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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...
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The solar value proposition part 2: Charting a new path using data and analytics
In Part 1 in our series on the solar value proposition, we looked at a new approach to valuing PV. With this new approach, there is a need to quantify deferred and avoided generation, as well as transmission and distribution capacity increases through peak-load...
The solar value proposition part 1: A fork in the road
Much like Kermit the Frog and Fozzie the Bear passing a fork in the road , the explosive growth of solar has many in and around the solar industry exclaiming in Kermit-like fashion, "I don't believe it." No longer is solar relegated to being the energy option when no...
2014 solar trends episode 3: Solar Financing – A New Hope
Financing has been with solar since its earliest days. Before the lease and the power purchase agreement (PPA), residential solar customers would often purchase systems with cash. Cash payments are a form of financing, as the customer is choosing to purchase a solar...
Flexibility meets reliability: PVWatts and NSRDB now available through Clean Power Research API services
In keeping with our mission of powering intelligent energy decisions, Clean Power Research is introducing a 10 km Typical Meteorological Year (TMY) dataset for use in Clean Power Research API services. Programmatic access to this high-resolution dataset and the...
Growing solar beyond California: financial intelligence for every state
Solar is rapidly growing beyond California. As described in the Men’s Journal article “Why Now Is the Time To Go Solar,” this growth is being driven by the availability of inexpensive panels, tax breaks, and options to lease or buy PV systems. While a recent...
Georgia blazing new trails with its value-based FiT
California and New Jersey are known for solar policy innovation, while the states of the Southeast have tended to stay on the sidelines despite having abundant sunshine. Until now, that is. Georgia is quickly emerging as a solar power innovator. Over the past 12...
USC 2013 insights: illuminating key utility solar issues
The Solar Electric Power Association (SEPA) Utility Solar Conference (USC) was held last month in Portland, Ore. This was convenient for our Kirkland, Wash., software team, so we sent four people down to join Tom Hoff from our Napa, Calif., office at the event. It was...
Electric vehicles + solar: an idea whose time has come
You’ve likely heard about the partnerships springing up between electric vehicle (EV) manufacturers and solar (PV) system providers. Most recently, Honda and SolarCity announced a plan that allows Honda customers to install solar with a low upfront cost and see an...
Top 2013 trends part 2: the NEM debate
Last week we identified the first of three big trends for the solar industry in 2013: soft cost reduction. This week, we look at the next big trend: a re-evaluation of net energy metering (NEM). While discussions about NEM aren’t new, they’ll be accelerating in 2013....
Quantifying the “variability” in variable solar energy forecasts
Utilities and grid operators need to procure and provide generation sources for anticipated load demands. As both grid connected and behind-the-meter photovoltaic (PV) systems continue to grow in number, total system load, including the load being served by solar, is...
The proof is in: Integrating PV into the grid is better with behind-the-meter solar forecasts
In recent years, Clean Power Research created a solar forecast method to accurately predict power production of “invisible,” behind-the-meter PV systems—typically those found on homes and commercial buildings. In our approach, forecasts are generated by simulating the...
Solar Power International 2015: Solar in Disneyland
Disneyland provided the backdrop for the Solar Power International (SPI) conference in Anaheim this year. As the biggest solar-focused conference in the U.S., exhibiting at SPI provides a great opportunity to find out firsthand what is on the mind of the industry—that...
West vs. south: Why change the orientation of your solar PV system
Originally published in the March/April issue of Solar Today. Within the solar industry, it's common knowledge that the optimal orientation of solar photovoltaic (PV) panels in the Northern Hemisphere is typically south, to maximize electricity production over the...
UVIG technical achievement award presented to Tom Hoff
Last week, the Utility Variable-Generation Integration Group (UVIG) recognized Tom Hoff, Clean Power Research founder and president of Research and Consulting, with an award for his ongoing contributions to solar forecasting. The ability to forecast the output of tens...
When it comes to solar resources, 2014 was anything but average
Solar resources naturally vary from year to year, and 2014 was no exception. While the 2014 average monthly solar resource map shows expected patterns, with the greatest energy output in the southwest, the real story is revealed by the PV power variance map. The PV...
Solar forecasting goes “EPIC”
Itron and Clean Power Research are embarking on the next phase of research that will lead to high-fidelity distributed solar photovoltaic (PV) forecasts, and integration of those forecasts into net load forecasts for the California Independent System Operator (ISO)....
Understanding PV variability: Affects of the 2014 California monsoon
While we all know that the energy production of solar PV systems can vary temporally on the short term (e.g., hourly and daily basis), monthly to annual variability can significantly affect the ongoing status of a developed PV solar asset. For developers and owners of...
Using ground plus satellite solar irradiance data to reduce risk, increase project profitability
If you stopped by the Clean Power Research booth (#118) at the most recent Solar Power International (SPI) Conference in Las Vegas, you would have noticed a tall metal frame supporting some measurement equipment. While this structure could have passed for a new-age...
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NARUC aims to level the playing field for cloud software
In November 2016, the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners (NARUC) approved a resolution encouraging State regulators to level the playing field for cloud software and on-premise software. Why is this resolution critically important for utilities?...
Electric vehicles provide large GHG reductions in Minnesota
This week’s blog post is a contribution from our guest author Dane McFarlane, of Great Plains Institute (GPI) and was originally published on GPI's Better Energy, Better World. To learn more about how Clean Power Research is helping customers understand the value of...
100K applications in PowerClerk Interconnect & 500K in all PowerClerk products
The proliferation of distributed energy resource (DER) adoption, particularly solar, across the U.S. in recent years has led to a common pattern of records being set for utilities, installers and more. Along those lines, last week marked an important achievement for...
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...
Paradigm shift for U.S. utilities: “Energy” efficiency, not “electric” efficiency
Stagnant load stinks If you're a regulated utility in the United States, stagnant or declining load stinks. Policies like decoupling help a little, but like any other business, no utility really wants to face the economics of declining use of their product. If one...
Should I wait for Tesla’s Model 3?
Tesla announced the release of the Model 3 on March 31, 2016, and several hundred thousand reservations have been made. This has demonstrated a strong market demand for an electric vehicle (EV) that has three attributes: It’s attractive, has a decent range, and is...
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...
Prescription for avoiding angry customers as net energy metering caps approach
As recently reported by GTM Research, the volume of distributed solar photovoltaic (PV) systems on American homes and businesses is continuing its rapid climb—with the residential solar market growing 66% in 2015 over 2014. This growth can be attributed to a variety...