SolarCity has announced a partnership with Google-owned Nest to trial new customers in California using Nest’s smart thermostats in conjunction with solar power consumption. Omar Saadeh, senior grid analyst at GTM Research, spoke to PV Tech about the trend for solar companies partnering with smart home technologies and the increasing consumer appeal of energy management systems.
A lax management and maintenance regime can see the value of a PV system leach away over time. Laura Stern outlines some of the key steps in ensuring a system retains its value right up to the end of its planned lifetime.
With potential induced degradation emerging as a major issue for PV power plant performance, manufacturers have responded by developing technologies to mitigate the problem. But a lack of long-term field data on PID means the jury is still out on whether these efforts will be sufficient, writes Rubina Singh of Fraunhofer CSE.
Author, campaigner and solar energy entrepreneur Jeremy Leggett's latest book, 'The Winning of the Carbon War', has just been published as a 10-part serial in the run up to the Paris climate summit in December. In a special interview, he speaks to Peter Bennett, editor of PV Tech's sister site, Solar Power Portal, about the global solar industry's role in the clean energy revolution he believes is inevitable as the oil, gas and coal industries become increasingly unstable.
PV software specialist, PVComplete has launched its commercial solar system design platform that is intended to streamline the most time consuming tasks in commercial solar project design in a CAD environment. PVComplete 2.0 expects to add further functionality to the platform on an ongoing basis.
Last week Chinese authorities announced a 17.8GW PV target for 2015, an even more ambitious quota than the one set in 2014, which was missed. Beijing-based Chinese solar market expert, Frank Haugwitz, asks whether China can live up to its aspirations this time around.
Shoals Technologies Group has added UL1699B listing to the SNAPshot Wireless Arc Fault solution. The SNAPshot Wireless Arc Fault Solution protects solar assets and property by detecting arcing at the string-level and disconnecting the inverter or charge components.
Despite the promise it offers of higher efficiencies, n-type solar cell technology enjoys only limited market penetration. Radovan Kopecek and Joris Libal of ISC Konstanz explain why and look at its prospects for growth.
SolarCity's move into PV manufacturing is one of the global PV industry's big unfolding stories. Mark Osborne assesses what the Californian company will have to do to pull of its ambitious upstream venture.
