COMMERCIAL MICROINVERTERS FIND THEIR NICHE TEMPERED-GLASS SOLAR PANELS PROTECT FROM HAIL PARK CITY’S HIGH-ELEVATION FLOATING SOLAR ARRAY | ALSO INSIDE |
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First Word
It's all up in the air again
I started working at Solar Power World in 2017 — the year the first Trump presidency began. At that point, I didn’t know a lot about the delicate balance of policy, demand and pricing that makes the solar industry so volatile from year to year.
Eight years and lots of solar policy education later, we’re now leaving behind a presidential administration that set ambitious renewable energy goals out the gate — and put a lot of money behind them — for a second Trump presidency.
The tonal shift has already begun. SEIA released its “policy priorities” for the Trump administration focusing on domestic energy production instead of combatting climate change as a whole. If that’s what it takes to keep our industry growing for the next four years, so be it.
Trump and his allies have harangued the Inflation Reduction Act during the election and promised to get rid of it, but study after study has found most of the IRA’s big manufacturing incentives have gone to red states and cities, creating jobs and decreasing our reliance on other countries for the latest technologies and products. The industry will need to shout these stats from the rooftops to save parts of the IRA.
While “Drill, Baby, Drill” is Trump’s popular catchphrase for increasing U.S. oil
and gas production, why should home-grown solar + storage be left out of the Americanmade energy conversation?
The effects of a second Trump presidency and a Dept. of Energy led by a fracking company executive still remain to be seen, but the Biden administration’s massive investments have made a measurable impact on this industry over the past four years, with a boom in large-scale projects and, finally, onshoring solar manufacturing. In this first issue of 2025, we take a look at the trends we expect to make waves this year, from robotic assistance on huge solar projects to modules better-tailored for extreme weather conditions. We also dive into new technologies like liquid cooling, commercial microinverters and more.
Stick with us this year for all the latest project, technology and policy updates in solar power. SPW
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Burns & McDonnell is one of the largest ESOPs in the world, with a current employee count of more than 14,000. Back in 1985, 10 employees purchased the company from previous owner Armco Steel with the intention of becoming employee-owned. Once that transaction was completed eight years later, Burns & McDonnell’s new employee-owners burned their paid-off mortgage.
"Our employee-ownership model sets us apart in solar construction,” said Adam Bernardi, renewable EPC sales and commercial strategy leader at Burns & McDonnell. “As owners, we have a personal stake in every project's success or failure, which fosters a culture of accountability and excellence. We pay for performance and incentivize our teams to go above and beyond to deliver exceptional results."
ReVision Energy was founded in 2003, and from Day 1 had operated in some capacity as an employee-owned business. Around 2012, ReVision developed a stock appreciate program and in 2017 bought out those shares to establish a trust and officially transition to an ESOP.
In an ESOP, the trust is what owns and manages those shares and passes stock increases to employee-owners at regular
intervals, typically after annual company valuations. This differs from an employeeownership trust, in which employeeowners receive a profit share through the trust instead of a retirement stock.
Building the business cooperatively
Profit sharing is one of the tenets of worker cooperatives. Where ESOPs build company buy-in through a retirement plan, worker cooperatives build buy-in by sharing company profits with employeeowners directly. How well a worker-owned cooperative performs affects how much profit-sharing an employee-owner earns.
"Something that I was focused on, and still am, is that a company's success isn't determined, or isn't in most cases, because of the one guy who happens to be the company owner," said Kevin McCollister, partner and co-founder of Catamount Solar, a Vermont solar contractor. "Everybody plays a role in making a company a success, and so they should share in that success more."
McCollister entered the field in 2005 and worked for two other solar contractors, and “I saw them grow themselves into the ground,” he said. After witnessing company layoffs, McCollister and two colleagues founded
Catamount Solar in 2011 as a workerowned cooperative from the start.
One of the primary functions of a worker cooperative is to ensure its employee-owners have employment opportunities. Catamount has grown from three to 26 employees over its 14 years in business, and McCollister said that growth has been deliberate and organic. The goal for the business isn’t to overextend its resources and employee-owners to drive maximum profits; it’s to build a sustainable and consistent workflow to ensure there is work and income for everyone employed there, even in a smaller solar market like Vermont.
“That guy on the roof who's putting holes in your roof with those screws, he's an owner," McCollister said. "He really cares about what he's doing. He's got pride of ownership, and he's going to take care of it and do the job."
With profit sharing, stable work and a handsome benefits package, there’s low employee turnover at Catamount as well, McCollister said.
Everyone is steering the ship
A pillar of employee-owned businesses is operating with some form of governance that involves employee-owner
The employee-owners and planned participants of ReVision Energy.
participation. For worker cooperatives, that can take shape as a direct democracy, where important company decisions are made collectively, with one person representing one vote on an issue.
As these companies scale, that governance can take different shapes. Namaste Solar, a worker-owned cooperative from Denver, Colorado, employs more than 200 people. It uses a representational democracy where employee-owners vote for a board of directors annually that represents the employee-owners and works with the CEO on company issues.
“We have this circular accountability, where the CEO runs the business, which is predominantly made of owners, but the owners elect the board who can hire and fire the CEO,” said Jason Sharpe, CEO of Namaste Solar.
ReVision Energy has a trustees that manage the ESOP, and they are also are responsible for appointing the company’s board of directors. The board is responsible for tasks such as fiduciary oversight of the trust, company financials and operationally strategic decisions. Leadership ultimately manage these tasks, but still consult employee-owners for input.
