acquired by GE Vernova in 2022) for seven years. She held key roles as controller and director of finance, playing a pivotal role in financing and acquisition activities.

From pv magazine ESS News

Swift Current Energy reported that it has closed on a tax equity investment from Google for its 800 MWdc Double Black Diamond Solar project in southern Illinois. The amount of funding by Google was not disclosed, but previous reporting by pv magazine USA stated that over $779 million in project financing was closed for this project, making it among the largest solar project financings in U.S. history.

Located 30 miles west of Springfield, Illinois, the Project is currently under construction and is expected to reach commercial operations by early 2025. Once operational, according to Swift Current Energy, Double Black Diamond Solar is expected to be the largest solar project east of the Mississippi River.

The tax equity financing makes use of energy communities and domestic content adders, provided in the Inflation Reduction Act.

Energy communities are those that are expected to face challenges in the transition away from fossil fuels, such as certain metropolitan statistical areas (MSA) and non-metropolitan statistical areas based on unemployment rates. The domestic content adder is a 10% tax credit bonus for solar, wind, and battery energy storage developers that install projects using U.S.-made components, adding to the 30% base investment tax credit.

“As we work to responsibly grow our infrastructure, we need to partner with companies like Swift Current who understand the nuances of the energy markets where we operate and can help unlock new clean energy at a rate that matches the pace and scale of demand growth on electric grids today,” said Amanda Peterson Corio, global head of data center energy at Google.

The project uses First Solar modules, a majority of which are being manufactured in the US, as well as solar trackers from U.S.-based Nextracker. At peak construction, the project employed approximately 500 construction workers. Swift Current is the project developer and will be the long-term owner and operator, and McCarthy Building Companies is the engineering, procurement, and construction (EPC) partner.

Swift Current Energy said that Double Black Diamond Solar will contribute to communities in Sangamon and Morgan counties. The Project, capable of powering 100,000 homes annually, is expected to reduce regional carbon dioxide emissions by approximately one million tons per year.

“We are proud to be home to one of the largest clean energy projects in the nation,” said Andy Van Meter, Sangamon County board chairman. “The Double Black Diamond Solar project brings significant economic benefits to our community, contributing $100 million in tax revenue and supporting hundreds of jobs. This project is a win for both our community and the environment.”

Energy producer Constellation NewEnergy reportedly will purchase a portion of the energy and renewable energy credits (RECs) generated by Double Black Diamond Solar to serve the seven customers that have been announced. The City of Chicago will source renewable energy produced by the Project to power several energy-intensive facilities, including Chicago O’Hare International Airport and Midway International Airport. Additionally, Cook County Illinois, CVS Health, Loyola University of Chicago, PPG, State Farm, and TransUnion have agreements to purchase power from the Project via Constellation.

Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group (MUFG), Societe Generale, Truist and ING provided construction financing for the Project. Vinson & Elkins LLP and Husch Blackwell LLP represented Swift Current in the transaction. Milbank LLP and Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner LLP represented Google.

NorSun, a solar wafer manufacturer signed a multi-year contract with Heliene, a solar module maker. The exact amount of wafers was not specified, but Heliene reported that the supply will meet its annual requirement of silicon wafers starting in 2026.

Heliene has been manufacturing solar modules in Ontario, Canada since 2010 and in Mountain Iron, Minnesota since 2018. Last year the company announced an investment of an additional $10 million to expand its manufacturing and assembly line at its Minnesota facility.

Minnesota Line One was first installed in 2018 at 150 MW and has now doubled in capacity to 300 MW with the recent investment. Line One is situated contiguously to a second 500MW line installed in 2022. The company reports that the upgrades will improve the efficiency of the line.

The NorSun wafers will be supplied from the company’s planned 5 GW wafer factory in Tulsa, Oklahoma. In June NorSun announced plans to invest $620 million the new silicon ingot and solar wafer manufacturing facility on a 60-acre greenfield site in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Production at the new NorSun plant is expected to begin in 2026, bringing much-needed U.S.-made silicon ingots and wafers to the supply chain, as well as 320 jobs to the Tulsa area. NorSun reports that production can be expanded up to 10 GW.

Heliene, will take delivery of the wafer at its cell factory to be built in the Greater Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minnesota metro area.

“NorSun and Heliene are both dedicated to developing low carbon, domestically produced solutions based on sustainable value chains free of forced labor,” said Erik Løkke-Øwre, CEO of NorSun. “In the months leading up to final decisions at the end of 2024 it is now important that further policy measures are taken to regulate the US market to make sure the IRA program can take full effect”

Norsun, founded in Norway in 2007, specializes in the production of monocrystalline ingots and wafers for ultra-high efficiency solar cells. Its U.S. expansion was facilitated by the Oklahoma Department of Commerce and Tulsa Airports Improvement Trust.

It has been two years since the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 (IRA), and like any complicated and multi-faceted policy, the IRA is a mixed bag of successes and failures. Let’s start with the successes.

The IRA created a tax credit transfer market, and it is thriving.  Our firm has closed almost $5 billion in tax credits transfers across over 40 deals. For our deals, the high price is 97 cents on the dollar and the low is 83 cents on the dollar. Much of the difference in price depends on the quality of the indemnity that backstops the buyer’s purchase of the tax credits. The high end of the range has investment grade indemnitors/guarantors or a tax credit insurance policy, while the low end of the range has an unrated indemnitor that is not backstopped by tax credit insurance.

The Treasury issued final regulations about tax credit transfers, but “the credit” really goes to Senator Joe Manchin (I-WVa) who decided that such things were better handled by the private sector than the IRS. In contrast, the activity around “direct pay” (i.e., a refund from the IRS) for tax-exempt project owners, clean energy component manufacturers, carbon capture and hydrogen projects is anemic. The eligible participants are, generally, avoiding direct pay due to concerns about the time it will take the IRS to process the direct pay requests and potential haircuts.

Tax credit transfers have been a success despite Treasury’s regulations consistently favoring tax policy over stimulating clean energy. Examples of that include the approach to the passive activity loss rules that limit the ability of individuals to buy tax credits that is even stricter than the passive activity loss regulations themselves: the transfer regulations preclude an election to “group” hours for an individual to reach the active threshold, while the passive activity loss regulations actually allow such an election for activities the combination thereof is an “appropriate economic unit.”

Further, Treasury’s regulations prohibit combining a lease pass-through (also known as an inverted lease) investment tax credit election with transferability (or direct pay), even though that election is provided for in the tax code.

The other gaps in the Treasury regulations are (i) that we don’t know whether the IRS is going to audit tax credit buyers or sellers (sellers make more sense, but buyers have the money) and (ii) we don’t know whether transaction costs for tax credit transfers are deductible.

Further, Treasury’s online registration portal is backed up, and Treasury is telling registrants that it can’t process registrations for 2024 until October because it has 2023 registrations it needs to process before the extension the buyers and sellers of tax credits that accrued in 2023 have to file their 2023 tax returns are up in September for partnerships and October for corporations.  The resourceful tax credit transfer industry is finding ways to work around these issues.

A related goal of the IRA was to democratize tax equity. The IRA has made progress in that direction but has not fully succeeded.  Thinly capitalized solar developers may be able to access the tax credit transfer market after paying a tax credit insurer, a tax credit transfer broker, a law firm and for investment credit deals, an appraiser.  While well-capitalized solar developers can probably pull it off with a law firm and for investment credit deals an appraiser.  Thus, the well-capitalized developers likely raise five cents or more on the dollar versus their thinly capitalized competitors.  It may sound small, but over time it compounds and leaves the well-capitalized miles ahead.

The 10% tax credit adder for projects built in “energy communities” appears to have been mostly successful. For the most part, developers are able to determine whether their projects qualify for that adder and are able to monetize the adder in the tax credit transfer market. This is due to Treasury publishing guidance that is relatively clear and based on objective standards. Further, we are seeing projects developed on closed coal sites and in communities with a history of significant fossil fuel employment.

At the moment, the 10% domestic content tax credit adder is a split decision.  The domestic content adder appears to have spurred the construction of a flurry of factories making solar modules and batteries, but most of those factories are not online yet.

Treasury’s original guidance on the domestic content adder was unworkable. To address that safe harbors were promulgated for solar, onshore wind and batteries. The safe harbors for solar and onshore wind seems to be viable. There is some cautious optimism about the safe harbor for storage. Technologies like geothermal heat pumps, fuel cells, renewable natural gas and offshore wind do not currently have a safe harbor and find themselves unsure about how to determine eligibility for the domestic content tax credit adder.

IRA failures

Grab a stiff drink and let’s turn to the IRA’s failures.  First, based on anecdotal evidence, the prevailing wage and apprentice rules are not creating much value for the nation.  Most folks building solar projects are already being paid wages not much different than the Department of Labor’s prevailing wage due to a tight market for skilled labor.  Therefore, the prevailing wage rules are burdening the solar industry with concerns about a foot fault in their record-keeping resulting in large penalties or worse yet a reduction in the tax credits a project is eligible for by 80%, while not stimulating higher wages for skilled tradesman needed to build solar and other clean energy projects.  It has created a cottage industry for consulting and accounting firms to verify the appropriate wages are being paid, but the nation was already facing a shortage of accountants.  Let’s not even discuss the shortage of tax lawyers.

In terms of apprentices, it appears most projects are qualifying for an exemption from the apprentice requirements because apprentices are not available. Therefore, the well-intentioned rules do not appear to be spurring America’s young people to forego video games for learning a trade. Thus, the apprentice rules create a concern for project developers and their contractors about a costly tax credit foot fault while not spurring a renaissance in the trades.  If solar and the other clean energy technologies are needed to save the planet from climate change, should we be burdening projects deploying these technologies with cumbersome requirements that are not resulting in more skilled tradesmen?

Finally, there are the proposed investment tax credit regulations.  Those regulations fail to clearly answer some basic questions the industry has been asking for years like how much of a solar parking canopy qualifies for the investment credit.  Further, Treasury has gone out on a limb requiring all equipment integral to a project to have a common owner and only allowing tax credits for repairs and upgrades if less than 20% of the improved project has its origins in the original equipment.

However, the investment credit regulations appear to have what is something of an unexpected gift. The Department of Energy (DOE) seems to have prevailed upon the Treasury to broadly interpret the rule about the investment credit for interconnection costs.  The apparent motivation for this is to spur improvements to the nation’s anachronistic grid.

The statutory allowance for the investment credit on interconnection costs has a 5 MW capacity threshold. However, the proposed regulations appear to say that threshold is applied at the inverter level for solar and the turbine level for wind. For instance, it appears that a solar project that most industry participants would say has 200 MWs of capacity (i.e., it exceeds the 5 MW threshold) would qualify, so long as no inverter is serving 5 MW or more (e.g., there are 50 inverters each serving 4 MW).  This interpretation appears to have been confirmed by the proposed section 48E regulations (i.e., the tech neutral investment credit).  However, many law firms’ tax opinion committees are by nature conservative and are waiting to bless “will” level opinions under the traditional section 48 until Treasury confirms the favorable interpretation in the final section 48 regulations.

The implementation of the IRA has resulted in a range of policies outcomes. However, as is usually the case, the nimble and creative have faired well, while concerns about whether the nation is doing enough to address existential threat of climate change remain unabated.

David Burton is a partner at Norton Rose Fulbright. He advises clients on a wide range of U.S. tax matters, with an emphasis on project finance and energy transactions. He has extensive experience structuring tax-efficient transactions for wind and other renewables with particular expertise with respect to flip partnerships and sale-leasebacks. Earlier in his career, David was the managing director and senior tax counsel at GE Energy Financial Services (GE EFS) where he oversaw all of the tax aspects for more than US$21 billion in global energy projects. 

Peter Diamandis is joining the Advisory Board of PeroNova, a climate tech company, to develop new uses for this cost-effective and versatile material.

Green Lantern Solar announced the promotion of Jon Sutton to Director of Engineering. Sutton, formerly Green Lantern Solar’s Construction Manager, possesses a wealth of experience in successfully leading complex engineering projects, making him a vital asset to the company’s ongoing success. In his new role, Sutton will lead Green Lantern Solar’s engineering division, ensuring the highest standards of quality and efficiency across all projects.

FTC Solar’s Board of Directors appointed Yann Brandt, a longtime solar executive, as the company’s new president and chief executive officer and a member of the Board, effective August 19, 2024. He joins the company from FlexGen, a leading battery energy storage services and software company, where he most recently served as Chief Commercial Officer since November 2022 and previously as Chief Financial Officer since February 2021. Prior to FlexGen, Brandt served as CEO of Quick Mount PV, a manufacturer of solar racking for residential solar, where he led the company’s reorganization and subsequent strong growth.

Perch Energy, a clean energy technology platform and leading provider of community solar services, appointed Russ Main as its new chief financial officer (CFO) and Jeffrey Battles as senior vice president (SVP) of Technology.

National Renewable Solutions (NRS), a U.S.-based renewable energy company, announced four leadership promotions to charge the company’s growth plans: Lindsey Ransom is now chief commercial officer and will oversee offtake origination strategy, commercial markets and regulatory affairs, policy, ESG and communications functions.  Mike Peck is chief operating officer after having been senior VP operations. In his new role, he will draw upon his 16 years of renewable energy industry experience to lead NRS in strategically improving its operations capabilities. Vineet Parkhe is chief technology officer. He and his team will continue to collaborate across the organization, and drive technical rigor, efficiency and innovation across all aspects of NRS’ business. Ben Klassen is the new chief legal officer. After serving as general counsel since February 2022 he will now focus on risk management and direction of legal strategy as NRS continues to grow its portfolio of renewable energy projects.

