Tag Archives: business
The PV Solar Industry in 2016
Four years is a long time in the solar industry. Think about what’s happened in the U.S. industry since 2009: We’ve seen a recession, a massive boom in federal spending, a precipitous drop in solar module prices, a wave of bankruptcies, a nasty trade battle with China, a slowdown in utility-scale projects, a strong gain [...]
In Focus: Solar 2.0
One hundred gigawatts of solar PV is installed on the global grid. That first 100 gigawatts has brought the solar industry to this curious point. The solar industry is living through the denouement of a market jacked up on incentives and the associated manufacturing overcapacity and painful consolidation. Entrepreneurs are witnessing the collapse of a [...]
Why Power Utilities Love Data Analytics + Smart Grid
While power utilities like to claim that they employ data analytics, they really don’t. Utilities tend to have last-gen business intelligence (BI) reporting solutions that they call “analytics,” but that typically amount to not much more than reporting tools or descriptive analytics (primarily based on older database architectures running SQL), as opposed to the real-time and predictive software using complex [...]
The Future of Green Business Practices
Instituting environmentally friendly practices does not mean sacrificing your competitive edge. Business homeowners are realizing that they will create an even bigger impact by dynamical their business policies than by dynamical their personal behavior, and this has result in a modification in company culture over the previous couple of years that has resulted in a [...]
Solar Reserve Gets Final Approval for Massive Crossroads Project in Arizona
Solar Reserve received its last required approval for its Crossroads Solar Energy Project in Arizona last week and should soon be able to begin construction. The Maricopa County Board of Supervisors unanimously approved Solar Reserve’s conditional use permit for a combined 150-megawatt concentrated solar power and 65-megawatt solar photovoltaic installation that will be able to [...]
China: Challenging Selected EU Solar Subsidies
After nearly a year of debate, the United States’ Commerce Department delivered a final ruling in October in regards to tariffs for Chinese-manufactured solar panels. The Commerce Department, in finding that China has in fact been illegally “dumping” solar products on the American marketplace, will impose 34 – 47% tariffs on about 60 Chinese solar panel manufacturers. Tariffs [...]
Energy Questions People Want Answered by Obama and Romney
Tonight’s presidential debate, which takes place in Hempstead, Long Island, is a town hall, where undecided voters get to ask the questions. Unfortunately, the subject matter is limited to foreign policy, so many important questions average voters would ask won’t be allowed (how about their positions on a constitutional amendment to reverse Citizens United?). Is [...]
A123 Systems: Going to Zero?
There was so much enthusiasm when high-performance battery manufacturer A123 Systems (NASDAQ:AONE) came on the scene. The promise of an advanced battery manufacturing facility pumping out batteries for next-generation electric cars while providing jobs for US workers was a bold one, and one that a lot of folks cheered. But certain realities rapidly turned that [...]
My Open Letter to Fox & Friends
Those silly kids over at Fox & Friends really went on a rant against solar the other day and capped it off by asserting that the German solar industry does so much better than ours here in the U.S. because, after all, Germany gets so much more sun that we do in the States. Here’s [...]