These companies operate this way by having written bylaws that dictate who can make what business decisions. What constitutes something worth voting on is at the discretion of the employee-owners or the elected officials representing them.
Becoming a worker-owned business
Whether a company is intending to start off employee-owned, or the workers are trying to buy the business from its sole proprietor, there is additional effort while establishing the new company structure.
Certain states have worker cooperative statutes to simplify launching or transitioning the business. Regardless, it is necessary to bring in third-party representation in a lawyer, preferably one familiar with this process, to draft an employee-owned business agreement.
"I think for any business, the conversion to employee ownership is a leap. How big the leap is probably depends on who you are and what dog you have in the fight, so to speak," Sharpe
"At the end of the day, it's a culture that I think every company wants to build."
— Daniel Clapp • ReVision Energy
said. "It wasn't a leap in the way we ran our business, because we always sort of ran it as a democratic workplace. But your capital structure and how you run your business can be very different things."
The result is a business agreement lending greater transparency to the minutia of business operations and even employee-owner wages.
Building a solid base
Most employee-owned businesses include a probationary period before a new hire is eligible to become a worker-owner. ReVision’s Clapp found this to be a crucial time to educate employees about the importance of the “owner mindset” for running this type of business.
As with any business, its success relies on the involvement of its employees. The difference with a worker-owned company is there isn’t a sole proprietor individually deciding to sell the business. Employee-owners have a real stake in guiding their business and the communities they’re working in. The impact of these employee-owned solar contractors extends well beyond operating democratically dayto-day.
Namaste Solar started the Amicus Solar Cooperative (which Catamount, ReVision and many other solar contractors are members of) and the O&M Cooperative to collectively assist in solar component purchasing and establish a network of solar operations and maintenance
technicians, respectively. Both ReVision and Namaste are also certified B Corps. And since it was founded, Catamount has donated 5% of its annual profits to community organizations across Vermont.
"You can point to all the studies on retention and increased productivity, but at the end of the day, it's a culture that I think every company wants to build," Clapp said. "And this is a true way of actually stepping up and showing your employees or your future co-owners that you're willing to do it — that you're going to build a sustainable company that's going to last well beyond the founders' careers, and that's what you've got to do if you truly want to make an impact on our clean energy transition — on our social justice missions." SPW
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Installation Floating
7,000 ft above sea level
The first floating solar project built in Utah is located on a reservoir atop a mountain at an elevation of 7,000 ft. This 587.5kW solar project is powering a water treatment facility serving Park City, a skiing destination that draws millions of visitors annually.
Floating solar was Mountain Regional Water Special Service District’s (MRW) first choice for meeting its renewable energy goals. Land is valuable in Park City, both in cost and its contribution to the natural beauty of the place. Floating solar was the solution that covered the water utility’s energy consumption goals without using any land for construction.
MRW was inspired to put PV on the holding pond at the Signal Hill water treatment plant by a floating solar project GRID Alternatives built in Walden, Colorado, in 2018. That array is in a similar climate and proved to the utility that floating solar could handle the increased snow and wind conditions present at that elevation.
“The geographic location of this lake is pretty unique. You think of lakes being in a lower elevation, or in a basin or valley, where this lake is actually at the top of this community,” said David Goldenberg, project development engineer for Ameresco. “It gets really windswept, and it's kind of nestled in there. They don't
Billy Ludt Senior Editor
expect snow to really stay accumulated at this location due to the winds and the amount of sun it gets.”
Floating at 7,000 ft
MRW issued a request for proposals for a floating solar project in June 2022, eventually hiring clean energy project developer Ameresco. During development, the company brought on floating solar contractor D3Energy, with whom Ameresco had previously collaborated on a project at Fort Liberty Army base in North Carolina.
Despite this being the first floating solar array in Utah, Daniel Hunter, senior business development manager
The first floating solar array in Utah was built on a water retention pond located atop a mountain. D3Energy
Installation
at Ameresco, said that the project was surprisingly well-received. Permitting went smoothly and there was minimal pushback from the community — even with oversight from a surrounding neighborhood’s homeowners’ association.
Component procurement began in January 2024, and construction started in June. The array is composed of 1,078 JA Solar 545-W modules, three Yaskawa Solectria XGI 1500-175-480-kW inverters and a Ciel & Terre Hydrelio floating racking system.
Ameresco and D3Energy hired local solar contractor Apollo Energy to help with construction, which meant training these contractors in floating solar. System assembly occurred mostly onshore. The floating racking, modules and wiring were connected in sections on the lake’s bank.
"This one was a little challenging because of the contour of the lake itself,” said Stetson Tchividjian, managing director of D3Energy. “Usually, we like to have a long edge that we can build the whole thing in just a couple pieces. We would have built it probably in one, maybe two pieces. Because we had such limited straight line shore space, we had to build this in like five or six pieces."
Those assembled sections were then pushed onto the pond, floated into place
and connected to one another and to the mooring lines that lead to ballasted anchors placed onshore.
Connecting to onshore ballast anchors is unusual for floating solar. There are several options for anchoring floating projects in place, including weighted ballasts and penetrating piles, and mooring lines can be tied to those foundations onshore or on a lakebed. Contractors couldn’t penetrate or use ballasts on the bed of the water treatment holding pond, which is covered in an artificial liner.