Bracewell LLP announced that renewable energy and project development attorney Hans P. Dyke has rejoined the firm’s Washington, DC office as partner in the energy practice. Dyke, a Bracewell partner from 2017 to 2021, returns to the firm after serving as general counsel of Sol Systems, LLC since he left Bracewell in 2021.

Flow Aluminum, an Albuquerque, New Mexico-based startup innovating the energy industry with an aluminum-CO2 battery alternative to lithium-ion, announced the addition of Dr. Olaf Conrad as chief technology officer. In this executive role, Dr. Conrad will establish a technology roadmap for Flow Aluminum and lead its technical team in commercializing the product.

Rhode Island has enacted the “Residential Solar Energy Disclosure and Homeowners Bill of Rights Act” to protect homeowners from predatory door-to-door sales tactics in the solar industry.

The law applies to any individual selling a solar system purchase agreement, a lease agreement, or a power purchase agreement (PPA). It covers anyone soliciting a homeowner or selling a solar project for up to four individual housing units simultaneously. Notably, the law does not apply to solar lease deals with payment terms of less than five years, transactions that involve a generator, or commercial systems.

The law requires all parties selling residential solar to register with the state and renew the registration annually. For the solar company, at least one person in charge of residential sales must have their name and address on file with the state. Additionally, all individuals directly selling to homeowners must undergo a national background check, including fingerprinting, which must be submitted to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The registration process will be managed by the Rhode Island Division of Taxation.

The Department of Business Regulation is authorized to investigate complaints, impose administrative penalties, revoke registrations, and order violators to cease operations. The department can also impose fines of up to $5,000 per violation for up to four years after the violation has occurred.

The law mandates that specific documents be provided to homeowners. A hard copy or email of the solar agreement must be given to the homeowner. Additionally, the state will issue a standard disclosure form that must include the following information:

• A statement indicating whether operations and maintenance are included in the agreement.
• A written estimate of projected savings over the system’s expected lifespan.
• An estimate of savings beyond the system’s anticipated useful life.
• Data fields used to calculate the savings projections.
• The electricity escalation rate applied in the savings assumptions.
• Information on tax credit eligibility.

Additionally, the new law gives residential customers the right to rescind or cancel the deal for seven days after entering the agreement.

The law goes into effect in March 2025.

The bill was prompted by an increase in consumer complaints regarding aggressive and misleading sales tactics by some solar companies. By implementing these regulations, the state aims to build public trust and encourage the adoption of solar energy while protecting consumers from unscrupulous actors. Attorney General Peter F. Neronha, along with other state officials, has emphasized the importance of these protections in fostering a reliable and transparent solar industry in Rhode Island.

Several other U.S. states have taken action against door-to-door sales companies. Minnesota recently sued four of the nation’s largest solar finance companies. Vision Solar has been sued in multiple states, including Connecticut and Arizona, while Vivint Solar, prior to its acquisition by Sunrun, was sued in New Mexico. Sunrun, along with several other solar door-to-door companies, has also been sued in Connecticut.

(Read: “U.S. government announces resources to protect solar customers“)

From pv magazine Global

Sinovoltaics, a Hong Kong-based quality assurance services firm, released the third edition of its Sinovoltaics PV inverter manufacturer financial stability ranking, featuring 32 manufacturers. The ranking is based on publicly available information on publicly traded companies.

The top ten inverter manufacturers are China’s Hoymiles Power Electronics, Irish energy management specialist Eaton, U.S.-based microinverter specialist Enphase Energy, China-based Kstar Science and Technology and Taiwan-based Delta Electronics, followed by China’s Sinexcel, Switzerland-based ABB, China’s Goodwe, France’s Schneider Electric and U.S.-based Emerson.

In this edition, Schneider Electric is new to the top ten, coming up from fifteenth to ninth.

Sinovoltaics notes that the report, which is global in scope and calculated since September 2021, provides insight into how the financial strength of inverter manufacturers has evolved over the past three years. The report is free to download.

The ranking is based on a so-called Altmann Z-score, a quantitative formula that uses multiple corporate income and balance sheet values to measure the financial health of a company. Sinovoltaics assesses a company’s financial strength through a credit-strength test based on profitability, leverage, liquidity, solvency and activity ratios.

A score that is 1.1 or lower indicates a higher probability of bankruptcy within the next two years, while a higher score of 2.6 or greater indicates a solid financial position.

Sinovoltaics has published several other manufacturer rankings for the quarter, including reports focused on battery manufacturers and module manufacturers. It notes that the financial ranking does not indicate the quality of the equipment, rather they are meant to be used as an element of the due diligence process, or to help identify financially stable partners.

SEG Solar officially opened its new photovoltaic module manufacturing facility in Houston on August 8 with a gala event featuring a ribbon-cutting ceremony and live country music. The automated factory line has an initial capacity of 2 GW of n-type panels per year with plans to expand to 5 GW by 2030.

“You see this facility?” said Jun Zhuge, SEG’s founder and chief operating officer, addressing an audience of mostly customers, partners and local officials gathered for the opening. “We have invested $60 million right here in Houston. We’re not just talk.”

The new factory and headquarters complex features 145,000 square feet of manufacturing and warehouse space and 16,000 square feet of office space. The fully automated production line – SEG claims it’s the longest PV line in the world – takes in glass and cells and runs through production stages over conveyor belts all the way through framing and packaging. There are numerous stations for various inspection and quality assurance processes. The hands-off line requires 12 technicians to attend the machinery, although more were on hand for training purposes.

“We don’t just want to make money,” Zhuge said. “We want to build solar manufacturing in this country. We want to bring all of the supply chain to this country.”

Conceived by co-founders Zhuge and Jim Wood, who serves as chief executive officer, SEG Solar was launched in California in 2016. Through 2021 the company established cell and module factories in Southeast Asia and China. The photovoltaic cells that feed the Houston operation are sourced from Indonesia, but the company says it is committed to producing cells in the U.S.

A veteran of investment banking and solar installation businesses, Wood eventually went to work for a large Chinese solar manufacturer. He teamed up with Zhuge and other partners with industry experience, and they decided there was a real opportunity to establish a successful American module producer under the right circumstances.

“We looked at a lot of the lessons that we’ve learned from myself and other folks here working at other manufacturers and we said, we’re going to lean heavily into automation,” Wood told pv magazine USA, adding that the production machines are the largest of their types available. “Those stringers are 1.3 times faster than any other stringers in the world. So because we’re fully automated, because the capacity of those lines are larger, because the machines run faster, we’re able to be as competitive here as we would be in Southeast Asia.”

According to Wood, the company looked at other regions to establish its U.S. manufacturing base but decided that Houston offered a number of key advantages for SEG Solar’s strategic development plans. He cited Houston as having one of the best ports in the country, a large and educated labor force with many skills and a very friendly business atmosphere. Moreover, Texas is already the second largest solar market in the U.S. with 42 GW installed as of Q2 2024, according to the Solar Energy Industries Association, and is poised to become number one next year.

Wood stresses that SEG Solar’s purpose is not to satisfy domestic content requirements or circumvent tariffs. It is a 100% U.S.-owned company, with the principals assuming financial as well as managerial responsibility for its operations.

“SEG is financed internally,” he said. “We don’t have private equity. There are no external owners. We haven’t taken any outside debt. We’re a true American company where we’ve taken our profits, recycled them and grown this business organically.”

CleanCapital has acquired an operating solar portfolio made up of two brownfield assets in New York. The projects, Steel Sun II and Homeridae, total 13 MW and supply clean energy to a local university, healthcare provider and a municipality in upstate New York.

The two projects were developed in 2019 by BQ Energy Development (BQ), a specialist in brownfield and landfill renewable energy development acquired by CleanCapital in 2022.

CleanCapital’s in-house development team, led by former BQ CEO Paul Curran, now oversees a project pipeline of nearly 2 GW of solar and more than 8 GWh of energy storage.

“The work we did at BQ Energy, including developing and operating these two exceptional projects, is a source of great pride for me,” said Paul Curran, chief development officer at CleanCapital and former BQ CEO. “Fully integrating the former BQ team into CleanCapital has produced a development team with the expertise, track record, and financial runway to develop, build, and operate hundreds of megawatts in the next few years. Our focus now is to execute on the more than 100 projects in our pipeline and deliver more clean megawatts to our customers as expeditiously as we can.”

The Steel Sun II project is located on the former Bethlehem Steel site on Buffalo’s waterfront and is part of a larger revitalization that includes an array of solar and wind projects. The energy generated by this project is contracted to local mainstays Kaleida Health and Canisius University, the latter of which is meeting its sustainability goals with this project.

“Canisius University benefits from this solar project by seeing lower energy costs, helps us meet the goals set out in our sustainability plan, as well as enhance our commitment to Laudato Si,” stated Joseph Snodgress, director of facilities management at Canisius University.

The Homeridae project is one of two solar arrays in Olean sited on a former oil refinery and tank farm, respectively. The City of Olean is the energy offtake for these projects, which reportedly have demonstrated cost savings to taxpayers in the five years the projects have been operating. Both sites benefited from the Department of Environmental Conservation Region 9 brownfield cleanup program.

“The net metering credits generated by the Homeridae solar project have been a significant benefit to our city budget, allowing us to reallocate savings toward other essential services for our community,” stated William Aiello, Mayor of Olean. “We are excited to see the ongoing positive impact of this oil refinery turned solar project that provides reliable and clean energy to the City of Olean.”

This acquisition brings CleanCapital’s portfolio of operating and under-construction assets to 242 projects totaling 341 MW across 23 states and U.S. territories.

From pv magazine Global

A U.S.-Dutch research team has developed a novel bidding strategy for PV plant operators participating in electricity spot markets. It is based on turning probabilistic solar power forecasts into interdependent scenarios used in the multistage bedding strategy.

According to the researchers, the new method is able to provide increased revenues and reduced imbalances. “Accurate forecasts can assist in the timely scheduling of the dispatch of power generators and batteries, and therewith ensuring grid stability, while reducing the need for balancing reserves,” they said. “There is a lack of studies that develop and evaluate operational stochastic bidding strategies for electricity markets that consider PV systems and rely on probabilistic solar power forecasting models.”

The bidding strategy is designed to optimize bidding results, considering the uncertainty of PV power generation. It first aims to maximize revenues from the day-ahead market (DAM) by considering a set of scenarios, which are a range of possible power outputs. In order to achieve this goal, it used the Pinson method, a statistical technique that can transform probabilistic forecasts to scenarios that consider the interdependence structure of the prediction errors.

“The method was originally developed for the purpose of wind power forecasting and was later also successfully used for net load forecasting, i.e. demand subtracted with solar generation,” the academics explained.

Following the creation of several scenarios, a bid is generated by solving a few numerical problems. Then, corrections to the initial DAM bid are made in the intraday market (IM), using updated PV power forecasts. “The consequences of deviations in real-time are considered by the imbalance prices for up- and down-regulation,” added the team.

The scenarios made with the Pinson method were based on three probabilistic models – quantile regression (QR), quantile regression forest (QF) and clear sky persistence ensemble (CSPE). They were all benchmarked against point prediction methods, that provide a single predicted value for each period.

“The point forecasting models include a multi-variate linear regression (MLR), random forest regression (RF), physical PV and a smart (clear sky) persistence (SP) model,” the scientists explained. “Since these point forecasts do not provide any information regarding the uncertainty of the prediction, the potential monetary impact of an imbalance is not considered.”

All prediction mechanisms were then run on data manufactured from a simulation of a 1 MW system in Cabauw, the Netherlands. The analysis was based on real-measured global horizontal irradiance (GHI), ambient and dew point temperature, wind speed, and surface pressure from 2018 to 2020. The first two years of collected data were used to train the different prediction models, while 2020 was used for testing.

“Results show that the probabilistic forecasting models outperform the point models,” the scientists stressed. “Second, the results demonstrate the dominance of tree-based models, where the RF and QF models outperform all other DA and ID point and probabilistic models, respectively. The findings indicate that the proposed method outperforms the reference method, yielding higher revenues and causing less imbalance.”

Also, the analysis showed that expanding market participation from the DAM to the IM results in increased revenues. “Considering the best-performing model per forecast horizon, revenues increase with 22.3% from € 22,000  ($ 23,900) /MW to € 27,000 /MW per year when DAM trades are updated with IM trades,” they concluded. “Similarly, the imbalance caused almost halves, by -46.8%.”

Their findings were presented in “Probabilistic solar power forecasting: An economic and technical evaluation of an optimal market bidding strategy,” published on Applied Energy. The group included researchers from Utrecht University, Wageningen University, and the University of California, San Diego.

Sunrun (Nasdaq: RUN) delivered its Q2, 2024 earnings, meeting analyst expectations for revenue and delivering promising guidance for cash generation in 2025. 

The residential solar and energy storage provider reported $524 million in revenue for the quarter, in-line with Wall Street expectations. The company delivered a surprise earnings per share of $0.55, up from the expected loss ($0.40). The stock is trading up roughly 15% during the trading session post-earnings report.

For businesses in the residential solar industry, generating cash and cover debts has become an area of focus for investors. Sunrun had a strong performance in this area, generating $217 million in cash in Q2. The company reiterated its guidance of $50 million to $125 million in cash generation in Q4 and introduced guidance of $350 million to $600 million in 2025. 

