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June 26, 2018 0

This live interview was facilitated by Josh Weiner, Solar Expert Witness & Solar Engineering Expert. Mr. Weiner has been at the forefront of the solar energy industry for over 20 years and is an industry leader on solar-plus-storage engineering & design. Josh’s expertise spans both in-front of and behind-the-meter initiatives including residential, commercial, utility, grid-scale, and ev charging solar and storage applications. 

If you’re not already installing solar+energy storage for your customers, you soon will be. But which energy storage technology is best? What’s the price per kWh? How long will the battery technology last? Are Lithium-based batteries really the best? How expensive are flow batteries? How about flywheels?

You can ask any of these questions–or anything else–and get an answer from SepiSolar’s CEO and storage expert, Josh Weiner. Also answering your questions will be our special battery technology guest, Matt Harper, Chief Product Officer of Avalon Battery.

Before Avalon, Matt was a former VP of Products and Marketing at Prudent Energy and has 9 years developing energy storage technologies. He holds 7 US patents.

In addition to being CEO of SepiSolar, Josh has been designing solar+storage systems since 2004 and was one of the early co-founders of Green Charge Networks (recently acquired by Engie.). He now consults with developers, as well as various storage manufacturers.

Over the years, Josh and Matt have separately studied many different battery technologies, and they’re both excited to be sharing their objective knowledge and opinions, answering any of your battery technology questions LIVE at the EES stage at Intersolar or on our usual web platform at the same time.

Join us for Ask SepiSolar Anything – Live from Intersolar!

Topic: Ask SepiSolar Anything about energy storage technologies. Josh will be answering questions with our special guest, Matt Harper, Chief Product Officer of Avalon Battery.

When: Thursday, July 12, at 1 pm Pacific.

Where: Sign up to get a link to watch via the web or be in the audience at Intersolar. Get all the info and a reminder here:

P.S. If you or your company are on Twitter and want to meet other solar people behind the solar brands on Twitter, RSVP for the 8th Annual Intersolar Tweetup, which @SepiSolar is sponsoring. Space is limited so get a ticket before Intersolar!

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June 20, 2018 0

This post was written by Josh Weiner, Solar Expert Witness & Solar Engineering Expert. Mr. Weiner has been at the forefront of the solar energy industry for over 20 years and is an industry leader on solar-plus-storage engineering & design. Josh’s expertise spans both in-front of and behind-the-meter initiatives including residential, commercial, utility, grid-scale, and ev charging solar and storage applications. 

If you missed our first Ask SepiSolar Anything with SepiSolar’s CEO Josh Weiner answering solar+energy storage questions, you can’t ask any more questions, but you can listen to the whole session here:

Josh tackled some great questions from people tuning in to this live and interactive program:

  1. What are some of the common KW inverter sizes for C&I solar+storage? (at 11:12)
  2. When you’re doing solar PV plus storage, what kind of interconnection requirements, like 120 percent rule, do people face? Are you seeing more AC or DC coupling on the system? (at 13:20).
  3. For commercial solar+storage, who are the customers that would benefit the most from solar+storage, and who are the customers that aren’t yet ready? (at 20:40)
  4. What type of energy storage is available and viable for the Florida residential and commercial market? Which brands? Also, does storage benefit from the 30% ITC credit if installed in conjunction with solar? (at 26:00)
  5. For O&M requirements for lithium-ion batteries for C&I solar+storage applications, is there maintenance required on a yearly basis? Or is it bi-yearly? What kind of components need to be serviced? What kind need to be replaced? (at 30:15)
  6. Is there an unbiased accurate chart from an independent testing lab of expected life cycles of all that all the battery brands? (Short answer, yes, but there’s only one that’s public.) (at 38:02)
  7. How does energy solar PV and energy storage work with virtual net metering and aggregate net metering? (at 43:22)
  8. What is the unit based cost for battery O&M? (at 47:10)

Join us for our next Ask SepiSolar Anything

If you have more questions about solar+storage, or energy storage or anything related to solar, join us for our July edition of Ask SepiSolar Anything. You can be in the audience and ask your questions live at Intersolar North America or tune in virtually.