Developers conducted a bathymetric survey of the pond to determine its depth, because the array had to compensate for varying water levels. The pond is fully drained once every few years, and the array must move with rising and falling waters with gradual depth changes of around 10 ft.
“The way that we had to design our anchoring system was you essentially had to have enough slack in those lines to where, when they do drain it, it can go all the way down," Tchividjian said.
Additionally, the project’s inverters and power electronics are located on land. The floating array at Signal Hill started operations in September 2024.
Implications of a novel floating solar project
Floating solar construction has its advantages when it comes to land use. For one, it doesn’t take up any land to build a floating project. Floating arrays use buoyant racking assemblies with comparably smaller profiles than traditional ground-mounted systems, meaning the projects occupy smaller footprints and have no inter-row shading.
The array at Signal Hill occupies an acre of water. Tchividjian said a similarly sized project on land would take up two to three acres. There’s no need for a fence when there’s the built-in security of being out on water; and covering water prevents evaporation loss and keeps modules cooler and cleaner.
“When you think about it, you have this nice flat surface already,” Goldenberg said. “You don’t have to do all this civil work. Like on a ground-mount, we would have to move a lot of dirt around to flatten it.”
Although the Signal Hill array was completed on a relatively short timeline and slotted well into its place in Park City, its fate wasn’t always clear.
“We were laughing about this at the ribbon cutting, because there was about three different times that we thought this
The floating solar project is directly serving Mountain Regional Water Special Service District’s Signal Hill water treatment plant. D3Energy
Being located on water means the Signal Hill
array will have the added benefit of operating at cooler temperatures, and in turn reduce evaporation in the pond. D3Energy
project was dead in the water, for a variety of reasons, mostly economic,” Tchividjian said.
A $400,000 grant from Rocky Mountain Power’s Blue Sky Award Program was a significant boon to the Signal Hill floating solar project. That funding made it possible to arrange a 10-year payback period for MRW instead of using a power purchase or lease agreement with a longer financial commitment.
D3Energy and Ameresco will maintain the floating project for the long-term. D3 is handling upkeep of specialized floating solar equipment, and Ameresco will monitor the system.
“O&M is an interesting aspect for floating solar, and the more we build these systems, the more we started to see that it's actually a big pro for floating solar vs. ground systems,” Tchividjian said. “The reason I say that is the system itself doesn't need a lot of love and care. All of the O&M costs that you think of with a ground system essentially gets zeroed out. Mowing the lawn, fencing, vegetation control, security — all of those go to zero with floating solar, with it being out on water.”
Having power electronics onshore means project operators might not have to traverse the pond for maintenance, a safer prospect for technicians, especially during the winter months.
The Signal Hill solar array is freshly operating and facing its first winter. Without the inspiration from a similar project in Colorado, the first floating solar array in Utah might not exist. In the present, it will help a regional water treatment plant meet its clean energy goals, but its legacy is yet to be determined.
“Typically, people don't look at your pond and think, ‘This is a great solar opportunity.’ But hopefully this project gives people that idea,” Ameresco’s Hunter said. “Usually for us, we're looking at rooftop, covered parking or a large ground mount. To be able to throw ponds in as another available area for solar, especially with large wastewater treatment plants, that's a wildly huge benefit that we definitely want to see other people take advantage of into the future.” SPW
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A look back at DOE’s solar agenda over four presidencies.
Kelsey Misbrener Managing Editor
The solar industry's journey to becoming the largest source of new U.S. generating capacity for most of 2024 was helped along by pioneering contractors, technological advancements, forward-thinking policymakers and one very influential position in the Cabinet — the secretary of the Dept. of Energy.
This position may not have direct legislative power, but it does hold the keys for allocating funding and research time to its technologies of choice.
The Dept. of Energy's mission is to "ensure America's security and prosperity
by addressing its energy, environmental and nuclear challenges through transformative science and technology solutions." Presidents on each side of the aisle interpret the role in different ways.
"Every Secretary shows up thinking that it is the Dept. of Energy, when in fact it is the department of nuclear weapons, clean-up from nuclear weapons production and national labs," said Michael McKenna, a lobbyist who was part of Donald Trump's transition team in 2016. "The main difference is, of course, that democratic appointees
tend to think that the department can somehow magically change the energy markets in the United States with enough interventions."
Even under President Joe Biden, nearly half of the requested $51 billion DOE budget for Fiscal Year 2025 was for nuclear security. But clean energy funding is still a significant chunk, with the administration requesting $1.6 billion to support clean energy workforce and infrastructure projects and $8.5 billion across DOE for clean energy researchers and entrepreneurs.
SOLAR AGENDA AT A GLANCE
President Obama
President Trump
President Biden
Steven Chu
Oversees LPO’s initial funding to start operations
Creates the SunShot Initiative
Ernest Moniz
Oversees LPO financing the first solar projects over 100 MW
Rick Perry
Initiates “grid study” to see if renewables were harming fossil fuels
Dan Brouillette
Oversees funding of $45 million to advance solar grid integration
Jennifer Granholm
Oversees $11.7 billion in funding through LPO
Facilitates IRA programs like lowincome bonus credit
Advocates for instant online permitting and solar workforce development
President Trump's Second-Term DOE Pick
Chris Wright
Expected to redirect clean energy funding to fossil fuels
Despite political differences on energy, the solar incentives that really kickstarted the industry originated under Republican leadership.