Sunrun added 26,687 customers in the second quarter, about 94% of which were lease or power purchase agreement customers. Annual recurring revenue from subscribers was approximately $1.5 billion as of June 30, 2024. 

Net earning assets increased to $5.7 billion, including over $1 billion in total cash. 

Sunrun posted strong execution in capital markets, as well, closing an $886 million securitization of residential solar and battery systems. The two classes of non-recourse Class A senior notes were rated A+ by Kroll with the $443.15 million public Class A-1 note priced at a credit spread of 205 basis points. The Class A notes represented an advance rate of approximately 72.6%. 

Energy storage capacity installed reached 192 MW in Q2, reaching prior expectations. Sunrun now has 7.1 GW of networked solar energy capacity. 

“In the second quarter we again set new records for both storage installation and attachment rates, further differentiating Sunrun in the industry, beating the high-end of our storage installation guidance and delivering solid quarter-over-quarter growth for solar installation, Cash Generation and Net Subscriber Value,” said Mary Powell, Sunrun’s Chief Executive Officer. 

Energy storage attachment rates increased to 54%, up from 18% in the same period in 2023. Sunrun has now installed more than 116,000 solar and storage systems, representing nearly 1.8 GWh of stored energy capacity. 

Sunrun also launched a partnership with Tesla to support the Texas power grid. More than 150 Sunrun customers have enrolled in a virtual power plant (VPP) program to be compensated for dispatching electricity from their batteries to the grid when power is needed most. Additionally, during prolonged power outages in the aftermath of Hurricane Beryl, more than 1,600 Sunrun customers in the greater Houston area were able to keep their homes energized with more than 70,000 hours of backup energy provided by their solar-plus-storage systems.

Harris names clean energy advocate Governor Tim Walz as VP pick The Harris-Walz ticket wins on climate, according to clean energy supporters.

Quantum algorithm for photovoltaic maximum power point tracking Researchers have developed a quantum particle swarm optimization algorithm for maximum power point tracking that reportedly generates 3.33% more power in higher temperature tests and 0.89% more power in partial shading tests compared to conventional swarm optimization algorithms.

New discovery paves the way for more efficient perovskite solar cells Researchers from University of Texas have used computational methods to study the formation of polarons in halide perovskites. The findings revealed topological vortices in polaron quasiparticles.

SunPower goes bankrupt The residential solar installer has filed for bankruptcy, among the largest in a series of major bankruptcies in the industry.

Atlanta Motorsports Park goes solar The motorsports club with an F1-style track is installing a solar array that is expected to power about 60% of its operations.

A drone’s eye view helps find the perfect solar site Drone Drafting brings an array of aerial sensors to project planning and engineering.

Residential solar company SunPower (Nasdaq: SPWR) has filed for bankruptcy.

“SunPower has faced a severe liquidity crisis caused by a sharp decline in demand in the solar market and SunPower’s inability to obtain new capital,” said Matthew Henry, chief transformation officer, SunPower.

The residential solar industry in the United States has been struggling over the past two years as rising interest rates and regulatory changes have squeezed the value offered to customers. As demand fell, rising excess inventory posed further challenges for installers.

Industry-wide, installations are down roughly 20% nationwide in 2024. SunPower joins Titan Solar Power and Sunworks as publicly-traded residential solar installers that have gone under this year, along with many smaller installers, particularly in California. However, analysts have cautioned that the industry is not in a tailspin as it may appear.

“SunPower’s travails are emphatically a company-specific issue and should not be seen as a comment on the underlying demand for U.S. residential solar,” Pavel Molchanov, an analyst with Raymond James.

SunPower’s struggles continued through persistent high interest rates. In December 2023 the company defaulted on its debt and issued a warning that it had “going concerns” about remaining in business. In April, the company announced it would close numerous installation service centers across the country and cut about 26% of its workforce.

This July, SunPower communicated to its employees that it will pause several core operations. The company announced it will deactivate its lease and power purchase agreement offerings and will discontinue new product shipments.

SunPower will now sell its assets, including installation company Blue Raven Solar and its new homes unit to Complete Solaria, Inc. for $45 million. The company requested courts approve the deal by late September.

SunPower was one of the longest-running solar businesses in the United States, formed in 1985. The company spun off its manufacturing business in 2020 to focus more squarely on rooftop solar as demand surged. Since then, demand cooled considerably, and, under a high interest rate environment, the strategy proved fatal for the company.

The U.S.-based SunPower is not to be confused with the SunPower branded solar panels designed, manufactured, and sold by Maxeon Solar Technologies in Europe and elsewhere outside of the U.S. and Canada. “Other than a product brand name, there is no existing relationship between Maxeon and SunPower Corporation”, a spokesperson from Maxeon Solar told pv magazine.​ SunPower Corp. and Maxeon separated in August 2020 when Maxeon spun off as an independent company. Maxeon previously had a supply agreement to provide solar panels to SunPower Corp., “but that agreement was terminated in 2023, and since Q1 2024, Maxeon has not been shipping any product to SunPower Corp”, she concluded.

From pv magazine Germany

Meyer Burger Technology AG and Solestial Inc. have entered into a strategic partnership to produce next-generation, ultra-thin silicon solar cells for use in space travel, the companies announced on Monday.

“The partnership will revolutionize space solar power by enabling Solestial to deliver ultra-thin, reliable, radiation-hardened cells and modules at unprecedented scale,” they added.

The companies plan to combine the radiation-resistant solar cells and flexible modules developed by Solestial, which are optimized for long-term performance under space conditions, with Meyer Burger’s heterojunction technology. Solestial’s proprietary metallization process and cosmic radiation damage reduction technologies will be used to create solar cells that offer the efficiency and reliability required for operation in orbit.

Solestial will supply its ultra-thin, radiation-hardened silicon wafers to Meyer Burger. The Swiss PV company will then process them using its heterojunction technology and send them back to Solestial’s production site in Tempe, Arizona, for metallization, completion and integration into flexible solar modules.

The cooperation will enable Solestial to supply enough solar modules to equip hundreds of spacecraft annually from the middle of next year. Production is scheduled to start on September 1, 2024.

“Meyer Burger stretches into industries that need our proprietary know-how and advanced technologies,” said Meyer Burger CEO Gunter Erfurt. “By excelling at every stage of product development, we help companies like Solestial scale, and support them as they grow.”

Generac Power Systems, known for its generators, battery backup and other power products, has acquired Ageto, a provider of microgrid controllers.

Ageto, based in Fort Collins, Colorado, developed the ARC microgrid controller, designed to integrate, optimize and manage distributed conventional resources, renewable energy resources and electric vehicle (EV) chargers in the commercial & industrial (C&I) market. Its controller provides a single interface for monitoring all components of a microgrid, the company reports.

“This acquisition enhances our ability to offer a complete energy technology ecosystem to domestic commercial & industrial customers with multi-asset sites,” said Erik Wilde, EVP and president, Domestic C&I at Generac. “By integrating Ageto’s industry-leading microgrid controller and advanced software into our systems, we’re simplifying asset integration, control and optimization for our customers and creating a competitive advantage for Generac.”

Generac has worked with Ageto since 2021, incorporating its microgrid controllers into Generac’s battery energy storage systems (BESS) solutions and generator sets. The transaction closed on August 1, 2024. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Generac was recently named a leader by Wood Mackenzie in the residential solar-plus-storage market. Not so long ago, Generac specialized in fossil-fuel based generators but it has fast become a leader in residential clean energy. PWRcell is its residential storage product, and coupled with the Concerto platform that is part of Generac Grid Services, it provides a distributed energy resource management system (DERMS) that is designed to detect spikes in demand, signaling to the the batteries to automatically dispatch clean energy based on real-time grid conditions. 

Generac signed on with Southern California Edison (SCE) as a virtual power plant participant, using this solution to scale the utility’s Power Flex program.

Generac first stepped into the commercial and industrial (C&I) market when it acquired PowerPlay Battery Energy Storage Systems, an engineering, procurement, and construction (EPC) firm. PowerPlay specializes in turnkey battery energy storage systems for commercial and industrial customers, with systems sized up to 7 MWh. Generac said the acquisition will help the company offer a more complete ecosystem of products and solutions to C&I customers.

From ESS News

Ambri has confirmed the closing of the sale of its assets in accordance with Section 363 of the Bankruptcy Code to a consortium of its lenders, as it prepares to take fresh steps toward commercialization of its long-duration storage technology.

Earlier this year, Ambri’s board, management and its lenders determined that a court-supervised 363 sale process was the best course to facilitate a comprehensive recapitalization in a bid to ensure long-term growth and profitability. The company filed for bankruptcy in May, blaming a challenging fundraising environment and thwarted plans to expand into manufacturing.

Now, the liquid metal battery storage startup has emerged with additional capital contribution from the Lender Consortium, whose bid was selected following a competitive sale process. The Lender Consortium comprises a group of Ambri’s pre-bankruptcy investors, including funds managed by each of Gates Frontier, Paulson and Co. Inc., Fortistar, and other investors.

“The team at Ambri has continued to make impressive progress towards a commercial long-duration battery system, including developing our third-generation cell product,” said David Bradwell, Ambri’s cofounder who is now taking the reins as the company’s new CEO.

“I am grateful for the dedication of our team and the support of our investors as we emerge as a leaner and more capital efficient organization. We look forward to offering our unique, safe, and low-cost commercial product to our customers at scale, to meet the strong customer demand for our battery systems, and for a cleaner energy future. As we embark on this fresh start with a stronger balance sheet and new capital, we are focused on positioning Ambri to play a leading role in the long duration energy storage market for the benefit of our stakeholders,” Bradwell said.

Founded in 2010 at MIT, Ambri has been working on building industrial-scale, liquid-metal batteries for over a decade. With Reliance Industries as one of its key investors, the company had plans to set up a large-scale battery manufacturing facility in India, in addition to building  a 140,000 square foot facility in Milford, Massachusetts.

As it filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, the company said it had seen strong demand for its technology from across the market, equaling the planned output of its factory in Milford, Massachusetts, for three years.

Ambri’s batteries feature a liquid calcium alloy anode, a molten salt electrolyte, and a cathode comprised of solid particles of antimony, enabling the use of low-cost materials and a low number of steps in the cell assembly process.

To continue reading, visit our ESS News website.

From pv magazine Global

Data centers come in many sizes. The largest, China Telecom’s Inner Mongolia Information Park, spans 100 hectares and consumes up to 150 MW per hour. North Virginia, in the United States, houses around 300 facilities in a grouping known as Data Center Alley, with each consuming about 10 to 50 times the energy per square meter of a typical commercial office.

Utility Dominion Energy was forced to pause grid connections for new members of Data Center Alley in 2022 and is now constructing new transmission lines to meet demand.

The United States has more than 5,000 data centers and consultant McKinsey & Company expects their power consumption to rise from a peak 17 GW/hour, in 2022, to 35 GW/hour in 2030.

Scaling up

Data centers are becoming more high density and power intensive but also more efficient.

“The hyperscale cloud providers all seem to be locked in an arms race to build out as much infrastructure as quickly as they can,” said Dan Thompson, principal research analyst at S&P Global Market Intelligence. “Some of this is high-density, high-performance, compute-type deployments, but a lot of it is also the cloud providers building out at scale. Densities in watts per square foot are rising, but I think what we’re seeing right now is just the tip of the iceberg.”

Data centers have a power usage effectiveness (PUE) ratio, which dictates how much energy is needed for computing versus other activity, such as cooling, lighting, and power losses. A PUE of 1.5 would indicate a data center requiring 500 kW of extra power for 1 MW needed for computing purposes.

S&P’s Thompson said power densities have fallen from an average 1.58 in 2020, as power density and cooling efficiency have risen. The lowest values, however, involve some trade-offs.

What’s in a data center?

Data centers house dense racks of servers containing processing, storage, and network equipment plus supporting infrastructure and cabling for power supply and power-intensive cooling, via air, water, refrigerants, or non-conductive liquids. The rise of artificial intelligence is changing data centers, which now include more specialized hardware accelerators for intensive tasks, high-performance computing infrastructure, and increased power consumption. Dedicated AI buildouts can require as much as five times more fiber optic cabling.

“The data centers we’re seeing built now are designed for PUEs of 1.3 to 1.4, so you can see some improvement there,” said Thompson. “That said, while they are designed for those PUEs, many factors could cause the building to never actually realize that PUE, depending on climate and operations. We have seen some constructions with a designed PUE of 1.15 to 1.2, however these facilities require the consumption of large volumes of clean water to reach those numbers. Given the issues around access to clean water, hyperscalers and the companies building data centers for them have tended to build slightly less efficient data centers for the sake of using very little or no water.”

The world’s technology giants are the biggest corporate power purchase agreement (PPA) buyers of renewable energy. On March 1, 2024, Microsoft and asset manager Brookfield signed a record 10.5 GW deal to deliver solar, wind, and “new or impactful carbon-free energy generation technologies” to Microsoft from 2026 to 2030.

Microsoft says its CO₂ emissions are now up 30% from when it set its 2030 net-zero target, in 2020, and mainly because of data centers.

“The rise in our scope 3 emissions [from third-party, supply chain companies] primarily comes from the construction of more data centers and the associated embodied carbon in building materials as well as hardware components such as semiconductors, servers, and racks,” said Microsoft, adding that the 10.5 GW renewables PPA is on top of a 19.8 GW clean power portfolio.

Simon Maine, managing director for communications, renewable power, and transition at Brookfield, told pv magazine that the deal was eight times bigger than any previous PPA.

