Rob Brown, Author at SepiSolar

If you’re just getting started installing solar with energy storage for residential and commercial applications, you know that getting energy storage permits approved is challenging. Not only are you newto energy storage, but your local AHJ may also be new to storage, or the brand of battery that you’re using, or the chemistry.

To address these challenges, SepiSolar recently did an Ask SepiSolar Anything webinar on energy storage permitting requirements. As you’ll see below, we received some great questions and some great answers on the best practices for getting storage project through permitting. We also share a few resources.

Perhaps the best advice that CEO Josh Weiner and Chief Engineer Richard Dobbins gave in this session is that your energy storage designers need to “spell it out.” That is, don’t leave your plan checker guessing about the applicable codes or interpretation. In the case of energy storage, less is not more. More info is better.

The full video is well worth watching, you can also click on the time code and jump to each specific question. Enjoy.

01:17 Josh updates us on SepiSolar’s long history with energy storage permitting challenges through the years and why it’s so challenging in 2018.

13:00 Josh shares info about a report from a San Jose fire captain Matthew Paiss called Energy Storage Systems Safety that does an apples-to-apples non-brand comparison of the fire safety concerns of lithium energy storage, flow batteries, and lead-acid chemistries. Find it here.

16:42 Does SepiSolar have any experience with large apartment building emergency backup systems that meet fire and life safety codes? (Short answer, yes we do.)

24:34 Do you have any resources for municipalities who are developing energy storage permitting guidelines? (We have thoughts, but IREC has created a guide.)

26:25 Based on SepiSolar’s experience, what manufacturers offer the best inverter products for energy storage?

31:26 What’s the most common mistake people make when submitting energy storage permits?

39:32 Do you have a recommendation for an integrated solution for a small hospital, low-carbon resiliency microgrid project? (Yep.)

45:32 We’ve heard about the mistakes people make to get energy permits rejected. What are the best practices for getting permits approved?

51:12 I’m submitting energy storage plans for the first time. Is there a guide for how to do the line drawings for residential energy storage designs?

54:50 Does SepiSolar specialize in any particular size or type of energy storage projects?

As always, if you have any more energy storage questions, always feel free to contact us. We’re happy to help. And if you’re not on SepiSolar’s newsletter list, sign up to get more useful info.

Power Technology Magazine interviewed SepiSolar’s CEO Josh Weiner about a new battery net metering policy proposal.

Currently, any energy produced by solar and stored in a connected storage system is not allowed to be exported to the grid for net metering credits, but that’s about to change.

Working with NEXTracker, SepiSolar’s Josh Weiner proposed an inverter firmware solution that, if approved, will allow customers to store solar for self-consumption or export the stored solar power to the grid for the current net metering credit.

Power Technology’s Molly Lempriere explains the reasoning behind the proposal and how solar+battery net metering will be a win-win-win for customers, utilities–and the duck curve. Read the full story here!

Have more questions about solar+energy storage or need a design quote? Contact us.

Got solar permitting challenges? Recently, Solar Builder Magazines’s editor Chris Crowell interviewed SepiSolar’s CEO Josh Weiner and our project manager, Tiffany Hanson, for “Shadow costs: How outdated local processes stifle the true solar market.”

Chris covers an important topic about how jurisdictional red tape can delay projects, add unnecessary “soft costs” and delay a project’s ROI, not to mention delay payments to the contractor.

In addition to interviewing SepiSolar about our 10 years of dealing with solar permitting challenges throughout the U.S., Chris also highlights some solar permitting solutions.

In a case cited by SepiSolar’s Tiffany Hanson, a permit was being denied because the solar panels would be visible from the street. In that case, the solution was already in place because the building was located in California and protected by The Solar Rights Act, which restricts jurisdictions from denying permits due to aesthetic considerations.

There are more examples–and solutions–in the Solar Builder article. Read it here.

Wouldn’t it be nice if all energy storage permitting requirements were the same? Sadly, we all know that energy storage permitting requirements vary greatly across the U.S.

In fact, as solar and battery prices decline, many authorities having jurisdiction (AHJs) are seeing storage projects and a variety of battery technologies come across their desks for the first time. Likewise, many solar contractors are submitting their designs to their local jurisdictions for the first time.

