SolarReviews Weekly News: Solar Warranty Available to All, NJ Passes 100k Solar Installations
As evidenced by the more than 100,000 solar installations in New Jersey, solar rooftops are becoming more common and as homes with solar are resold or service contracts end owners may need a provider to service or insure their solar system is working. One company is stepping up with such a service regardless of who installed the system. Meanwhile a new bi-directional vehicle charger will be tested out as a way to provide energy locally and potentially increase renewable energy use.
Last week New Jersey announced that it reached a milestone, surpassing 100,000 solar installations across the Garden State. While it’s a positive step for the solar industry in the state, it’s starting to see more growing pains. Chiefly the state’s solar renewable energy credit (SREC) program is nearing its fulfillment. When that happens it could hamper growth of renewable energy in the state. As such the state already is working on successor solar programs.
In states like New Jersey and California, where solar is growing the quickest and the longest, homeowners with solar power may be selling their homes or contracts they originally signed for solar services may be ending. In both cases, the changes might me the solar installation is no longer serviced or warrantied. Now Sunnova, a solar installer and service provider in a number of states is launching Sunnova Protect in California to offer solar owners a monitoring and insurance service if they don’t have one, regardless of what company installed the solar panels. The company plans to introduce the service in more markets in the future.
As solar power and the use of electric vehicles increase across the country and world, EVs can do more than just drive people from home to work and elsewhere, like help cut electric bills by powering a building when electricity is most expensive. That’s what Nissan is piloting with Fermata Energy in Tennessee and California, a bi-directional charging system that allows a Nissan Leaf EV to send energy to the electric grid or a building when it’s expensive and charges the vehicle when electricity is less expensive.
Concentrating photovoltaics (CPVs) aren’t as popular as silicon solar but they can produce much more power from a smaller area and they’re pushing the efficiency of solar devices much higher. Last week, for instance a Fraunhofer CPV Module proved that, reaching 41.1 percent efficiency in converting sunlight into electricity.
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