“We have a very large renewable power and transition business, with over $100 billion of assets in that division alone, and 30-plus-years’ experience in the sector,” said Maine. “We look to either buy assets or, more recently and more likely, buy companies. The companies will have high-quality management teams that have a full spectrum of capabilities. We have projections to install somewhere between 5 GW and 7 GW per year [to 2030]. The deal with Microsoft probably covers about 30% of that growth and that’s without factoring in further acquisitions.”

Brookfield is reported to have acquired a majority stake in India’s Leap Green Energy for $500 million, and is also said to be preparing to acquire Australian renewable energy developer WindLab, which has around 24 GW of projects in development or under construction.

Anas Papazachariou, senior PPA manager at renewables developer Cero Generation, explained how colocation can meet data center energy demand.

“A single solution where solar meets the full increase from the growing number and size of data centers is probably not optimal and I have to be honest about that,” he said. “So a lot of the offtakers are looking to create virtual portfolios whereas wind and solar, and combined batteries, are part of their portfolio because they’re actually optimizing their profiles through that basis.”

Solar-plus-storage means more expensive energy offtake agreements, but reduced risk, said Papazachariou.

Efficient clusters

“Hyperscale” data centers are clustered for efficiency. Where latency is concerned, however, many other data centers, especially those serving internet and network services, are distributed closer to population centers. These are smaller and experience more variation in demand.

Mike Bates, general manager for the Intel Energy Center of Excellence, said data centers are using workload management software that can respond to real-time energy conditions. Intel is deploying software inside data centers to manage workflows and loads, while also tracking carbon footprints of workloads for audits by companies claiming low carbon or net-zero workflows.

“One of my customers is the [internal] Intel Data Center group and we work to deploy these same solutions we’re taking outside of the market, making sure that we’ve hardened data centers for climate impacts while opening up new opportunities as well,” said Bates. “For example, our software is also able to adapt workloads for certain conditions. If I can push a workload inside the data center to the times when energy is in surplus, I can actually get paid to consume that energy.” He added that energy resiliency also includes interruptions to supply, when considering climate impacts.

Ben Levitt – associate director for the gas, power, and climate solutions North American power and renewables research team at S&P Global Commodity Insights – highlighted the cost benefits of operating data centers with flexibility.

“Data centers with flexible operations – that is, interruptible, price-responsive – cost less to supply than ones that are less flexible,” said Levitt. “Data centers that are interruptible might even be able to get a faster grid connection. In addition, and separately, it is possible that big tech may drive investment in developing and scaling the new, ‘clean firm’ technologies needed for around-the-clock clean energy for their data centers.”

Levitt said new loads will lead to new renewables investment but fossil fuel generation, and increasingly batteries, will also pick up extra demand. Ultimately, a lot will depend on local bureaucracy and permitting.

Levitt added that it is possible big technology companies will play a role in scaling new clean technology. “These efforts could accelerate the development of newer technologies that could reshape energy supply mix at a faster pace than previously considered,” he said.

Paces, a GIS and data platform, recently completed its Series A funding round, raising $11 million.

The round was led by Navitas Capital, an early stage venture capital fund, with participation from Suffolk Technologies and MCJ Collective, and existing investors Resolute Ventures, Soma Capital, and Y Combinator.

Paces provides software solutions to renewable energy developers that is designed to reduce time and provide transparency to site origination and permitting processes.

‍“Meeting the challenge of the energy transition requires new solutions to enable development of the energy ecosystem,” said Louis Schotsky, managing partner, Navitas Capital. “We are incredibly excited to support Paces as they expand their transformative approach to pre-construction for grid-connected projects. Paces is tackling the critical challenges of electrifying our economy, accelerating the development of renewable energy and industrial load projects and streamlining the energy ecosystem.”

Paces reports that its software streamlines the traditionally manual process of site selection and project due diligence by consolidating and interpreting spatial, zoning, permitting, interconnection, and environmental data.

The software lets developers use their own custom parameters to locate the most viable sites for development. Then by using local, state and federal zoning, permitting and geospatial data, its core tool, Permitting Predictor, assesses risk and delivers concise summaries to empower developers to make informed decisions during due diligence.

‍“The Paces platform has significantly improved our site selection process and quality control, allowing us to increase the number of solar projects we deliver to communities across the country,” said Ned Horneffer, director of development, Third Pillar Solar. ‍

The company reports that it will put the $11 million in new funding to use in enhancing its software platform, expanding availability of Permitting Predictor across the U.S. and enhancing its data intelligence.

“Paces is committed to maximizing the climate benefits of every piece of land,” said James McWalter, co-founder and CEO, Paces.  “By expanding our capabilities to accelerate additional components of the due diligence process and serving new sectors like EV charging and data centers, we’re taking a significant step towards realizing this goal. This Series A funding will fuel our growth and impact, allowing us to enhance our platform and support the entire clean energy infrastructure ecosystem.”

Paces reports that its current client list includes EDF Renewables, AES, along with Third Pillar Solar.

In recent years, the commercial landscape for renewable energy assets has been significantly altered by extreme weather events. Solar PV systems have been the most heavily impacted, with an increasing frequency of major loss events and associated insurance claims.

Since 2018, severe weather events in areas with substantial solar deployment such as the northeastern U.S., California and Texas, have prompted insurers to tighten terms and conditions. The result has been a sizable increase in insurance premiums, sometimes by as much as 400%, accompanied by deductible requirements of up to $1 million or 15% of the physical damage limit. More critically, insurance coverages for hail damage have been capped between $15 million and $40 million regardless of project size. Consequently, for large renewable assets with capital expenditures exceeding $200 million, the insured value only represents a fraction of the potential loss.

In addition, natural catastrophe (NatCat) coverages now often include exclusions like microcracking in PV modules. These changes are forcing the solar industry to confront a new reality where obtaining adequate insurance coverage presents a significant obstacle to project viability, and developers may be required to put up additional capital, securities, and/or guarantees to bridge gaps in coverage.

Hail risk

Many locations worldwide experience frequent hail, but only certain areas have historically experienced hail large enough to damage PV modules. In the U.S., severe hail is largely confined to east of the Continental Divide, up to the Great Lakes. In these regions, hailstones can exceed 2 inches in diameter and pose substantial risks to PV projects.

DNV estimates that since 2018, hail-related losses on PV facilities in Texas alone have surpassed $600 million. For instance, in May 2019 the Midway solar project near Midland, Texas, experienced significant hail damage to over 58% of its 685,000 modules, resulting in an insurance claim of ~$70 million. At the Fighting Jays solar farm in Fort Bend County, Texas, a hail event in March 2024 is expected to result in remediation costs reaching hundreds of millions, potentially exceeding 50% of initial construction costs.

Unfortunately, even current best-in-class mitigation strategies like automated hail stow and 1-inch hail resistance tests won’t protect against hailstones larger than 2 inches. To ensure sustainability and financial viability, the solar industry needs a critical reevaluation and enhancement of both technical protective measures and financial risk management practices for solar installations in hail-prone regions.

Loss estimation tools and inaccuracy

Quantifying potential hail-related financial losses for solar assets is crucial for financial planning, financial model evaluation, and determining insurance coverage. Given the complexity, assessing and quantifying potential losses is highly challenging. Risk probabilities used in these assessments vary widely, from near certainty (100%, corresponding to a 1-year return period) to extremely rare events (0.001%, or a 100,000-year return period). Benchmarks are chosen based on the risk tolerance of project owners and investors. The 500-year return period is particularly critical for gauging the extent of potential extreme event losses.

Since 2018, efforts have intensified to quantify the financial impact of hail-related losses across these periods, largely through Probable Maximum Loss (PML) studies to stress-test financial models of assets and portfolios. However, DNV’s reviews suggest these studies may significantly underestimate potential damages, often by a factor of 2 but as large as a factor of 295. This discrepancy typically arises from underestimating hail size for the 500-year return period and by overestimating the effectiveness of mitigation strategies like tracker hail stow position or the resiliency of modules that have passed 1-inch hail tests.

It appears that hail damage at the previously mentioned solar projects exceeded PML estimates by a large margin; these cases underscore the need for a thorough re-evaluation of hail risk assessment. By enhancing the accuracy of PML studies and adjusting risk management strategies, the industry can better ensure the adequacy of insurance coverage and the financial sustainability of solar projects against the risks posed by hail.

Mitigation and financial impacts after loss events

When a solar farm sustains significant hail damage, the repercussions are substantial. The most obvious effects are financial stress from insurance policy deductibles, production losses, and mitigation costs outside of policy coverage, but financial consequences can extend to increased insurance premiums, liquidated damages during operational downtime, costs and fees related to offtake agreements, and legal expenses from litigation by downstream assets and insurers.

The repair process for damaged solar sites is costly and labor-intensive. Disassembling shattered modules and reassembling new ones can require up to three times the effort compared to the original installation. Even modules and equipment that appear undamaged require inspection, testing, and commissioning to confirm functionality.

The financial stability of the project will be jeopardized if project owners are unable to promptly repair damage and restart operations. Tax equity investors and tax credit purchasers who depend on consistent energy production will find their investments at risk. If the project relies on a federal Investment Tax Credit investment structure, tax credits are subject to recapture by the IRS within a 5-year period from the Placed in Service date for the portions of the facility that are not promptly repaired. While insurance firms have introduced products to help mitigate this risk, the impacts from inadequate coverage can be severe.

Risk transfer instruments

Effective commercial risk management and hedging solutions are essential for managing the risks associated with natural catastrophes. A key component is the use of transfer instruments that shift the risk from the project to another party. In addition to insurance policies, these instruments include parametric warranties, long-term service contracts, financial derivatives such as options and catastrophe swaps, event-linked bonds like catastrophe bonds and resilience bonds, captive and self-insurance strategies, insurance-linked loan packages, multi-year insurance policies or bond agreements, reserve funds, and other contingent products. As a testament to their effectiveness, these instruments are already comprehensively applied in mature energy industries such as oil & gas, nuclear, and hydropower.

Parametric warranties and insurance policies offer a way to transfer specific risks to equipment manufacturers or project contractors. For example, if a module manufacturer certifies that their modules can withstand hail up to 2 inches, any damage from hail of this size could be covered under the warranty. This can reduce overall project insurance premiums by transferring frequent, predictable risks to the manufacturer or installer, who are better positioned to manage these risks.

Long-term service contracts with original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) or Engineering, Procurement, and Construction (EPC) contractors are another risk management tool, typically used by the wind industry. These contract structures can also help solar projects transfer operational risks by ensuring that unexpected costs related to equipment failure or operational issues are borne by the service provider.

Catastrophe swaps and event-linked bonds provide financial protection against large-scale natural disasters. By allowing project owners to exchange their risk exposure with another party, potentially in a different geographic location or industry, catastrophe swaps diversify and reduce risk profiles. Event-linked bonds, such as catastrophe and resilience bonds, are designed to raise funds in the event of a disaster. These bonds may defer or forgive repayment obligations if a specific disaster occurs, thus providing immediate liquidity to manage the aftermath of the event. Together, these instruments form a comprehensive toolkit for solar projects to manage and finance the risks associated with natural disasters.

Mitigating operational risk

Despite an expected increase in extreme weather events, project owners can mitigate operational risk through technical hardening measures, and hedge financial risk with accurate loss estimations and innovative risk transfer instruments.

Project stakeholders can negotiate parametric warranties, insurance policies, and long-term service contracts with OEMs, EPCs, and insurers for both operational and pipeline projects. They can discuss financial derivatives, event-linked bonds, and contingent products with their financial teams, and have the option to explore contingent future insurance and credit facilities with insurance brokers and underwriters. At the corporate level, project developers and owners can consider diversifying risk management across various uncorrelated segments of the company, thereby enhancing overall company resilience.

Having a combination of mitigation measures in place—technical measures including hail smart stow strategies, and reinforced PV modules as well as insurance and financial hedges—will allow solar asset portfolios to remain financially bankable, sustainable, and profitable even in locations prone to hail events.

Hamid Gerami is a civil engineer with DNV. As a licensed professional engineer and a CFA candidate, Gerami brings more than eight years of specialized experience in solar project engineering, design, construction, and innovative financing.

Avantus, a U.S. developer of utility-scale solar and solar-plus-storage projects, and KKR, a leading global investment firm, announced in March the acquisition of a majority equity interest by investment funds and accounts managed by KKR.

In the closing Avantus secured a $522 million development facility arranged by KKR Capital Markets and Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation (SMBC). The facility provides Avantus the financial backing to continue to grow its project pipeline, which currently stands at 30 GW of solar and 94 GWh of battery storage, enough to provide 20 million people with clean energy. The company has also developed and sold 7.3 GW of solar and 17 GWh of storage.

“There is enormous opportunity ahead for Avantus, and we look forward to supporting the company in this next phase of growth. The need for clean energy in the United States is increasing substantially, driven by many factors including data center demand, the rise of artificial intelligence, and growth in electrification. Avantus is well positioned to capitalize on these tailwinds,” said Cecilio Velasco, managing director in KKR’s Infrastructure team.

Avantus was founded in 2009 as 8Minute Solar Energy by Tom Buttgenbach with the intention of fighting climate change by developing renewable energy at scale. The company expanded that vision in 2022 to include what it calls an “advanced ecosystem” of clean energy products and services. With the expanded vision came the new name, Avantus, and the plan to build a substantial clean energy development pipeline.

