Showing results for: utility-scale solar Articles
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Yolo County Municipal Utility Northern California - Case Study
Challenge Yolo County faced tightening budgets and difficult infrastructure demands to provide large amounts of energy to rural customers. Solution Four large utility scale solar arrays totaling 6.8 megawatts were commissioned over four years with no upfront costs and financing that guaranteed a positive cash-flow operation. Benefit Yolo County now generates enough solar energy to meet 152% ...
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Solcast partnership with BloomSky deploying sky-imagers
Solcast has partnered with BloomSky on our Super Rapid Update solar power forecasting products. Get a sky-imager installed on your solar farm site with affordable and fast installation. Sky-imagers for short-term solar forecasting Solcast recently wrote about our super rapid update solar forecasting product for short-term prediction. Sky imagers blended with solar power forecasting In this ...
By Solcast
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Utility-Scale Solar: Maximizing Project Profitability with Trackers
Watching the prices recently for utility-scale solar power-purchase agreements has felt a bit like being a spectator at an ultra-competitive Olympic event, where each successive race delivers a new world record. The headline-grabbing 1.79 cents per kilowatt-hour tender announced in Saudi Arabia this past October is just one indicator of a global trend, in which PPA prices have been steadily ...
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Project Alamo 1 - San Antonio, Texas
Project Description: Alamo 1 represented the first stage of a 400 MWac solar PV project delivering clean, renewable energy to CPS Energy, the municipal utility for the City of San Antonio. This 39.2 MWac solar farm is made up of 167,680 modules on 2,260 single-axis and 1,932 dual-axis tracker rows. Commercial operation began in December 2013, serving approximately 9,150 homes. The ...
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Renewable Power Generation Costs in 2014
Executive Summary The competiveness of renewable power generation technologies continued improving in 2013 and 2014. The cost-competitiveness of renewable power generation technologies has reached historic levels. Biomass for power, hydropower, geothermal and onshore wind can all now provide electricity competitively compared to fossil fuel-fired power generation (Figure ES 1). Most ...
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Mining sector the biggest opportunity for PV in Chile but financing and PPAs rely on technical acumen
A recent PV Insider webinar on the prospects for financing PV projects in Chile is now available for viewing. The 60 minute webinar addressed the forms of financing available likely to be available and the different stakeholders involved as well as the technological and project variables examined by interested investors. Hervé Collin,Chile Country Manager at Astris Finance outlined the ...
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Part 2: Historic and Current Market Risk Assessment for Utility-Scale PV Solar Lenders and Insurers
Utility-scale PV market changes happen rapidly. These shifts have accelerated over the decades, but the past decade has been particularly transformative. One significant change is utility-scale solar power plants growing in size. 1 MW was about average for a project in North America at that time. Now average plant sizes are around 100 MW or more, some even approaching 1 ...
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Flocking to a Utility-Scale PV O&M Solution
Operating and maintaining a utility-scale photovoltaic (PV) solar power plant is a time-consuming and expensive proposition. However, there’s been a unique innovation in PV plant operation – though it comes from a simple and decidedly old-school source. Sheep’s New Role in Lowering PV Plant Operations and Maintenance Costs You read that correctly. Sheep are now being used for ...
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Solar Investments: Reducing the Risk of Unfavorable Returns
Competitive prices, on-time delivery, quick installation–it’s all too easy to make assumptions about what utility-scale solar investors may want. However, what’s commonly overlooked or discounted by many outside the investment community is what’s most important and highly sought after from those within it: a low-risk investment with steady and predictable cash flows for 20 ...
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The Solar Industry Keeps Growing
For the last 10 years, Roller Die + Forming has been making parts for solar racking companies. We’ve watched the solar electricity industry grow from its infancy to helping put solar on roofs, in fields, and in huge solar farms. Since the introduction of the Solar Investment Tax Credit (ITC) in 2005, and its subsequent extensions, the installation of solar in residential, commercial, and ...