George W. Bush's 2005 pick for Sec. of Energy, Samuel Bodman, was a chemical engineer and businessman before entering the political sphere. Although he was in a Texas Republican's cabinet, he supported the creation of the Investment Tax Credit that spurred solar development.
"There wasn't a huge [solar] role for the administration. It was mostly in Congress. But Congress does ask the Dept. of Energy, 'Hey, will this make a difference?' And Bodman and his team said, 'Yeah, we think we it will,'" said Rhone Resch, current president and CEO of software company Solarlytics and president of SEIA from 2004 to 2016.
The 30% ITC was included in the Energy Policy Act of 2005, along with the framework to begin the DOE's Loan Programs Office (LPO).
Obama turns focus to climate President Barack Obama's pick to succeed Bodman was the first scientist appointed to a cabinet post. Steven Chu was a physicist who foresaw the impacts of climate change and presided over some major programs that helped speed the growth of renewables.
"He was also the first person I heard use the Wayne Gretzky analogy, which is, 'You skate to where you think the puck's going to be, not to where it is.' And he used that to describe the move to address climate change," said Dan Whitten, former energy journalist and SEIA VP of communications who has since started a PR company.
Chu was secretary while the Obama administration worked to recover from the Great Recession of 2007. The omnibus bill passed in 2009 to help restore the economy, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), included 17 provisions that supported solar, said Resch, including funding the LPO so it could begin operating.
"We created the loan guarantee [program]. We created the Treasury grant program, which was basically the ability to create a refundable tax credit in that bill, and a whole bunch of other things that fundamentally changed the economics of solar," he said.
ARRA also included domestic manufacturing tax credits, which were recently expanded in the IRA.
"All the way back in the beginning of the Obama administration, we recognized that [solar]
manufacturing was critical in the states," Resch said.
Another hallmark of Chu's leadership was the creation of the SunShot Initiative in 2011, a program with a goal to reduce the total cost of solar energy by 75% by the end of the decade. The utility segment hit its cost target of 6¢/kWh three years earlier than expected, while the Solar Energy Technologies Office (SETO) is still working on hitting the residential and commercial goals, with revised targets of 5¢ and 4¢, respectively.
Obama's second DOE secretary, Ernest Moniz, was a nuclear physicist who obviously supported investment in nuclear energy but was in favor of all renewables.
"To me, Moniz was the first really loud, really effective advocate for climate change, and Moniz was a rare person who was smarter than anybody on the technical stuff, especially with regard to the nuclear side of it," Whitten said.
Under Moniz, the LPO financed the first five utility-scale solar projects larger than 100 MW in the United States.
“When the Obama administration began, there were zero large-scale solar PV projects in the United States. Our Loan
Programs Office committed funding for the first five, and today we can say 45 more have been built with private financing, opening a clean energy market that did not exist before,” Moniz said in 2016.
Even under relatively ambitious renewable energy secretaries like Chu and Moniz, solar and other clean energies made up a small part of their overall missions. Yet their efforts still lowered the cost of solar by over 75% and increased annual solar installations from 485 MW in 2009 to 14.6 GW in 2016.
"Both secretaries did an excellent job in being innovative, creating new programs that address some of the technological issues, but also the cost issues for solar that allowed us really to scale up, drive our costs down, develop new business models, ultimately, and make solar widely available for consumers," Resch said.
Trump sets sights on U.S. fossil fuels After Trump took office in 2017, the Dept. of Energy’s priorities shifted from renewables to oil and gas.
Trump chose former Texas governor and U.S. presidential candidate Rick Perry to lead the office first, who said he'd eliminate the agency during a presidential primary debate in 2011. Instead of axing it, he ended up increasing the budget around 25% from when he started, according to E&E News
Perry spent much of his time advocating for fracking and exporting U.S. "freedom gas," along with expanding nuclear and coal facilities. As far as renewables, Perry initiated a controversial study that blamed solar and wind power growth for the financial struggles of coal and nuclear plants.
After Perry stepped down as energy secretary in 2019, former lobbyist and congressional staffer Dan Brouillette took the helm. Like Perry, Brouillette focused on expanding fracking and exporting fossil fuels. One of the few solar-related headlines under Brouillette's leadership was a research funding announcement of $45 million to advance solar hardware and integration into the grid.
“The nation’s solar energy use is on the rise,” Brouillette said. “Funding innovative research and development
Total solar GW installed each year under DOE
secretaries
Sources: SEIA/Wood Mackenzie Power & Renewables U.S. Solar Market Insight reports and IREC
Obama’s Administration
Trump’s Administration
Biden’s Administration
Policy
projects will ensure that the technologies we’re using benefit the U.S. economy while securely delivering reliable power to all Americans.”
Trump's two energy secretaries may have favored fossil fuels, but it was tariffs on Chinese imports set by Trump that were mostly to blame for the loss of 10,000 solar energy jobs in 2017 and another 8,000 in 2018, according to Forbes. New solar installations initially decreased after experiencing growth during Obama’s two terms, but install numbers rebounded into the 2020s.
Biden's renewable boom
The past four years of DOE leadership by former Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm put the spotlight on renewables in a way the country hasn't seen before.
After Biden set a goal of net-zero carbon emissions by 2050, Granholm got to work advancing all clean energy sources, including solar power.
"Obviously, Granholm just blows everybody away in terms of advocating for all clean energy and ferociously advocating for renewables," Whitten said.