“This announcement is a ringing endorsement of our proven team at Avantus, providing us the capital to advance our portfolio and develop high-performing, high-value clean energy projects,” said Stephanie Perry, chief operating officer at Avantus. “We are excited to work with KKR and our existing investor EIG to achieve our growth plans and build on our track record of delivering record-breaking clean energy solutions that will decarbonize our planet at scale.”

With the close of the transaction, KKR and EIG, a leading institutional investor in the global energy and infrastructure sectors, will be the sole equity investors in Avantus. Both equity sponsors secured commitments for a development financing facility alongside their equity commitments to the company, totaling upwards of $1 billion in the aggregate.

Origis Energy hired capital markets leader Deborah Kross. Most recently at Wells Fargo as managing director, portfolio manager for power, utilities and renewables, Deborah brings two decades of project finance leadership in North America to her new position at Origis as the senior vice president of Capital Markets.

Paul Subzak was hired as vice president of engineering at Affordable Wire Management.

EVPassport announced Liz Howard has been appointed chief financial officer; John Gilbrook has been named senior vice president, North American sales; and Brian McKinnon has joined as vice president of channel partnerships and alliances.

Additional job moves provided by EnergeiaWorks:

• Michael Schutz is starting a new position as Market Sector Leader, Renewable Energy & Power Delivery at Bowman Consulting.
• Evan Wilson announces the newest addition to his CanREA Alberta team – Radha Rajagopalan.

North America’s leading renewable energy search firm

It was not until 1982 that NERC (North American Reliability Corporation) started GADS (Generating Availability Data System), a database about the performance of electric generating equipment that supports equipment availability analysis. Through GADS, NERC maintains operating information on conventional generating units, wind plants and solar plants.

Today there is information on over 5,000 generators in the GADS database, and that number is soon to go up with the changes in regulations. Starting in January of this year, solar facilities over 100 MW of total install capacity were required to report to GADS and that threshold will be lowered to 20 MW in January of 2025.

GADS reporting is separate from the upcoming NERC applicable changes. The NERC rules ensure that elements of the Bulk Electric System operate in a way that is safe and reliable for all that use it. GADS is an arm of the NERC organization that began collecting design, performance, and event data into a singular location to analyze and identify if there is a holistic problem across different utilities, different generators, transmissions, etc. To see trends, you need as much data as possible, hence the inclusion of smaller facilities.

Loggan Purpura Senior Manager of Compliance with Radian Generation said “A few months back I determined that a specific solar panel had an issue with reduced capacity, but it was only because we had the exact same issue on two sites. GADS is collecting thousands of site data, so if they detect a material defect across multiple sites, they can quicky alert owners to the issue. This is extremely helpful to all parties and is helpful in building grid reliability.”

What kind of information is GADS looking for?

GADS will require quarterly reporting, with reports due 45 days after the end of a quarter. If you do not have a plan for these reports, it is time to put one together. The first challenge is data collection. How will you collect the data for the report? What stakeholders are included in the process? Who will collect the data?

GADS will require you to collect three types of data: design, performance, and event data. Design data is basic information about the site, such as plant information, inverter group, and energy storage, if applicable. Other information includes location, elevation, the nearest city, the ownership structure of the site, equipment identification manufacturers, and model numbers. If you have PV trackers, reporting includes the angle, the stove speed, the minimum irradiance you expect to see performance from. All this detail from the design side, gives a baseline or context for performance data, that will be beneficial to all owners and operators.

GADS also collects a wide range of data from the performance of the site such as gross power generation, maximum capacity, active solar inverter hours, forced outages, and more. When there is a reduction in plant output below a certain level or an outage, GADS will ask generators to report on those specific events. They will want a significant amount of data on events, whether they are outages or derates to better understand and improve the industry.

While regular reports are something your facility can anticipate, an event report, can catch you off-guard if you do not have a process in place. Outages or decrease in plant output of more than 20 MW, will require event reporting, and include information on equipment failures, or grid event circumstances or whether it was planned maintenance or a forced outage.

Be sure to validate your data

It is important to plan for data validation. Is someone going through the data to check for accuracy before it is reported? Be sure to have various checks in place to make sure you are reporting quality data. There will be eyes on what you report and regulatory scrutiny to ensure you are reporting the correct data, so validating your data must be an integral part of the process. There is data management software, including Radian Digital that is designed specifically for renewables and can help identify anomalies, in addition to streamline data acquisition from multiple sources, visually enhance analytics, and facilitate timely accurate reporting.

Data validation provides cleanness, accuracy, and completeness to a dataset by eliminating errors and ensuring the information is not corrupted. Without it, a service like GADS might rely on insufficient data to make conclusions about the grid. For example, data outside certain ranges should produce red flags, and some data can be checked against historical records for validation.

Consider voluntary reporting to work out the kinks

While GADS reporting for 20MW facilities will only be required in January 2025, voluntary reporting for Q3 and Q4 will allow organizations to identify and address any issues before they become serious compliance concerns. The initial setup takes more time, and by doing a voluntary submission organizations will be able to work out the kinks and streamline the process internally or determine if they need outside help.

One challenge for many facilities is that the reporting can be incredibly dynamic, meaning there is data that businesses are not accustomed to pulling. For example, there may be aspects of your operation that are not easily available, and you will have to find a way to isolate that data and put it into the correct format for the GADS system. For example, inverter maintenance hours vs. planned inverter maintenance hours.

For organizations that choose to outsource GADS and NERC reporting, be sure to get a customized strategy that includes internal controls, reporting, documentation of all data for validation, and overall risk reduction. This will help with efficient data collection and reporting, regulation interpretation, error avoidance, proactive problem-solving, and resource optimization.

Purpura said “Most industries report on similar types of information, but it is usually a handful of volunteer companies reporting, or the top ten, or a dozen diverse companies sharing their observations, which is not a comprehensive approach. What NERC is striving for through GADS is the single best way for the entire industry to understand the real impacts of renewable energy. And for owners this should result in valuable data to help improve performance and inventory management, predictive maintenance, and of course the transition to clean energy.”

NERCs mission is to have a reliable grid, and GADS is recognized as a valuable source of information about reliability, availability, and maintainability – a key component to achieving this mission. By quickly identifying industry wide trends NERC can help owners and operators optimize performance and develop better facilities.

Building a culture of compliance and starting voluntary reporting today is a smart move, so that when 2025 is upon us, those facilities will already be accustomed to the requirements, and GADS is just another quarterly report.

Kellie Macpherson is executive vice president compliance & risk management  with Radian Generation. She oversees NERC compliance and managed security services. For over 15 years, she has been a noteworthy leader in the renewable asset space and has implemented 200+ compliance programs and completed 40+ NERC audits in all six NERC regions.

The U.S. is facing record electricity demand, mostly driven by AI processing, hyperscale data centers, electric vehicles and hotter weather.

But our nation’s electric grid, built over 70 years ago, struggles to keep pace with this record demand. Utility companies are stuck in the middle and often limited by aging grid technology. While the grid has been improved with automation and emerging technologies, U.S. aging infrastructure struggles to meet modern electricity needs, including the incorporation of renewable energy resources and handling growing building and transportation electrification.

To address these limitations, the Department of Energy (DOE) recently released its “Liftoff” plan. This ambitious plan will deploy advanced grid technologies to increase transmission capacity and reduce carbon emissions.

Outlined here are three key actions utility companies can take to realize this plan and the critical role of renewables, primarily solar energy, in making it come to life.

1. Identify Interconnection Requirements and Standards

First, it’s important for utility companies to understand any existing interconnection rules and standards. These can vary by state or region, although the U.S. federal government sets the minimum requirements. Utilities who do not produce their own power should work closely with independent power producers (IPPs) to ensure all relevant parties are meeting these rules and standards.

Utilities and grid operators can develop their own interconnection standards, particularly concerning solar energy. For any utilities or operators who use solar energy, safety and reliability need to be at the center of plans. Protection and control systems need to be in place to prevent inverters from catching fire due to possible overheating. Utilities should also consider battery storage systems for their solar energy systems, which can supply power to customers on cloudy days or at night.

There are a few different interconnection scenarios that could result from the DOE’s liftoff plan, which utility companies will need to prepare for:

Replace: Plans to replace towers and power lines is the most expensive and time-consuming element of the plan. For utility companies, this can help with future electricity demands. In the near-term, this could result in being unable to deliver the power required by customers with fast-growing electricity demands such as data centers or electric fleets.

Reconductor: Updating power lines with advanced conductors can cost less than half the price of replacement for similar capacity upgrades. This is a viable middle-of-the-road option that can support increased electricity demand over a short period of time without significant upfront investment.

Re-dispatch (“Connect and Manage”): This option allows customers to connect to the grid with the understanding that their energy supply might be curtailed based on grid supply and demand. This is the least expensive and fastest option but could also lead to insufficient power availability and reputational damage.

It’s worth paying attention to organizations like IEEE, NREL, EPA, and Interstate Renewable Energy Council because they provide industry perspectives in the drafting of these rules and standards.

2. Determine Roles and Responsibilities

An updated grid will need clearly defined roles and responsibilities across the energy ecosystem, including responsibility for repairs and servicing. To help avoid a “who’s on first” situation in delivering these essential services, utilities and IPPs can work together to clarify ownership and responsibility of certain tasks. The point of interconnection and the demarcation line often determine these responsibilities, impacting maintenance, repair, monitoring and incident management.

Electric utilities are generally responsible for:

• Regular upkeep of infrastructure such as powerlines, transformers and substations to ensure reliable service;
• Feasibility and impact studies to help ensure new interconnections do not compromise the grid;
• Reliability studies to ensure minimal outages and to shore up demand needs.

IPPs are typically responsible for:

• Power-producing components and interconnections;
• Maintenance and repair costs (though these are defined by contracts between IPPs and third parties, with responsibility contingent upon the location of faults and component ownership);
• Developing new power generation projects, which include site selection, securing permits, financing, construction and commissioning of some power plants.

It is critical that utility companies and IPPs have a collaborative relationship, sharing data to better understand and predict demand patterns and servicing needs. Technologies like Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems and Phasor Measurement Units (PMUs) enable real-time monitoring and management of grid conditions. Other technologies, such as predictive analytics and machine learning, can forecast solar generation patterns and adjust grid operations automatically – ultimately helping utilities and IPPs get power to the right place at the right time.

3. Work With Sustainable Technology Partners

The grid has grown more complex with the integration of solar, wind and other renewable energy sources. Software will play an important role in ensuring the grid can use these sources efficiently.

The DOE regularly announces solar funding opportunities, such as the Solar Technologies’ Rapid Integration and Validation for Energy Systems (STRIVES) program, that utility companies can tap into to integrate solar energy and other renewables into the power supply. Working with the right technology partner is critical to helping secure funding, as well as navigate this transition.

Partners who can support quick and easy installations, particularly for undergrounding and microgrid initiatives, can support utility companies in securing appropriate funding to drive investment in new and existing technologies. Products like switchgear connectors that are easy to install and have a lower total cost of ownership can help the utility company show that it can both operate efficiently and be financially prudent. In developing short- and long-range plans, factor in solutions and materials that can improve reliability and longevity such as fasteners and cable ties that can stand up to demanding conditions and exposure and simplify and reduce maintenance.

Ultimately, partners who can bridge hardware, software and data can help utility companies balance power supply and demand, while reducing the overall carbon footprint of their operations.

Solar Energy: The Not-Too-Distant Future

Foundational to the DOE’s Liftoff Plan is the interconnectivity and collaboration across the energy ecosystem, with the ultimate objective of improving both grid resilience and incorporating cleaner energy sources. While it may take more time for solar energy to become an integral part of power generation across the U.S., utility companies can prepare now to capitalize on the opportunities ahead as the DOE initiative moves to transform the grid for generations to come.

Alan Tse is senior director, utility solutions segment, ABB Installation Products Division, which is part of ABB’s Electrification business. He works with utility companies to power a safer generation through end-to-end solutions with trusted brands that connect, protect and control power continuity. ABB Electrification is a technology leader in electrification and automation, enabling a more sustainable and resource-efficient future. Building on over 140 years of excellence, ABB’s more than 105,000 employees are committed to driving innovations that accelerate industrial transformation.

Residential solar company SunPower (Nasdaq: SPWR) suffered a 70% decline in share prices of its stock this week, crashing nearly 50% on Friday, July 19.

Reuters reported that SunPower communicated to its employees that it will pause several core operations. The company announced it will deactivate its lease and power purchase agreement offerings and will discontinue new product shipments.

SunPower said it will stop countersigning new agreements and is unable to support installation services for shipments currently in transit or already delivered.

Residential solar in the United States has been struggling over the past two years as rising interest rates and regulatory changes have squeezed the value offered to customers. As demand fell, rising excess inventory posed further challenges for installers. Installations are down 20% nationwide in 2024.

SunPower’s struggles have continued through persistent high interest rates. In December 2023 the company defaulted on its debt and issued a warning that it had “going concerns” about remaining in business.

In April the company announced it would close numerous installation service centers across the country and cut about 26% of its workforce.

The company’s share price target was cut to $0 by Gordon Johnson from GLJ Research. Roth Capital Partners said competitors Sunrun and Sunnova are likely to gain from the lost market share left behind by SunPower.

“We think this effectively marks the end for SPWR as an operating business,” said an analyst note from Guggenheim. “Considering the debt that the company has accumulated, we believe that SPWR’s equity no longer has any value.”

