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SolarAnywhere now-casts to support EDD-led U.S. DOE project to improve grid resiliency with interconnected DERs
Clean Power Research was selected to participate in a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) research and development (R&D) project focused on increasing behind-the-meter solar situational awareness and grid resiliency. SolarAnywhere® historical, now-cast and forecast...
Empowering customers with backup power protection during outages
Reliability is a core mission of electric utilities. Utilities are typically so effective at providing reliable service that customers are accustomed to having power available whenever they want it. As might be expected, when power is unavailable, customers become...
All top 10 U.S. utilities trust Clean Power Research
At Clean Power Research, we think of ourselves as a modestly sized company doing big work. We are a passionate team of engineers, scientists and customer-obsessed service professionals focused on delivering world-class software solutions to utilities and the solar...
Could distributed solar + storage protect Californians from precautionary power outages?
Wildfires & California: A major concern California has experienced multiple devastating wildfires over the past two years. The Wine Country Fires that started on October 8, 2017, in Napa County killed 44 people and cost $15 billion. The Camp Fire, an even more...
Three keys to unlocking DER program management excellence
A question we often hear from utilities is: “What makes an effective distributed energy resource (DER) program management solution over the long-term?” The question is often rooted in concern for making the best choice between developing an in-house solution or...
PowerClerk Dashboards deliver key data visualization capabilities to energy program managers
Advancements in data visualization reporting tools are helping companies make sense of ever-increasing data volumes and complexity. The right tools help increase efficiency and make data visualization more approachable for all users. Improved application design has...
Demand for firm power driving innovation in solar forecasting
Since 2014, compelling economics have made renewable energy the preferred source of new power generation capacity in the United States. Energy cost parity with traditional sources has been well-established by the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) and other...
As community solar grows, scaling customer engagement is critical
Solar energy production is booming in the United States. According to the EIA (U.S. Energy Information Administration), “U.S. solar generation has increased from 2 million MWh in 2008 to 96 million MWh in 2018.” The growth of solar has coincided with the proliferation...
What U.S. PV plant owners have seen in 2018/2019 is real: sunshine has been scarce
What it means to PV plant owners and developers For many solar PV plant owners in the U.S., solar energy production in the last year or two has fallen well below expectations. We’ve heard this again and again recently. Maybe you’ve heard the same thing. What’s causing...
Reflections on SPI 2014: How today’s U.S. solar industry is the same, different and revolutionary
Clean Power Research had a first-floor booth at Solar Power International (SPI) this year, and it drew great traffic. It didn’t hurt that we had a cool meteorological station in our booth from GroundWork Renewables that also drew a lot of attention, since Clean Power...
Five things you need to know about PowerClerk Interconnect
We’re very excited to be releasing the latest product in our PowerClerk® family of products—PowerClerk® Interconnect—this week. Developed and launched with the help of a Department of Energy Sunshot Incubator award, PowerClerk Interconnect is already helping NV Energy...
Three reasons it’s time for utilities to think seriously about distributed solar interconnection
When home and business owners decide to go solar, they embark on an adventure that will require navigation of a multi-step process that includes soliciting and evaluating proposals, determining financing, and applying for permits, incentives and interconnection....
New York State solar incentive programs consolidated into NY-Sun
This month, under direction from the New York State Governor’s office, the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) and PSEG Long Island (now operating Long Island Power Authority’s electric system) merged their solar incentive programs under...
PowerClerk auto-document generation and electronic signature features streamline incentive and interconnection processing
Taking paper intensive processes online can dramatically simplify what formerly would have been manual, time-consuming administrative tasks. For the solar industry, this can help reduce soft costs, which today account for more than 60 percent of the cost of installing...
Infographic: Keeping Track of Solar
2013 saw record-breaking solar growth in the U.S.—an increase of 41% over 2012—and 2014 is expected to see even larger gains. With more than 440,000 solar electric systems operating across the U.S. today, keeping track of these distributed resources is more important...