Her department worked closely on the many IRA initiatives that concerned solar, including facilitating the special low-income and domestic content tax incentive programs and overseeing funding for agencies like SETO and the LPO. The $11.7 billion allocated to the LPO has gone toward loans to increase battery backup
in Puerto Rico, start new U.S. solar panel factories and much more.
Granholm advocated for automating residential solar permitting, cutting red tape for large-scale solar interconnection, building out the solar workforce and much more. She was named on the 2024 TIME100 Climate list for her work in the cabinet.
"Under Jennifer M. Granholm’s leadership, the U.S. Energy department has quickly become a powerhouse of the clean energy transition," TIME wrote.
In her first year as secretary, 20.2 GW of new solar was installed in the United States. According to SEIA and Wood Mackenzie’s 2024 projections, that number has doubled during her tenure.
An uncertain 2025 Trump's pick for the first DOE secretary of his second term is Chris Wright, the CEO of Liberty Energy, one of the largest fracking companies in North America. The choice wasn't surprising for a presidential campaign with a catchphrase of "Drill, Baby, Drill!"
"Mr. Wright is a formidable thinker on energy issues, and I would expect that he and the president will remain aligned for the duration of his tenure," said 2016 Trump transition team member McKenna.
In a 2019 Facebook video, Wright and coworkers drank a shot of fracking fluid, which contained bleach and other chemicals, to try to show it’s not harmful.
"He's the biggest entrepreneur, like, build it from the ground up and perhaps tear it down from the top down," Whitten said. "Philosophically, [he] doesn't really buy into climate change. I think that's distressing for a lot of people, but I do not think that he's of the mind to tear down profitable industries."
Under Republican leadership of the DOE, money that previously went toward renewable energy efforts is usually redirected to fossil fuels and nuclear energy.
"What you typically do if you want to slow down a government agency from supporting one segment of the economy, you just cut back on the staffing," Resch said. "You'll expand the fossil programs and give people the opportunity to go work there, but you're just basically shifting resources from one segment of the agency to the other. I certainly think that'll be the case in research. It'll be the case in the loan programs office [and] SETO, for sure. We will see pretty significant budget cuts, I would expect."
While many DOE staffers may be looking for new jobs, the industry as a whole is expected to continue the pace of installing at least 40 GW per year, according to SEIA and Wood Mackenzie. It’s been four years in the limelight for the solar industry, but fossil fuels are No. 1 again for the federal government, for now.
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Kelsey Misbrener • Managing Editor
Microinverters make their mark in commercial solar sector
While microinverters have a clear place in the residential solar ecosystem, commercial projects are usually synonymous with string inverters. But microinverter manufacturers still see a clear place for them in the C&I market, whether it’s satisfying rapid shutdown and optimization requirements or stepping in to handle unique site conditions.
Manufacturers like Northern Electric Power (NEP), Enphase and APsystems all believe their microinverters can work well for many smaller commercial projects that are seeking long-term cost savings and higher uptime.
Specialized C&I micros
Although it's possible to install residential microinverters in three-phase commercial applications using combiner panels, a few companies have created microinverters specifically for the C&I market.
APsystems has offered C&I microinverters since 2014, with its latest iteration being the four-module QT2. It features three-phase plug-and-play design and incorporates phase monitoring and balancing to save time on commercial projects.
Enphase decided to launch a U.S.made microinverter in 2023 exclusively
for the commercial market to simplify both installation and domestic content credit qualification. The company noticed some of its installers were using residential microinverters on commercial projects just because they had them in stock and were already trained to install them.
"We saw the uptake without even trying, essentially, where installers viewed a spot for microinverters in commercial. And then we dug into that more and more," said Trey Ramsey, senior director of Enphase's C&I business. "Those same installers inevitably would meander into commercial, simply because those residential
A small commercial project uses microinverters from APsystems.
Inverter Technology
homeowners had commercial properties and they wanted a similar solution."
The single-module IQ8P-3P commercial microinverter is still a singlephase inverter, but it balances the necessary branch circuits between the inverter and the cable without the need for an additional combiner panel. To tailor the offering to the commercial market, Enphase also added new features to its app to help fleet owners better visualize and display their systems, including an improved kiosk feature for production display in businesses like coffee shops or bank branches.
Ramsey said customers choosing commercial microinverters are looking for granular monitoring to help identify issues and decide when a truck roll makes sense for just a few unproductive panels. He's also seen microinverters save the day when insurance companies or regulatory entities push back on allowing high DC power on rooftops, like in traditional string inverter arrays.
"That definitely resonates particularly well with numerous segments within commercial; so, schools, gas stations, fire stations, a lot of retail. There's been some obviously negative occurrences in the industry that have put a spotlight on that risk," Ramsey said.
Jesse Elliott, president of JEBL Engineering & Construction, has chosen microinverters for projects with uncommon electrical service amps. Most recently, he went with NEP BDM-2000 microinverters for a church with 240-A high-leg delta electrical service in central California. To use a string inverter for this site, he would've had to install an additional costly transformer.
"A lot of commercial systems are for a native 480-A [service] and so it works fine for most string inverters to be used. In those cases when you have a commercial system that is a 240-A, that's a different beast," Elliott said.
Microinverters could also be a good solution for commercial sites with lots of shading from large rooftop HVAC units, low weight restrictions or insufficient space to mount a larger string inverter, Elliott said. When given the option to add more panels or go with a heavy string inverter, it might be best to choose microinverters and more panels.