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PV plant costs fall 7% to threaten coal units; US court temporarily halts bifacial tariffs
Falling solar, wind costs pressure US coal, nuclear fundamentals Average costs for utility-scale solar plants have fallen by around 7% in the last 12 months, increasing the competitiveness of solar facilities against existing conventional U.S. plants, Lazard consultancy said in its 'Levelized Cost of Energy Analysis Version 13.0' report, published November 7. Lazard estimates ...
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ERCOT steps up capacity to make Texas land of opportunity for PV
An increase in capacity and potentially of reserve margin in Texas shows that the state which traditionally has relied on fossil fuels and natural gas continues to accommodate and look for solar. The Electric Reliability council of Texas recently announced that they are increasing the capacity value for solar to 100 percent capacity for up to 200 megawatts of installed capacity. After that, the ...
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Tracker Bankability: The Truth Behind the Reports
A major reason The Big Short was such a widely acclaimed book and movie was because it was able to take the complicated financial arcana that led to the housing crisis and make it understandable and entertaining. During the lead up to the crisis, there was a tremendous amount of money to be made originating very questionable home loans, bundling them into portfolios, and then selling these ...
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Project - Rwanda
The Project: The solar field at the Agahozo Shalom Youth Village in Rwanda embodies a range of causes: it helps the long-term sustainability of the Village, it is good for the environment, it generates local employment and education and it empowers the country with access to electricity - which in itself results in a myriad of benefits for the Rwandan population. Located on rolling green hills, ...
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Part 1: Pitfalls to Avoid for Utility-Scale PV Solar Lenders and Insurers
Throughout Array’s 30-plus years in utility-scale PV, we’ve seen major shifts in the solar energy market. As the market currently expands with utility-scale PV assets, more and more lenders and investors are seeing the potential in funding these projects. Considering that these are multi-million-dollar endeavors, it’s remarkable the amount of guesswork that can still sneak into ...
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Utility-Scale PV Solar Trends: Increasing Power and Module Size
A primary goal of utility-scale PV power plants is to optimize power production. To achieve that goal, manufacturers are turning to increased module sizes in the hopes of increasing module power. This can bring lower levelized cost of energy, lower balance of system costs, faster installation, and, sometimes, even reduced land costs. With 650W+ modules now available, it appears that large module ...
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Bifacial solar plants can generate 7% higher returns, US model shows
Machine learning models predict returns for U.S. bifacial plants are 2.5% to 7% higher than mono-facial designs, depending on the region, Itai Suez, Senior Solar Project Engineering Manager at developer EDP Renewables (EDPR), told the PV Operations Dallas 2019 conference. The market for bifacial solar modules looks set to take off this year as developers seek new ways to increase efficiency ...
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Whitepaper: How to monitor factors influencing the Performance Ratio - Solar Utility Scale
Simultaneously keep an eye on 10 Solar Performance Factors Many environmental factors influence the performance of solar plants, which can lead to noticeable losses or even damages. The new whitepaper explains why it is important to monitor these factors and gives valuable tips on how to choose the right weather sensor. Free Whitepaper about the observation of factors influencing ...
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What’s Your Risk Tolerance during Construction of a Utility-Scale PV Solar Power Plant? Active Stow vs. Passive Mitigation
Utility-scale engineering and construction projects are inherently risky. Large numbers of people independently working on a site, out in the weather, around dangerous machinery large and small, racing to finish the project as quickly as possible. Most Engineering, Procurement, and Engineering (EPCs) in the solar industry have the personnel safety issue solved. There are ongoing, sophisticated ...
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Are inverters PV’s Achilles Heel?
The organizers of the Utility Scale PV Yield Optimization Conference & Expo, gained exclusive access with Michael Levi, Senior Director Worldwide Marketing from Satcon to talk about the inverter market for utility solar projects, how they are positioning themselves in a competitive market and how reliable are these key components. Q1: What segment of the solar market are you targeting? ...
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