CSI program wind-down doesn’t mean the end of solar in California
As the California Solar Initiative General Market program—the largest PV incentive program in the U.S.—winds down, an interesting solar landscape is emerging in California. A number of incentive programs large and small continue to support solar adoption in the state,...
Three ways automation can smash solar interconnection costs
It’s no secret that although solar hardware costs have been steadily decreasing, solar soft costs— including permitting, interconnection, customer acquisition and installation labor—have remained steady. In fact, according to studies by the National Renewable Energy...
California Solar Initiative at 85% of MW goal (and how we helped them get there)
It’s a remarkable achievement that in just seven years, the California Solar Initiative (CSI) has reported an estimated 1,629 megawatts (MW) of solar PV has been committed. That is a whopping 85% of its goal to install 1,940 MW of solar by the end of 2016 in...
Solar+ homes (Part 1): The new foundation of the energy transformation
This is the first article of an 11-part series on Solar+ homes. The series describes how homeowners can combine simple energy efficiency measures, solar PV, electric vehicles and appliance electrification to create households that are fully powered by solar...
Build trust with your customers by facing electric rate changes head-on
By now it’s old news that the utility business model needs to change. According to Utility Dive’s 2016 State of the Electric Utility Survey, only 3% of utility respondents feel the utility business model does not need to evolve. Unsurprisingly, utilities are investing...
Three ways utilities can prepare for high solar growth in the wake of the ITC extension
While extension of the Investment Tax Credit (ITC) is expected to relieve some of the pressure for new solar photovoltaic (PV) interconnections in 2016, the long-term outlook is for overall stronger growth for all types of projects, including residential PV. As a...
Are utilities the key to kick-starting electric vehicle sales in 2016?
After three years of strong growth, plug-in electric vehicle (PEV or ‘EV’) growth fell in 2015. Lower gas prices and consumers waiting for the new 2016 Nissan Leaf (and its longer range) were part of the reason for the decrease in sales, but likely these factors don’t...
2016: The year of enhanced energy price competition
You can’t go anywhere these days without hearing about the price of oil. While in past years that often meant oil prices were skyrocketing, today, oil is threatening to hit 20-year lows (in inflation adjusted dollars). Right now, oil demand is so low, and supply is so...
With electric vehicles and solar, the ‘whole is greater than the sum of its parts’
Is it possible to save more money by combining an electric vehicle (EV) with a home solar PV system rather than considering each individually? Often the answer is yes, and the additional savings can be substantial. To help energy consumers answer that question,...
Infographic: 5 Characteristics of Great Utility Customer Engagement
Industry research indicates that utilities that successfully educate their customers about their energy options will be positioned to survive and thrive, even as the industry evolves. Here’s how utilities can get the most from their customer engagement. Want to learn...
Tapping the win-win-win of rate reform
Utilities nationwide are adding variety to residential electric rate plans and reconsidering how to value rooftop solar. Rate changes being considered include demand charges and net metering “2.0” policies that provide customers less than full retail credit. These...
Hot topics at Intersolar NA 2015: ITC, solar + storage and snow!
San Francisco once again played host to the Intersolar North America conference in July. For industry veterans, this year’s event was familiar: crowded registration lines, bumping into old friends and a busy exhibition floor. On the other hand, this year’s hot...
How to reduce demand charges using solar forecasts
The challenge is well-known by commercial building owners and PV project developers: on site solar PV generation offers excellent energy savings to commercial customers, but can result in unreliable demand charge reduction benefits. Through a recent DOE funded...
The Future of the NREL Solar Prospector and Public Solar Data
Solar Prospector Sunsetting As many of you have heard, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) will be sunsetting the Solar Prospector tool. The Solar Prospector tool was last updated in 2012 by NREL, and its purpose was to provide mapping and data analysis in...
Observational MET programs reduce uncertainty
This week, we're pleased to present a post from GroundWork® Renewables' CEO Ann Gaglioti. Measuring irradiance data in the field reduces the uncertainty of the energy production assessment and results in a measurable return on investment during project financing. In...
Quantifying day-ahead solar energy forecast uncertainty
Solar resource variability is an unavoidable natural characteristic that impacts solar power forecasting. However, its impact on forecast uncertainty can be reduced by providing information on predictive uncertainty, along with deterministic forecast values. Having...