A commercial installation using Enphase microinverters.
Cost competition
Outfitting a project with numerous microinverters instead of a few string inverters has always been more expensive, but that conversation has started to change with recent code and policy happenings.
While the new UL 3741 PV Hazard Control System listing can sometimes eliminate the need for module-level rapid shutdown devices paired with string inverters, some AHJs have not yet adopted it and are still requiring rapid shutdown. NEP is pushing its single-phase, fourmodule microinverters for the commercial market as a more cost-effective option to satisfy rapid shutdown requirements with fewer failure points than systems that use a string inverter + rapid shutdown/optimizer combination.
"There's a tipping point here occurring now where the cost of the quads can get under the [cost of] string plus rapid shutdown," said Ed Heacox, co-founder of NEP. "And with that, you get a couple things. You get very granular power conversion, very granular MPPT with the quads that you don't get with the string inverters."
APsystems said its QT2 four-module microinverters are a good choice for projects under 250 kW for those same reasons. These microinverters can pass the fire safety requirements and also give C&I customers more peace of mind, said Jason Higginson, senior director of marketing at APsystems.
"A microinverter system offers a redundancy where each PV module can operate independently, and if one goes out, the rest can perform normally. If you
scale an array large enough, string inverter systems can then offer a similar benefit, so if one string goes out, the rest aren't affected," he said. "Ultimately, the decision often comes down to project-specific factors like roof configuration, shading and the site owner's performance and financial goals."
Longer warranties for microinverters — usually 25 years vs. 10 to 15 for string inverters — can also give the little guys a leg up. Project owners invested in the long-term rate of return for a project could be interested in the higher output and lack of replacement spending on microinverter options.
For Enphase and its U.S.-made inverters, there's the added IRA domestic content bonus that makes the product even more cost-competitive, whether looking at the short- or long-term. Its C&I inverters can help companies reach the threshold to get another 10% added to their tax credits.
"With domestic content, the benefit here is that it actually even undercuts the ‘higher cost’ argument to some degree," Ramsey said. "We're seeing a lot of folks looking to buy the ‘safe harbor,’ because, of course, the threshold is going up next year, so it's definitely a boom, but putting that to the side, it's a great tailwind for us."
Microinverters are a solid solution for smaller C&I projects that won't work optimally with string solutions or whose owners are invested in the full lifespan of the array. As more inverter-makers continue to contemplate U.S. manufacturing, the cost savings can make them even more competitive with the string inverter crowd. SPW
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Kelly Pickerel • Editor in Chief
Panel manufacturers offer hail-resistant models for small yet significant US region
In the constant race to do more with less, solar panels in the utility-scale space have been getting more powerful but also larger, heavier and bulkier. To cut costs and weight of the two largest components on a bifacial module, manufacturers reduced each piece of glass to a 2-mm thickness. But soon, a new problem arose on bifacial projects sited in the middle of the United States: these panels with thinner glass were sustaining more damage than panels with backsheets during the region’s common hailstorms. Maybe cheaper, lighter glass wasn’t the right choice.
Solar panel manufacturers found that the easiest and, honestly, most obvious thing to do was go back to the traditional 3.2-mm glass thickness. JinkoSolar recognized the hail problem in 2021 and released the thicker-glass bifacial module EAGLE G5b to the North American market.
“There was a mass migration to dual-glass products, mostly for cost reduction, and the glass was getting thinner and thinner. We were anxious
about hail exposure and the thinning out of the glass,” said Adam Detrick, U.S. director of product management and technical services for JinkoSolar U.S. “We decided to differentiate and keep our eye on hail, so we went with a 3.2-mm glass, transparent backsheet panel.”
Just using a thicker piece of glass isn’t the full story though. In addition to Jinko, companies like Trina Solar and LONGi have moved toward 3.2-mm designs for hail-resistant brands but use tempered instead of heat-strengthened glass.
Tempered glass is five-times stronger than heat-strengthened glass, said Brenden Frazier, product manager at Trina Solar US.
“The front glass being a greater thickness allows that tempering process to be done more easily,” he said.
“A lot of typical 2-mm glass is heatstrengthened, and there is a good amount of strengthening when you put it through that heat process, but it’s not nearly as strong as a fully tempered glass.”
Trina developed a hail-resistant version of its Vertex N bifacial module that will begin shipping Q2 2025. In addition
to tempered glass, the module has a transparent backsheet. Backsheet quality a decade ago was questionable, another reason why brands moved to dual-glass designs, but things have improved, especially with transparent backsheets.
“A few years ago, we would highlight a backsheet module as being a concern,” Frazier said. “But we’ve done a lot of work in that realm, a lot of work with our TOPCon reliability and extended backsheet reliability tests. We’re putting this hail-resistant module through full testing and have full confidence in the performance and reliability of the backsheet.”
As the first to really explore hailresistant designs, Jinko worked with DuPont on a Tedlar-based transparent backsheet that has proven itself over the last three years on Jinko projects. Detrick said that as the 3.2-mm glass, transparent backsheet design is now catching on with other brands promoting hail-resistant modules, Jinko is pushing the envelope again, this time back to dual-glass models.
Panel Technology
“When we looked at deploying our TOPCon product to the United States, we looked at how we could do this even better,” he said. “Our new G6X, introduced in 2024, is a dual-glass version of the hail-resistant product. It’s not just glass thickness; there are multiple elements that go into a hail-resistant module. Construction and materials matter. We have a recipe on what we think works best with a dual-glass format. We’ve branded it EAGLE Talon Glass, and that’s what we put on the G6X product.”