In our latest edition of Ask SepiSolar Anything, SepiSolar’s CEO Josh Weiner and Chief Electrical Engineer Richard Dobbins, PE, will answer any of your questions about energy storage permitting requirements and best practices for getting your energy storage designs approved. Join us!

What: Ask SepiSolar Anything: Energy Storage Permitting Requirements

When: Wednesday, September 12, 2018, 11am PST, 2pm EST

Where: Sign up and get reminders and a link to the webinar. (Also, if you miss the episode, you’ll get an email with a link to the recording.)

“How do you sell C&I solar+storage?” Some might answer, “the same way you sell solar,” but it’s not that simple. In fact, if you’ve tried to sell solar with residential or C&I (commercial & industrial) energy storage, you’ve probably found that nothing about storage is “Plug & Play.”

As Josh stated in this Ask SepiSolar Anything episode, “Energy storage is a dream project–or product– for engineers. It’s a dream product because it’s a financial problem, it’s a technical problem, and it’s also a sales problem on how to articulate these systems to the private sector. It can be extremely complex and difficult.”

It’s because of this complexity that we have our monthly Ask SepiSolar Anything webinars. While SepiSolar does do NABCEP training about solar+storage, we realize that contractors and developers have specific questions about the technical and financial modeling aspects of selling C&I (and residential) storage.

14 C&I Solar + Storage Questions and Tips

Below is a run-down of the audience questions with a time code. Click on the time code and you’ll jump to a new tab with the answers from SepiSolar’s CEO Josh Weiner and Systems Engineer John Henley. (We had some intermittent technical issues with the visuals, but you should be able to hear everything.)

00:00 Josh shares his experience selling C&I storage with Green Charge Networks
08:34 What’s the minimum size of storage required to offset to perform demand reduction?
11:27 We’re a small solar installer, mostly residential, but people are starting to ask us about storage. Any beginner’s advice?
19:39 Does the solar system size make a difference on whether or not you use an AC or DC-coupled storage system?
21:33 Are you limited to the size of the solar system on the site with storage? Or does solar change or limit of the size of a storage system?
23:20 I’ve been trying to find information to do a return on investments for doing peek shaving for one of my clients. They use about 2 MWhs per year. Is there a financial modeling service out there or any calculators that I can use?
24:53 Do you use the algorithms from the different storage manufacturers in your calculations?
27:58 Are you seeing developers returning to their customer to add energy storage to the original solar generation assets?
31:44 I’m doing some work for an irrigation district. Is there a way to store energy for their big pumping times? They have 400 horsepower wells.
34:28 Does SepiSolar handle off-grid projects, for example, microgrid projects with solar plus storage, plus a generator, as well as only grid-tied?
36:43 When do you think the commercial customer needs a microgrid, as opposed to just solar plus storage? Is there some way to define that?
41:22 Josh offers some more C&I selling tips, including his perspective on Time of Use (TOU) arbitrage.
44:15 We have a few customers who don’t have historical usage data because they’ve been off grid marijuana growers. Can we model their usage, or would you recommend that they wait until they’re up and running for at least a year?
47:00 Josh offers some more C&I market insights on where storage is needed and tells you about SepiSolar Academy, our new NABCEP SepiSolar Training for PV and Storage.

Join us for the next Ask SepiSolar Anything

We asked what you’d like to see for the next Ask SepiSolar Anything topic, and the winner is… Energy Storage Permitting requirements. Josh and the team will be fielding your questions on the best practices for getting your residential and commercial energy storage projects approved.

This episode will take place on Wednesday, September 12, 2018 at 11am Pacific, 2pm Eastern.

Of course, if you have any questions before then, please always feel free to contact us!

How do you sell C&I energy storage without overwhelming prospects with jargon and giving just the right amount of technical and financial modeling information? SepiSolar’s CEO Josh Weiner and Systems Engineer John Henley will be answering any C&I energy storage sales and financial modeling questions at our next Ask SepiSolar Anything, Tuesday, August 14, at 11 am Pacific/2pm Eastern!

