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Thursday, Dec 04, 2014

8minutenergy Renewables Joins SEIA Board of Directors

8minutenergy Renewables, LLC today announced that it has joined board of directors for the Solar Energy Industries Association® (SEIA), the national trade association of the U.S. solar energy. The nation's leading independent solar PV developer, 8minutenergy has over 1,100 megawatts (MW) in power purchase agreements (PPAs), has successfully built 260 MW and has 15,000 acres of land under contract.

Tuesday, Dec 02, 2014

Bridges to New Solar Business Models: Opportunities to Increase and Capture the Value of Distributed Solar Photovoltaics

In this report, Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI), with support from the U.S. Department of Energy’s SunShot Initiative, investigates opportunities to optimize and demonstrate DPV’s value as it is integrated into the grid to utilities, customers, and solar companies alike.

Tuesday, Dec 02, 2014

Financial Impacts of Net-Metered PV on Utilities and Ratepayers: A Scoping Study of Two Prototypical U.S. Utilities

As distributed generation continues its rapid expansion, these new resources will have an increasingly larger role. This analysis focuses on two prototypical investor-owned utilities, one in the southwest and one in the northeast. For each utility, this study models the potential impacts of PV over a 20-year period, estimating changes to utility costs, revenues, average rates, and utility shareholder earnings and return-on-equity (ROE).

Tuesday, Nov 11, 2014

Diffusion of environmentally-friendly energy technologies: buy versus lease differences in residential PV markets

Utilizing a unique dataset from the residential PV market in Texas, the authors construct a financial model based in part on an NREL model that calculates the expected lifecycle costs and revenues of PV system ownership for the residential buying and leasing business models. The results confirm the ability of third party ownership to open up new market segments. 

Wednesday, Oct 22, 2014

DOE Secretary, Senate Majority Leader Tout Solar's Benefits

LAS VEGAS, NV – Calling solar "critical to the United States" when it comes to meeting its future carbon reduction goals, Department of Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz today delivered the keynote address at Solar Power International (SPI), the largest solar trade show in America, co-sponsored by the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA). "Cost reduction, as we have seen dramatically in solar energy, is very much a part of shaping our clean energy future," Moniz said. "We've seen costs of modules decline by nearly 80 percent.

Monday, Oct 06, 2014

Rethinking Standby & Fixed Cost Charges: Regulatory and Rate Design Pathways to Deeper Solar PV Cost Reductions

Utilities have taken on the practice of applying standby and fixed cost charges specific to solar PV for customers choosing to go solar as a means to recover costs resulting from net energy metering (NEM). These charges are not the most efficient or best means for utilities to recover costs and this report finds that an integrated approach that includes the items below will allow for both effective utility cost recovery and minimal impact on the U.S. PV market. 

Monday, Sep 22, 2014

How Much Do Local Regulations Matter? Exploring the Impact of Permitting and Local Regulatory Processes on PV Prices in the United States

While PV modules and other hardware costs have dropped significantly over recent years, non-hardware soft costs have also fallen, but not nearly as sharply. This research report, authored by experts from Yale University, Lawrence Berkley National Laboratory, University of Texas at Austin and the US Department of Energy, focuses on the impacts of city-level permitting and other regulatory processes on residential PV prices in the US. Key Findings:

Monday, Sep 22, 2014

Lazard's Levelized Cost of Energy Analysis - v.8.0

Lazard's Levelized Cost of Energy Analysis has been published since 2008. With their latest edition, Lazard shows that Wind and Solar PV continue to become cost-competitive.

Monday, Aug 25, 2014

Strategies for Mitigating the Reduction in Economic Value of Variable Generation with Increasing Penetration Levels

Looking at 4 variable generation technologies (wind, single-axis tracking PV, CSP with no storage, & CSP with thermal energy storage), the authors look at the benefits of mitigation measures. In particular, the authors are looking at specific mitigation measures to first find those measures that provide an increase to the value of variable generation technologies and then seeks to determine whether such mitigation measures are themselves economically attractive. Some of the conclusions the authors come to: 

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