Solar corporate funding drops to $16.6 billion in H1 High interest rates, an uncertain rate trajectory and timeline, increasing trade barriers, supply chain challenges, concerns about the presidential election’s impact on the sector, and constantly evolving trade policies have created a climate of uncertainty.

First Solar commissions 1.3 million square-foot R&D facility The Jim Nolan Center for Solar Innovation in Lake Township, Ohio includes a high-tech pilot manufacturing line allowing for the production of full-sized prototypes of thin film and tandem PV modules.

Intersect Power closes $837 million in financing for three battery systems in Texas Each project comprises 86 Tesla Megapacks and will provide a capacity of 320 MWh of battery storage with a two-hour duration.

S&P Global launches daily spot market price assessment for solar panels The tool has been billed as the world’s first independent daily spot market price assessment for solar panels. S&P Global says it has been launched to aid transparency in technology pricing as solar modules become increasingly commoditized.

Generac awarded up to $200 million from DOE for solar and storage in Puerto Rico The funds seek to build energy resilience in Puerto Rico, where hurricanes and other extreme weather frequently leave residents without power.

North American solar power purchase agreements rise 3% in Q2 LevelTen Energy released its quarterly PPA Price Index Report, showing an increase in prices following a modest drop in Q1.

LevelTen Energy, which operates a solar and wind energy power purchase agreement (PPA) platform, released its PPA Price Index Report for Q2, 2024. The company reports data based on P25 prices, or the 25th percentile of secured PPA contracts on its platform.

The report noted after a 1% decrease in P25 prices in Q1 2024, solar PPA prices have increased by 3% in Q2.

LevelTen said a variety of forces are putting upward pressures on North American solar PPA prices. Long interconnection queues, permitting difficulties, expansion of tariffs on Chinese PV components, and a relaunched AD/CVD investigation are all drivers in the price increases.

These events illustrate a trade law environment that is growing increasingly challenging for solar developers in the United States. The added costs for projects utilizing duty-subjected components are folded into PPA prices — which may have contributed to this quarter’s rising solar price trend.

“These events illustrate a trade law environment that is growing increasingly challenging for solar developers in the United States. The added costs for projects utilizing duty-subjected components are folded into PPA prices — which may have contributed to this quarter’s rising solar price trend,” said LevelTen.

LevelTen also noted a 7% increase in wind PPA prices in Q2 2024.

The PPA platform said that market participants continue to find innovative ways to mitigate risks and get deals done during this time of uncertainty. Recently this has been characterized by increased use of contractual elements that address development risks, specifically through the use of conditions precedent (CP) and indexation in PPA contracts.

“CPs provide developers with contractual ‘offramps’ should unlikely but untenably adverse events occur during the development journey,” said LevelTen. “And more counterparties are indexing subcomponents of PPA price to metrics like tariffs or interest rates, allowing the PPA price to flex up or down in light of future shifts in these important factors.”

LevelTen said these contractual elements can provide some future-proofing to help deals continue to get done.

From pv magazine Global

Total corporate funding in the solar sector reached $16.6 billion in the first half of 2024, according to data released by Mercom Capital Group in its latest solar funding and merger and acquisition (M&A) report.

The total figure, which includes venture capital/private equity funding, public market, and debt financing, is 10% lower year on year than the $18.5 billion raised in the first half of 2023. However, the number of deals increased 9% year on year with 87 recorded in the first half of 2024, compared to 80 deals during the same period last year.

VC funding activity decreased 29% year on year in the first half of 2024, with $2.7 billion raised in 29 deals. Solar public market financing hit $1.7 billion across eight deals in the first half of 2024, down 75% from $6.7 billion across 14 deals in the first half of 2023.

Solar companies raised $12.2 billion across 50 debt financing deals in the first half of 2024, marking a 53% increase from the $8 billion raised in 33 deals during the first six months of 2023. According to Mercom Capital Group, this period represented the highest first-half total for solar debt financing in a decade.

“Financing activity in the solar sector remains restrained despite tailwinds from the Inflation Reduction Act and favorable global policies,” said Raj Prabhu, CEO of Mercom Capital Group.

Prabhu added that high interest rates, an uncertain rate trajectory and timeline, increasing trade barriers, supply chain challenges, concerns about the US presidential election’s impact on the sector, and constantly evolving trade policies have created an “unpredictable and uncertain climate … This has slowed down development, investments and decision-making.”

There were 40 solar M&A transactions in the first half of this year, down from 48 in the same period of 2023. The largest deal involved Canada’s Brookfield Asset Management acquiring a majority stake in French renewable company Neoen for over $6.5 billion.

People on the move: Swift Current Energy, Lightsource bp, WTS Energy, and more Job moves in solar, storage, cleantech, utilities and energy transition finance.

50 states of solar policy moves, Q2 2024 Q2 2024 saw 44 states plus the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico take a total of 182 distributed solar policy actions.

Grid operator PJM to start talks on regional transmission The nation’s largest grid operator told renewables trade groups that it will launch a transmission planning process ordered by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.

Utah developer rPlus secures $1B in financing for 400 MW/1600 MWh solar-plus-storage project  The Green River Energy Center will supply power for PacifiCorp.

Peak Energy secures $55 million Series A funding to manufacture sodium-ion batteries The company plans to deliver its first systems in 2025 and open a full-scale production facility in 2027.

U.S. residential solar down 20% in 2024 A webinar hosted by Roth Capital Partners looked at the health of the residential solar market and forecasts for next year.

Swift Current Energy announced that Brian Dee has joined the company as chief financial officer (CFO). Brian, a seasoned energy executive, joins Swift Current as the company prepares to own and operate more than 1 GW of renewable energy projects by the end of this year and invest in its market-leading, multi-technology development pipeline. Most recently, Brian served as CFO of Atlantic Power & Utilities, an independent power producer with operations across North America. His nearly two-decade track record at the company includes $6 billion in capital raises and $4 billion in acquisitions and divestitures.

Lightsource bp appointed Emilie Wangerman as our chief operating officer (COO) of the United States and member of our executive team, effective immediately. Wangerman will lead the growth and development of our ambitious U.S. portfolio, strengthening our market position as a leader in the region. She has been an integral part of Lightsource bp since joining in late 2017 to significantly accelerate expansion into the U.S. market. During six years under Emilie’s leadership, the business development team executed more than 4GW of power contracts with a wide range of power purchasers that include universities, utilities and well-known brands such as McDonald’s, eBay, Verizon, and Amazon. Over the last seven months, Emilie has been acting as interim COO of the U.S.

Additional job moves provided by EnergeiaWorks:

• Ryan Morphett has joined WTS Energy as their newest Director of the U.S. business

North America’s leading renewable energy search firm

Utility-scale agrivoltaic installation in Ohio is now operational Savion developed the 180 MW solar power plant located in Madison County, one of the first operating utility-scale solar sites to integrate soybeans, alfalfa and forage crop production within the array.

Solar trade group sets standards for ethical solar practices The Solar Energy Industries Association seeks public comment on two standards designed to ensure transparent, ethical solar sales practices and to raise the bar for safety and durability of rooftop solar and storage installations.

With acquisition of Lyra, Aurora adds automated permitting to its toolbox Lyra provides permit packaging software that automates permit-ready solar designs.

Trial by fire: Inside Sungrow’s thermal event testing Sungrow says the industry needs to do more to increase public confidence in lithium-ion battery storage.

Solar electricity “a good idea” for 83% of poll respondents Support for solar electricity has declined by 8% since 2013, according to a recent RMI poll.

Solar nears 9% of U.S. total electric generation capacity The monthly energy infrastructure update from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) shows solar accounted for nearly 80% of capacity additions in May, continuing its dominance of new-build generation.

Mission Solar introduces modules for C&I and utility-scale The residential solar panel manufacturer introduced large format bifacial solar modules for larger projects.

Aurora Solar, a platform for solar sales and design, has acquired Lyra, a specialist in permit packaging software that enables solar professionals to automatically create permit-ready design plans.

The solar permitting process can be challenging due to complex regulations and reliance on manual input methods. Aurora, which specializes in streamlining the sales and design process for installers, sees its acquisition of Lyra as adding another tool to help speed up the permitting process.

“Lyra’s advanced automation software for plan sets is the solution the solar industry needs to alleviate a key homeowner pain point — the often agonizing local permitting process – and cut down on wasted time and energy for solar professionals,” said Chris Hopper, CEO at Aurora Solar. ” Our intention is to be the market leader in U.S. residential plan set services and automation; the acquisition of Lyra significantly accelerates our ability to achieve this goal.”

Aurora’s cloud-based platform uses data, automation and artificial intelligence to streamline the process of selling, designing—and now permitting—solar. The company reports that over 20 million solar projects have been designed with the platform globally. The acquisition of Lyra is only one of the many recent moves that Aurora has made to add tools to its toolbox for installers. In March, for example, Aurora Solar announced it was partnering with EagleView, a software platform provider for rooftop solar project designs and sales proposals, announced it has partnered with EagleView, an aerial imagery and geospatial software specialist. Under the partnership, Aurora will make use of EagleView’s high-resolution imagery taken from its aircraft fleet.

Anker launches new all-in-one home storage solution Anker has developed a new all-in-one home storage solution with up to 30 kWh of capacity, available in single-phase and three-phase configurations.

Residential PV power forecasting method based uniquely on direct radiation Researchers in Spain have created a novel PV forecasting method that uses only direct radiation as a parameter. They found it to be “comparable, if not superior” to four established forecasting techniques. The method could help homeowners with PV systems decide when to use electricity-intensive appliances and cleaning systems.

Solar panel cleaning with electromagnetic waves Three companies, including Massachusetts startup Sol Clarity, are experimenting with electrodynamic screen systems to clean solar panels using minimal electricity and no water.

Amazon hits 100% renewable energy goal seven years ahead of schedule The retail giant matched 100% of the electricity used in its operations with investments in renewable energy in 2023.

All-perovskite tandem solar cell based on tin-lead perovskite achieves 27.8% efficiency Scientists in the United States have fabricated an all-perovskite tandem solar cell that reportedly shows reduced interfacial energy loss in the cell’s top device. It was built with a hole transport layer based on a compound known as P3CT that was doped with lead iodide.

Sol Clarity is developing an electrodynamic screen (EDS), which charges dust particles with a static charge and then uses an electromagnetic wave to sweep them off the solar panels. The company is currently seeking investment partners to help scale its operations and is testing the technology on a community solar project in the Northeastern U.S.

In the video above, the dust can be seen suddenly falling off the panels when the electromagnetic wave is engaged.

The Massachusetts-based company has tested its EDS material at a community solar facility in the Northeast owned by developer Nexamp. More recent tests were conducted at a facility in Chile, and next year, they plan to implement the technology at a power plant owned by Engie in California. The startup has received support from two state-funded groups that assist startups, Mass Ventures and the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center (MassCEC), and raised a $920K Seed I round with Equinor ventures, Techstars, and Friends & Family to begin work on their first commercial pilot.

At the Nexamp site, Sol Clarity installed eleven full-scale solar panels equipped with EDS systems, complete with power boxes and intricate circuitry.

According to a 2018 paper, Sol Clarity expects the EDS system to operate for one to two minutes daily. The paper estimates that less than 1 watt-hour of electricity will be used per square meter per cleaning cycle, allowing for approximately 500 solar modules to be cleaned daily with just 1 kWh of electricity.

The product, which can be installed in the factory or retrofitted in the field, consists of either two or four layers, plus a power box. The factory-installed product includes an optically clear adhesive layer, plus a dielectric layer that contains the printed electrodes. The retrofit version adds two additional layers that separate the printed electrodes from the top dielectric layer.

Other players in the EDS field include SuperClean Glass, which is still refining its product to meet commercial standards. Jim Smith, VP of Business Development and Engineering Lead, commented, “Having passed the first few milestones of industry standard tests, this next phase is focused on scaling up and driving costs down.  We need to develop systems and processes to produce a football field of patterned glass per day and drive costs down for a competitive ROI. Of course the societal benefit is in the elimination of the use of potable water.”

The company has been reserved about the volume of information they share, but they did release data indicating that the net transmissibility of light through their electrode coating on a cadmium telluride solar panel is 99.05%.

Another EDS company, CleanFizz, has conducted tests in Saudi Arabia, showing that their product can remove over 95% of soiling losses from solar panels. They recently announced the closure of a $1M investment round at the end of 2023 and are now seeking $50 million to build a 300 MW manufacturing facility in Switzerland.

Although the financial viability of cleaning solar panels is often debated, there is clear evidence that soiling significantly reduces electricity output, as was shown by high pollen east coast sites in a recent analysis – along with driving hot spot damage, potentially significantly lowering the lives of solar modules. Pollen’s unique characteristics, and the dynamics of rain, have made all three of the EDS firms target arid and semi-arid regions.

Indiana’s largest solar power plant about to come online Mammoth North Solar is a 400 MW agrivoltaic installation that is the first phase of Doral Renewables’ 1.3 GW solar complex.

People on the move: SolarEdge, SEIA, Mitsubishi Power Americas, and more  Job moves in solar, storage, cleantech, utilities and energy transition finance.

World’s first anode-free sodium solid-state battery Researchers at the Laboratory for Energy Storage and Conversion have created a new sodium battery architecture with stable cycling for several hundred cycles, which could serve as a future direction to enable low-cost, high-energy-density and fast-charging batteries.

Researchers build 16%-efficient mini perovskite solar module resistant to UV light-induced degradation A U.S. research team has built a 15 cm2 perovskite solar module with improved stability and efficiency thanks to a polymer hole transport layer that reportedly improves the panel stability and efficiency.