From demand charge reduction to energy arbitrage or backup power for critical loads, commercial and industrial businesses turn to solar+storage for many different pain points. Some are financial, some have to do with grid reliability, some want self-sufficiency, and some have corporate sustainability goals. And then there are those facility managers who will pay almost any price to keep their machines and data centers running 24/7 during the next natural disaster.

SepiSolar’s Josh Weiner and John Henley have years of experience consulting with clients on how to sell and design C&I energy storage from a technical sales perspective, providing easy-to-digest language and data points that don’t overwhelm prospects with jargon or too much information.

After a brief sales tips and best practices presentation, Josh and John will answer any question about energy storage sales and financial modeling for your C&I solar+storage prospects. RSVP to this interactive “Car Talk for Solar” webinar!

“Where are we on the energy storage adoption curve?” That’s one of the questions a participant asked at our latest monthly Ask SepiSolar Anything “Car Talk for Solar” webinar series. It’s the only place on the web where solar professionals can ask SepiSolar’s solar+storage engineer experts anything about a particular renewable energy topic.

For July, our topic was to Ask SepiSolar Anything… about battery storage technologies. That is, about the technical aspects of different battery chemistries on the market today.

To offer a broad view than the typical Lithium-ion energy storage landscape, SepiSolar’s CEO Josh Weiner invited Matt Harper, the Chief Product Officer and Co-Founder of Avalon Battery, a Vanadium flow battery company based in Fremont, California.

Together, Josh and Matt tag-teamed on the answers, offering various perspectives and case study examples of their years of experience in developing and modeling energy storage for various applications.

From the live audience at Intersolar and on the web, we received the following questions. Jump to the topic that most interests you in the time stamp at the end of the question:

Overview of Energy Storage Technology Landscape 00:01
Matt Harper briefly describes Avalon Battery and its Vanadium flow battery technology 01:40
Question 1: Please give a concrete example of a project that has integrated electric vehicles with solar and storage in some kind of a project or a use case 07:00
Question 2: There are a lot of flow battery technologies out there. Zinc Iron, Zinc Bromide, Iron-Iron, etc. Why Vanadium? What makes it so special? 12:48
Question 3: If you have a grid-tied inverter already installed, how would you integrate a battery into that, perhaps aftermarket? 17:55
Question 4: What are the HVAC requirements for Avalon and other flow batteries? 21:27
Question 5: Does the efficiency level of Vanadium Batteries change at cold temperatures? 27:30
Question 6: I have an existing PV array that uses SMA inverters, two strings with a total of 6kW. Can it work with a flow battery? 29:20
Question 7: Where are we on the energy storage adoption curve? i.e., Utility vs DG projections? 45:51
Question 8: When will batteries—of all kinds—be cheap enough and available enough to combine with solar, wind, etc and replace a baseload natural gas plant. That is when will utilities have a choice between a baseload natural gas plant and a solar+storage plant? 47:04

Have a question about selling solar+storage for commercial projects? Then tune in next month for Ask SepiSolar Anything about Selling C&I Energy Storage. Click the button below to sign up!

SepiSolar came, SepiSolar saw, SepiSolar celebrated! If you missed Intersolar North America 2018, here are some visual highlights from our time at the show!

SepiSolar’s Marketing Director Tor Valenza meets up with solar advocate friends Yann Brandt (Solar Wake Up and the new President of Quickmount PV), Dave Rosenfeld (Executive Director Solar Rights Alliance) and Anne Hoskins, Chief Policy Officer at Sunrun.

*SepiSolar’s CEO Josh Weiner was honored to be recognized at Intersolar North America as a Renewable Energy World “40 Under 40!”*

*SepiSolar’s Josh Weiner takes a photo with fellow 40 Under 40 Honorees.*

*SepiSolar’s Josh Weiner, right, talks to the Intersolar Tweetup crowd of 150 solar communicators about how engineers communicate through design.*

*SepiSolar’s CEO Josh Weiner (aka @SepiSolarJosh) and Director of Marketing Tor @SolarFred Valenza have a serious discussion at the Intersolar Tweetup about beer, most likely.*

*Aside from the Tweetup having great spirits, there was also great food!*

*SepiSolar’s Marketing Director and Tweetup host Tor @SolarFred Valenza takes a selfie with fellow Tweeters behind Avalon Battery, Sunnova, and Vote Solar.*

*What happens at Intersolar’s Solar Battle of the Bands stays at Solar Battle of the Bands*…. Congrats to the winner SunPower and to our client NEXTracker and CALSSA for putting on a spectacular event! The music and food rocked.