Topic: Ask SepiSolar Anything about energy storage technologies. Josh will be answering questions with our special guest, Matt Harper, Chief Product Officer of Avalon Battery.

When: Thursday, July 12, at 1pm Pacific.

Where: Sign up to get a link to watch via the web or join us live at Intersolar. Get all the info and a reminder here!

P.S. If you’re on Twitter and want to meet other solar people behind the solar brands on Twitter, RSVP for the 8th Annual Intersolar Tweetup, which @SepiSolar is sponsoring. Space is limited.

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May 21, 2018 1

This post was written by Josh Weiner, Solar Expert Witness & Solar Engineering Expert. Mr. Weiner has been at the forefront of the solar energy industry for over 20 years and is an industry leader on solar-plus-storage engineering & design. Josh’s expertise spans both in-front of and behind-the-meter initiatives including residential, commercial, utility, grid-scale, and ev charging solar and storage applications. 

Join SepiSolar’s CEO and battery expert Josh Weiner for Ask SepiSolar Anything, a live monthly video Q&A about today’s hottest

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March 6, 2018 0

This post was written by Josh Weiner, Solar Expert Witness & Solar Engineering Expert. Mr. Weiner has been at the forefront of the solar energy industry for over 20 years and is an industry leader on solar-plus-storage engineering & design. Josh’s expertise spans both in-front of and behind-the-meter initiatives including residential, commercial, utility, grid-scale, and ev charging solar and storage applications. The following blog post was contributed by CivicSolar’s Conor Walsh, Senior Account Manager at CivicSolar.

 

***

This article is a follow-up to a previous Civic Solar article discussing UL 1741 & Rule 21: Advanced Inverter Tests. We suggest you start with that article first.

Seemingly discontent to be left out of the advanced inverter functionality game, ISO New England (ISO-NE) recently announced new requirements for interconnected PV inverters in Massachusetts. Similar to California’s Rule 21, the new ISO-NE settings requirements are designed to maintain grid stability and resilience during both normal and abnormal operating conditions in the presence of a large volume of interconnected dynamic PV systems.

To achieve this mandate ISO-NE has promulgated a set of inverter ride-through requirements to be manually adjusted on UL 1741 SA  inverters that specify voltage and frequency trip settings and ride-through capability described in the ISO-NE Inverter Source Requirement Document. Implementation of these setting requirements vary by system size:

  • < 100kW: All inverter-based solar PV projects 100kW or less with applications submitted on or after June 1, 2018 are subject to ISO-NE Ride-through Requirements.
  • > 100kW: All inverter-based solar PV projects greater than 100KW with applications submitted on or after March 1, 2018 are subject to ISO-NE Ride-through Requirements.
    • Inverter-based solar PV projects with applications submitted prior to the above dates are encouraged to comply with ISO-NE Ride-through Requirements with the approval of the interconnecting utility.

Don’t fret. ISO-NE is actively engaging inverter manufacturers to ship units with a pre-programmed NE Regional Setting Group, that when selected, defaults to the required setting described in the ISO-NE Inverter Source Requirement Document.

What does this mean for your next PV project in the Commonwealth? First, be sure you are purchasing and installing UL 1741 SA compliant inverters. Below is a short list of compliant manufacturers. Secondly, begin to become comfortable with the ins-and-outs of the new setting requirements and how they are made. It may be several months until a default setting is available.

  • Enphase
  • Fronius
  • SMA
  • SolarEdge
  • Yaskawa – Solectria

For additional readings, please see below:

  1.  What is UL 1741 SA Advanced Inverter Testing and Rule 21?, UL Laboratories, 2016
  2.  2018 Regional Electricty Outlook, ISO New England, 2018

SepiSolar Editor’s note: While UL 1741 SA is a great standard that allows “smart” inverters to work dynamically with the utility grid, SepiSolar is excited about further developments in firmware architecture beyond UL 1741 SA. For instance, with upcoming new solar PV + storage systems, inverter firmware can be modified to allow PV to continue to stay on, beyond the sunset, or in spite of grid instability, without requiring ramping down the real power export of PV. Stay tuned.

If you’d like to contribute your thoughts about solar or storage design, engineering, codes, and standards, please send your articles to blogs@sepisolar.com.  

CA Small Business Enterprise

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