With great (solar) power comes great responsibility Consumer protection and transparency are the keys to reigniting industry growth. Josh Levine, vice president of marketing, EnergySage shares his perspective

Organic solar cell gains counterintuitive efficiency boost from entropy A research team at the University of Kansas found that organic semiconductors known as non-fullerene acceptors demonstrate a high solar cell efficiency due to a reversed heat flow.

North America’s leading renewable energy search firm

Black Bear Energy, an onsite renewable energy developer, announced one of its customers, a real estate investment trust (REIT), has completed the sale of tax credits associated with its new solar assets.

The REIT sold Inflation Reduction Act created Investment Tax Credits (ITC), which can be transferred to third parties with a tax appetite in exchange for cash. The transaction was completed on a marketplace operated by Evergrow.

“By unlocking tax credit financing for REITs, Black Bear and Evergrow are forging a new path for improved returns that simultaneously support the commercial real estate sector’s sustainability objectives,” said said James Richards, chief executive officer of Evergrow.

The tax credits are generated from multiple projects installed on multifamily assets in California and Washington DC. The portfolio totals 556 kW and individual projects range in size from 66 kW to 195 kW. 

Black Bear Energy said the transaction will open doors for broader REIT participation in renewable energy projects and unlock monetization of the ITC. It said that prior to this transaction, it was unclear if there would be a market for REITs to sell tax credits, as the associated projects are magnitudes smaller than utility-scale project tax equity transactions. REITs also have special tax, accounting and business requirements that make knowledgeable partners important.

“With this transfer, we have proof of concept that demand exists for credits of this size and risk profile,” said Drew Torbin, founder and president of Black Bear Energy. “This is significant as the ITC sale proceeds typically increase the returns by 300 basis points and upwards of 600 basis points for certain projects which qualify for the 10% bonus adder.”

Tax equity, a financing arrangement where investors fund solar power projects in exchange for federal tax benefits like investment tax credits, is a complex field that integrates capital and labor.

Initial costs for assembling these deals can start under $100,000 but may quickly escalate to millions. These expenses, covering fees for lawyers, accountants, and engineers, support extensive review of data rooms and the drafting of extensive contracts, focusing on compliance and diligence. The objective is to ensure that large investment groups can safely deploy billions of dollars in compliance with the U.S. Internal Revenue Service regulations.

(Read: “Solar tax transfer for smaller projects: Dissecting a $600,000 tax credit transaction”)

Global energy storage fleet to surpass 1 TW/3 TWh by 2033 According to the latest forecast from Wood Mackenzie, the global energy storage market (excluding pumped hydro) is on track to reach 159 GW/358 GWh by the of 2024 and grow by more than 600% by 2033, with nearly 1 TW of new capacity expected to come online.

Solar for small-scale brewing  Researchers in Spain have investigated the potential of using photovoltaic (PV) or photovoltaic-thermal (PVT) systems in microbreweries and have found that PVT systems can cover more energy demand but have a longer payback time.

U.S. manufacturer Toledo Solar closes business The Ohio based thin-film solar module producer was sued last year by First Solar, alleged that Toledo Solar sold Malaysian-made First Solar modules under the Toledo name.

Transfer switch for home solar power integration Nature’s Generator now offers a 50-amp, 12-circuit switch to manually power up selected circuits from backup system.

Solar tariffs could “unintentionally cede U.S. leadership in the solar industry” A report from Clean Energy Associates (CEA) and the American Council on Renewable Energy shows how antidumping and countervailing duty (AD/CVD) tariffs create cost issues not just for imported solar panels, but for U.S.-made solar panels as well.

The Hydrogen Stream: Hydrogen power plants feasible but inefficient, says CATF The Clean Air Task Force (CATF) says in a new report that dedicated clean hydrogen production and use is often a costly, inefficient decarbonization strategy for the power sector, while American Airlines says it has signed a deal with ZeroAvia for 100 hydrogen-electric engines.

The U.S. has ended its two-year pause of solar antidumping and countervailing duty (AD/CVD) tariffs. The tariffs apply to solar components shipped from Vietnam, Malaysia, Thailand, and Cambodia that are found to be harboring tariff-dodging goods originating from China.

The four Southeast Asian nations are responsible for almost 80% of the U.S. supply of solar components. AD/CVD tariffs historically have ranged from 50% to 250% of the cost of shipped goods. This tariff risk creates a great deal of uncertainty for buyers and suppliers. Clean Energy Associates (CEA) and the American Council on Renewable Energy (ACORE) released a report assessing these risks.

The U.S. Energy Information Administration said the threat of AD/CVD tariffs in 2022 had prompted delays or the cancellation of around 20% of utility-scale solar generation capacity.

Now, following petition from U.S. manufacturers claiming dumped products are harming their business, the U.S. International Trade Commission has decided to take up a new round of AD/CVD investigations on component suppliers from the four Southeast Asian nations.

The Department of Commerce of is expected to issue its CVD preliminary determination on September 23 and its AD preliminary determination on November 20, said law firm Foley and Lardner. For either determination, Commerce will establish the tariff rate based upon the records of subsidization and dumping before it. A final determination is expected to be made on April 4, 2025 for the Department of Commerce and May 19, 2025 for the International Trade Commission.

ACORE president and chief executive officer Ray Long said a finding of AD/CVD violation “could unintentionally cede U.S. leadership in the solar industry to other countries.”

Domestic manufacturers of solar components have petitioned in support of the tariffs, but CEA warns that enforcement could negatively impact their businesses, too. This is because there is a significant gap in the U.S. solar supply chain. While huge amounts of module assembly facilities have come online, the cells that are manufactured and integrated into a solar module are still heavily reliant on imports, with very little production capacity domestically.

CEA said module manufacturing capacity in the U.S. may grow from 31 GW in 2024 to about 60 GW by 2026. Cell capacity may take more time, it said, growing from about 1 GW in 2024 to 11 GW in 2027. The firm expects most cell factories to finish expansion by 2027 as the Inflation Reduction Act 45X manufacturing incentives run out shortly thereafter in 2030.

CEA modeled that solar AD/CVD tariffs would raise domestic module costs by 10 cents per watt and imported module costs by 15 cents per watt, significantly affecting project economics. For reference, a buyer told OPIS that current U.S. Delivered Duty Paid (DDP) TOPCon solar module prices have risen to the low-to-mid $0.30/W range. This pricing includes the 201 bifacial tariffs but excludes the new antidumping/countervailing duties.

“These higher prices implemented on top of other headwinds, including domestic factors and trade restrictions already in place and impacting the industry’s trajectory, could seriously hinder America’s progress on solar deployment,” said ACORE.

ACORE noted that the U.S. solar industry is in good health. Private businesses have announced at least 105,454 new jobs and over $123 billion in capital investment in clean energy broadly since the passage of the IRA, and solar is expected to represent about 59% of all grid capacity additions through 2028. but to meet goals of a 50-52% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030, the U.S. solar industry must increase from 177 GW of installed capacity to over 500 GW. Worsened project economics could threaten hitting this fast-approaching target.

The report argues that the U.S. needs more time to build solar cell capacity to meet demand. It also recognizes that the U.S. may be reliant on cell imports for some time.

It is more difficult to establish a solar cell factory for numerous reasons, said CEA. Cell capacity can take twice the construction, training, and ramp time of module capacity. Uncertain domestic content rules make the value of U.S. cells highly variable until the final statutes are published. And cell capital expenditure costs can be two to three times the cost of a module factory, making it difficult for new suppliers to raise funding.

CEA forecast that the U.S. will need to import up to 41 GW worth of cells and/or modules to meet projected U.S. installations until Section 201 tariffs are phased-out in February 2026.

Enforcement of AD/CVD may threaten the supply of cells in the meantime. The report said duties could create a situation where cell buyers and suppliers are unwilling to risk duty, and cell transactions stop.

The report warns that an AD/CVD finding may in turn put U.S. manufacturing jobs at risk. Duties could leave nearly 34 GW of U.S. solar module capacity without competitively priced cell inputs, jeopardizing almost 9,000 U.S. factory jobs.

Battery storage deployment in Canada kicks into gear  The deployment of battery energy storage systems (BESS) in Canada is picking up the pace, with the announcement of a 705 MWh battery storage system delivery to Nova Scotia by Canadian Solar’s e-Storage and various other projects in provinces across the country. However, this surge cannot come quickly enough says Energy Storage Canada.

Vineyard installs solar to keep distillery warehouse cool  The 55kW system is expected to produce more than .06 MWh a year and will help keep the vineyard’s distillery storage warehouse at the optimal temperature of 50 to 60 F throughout the year.

California approves 525 MWac of solar and 320 MW of geothermal Southern California Edison received approval from the State of California to proceed with power purchase agreements for three solar power projects and two geothermal projects from startup Fervo Energy.

How grid operators and renewable energy producers can use batteries to develop a flexible energy system As the urgency of mitigating the impacts of climate change intensifies with each passing year, it is the collective responsibility of grid operators and renewable energy producers to spearhead the transition to a renewable energy system.

Global solar installations to nearly quadruple by 2033 Wood Mackenzie forecasts 4.7 TW of solar capacity to be built between 2024 and 2033, with China accounting for about 50% of the growth.

TrendForce says 210 mm module shipments surpassed 260 GW in Q1 Market intelligence platform TrendForce says 210 mm n-type technology is “set to spearhead a new industrial revolution.” It expects 210mm modules to account for 78.29% of the large-format module market this year, increasing to 82.51% by 2027.

Aggreko Energy acquires C&I solar developer With the acquisition of Infiniti Energy, Aggreko expands its commercial and industrial development portfolio.

Enphase begins shipping U.S.-made microinverters for commercial applications The IQ8P-3P commercial microinverters support up to 480 W of peak output power for three-phase commercial installations, and they’re compatible with a wide range of solar modules up to 640 W.

From pv magazine Global

Cumulative shipments of 210 mm PV modules surpassed 260 GW in the first quarter of this year, according to Taiwan-based TrendForce.

The analysts said that seven of the top 10 module makers now make 210 mm n-type modules, with Trina Solar, Risen Energy, Tongwei and Huasun all now mass producing panels above 700 W.

“It is clear that the 210 mm n-type modules are emerging as the predominant choice in the market,” said TrendForce.

The research firm projected a 51.8% year-on-year increase in 210 mm module production capacity to about 1,105 GW in 2024. That would account for 78.29% of the large-format panel market this year and 82.51% by 2027.

The analysts said that production of large-format wafers will also continue to accelerate, with capacity projected to reach 1,174 GW this year. Large-format wafers now account for nearly 99% of all wafer production. In 2023, 210 mm and 210R wafers accounted for more than 38% of the market total, up 46% year on year.

“A prevailing trend in the industry chain is the concentrated focus on the advance of n-type, large-format and thin wafers … 210 mm (including 210R) has emerged as the next mainstream standard, heralding a new phase in wafer development,” said TrendForce.

Production of large-format cells, meanwhile, is expected to reach 1,549 GW this year. TrendForce said 210 mm cells will account for 1,296 GW of all large-format cells, for a market share of 82.66%. Its market share is set to increase to almost 92% by 2027.

In addition, TrendForce said the production capacity of all n-type cells will reach around 1,078 GW by the end of this year, for almost 69% of the total cell market. Tunnel oxide passivated contact (TOPCon) cells will account for around 909 GW of n-type cell production, or 58% of the total n-type cell segment.

“Continuous technological innovation and product upgrades are driving the advance of the PV industry,” TrendForce said. “The 210 mm n-type technology is set to spearhead a new industrial revolution, fostering the high-quality development of the new energy sector.”

ESS Tech, listed on the New York Stock Exchange as “GWH”, announced it has secured a $50 million investment from the Export-Import Bank of The United States (EXIM).

The funds are expected to support the expansion of ESS production capacity at its Wilsonville, Oregon plant. The company develops long-duration energy storage iron flow batteries. The investment is expected to help ESS triple its manufacturing capacity at the Wilsonville plant.

“Our technology uses earth-abundant iron, salt and water to deliver environmentally safe solutions capable of providing up to 12 hours of flexible energy capacity for commercial and utility-scale energy storage applications,” said ESS Tech.

EXIM made the investment via its Make More in America Initiative, which makes available medium- and long-term loans, loan guarantees, and insurance to finance export-oriented domestic manufacturing projects.

ESS Tech is delivering iron flow energy storage systems to customers in Europe, Australia and Africa. The company manufactures 100% of its products in the United States, with a predominantly domestic supply chain that spans 29 states.

“Our partnership with EXIM underscores the critical role that American-made clean energy technology will play in the global clean energy transition,” said ESS chief executive officer Eric Dresselhuys. “ESS’s iron flow technology is already deployed in Australia and Europe and with this agreement, we are well positioned to meet the growing needs of our current and future global customers.” 

ESS battery systems are designed to operate for 25 years, while conventional batteries last about 7 to 10 years. The battery modules, electrolyte, plumbing, and other components may well last for decades longer with proper maintenance, said the company. The battery, for example, is expected to experience zero degradation over 20,000 cycles. The long duration energy storage (LDES) system can store and dispatch electricity for 12 hours or more.

According to the Department of Energy’s ‘Pathways to Commercial Liftoff: Long Duration Energy Storage’ report, the U.S. grid needs 225 to 460 GW of LDES capacity for power market application for a net zero economy by 2060. The global LDES market is estimated to be $50 billion per year and forecast to grow significantly with a cumulative investment of up to $3 trillion by 2040, according to the LDES Council and McKinsey & Co.