Jinko won’t reveal the properties of its proprietary glass technology, but modules with EAGLE Talon Glass have been tested by Kiwa PVEL and RETC and received top performer and high achiever markers. While the IEC testing standard requires solar panels to withstand 25-mm hailstones traveling at 23 m/s, Jinko’s EAGLE G6X
line can withstand 55-mm hailstones at the same speed — larger than a standard golf ball. With the probability of regular golf-ball sized hail events increasing due to climate change, Jinko’s dual-glass hail-resistant panels should perform well in the United States.
“We learned that the best solution isn’t necessarily completely intuitive,” Detrick said. “Everyone is just talking about thicker glass being better, and we keep coming back to that not being the only thing, there are other factors to consider.”
Although the details of Jinko’s new module design aren’t published, one can compare datasheets. Jinko’s 2-mm, heat-strengthened dual-glass module has a height of 30 mm and weighs 68 lb. The 3.2-mm tempered, transparent backsheet module is 35 mm and 61 lb. The new dualglass module using EAGLE Talon Glass is
back to 30 mm but weighs 83 lb.
The new design from Jinko shows that not all solar panels are easy to install solo, but also, not all solar panels need to be hail-proof. Hail is not a problem everywhere in the United States, so solar projects in Nevada, for example, don’t need to have the heaviest, strongest panels available. That’s why all the brands making hailresistant modules are still making the heat strengthened 2-mm dual glass designs along with 3.2-mm alternatives.
“We don’t want to look at our hailresistant modules myopically like, ‘Here’s a BOM that does great for hail. It has to do these other things too,’” Detrick said. “With its heavier, thicker construction, EAGLE G6X has a much higher wind resistance than standard modules so we’re advertising it globally as a complete extreme weather solution.” SPW
Ground screws solve challenging site problems for utility-scale solar
German inventor Klaus Krinner, who created a Christmas tree stand that bears his surname in 1987, was given the humble task of erecting a pole in his yard to hang laundry. The pole stayed upright, and another grand invention came from it — the first Krinner ground screw.
Today, ground screws are a common foundational choice for construction projects. They are used for signage, lights, utilities and buildings that are two-stories or less. The ground-attached mount has also gained traction in the large-scale U.S. solar market as PV projects enter territories with hillier landscapes and challenging soil conditions.
“For us it’s perfect, because we shine when the ground is tricky,” said Enmanuel Rumbos, chief strategic officer at Krinner Schraubfundamente GmbH.
The modern ground screw didn't originate in solar construction, but Rumbos said it was validated by it. Krinner
— not the company producing ground screws, but its founder — sought global patents on the foundation after it was deployed in one of the first substantial solar projects in Germany.
Those patents eventually expired, and the market has proliferated with manufacturers producing their own ground screws, many coming from China. A few others, Krinner included, have started producing ground screws in the United States to reap the benefits of domestic manufacturing subsidies from the Inflation Reduction Act.
Threading its way into U.S. solar construction
I-, C- or H-beams still dominate solar piling choices due to their cheaper production vs. ground screws. However, depending on the project site, ground screws have an edge that can make more economic sense than beam piles.
When an I-beam is deployed in challenging site conditions, there is a higher chance for refusals. The beam itself could be much longer compared to ground screws, which can embed at shorter depths and better withstand frost heave.
APA Solar Racking of Ridgeville Corners, Ohio, started out producing helical piles, a driven foundation with two to three curved threads that are designed to resist frost heave. Seven years ago, the company started carrying ground screws and recently began manufacturing them domestically. APA found that both ground screws and helicals largely use the same equipment for installation and undergo the same push, pull and lateral load tests for deployment.
The primary difference is that ground screws have a much larger threaded portion than helicals. Ground screws, which resemble the common wood screw,
Billy Ludt • Senior Editor
The threaded portion of a ground screw is designed to work in cobbly soils, and can even drive into solid rock.
Terrasmart
Mounting Technology
started gaining more traction as the New England market opened to large-scale solar projects. Northeastern soil is rife with glacial till, cobble, boulders and bedrock — ideal conditions for ground screws.
"There's just no other type of foundation out there that can do something similar to a ground screw," said Josh Von Deylen, CEO of APA Solar Racking.
Terrasmart, a turnkey solar racking manufacturer and installation service from Fort Myers, Florida, was an early adopter of ground screws for PV projects in the United States and a longtime client of Krinner. The company has tested and catalogued each project it has installed, resulting in a data log of 12,000 tests on ground screws and a standardized method for installing ground screw projects.
Before installation, a geotechnical investigation is made on a project site. Installers perform a pull test in the soil to determine the proper depth for ground screw embedment. Ground screws are installed by drilling pilot holes and are later drilled into place with a pile driver or other specialized equipment. To optimally work on a project site, ground screw threading must be driven below the frost line, otherwise there’s a risk of frost heave.
Having smaller threads means ground screws can work around subterranean obstacles. If boulders or bedrock are on a project site, a pilot hole is drilled into the rock, filled with aggregate and the ground screw is driven into the hole and secured.
"Bringing a ground screw in on those sites is a much more predictable performance," said Chase Anderson, director of engineering at Terrasmart. "The ground screw really is the product that you put on sites that traditionally might not have been right for solar."