SepiSolar’s Josh Weiner and Avalon Battery’s Matt Harper tag-teamed on Ask SepiSolar Anything, answering audience questions about battery technology. (A recording will be available here on the SepiSolar blog later this week.)

We had some terrific meetings with SepiSolar customers, friends, and fellow solar+storage advocates. If you missed us at Intersolar, contact us to meet up in person in Fremont or at Solar Power International in September!

We’re delighted to share the news that SepiSolar’s CEO, Josh Weiner, has been named to Renewable Energy World’s inaugural “Solar 40 under 40” list.

What does it mean to be on the list?

According to Renewable Energy World’s editors, “Solar 40 Under 40 recognizes these individuals and their unparalleled accomplishments within the solar industry. Their mission is to bring solar far into the 21st century and build on the roots of the solar industry and those who have come before them. They are, and will continue to be, advocates for solar. Each one is unique, shows a great deal of passion and has achieved accomplishments within the industry.”

We recently posted a blog about Josh’s solar origin story. It began with Akeena Solar in 2004 and eventually led to founding SepiSolar in 2009.

While growing SepiSolar into a national solar + storage design, engineering and consulting firm with over 6.5 GW of residential, commercial, and utility designs, Josh co-founded Green Charge Networks, managed NRG Home’s engineering department, and has consulted with many solar asset owners and manufacturers on developing and commercializing cost-effective energy storage.

With SepiSolar’s membership in CALSSA, Josh has also been instrumental in developing solar+storage policies that are a win-win-win for utilities, contractors, and solar customers. Josh is also dedicated to educating the next generation of solar PV designers, and has taught advanced solar design courses at UC Berkeley.

If you’ll be attending Intersolar, you can meet Josh in person at Renewable Energy World’s honoree ceremony, Tuesday, July 10, at 3:30 pm on the ees Stage on Level 2; at the Intersolar Tweetup; as well as at our Intersolar edition of Ask SepiSolar Anything.

Congratulations, Josh!

If you’re heading to Intersolar, be sure to meet with “@SepiSolar” and the people behind other solar brands on Twitter at the 8th Annual Intersolar Tweetup!

What’s a Solar Tweetup? It’s a happy hour gathering of all the solar and energy storage people on Twitter. However, instead of limiting conversations to 280 characters, these people get to meet each other in person at a beautiful waterfall setting and actually speak!

Aside from people behind solar brands, you’ll often meet Tweeting solar reporters from Greentech Media, Solar Power World, and PV Magazine, Suncast, and many more.

Whether or not you or your solar company are on Twitter, join us as “@SepiSolar’s” guest! Space is limited, however, so please RSVP! We’d love to see you there.

When: 4:30 pm to 5:30 pm on Wednesday, July 11th

Where: The Samovar Tea Lounge (known as “The Kiterocket Experience” during Intersolar.)

How: Register on Eventbrite to be on the list.

RSVP

SepiSearch

Do’s and Don’ts for Getting Energy Storage Permits Approved

SepiSolar Featured in Power Technology Magazine

Red Tape: Solar Builder Interviews SepiSolar on Solar Permitting Solutions

Ask SepiSolar Anything: Energy Storage Permitting Requirements

Selling C&I Solar+Storage Is Complicated. Here are 14 Tips

14 C&I Solar + Storage Questions and Tips

Join us for the next Ask SepiSolar Anything

How Do You Sell C&I Energy Storage? #AskSepiSolarAnything

“Where are we on the energy storage adoption curve?”

Photos, Selfies & Celebrations from Intersolar North America 2018

SepiSolar’s CEO Josh Weiner Honored on “Solar 40 Under 40” List

Join SepiSolar at the 8th Annual Intersolar Tweetup Happy Hour!

CA Small Business Enterprise

RESOURCES

BLOG & NEWS

ABOUT

CONTACT