• David Rogers, founder & CEO of Amp Energy, welcomes Andy Hoffman, CFA, to the team as its newest Chief Financial Officer, joining from The Carlyle Group, where he led the origination, structuring, and underwriting of private credit real asset transactions within the firm’s $5B+ AUM Infrastructure Credit platform.
• Matthew Dorsen just joined Deriva Energy as their new Director of Development.
• Jiwan Singh is announcing their new role as Director of Engineering at Atwell, LLC.

North America’s leading renewable energy search firm

Origami Solar announced partnerships with three steel fabricators who will domestically produce steel solar module frames. The fabricators include with Welser Profile of Valley City, Ohio; Priefert, of Mt. Pleasant, Texas; and Unimacts of Houston, Texas. Origami expects to be able to ship steel frames to customers in the first quarter of 2025, and by producing regionally says that frames will get from the fabricator to the module manufacturer in one to two days.

“America has one of the world’s strongest steel industries” said Origami Solar CEO Gregg Patterson. “We have the energy efficient steel mills and the world-class fabricators that can produce every solar frame America will ever need.”

Origami Solar, founded in 2019 and based in Bend, Oregon, is a pv magazine 2023 award winner for manufacturing. The company produces patented, steel solar module frames that are said to lower cost and improve module performance. The company reports that the frames are made of “green” recycled steel, thereby reducing greenhouse gases by up to 93%, representing a reduction of 80 kg per module or 200 metric tons per MW.

A recent report by Wood Mackenzie and Origami Solar notes that while the U.S. is working toward building up its domestic module manufacturing, thanks for the IRA, a less well-known problem is U.S. dependence on aluminum module frames. The majority of these are currently imported from East and Southeast Asia, and the report says that they are all made from carbon-intensive aluminum.

Origami sees an opportunity to supply module manufacturers in the U.S. market who are switching from imported aluminum frames to domestically made steel frames. Its use of recycled steel from suppliers in the U.S. and Europe in its frames give it a competitive edge when it comes to greenhouse gas scoring as assessed by Boundless Impact

Patterson points out that by having regional fabrication centers in the U.S., customers will avoid “shipping issues, labor strife, or impoundments delaying the arrival of the frames they need.” He added that by procuring domestically produced steel frames customers won’t have the worry of “geopolitical tensions” or “ever-increasing tariffs.” In light of recent news about fragile solar panels, he noted that steel frames may alleviate the risk of frames failing to support ever-larger solar panels.

Switching to domestically produced products across the solar supply chain has the further benefit of supporting good-paying jobs.

“Thanks to our partnership with Origami, we were able to expand our investments in the solar industry, keep our Benton, Arkansas facility open, keep our current employees hard at work and expand to up to 70 additional skilled workers over the next three years,” said Rocky Christenberry, Priefert’s executive vice president

Basis Climate has delivered an investment tax credit (ITC) transfer worth $600,000 for a 1.2 MW solar project, complete with a twelve-page transfer agreement plus requisite due diligence documentation. This transaction, facilitated under the new provisions of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), signals a significant shift in the tax credit landscape, expanding access to smaller-scale solar projects.

Tax equity, a financing arrangement where investors fund solar power projects in exchange for federal tax benefits like investment tax credits, is a complex field that integrates capital and labor. Initial costs for assembling these deals can start under $100,000 but may quickly escalate to millions. These expenses, covering fees for lawyers, accountants, and engineers, support extensive review of data rooms and the drafting of extensive contracts, focusing on compliance and diligence. The objective is to ensure that large investment groups can safely deploy billions of dollars in compliance with the U.S. Internal Revenue Service regulations.

The introduction of the IRA brings about ITC transferability. This mechanism provides a less formal alternative to traditional tax equity, facilitating the use of solar ITCs by investors.

When pv magazine USA consulted tax equity professionals, now also working with transfers, at the Solar Energy Industries Association’s annual Finance, Tax, and Buyer’s Seminar in March about the potential for simpler “six- to eight-page” tax transfer contracts, their response was a mix of skepticism and amusement. Such brief documents would stand in stark contrast to the extensive documentation required for solar tax equity transactions due to their complexity and regulatory demands. Our sources indicate that shorter contract lengths would align better with those used in the movie industry, which also navigates its own tax credit processes.

In the past, even the smallest projects that attracted tax equity investors required $1 to $2 million in tax benefits to offset the $75,000 in fees. That landscape is now evolving.

Source: Basis Climate’s online portal

Basis Climate, an internet-based tax credit transfer platform, has closed nearly $250 million in deals and boasts a $2 billion pipeline across various technologies, including solar, energy storage, renewable natural gas, wind, and electric vehicle charging. Over the past month, the company has managed over $50 million in term sheets and offers, with more than $70 million in signed deals progressing towards closure.

WeWould Solar, a single-purpose entity providing ancillary power to on-site agricultural processing in Gainesville, Florida, partnered with Basis Climate on the $600,000 ITC sale. The project is for a net-metered, behind-the-meter solar power initiative within the utility region managed by the Clay Electric Cooperative. The transaction took place through Basis Climate’s website, with the ITC being acquired by Creditable Capital.

Derek Silverman, co-founder & chief product officer at Basis Climate, shared insights with pv magazine USA.

The project is slated for development in three phases, each anticipated to be 1.2 MW. Notably, since the initial phase was under 1 MWac, it was exempt from prevailing wage or apprenticeship requirements. The installation will use SMA Sunny High Power PEAK3 inverters, Canadian Solar bifacial BiHiKu 425 W modules, and TerraSmart’s Glade Wave racking.

Source: WeWouldSolar energy monitoring dashboard

Creditable has disclosed that it is underwriting ITC transfer transactions targeting a 10% to 15% return on investment, net of fees and expenses, for its investors. For a $600,000 transaction, with limited information available, a return in this range suggests that Creditable Capital paid approximately 85 to 87 cents on the dollar. This payment rate is at the lower end of the typical industry range, where 90 to 95 cents on the dollar is common for larger solar power projects involving investment-grade asset owners and sophisticated development and construction firms.

First Solar, meanwhile, received 97 cents on the dollar when it sold its manufacturing tax credits.

Risk management

Silverman highlighted that the project’s diligence covered approximately 20 key areas, including organizational documents, project design, construction plans, operational strategies, insurance placement, and project valuation and qualification. Finalizing these core areas early helped Creditable Capital concentrate on higher-risk aspects, such as determining the project’s eligible basis and mitigating recapture risks, which involve the risk of having to return tax benefits if the project fails to comply with regulatory requirements.

For projects where asset owners lack strong financial foundations, buyers commonly secure tax insurance to safeguard against recapture risk. This insurance also provides a financial safety net, known as a backstop indemnity, in case the project’s liabilities exceed its assets. In the case of Creditable, the financial guarantees provided by the asset owner were sufficient, eliminating the need for tax insurance. However, when sellers lack a robust balance sheet, buyers generally obtain tax insurance to ensure comprehensive protection.

Adam Stern, founding partner of Creditable Capital, commented on their funding strategy, stating:

Creditable is getting more comfortable with the funding at a point in time after diligence is completed with a holdback for the IRS registration. Creditable, through its investors and financial institution relationships, is working to provide bridge loans on projects that it is buying the credits for.

A lingering risk in these transactions is how the IRS will require buyers and sellers to verify aspects of the deal, such as the determination of the basis.

Determining the appropriate ITC is a complex process due to the US Internal Revenue Service’s (IRS) detailed and evolving definitions of what constitutes an eligible project ‘basis’. For example, essential infrastructure like fences and roads, required by code for project deployment, are not considered part of the eligible basis, thus not qualifying for the 30% ITC. Similarly, interconnection costs had been excluded until recent changes under the IRA, which now allows projects under 5 MWac to include these costs in their ITC calculations.

In the traditional tax equity market, buyers of ITC needed to demonstrate significant involvement in the solar projects, taking on considerable operational and developmental risks, and ensuring long-term revenue from the projects flowed to them through complex financing arrangements. Some of requirements have been relaxed, although thorough due diligence and responsible investment practices remain essential.

A community solar project developed by Wunder Power in Maryland, part of an ITC sale facilitated by Basis in 2023. Image: Basis Climate.

From pv magazine Germany

Meyer Burger’s new plant in Goodyear in Arizona passed the factory audit according to UL test standards without any deviations, and production can begin.

The solar cells required for module production have been delivered from the German site in Thalheim to the U.S. plant for some time now. This will continue to be the case in the future to ensure the ramp-up in the USA, Meyer Burger added.

In addition to the module factory, Meyer Burger also plans to build a cell factory in Colorado. It is not yet entirely clear when this will be able to start production. This depends on the conclusion of the 45X financing. The due diligence of a major U.S. bank on monetization in accordance with Article 45X of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) has been completed and negotiations on the loan agreements are currently underway.

Meyer Burger says it is aiming to complete the deal and make the payment by the middle of the third quarter. At this time, the payment of export financing by a German bank for the construction of photovoltaic production in the U.S. is also expected. The photovoltaic company has also submitted the final application for the loan from the U.S. Department of Energy to finance the cell factory. This is currently still being reviewed, says Meyer Burger.

In addition, a commercial agreement has already been negotiated with a U.S. industrial and technology group and a term sheet for a possible investment in Meyer Burger has been exchanged. This strategic cooperation would enable Meyer Burger to manufacture solar modules in the U.S. with an ever-increasing proportion of domestic components.

Meyer Burger has already signed several contracts with EPC companies and energy suppliers for the purchase of its solar modules manufactured in the U.S.. Now another purchase contract for up to 600 megawatts per year has been added with a large energy company from the U.S.. Delivery has been agreed for three years from 2026 with an extension option for two years. The agreement is to take effect when the financing of the solar cell plant in Colorado Springs is completed, Meyer Burger said.

Meyer Burger shut down its module plant in Freiberg, Saxony , in April after there was no agreement within the federal government on resilience measures for German and European photovoltaic manufacturers .

Maine may design a distribution system operator to advance distributed energy resources Maine has hired a consulting firm to evaluate whether forming a distribution system operator could speed deployment of distributed energy resources and support other state goals. Consultants are reviewing how the approach is used in five other countries.

New platform vets residential solar salespeople An industry plagued by deceptive practices is now verifying salespeople via a platform called Recheck.

Summit Ridge to procure 800 MW of Qcells solar panels The recent agreement brings the total to 2 GW of solar modules that the community solar specialist will purchase from Qcells, mostly manufactured in its facility in Georgia.

More solar installations coming to U.S. military bases In a partnership with Duke Energy valued at an estimated $248 million, the U.S. Department of Defense will be the exclusive purchaser of all output generated by two new solar facilities, which will serve five military bases.

Siting solar projects for best environmental results A new white paper from Clearloop identifies key U.S. regions for best carbon displacement impact of new clean energy projects.

Top solar panel brands in reliability, quality, and performance Solar modules are evaluated in the Renewable Energy Test Center annual PV Module Index.

pv magazine interview: ‘In the next year, some of these guys are going to be bankrupt’ At Intersolar in Munich, pv magazine spoke with Jenny Chase, solar analyst at BloombergNEF, about the incredibly low polysilicon prices, massive overcapacity, and increasing consolidation. According to Chase, this year there will be enough polysilicon capacity to produce 1.1 TW of solar modules, but global module demand is expected to reach around 585 GW. 

Leading residential solar industry financers and the Solar Energy Industry Association (SEIA) are partnering with the newly launched Recheck, a platform designed to create a registry of residential solar salespeople and vet their conduct.

Residential solar has long struggled with aggressive sales tactics that has led to negative customer experiences. Many installers outsource their sales efforts to a third party, which can create a disconnect between sales promises and installation realities.

The platform was launched by a consortium of the main players in U.S. residential solar finance, including Dividend Finance, Freedom Forever, GoodLeap, Mosaic, Palmetto,  Sungage Financial, Sunlight Financial, and Sunrun.

“A healthy solar industry is vital to consumers and the U.S. energy transition. Recheck is proud of its founding partners and is committed to building the tools to ensure long-term trust with consumers,” said Tim Trefren, Recheck co-founder and CEO.

Recheck creates an online registry of approved solar salespeople, issuing a Recheck ID that allows contractors, financiers, and technology platforms to confirm that their sales partners meet certification, licensing, and training requirements.

The platform marks a first-of-its-kind opportunity for solar finance, contractor, and technology partners to track sales conduct across the industry.

Recheck will also facilitate industry-wide data exchange across the platform. The data will businesses vet sales partners, prevent poor practices by unregistered salespeople, and identify individuals with a history of consumer protection violations that move from company to company.

“Solar remains America’s most popular form of energy and will be installed on 10 million homes by 2030. It’s our job to make sure the solar and storage industry is accountable to the millions of families that are putting their trust in us to power their lives,” said SEIA president and chief executive officer Abigail Ross Hopper.

Recheck founding partners will be part of an ongoing advisory board and have committed to driving the adoption of Recheck IDs within their platforms in 2024 and beyond.

Along with supporting the launch of Recheck, SEIA is developing industry wide standards for residential solar, with accreditation from the American National Standards Institute. SEIA is proactively tackling issues that build confidence among customers, regulators, investors, rating agencies, and other stakeholders. These standards will contribute assurance that solar and storage systems have been ethically, sustainably, and responsibly sourced, manufactured, transported, installed, operated, and recycled.