Guest Blog

Last year analysis by renewables performance aggregator and insurance provider kWh Analytics highlighted the extent of solar asset underperformance against P50 estimates in the US. Here, the company’s Sarath Srinivasan details some of the reasons behind that underperformance.

Prior to 2019, there was an ample number of insurers willing to provide renewable energy insurance, leading to plentiful, affordable cover being available for solar power project finance transactions. However, with increased claims and risks, price rises and lower availability of cover is impacting the sector. Duncan Gordon, head of Renewable Energy at specialist energy insurance brokerage and risk management firm Gallagher, provides an overview of how solar power project owners can navigate a challenging insurance market.

UK-based solar PV inspection and data analytics company Above details how its ‘Follow PV’ project, launched alongside the University of Essex, is enhancing the research and development of autonomous drone technology in utility-scale solar.

Andor Savelkouls and Jonathan Bell of Altenex Energy, a subsidiary of Edison Energy, assess the flaws in how corporates currently procure renewable electricity, and how slight tweaks to the system can make it more accurate and cleaner.

Radovan Kopecek and Joris Libal analyse recent efficiency announcements against the backdrop of new and emerging solar PV technologies, and plot the course for solar’s next steps.

With RS-485 connection ports being phased out, Carsten M. Steenberg, VP of product management at Rainwise, explores whether Modbus TCP will emerge as the communication standard for C&I solar inverters from now on, and details the benefits such a transition could bring.

Nextracker’s Aron Dobos and Neelesh Umachandran explore the risk posed by tracker terrain loss to asset performance and revenue, as well as the potential remedies to the problem for large-scale solar development.

In the wake of the US Withhold and Release Order and other sanctions targeting alleged forced labour in solar supply chains, Graham Vinter, Ursula Owczarkowski and Sarah Bishop of law firm Covington & Burling LLP explore the legal status quo and the options at hand for solar companies to mitigate contractual risk.

Utility-scale solar is evolving beyond traditional measurements, and performance ratio are one such metric that is likely to become obsolete, replaced by more modern criteria such as availability metrics. Carsten Steenberg, VP of product management and business development at Rainwise, explores the new metrics coming to the fore and discusses the importance of weather monitoring.