Author Archives: SolarWakeup

Top 10 most read solar articles by your peers this week!

Original Article from SolarWakeup This Week

SolarWakeup: Is Permitting in Solar a Mess or Opportunity?

These are the top 10 most read solar articles by your peers this week!

#1 RE World: Storm Clouds Gathering Over the US Solar Industry
#2 New Times: FPL, Duke and Others Squeeze Out Solar; Have They No Shame?
#3 Bloomberg: Rooftop solar leases scaring homebuyers
#4 CleanTechnica: Solar, Wind, Natural Gas Dominate New US Power Installations
#5 Gigaom: SunPower and SolarCity emerge as fierce rivals for solar roofs
#6 GTM: YieldCos Could Cut Renewables Costs by 20%
#7 Think Progress: Utility Cuts Deal Solar Because It’s The Cheapest
#8 RE World: Welcome to the Grid Revolution, Massachusetts-style
#9 Forbes: SPWR’s Strategy: Developing Software To Manage Solar And Storage
 #10 PV-Tech: Clinton Global Initiative launches “Feed-Out” solar funding initiative
 

The Top 10 is ranked by the number of SolarWakeup.com readers that clicked on the news article during the previous week.  It is the poll of the most relevant solar news of the week as judged by your colleagues and competitors.

Have a great weekend!

Yann

Making Electricity and Solar Usage Visible To The Naked Eye

Making Electricity and Solar Usage Visible To The Naked Eye

By Yann Brandt

Bidgely Whole House Usage Details - solarBidgely means Electricity in Hindi. And making your electricity usage at home understandable is the business of Bidgely, the company based in Sunnyvale, California. Electricity is this magical physics phenomenon that results in a bill at the end of the month, we use it almost every minute of the day but do we really know what is going on?

The goal is to disaggregate your energy usage, which Bidgely calls ‘energy disaggregation’ through its platform filled with intelligent algorithms. By seeing the energy usage through green button or utility dashboards, the homebeat platform can tell you (the homeowner) what appliance is using the electricity. By showing you the details, it allows the user(s) of the home, to review their usage with a day lag and change their habits. Bidgely allows homeowners to use their system for free and all sharing of data is purely opt-in. The company is working throughout the Country but in some areas you may be required to install a monitoring hardware kit though the goal is to be hardware-free.

It may be complicated to see how a energy disaggregation tool has any meaning for the solar industry at first glance. Information and data will drive new users to reduce energy usage. Homeowners will want to battle each other for energy efficiency pride and being close to net-zero. It can also be foreseen, that solar companies and home energy service providers would benefit to see how much energy a home is using and how the pattern of usage affects the value of solar.

We continue to see the trend of utilities, homeowners, home automation and solar come together as we wrote a few months back (Is Google About To Be Your Cleantech Utility). Bidgely animates the story for everyone with data and algorithms. With their summer freedom campaign, utilities can use the Bidgely service free of charge for the next 2 years, so expect to see your energy bill come together on drier load at a time!

This is your SolarWakeup for June 27th, 2014

So much in today’s rundown about the same topic that it requires more space. It is a tale of two States, one (Massachusetts) very much embracing solar as part of the energy portfolio, creating thousands of jobs and generating millions in revenues. The other (Florida) has one of the best net metering standards in the Country, because of the work open dialogue solar and utilities enjoyed. As you see in today’s first story, … continue reading below or click here

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So much in today’s rundown about the same topic that it requires more space. It is a tale of two States, one (Massachusetts) very much embracing solar as part of the energy portfolio, creating thousands of jobs and generating millions in revenues. The other (Florida) has one of the best net metering standards in the Country, because of the work open dialogue solar and utilities enjoyed. As you see in today’s first story, a story I am unfortunately involved in, Florida’s utilities have unanimously chosen to say no thank you to solar. More specifically, they told solar to go take a hike. They have reasons and excuses but we all know why, they know that solar is cheaper than grid electricity and has no fuel cost volatility.

So while National Grid CEO joins SunRun CEO to pen an article about how working together allows Massachusetts continue its growth into the 21st century energy economy. Florida utilities will look forward to keeping the State I call home on the path to 75% natural gas. I have hope, and look forward to writing an article about the start of an enormous solar market in Florida with my friend, Eric Silagy (CEO of Florida Power & Light). After all both of us are staunch believers in intellectual honesty.

Have a great day! Yann

This is your SolarWakeup for June 26th, 2014

The Michigan solar working group published a report that solar could be increased in the State without raising the cost to consumers. Under Governor Granholm, now a resident of the East Bay, solar was thriving in Michigan. Featuring return IOU highlights such as “we support solar” and “we want policies to be fair to ratepayers”, DTE shows again that unless a policy includes investment that can be put into the ratebase, utilities will do anything & everything to shut down solar markets.

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Have a great day! Yann