Version control: Your bankable signpost in a digital world
If you own an iPhone, you’ve seen the familiar message “iOS 9.3.3 is available for your iPhone and is ready to install.” If you’re like me, you hit “Remind me later” a few dozen times before you actually install the update. Call me paranoid, but I always have to take...
Producing perfect PV fleet forecasts – at what cost?
In our last blog, we talked about the performance of SolarAnywhere® v4 PV fleet forecasts, and discussed how accuracy was a function of the PV fleet’s geographic footprint. For instance, SolarAnywhere hour-ahead forecasts in the Western U.S. were shown to have a...
Can ISOs rely on PV fleet forecasts?
PV fleet forecasts Solar forecasts are traditionally concerned with predicting the output of solar PV systems at particular locations. Consequently, much of what is known about solar forecast accuracy is centered on point validations. Fleet forecasts consider the...
How to validate PV fleet forecast accuracy when you cannot directly measure it
The capacity of behind-the-meter PV systems is growing steadily. Figure 1 illustrates that there is over 5 GW of PV in California alone. The number is continuing to increase. The result is that behind-the-meter PV fleet forecasts are becoming increasingly important...
Infographic: Five factors defining bankable solar irradiance data
Bankable solar irradiance data is crucial to minimizing cost of capital for solar projects. Check out this infographic to find out what you need to know when selecting resource data. Want to see the infographic in full size? Download it now: Download...
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The future of solar forecasting with the new GOES-16 satellite
The SolarAnywhere® team transforms satellite images into industry-leading solar irradiance data. We make algorithms, not satellites, so when NOAA/NASA upgrades the hardware, we take notice of the possibilities—and get to work. On January 2, 2018 we made a seamless...
Why WattPlan Grid: Planning for DER adoption
Eight months ago, Clean Power Research and the Sacramento Municipal Utility District (SMUD) formed a unique partnership to solve the critical challenge of planning for DER adoption. In the words of our partners at SMUD, this new DER planning software—called WattPlan®...
SolarAnywhere FleetView Forecasts Top EPRI Study
The Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) recently completed a solar forecasting trial designed to help utilities understand the value that accurate solar prediction can bring to their energy market schedules and balancing operations. SolarAnywhere® FleetView®...
The August 21st solar eclipse: How and where it’ll impact solar production
On August 21, 2017, the U.S. will experience a solar eclipse for the first time since May 2012. The eclipse will cause an obscuration of the sun’s light, resulting in a reduction of the energy from irradiance that will hit the Earth’s surface. As the eclipse crosses...
How Orange and Rockland Utilities reduced interconnection application errors by 95%
PowerClerk: The DER interconnection control center In September 2016, we released an important new integration capability that enables utilities to use PowerClerk® to create their own distributed energy resource (DER) interconnection control center. By using web...
MN Solar Pathways: Illuminating pathways to 10% solar
On March 30, 2017, the Minnesota Department of Commerce along with its core team, kicked off its Department of Energy-funded MN Solar Pathways project aimed at finding the least-risk, best-value solutions for MN to achieve its solar energy goals. Clean Power Research...
Can a simple model predict future PV adoption? (Yes—if done right)
Utilities across the U.S. are eager to know how much PV their customers will adopt, as this adoption can impact both revenues (from reduction in energy purchases) and costs (linked to distribution operation and intermittency mitigation). Having seen the explosive...
DERs take center stage at DistribuTECH
At the recent DistribuTECH Conference in San Diego, more than 13,000 attendees spent three engaging days discussing the biggest issues facing utilities today. One of the hottest topics, judging by session attendance and exhibit floor conversations, was Distributed...
SolarAnywhere detects calibration error in nation’s most trusted ground site
How accurate are SolarAnywhere® irradiance data? They are accurate enough to identify an undetected calibration error at one of the nation’s most trusted ground truth stations. Figure 1 presents Direct Normal Irradiance (DNI) and Global Horizontal Irradiance (GHI)...