Taking large-scale projects to new heights
A driving trend among solar trackers is making these moving solar racks work on uneven landscapes. Solar trackers have taken on new shapes with articulating posts that will follow the contours of project sites, but hilly land often comes with obstacles beneath the surface.
“In the past, a tracker project is on a nice, big, flat field. There's a reason why they're flat. The geology of them and the soil is usually pretty good,” Von Deylen said. “The industry is growing so much to the point that solar cannot just work on flat sites. Better locations might be high topography, where people are not
farming, or there is rock and cobble in there.”
So, the foundations of solar trackers have had to change to adapt to these project sites, garnering new demand for ground screws. In 2021, APA Solar Racking introduced its A-Frame Tracker Foundation, an A-shaped mounting structure that uses ground screws and works with third-party single-axis solar trackers. That same year, Terrasmart debuted TerraTrak, its foray into solar tracking, which uses an A-frame-style foundation supported by ground screws.
Nextracker acquired ground-mount manufacturer Ojjo in 2024 and is using its Earth Truss foundation on tracker projects. Earth Truss uses two threaded posts, like ground screws, that are driven into the ground at a 45° angle.
Ground screws might not be the inexpensive choice for every solar project, but they’re a better option to make an array work on challenging sites with uneven surfaces and obstacles underneath. A ground screw can hold a laundry pole in place in a yard just as well as it can secure a solar project to a mountainside — all thanks to Klaus Krinner. SPW
Ground screws are used in a variety of construction projects, but the U.S. utilityscale solar market has driven new demand for the foundations. Terrasmart
Kelly Pickerel • Editor in Chief
Liquid-cooling becomes preferred BESS temperature control option
As the industry gets more comfortable with how lithium batteries interact in enclosed spaces, large-scale energy storage system engineers are standardizing designs and packing more batteries into containers. For every new 5-MWh lithium-iron phosphate (LFP) energy storage container on the market, one thing is certain: a liquid cooling system will be used for temperature control. BESS manufacturers are forgoing bulky, noisy and energy-sucking HVAC systems for more dependable coolant-based options.
Liquid cooling as a concept is probably most recognized in vehicles with combustible engines. A car’s engine burns fuel to create energy. Some of that energy propels the car forward, and the rest is converted into heat. The engine must be kept cool, so coolant/antifreeze passes through pumps and hoses and works with the radiator to bring temperatures down. Liquid cooling systems in BESS work much
in the same way — coolant cycles around battery packs to manage heat.
Liquid-cooling systems are carefully integrated into BESS containers to efficiently manage the heat, said Zhehan Yi, utility and ESS director at CPS America. The liquid-cooling system in the CPS Power Block 5-MWh container uses a multi-level system control.
“It utilizes cooling pipes and pumps that circulate the coolant across every battery module to evenly control the temperature,” he said. “There is a cooling unit in the electric compartment that exchanges the heat and cools down the coolant for circulation.”
Air-cooling is still a common thermal management solution for BESS. It uses air to dissipate heat, usually with fans, heat sinks, air conditioning systems and other HVAC components. There’s nothing wrong with air-cooling, but liquid-cooling has more consistent benefits, Yi said.
“Liquid-cooling has a higher cooling capacity and can manage the temperature more evenly. It is less affected by external temperature,” he said. “It also reduces the noise of operation compared to aircooling.”
Liquid coolant is better at managing temperatures because the cooling lines are closer in proximity to each battery module. Air from fans can only reach so many modules, and the temperature of that air is dependent on outside conditions. Not relying on fans means sites won’t have a constant hum of operation — a welcome auditory benefit for those working and living nearby.
Fewer HVAC components also decrease auxiliary electricity consumption. Although BESS store energy for larger grid and site needs, they do need electricity for maintenance. Contained liquid-cooling systems use less electricity than HVAC, making BESS more efficient.
Canadian Solar’s e-STORAGE brand of 5-MWh containers using liquid-cooling.
Storage Technology
As for maintenance, BESS liquid-cooling systems need regular checkups just like a car’s system. Coolant levels should be checked along with the wear-and-tear of moving parts like pumps. Sensors in the system will warn operators when a part or process is failing, Yi said.
Perhaps the biggest benefit to using liquid-cooling for temperature control in BESS is allowing for more storage capacity in a smaller space. Removing most of an HVAC system and better managing individual module temperature means more battery racks can be positioned in the containers. Liquid-cooling is better at preventing thermal runaway escalation — a huge worry for system owners.
Many popular BESS brands have introduced 5-MWh models in the last few years, thanks to liquid-cooling. Hithium has graduated to the next level: a 6.25-MWh container in the same 20-ft footprint. This latest addition to the HiTHIUM ∞Block line is not yet available to the North American market (hopefully arriving in Q2 2025), but it is in line for UL 9540A testing, which determines how systems work in thermal runaway scenarios. The company’s 5-MWh models successfully completed the testing to receive certification, so the expectation is the same for the larger version.
How big can BESS go? Lithium cell capacity R&D is a forever endeavor, and their final containerized home will likely use liquid-cooling to stay comfortable — until the next big idea in temperature control. SPW
• Faster and safer construction
• DC electrical to inverter completed on the ground
The U.S. solar + storage industry is experiencing growth and innovation in some segments but stagnation in others as it enters a new year.
Both small- and large-scale energy storage continues to break records, with California leading the way in both markets.
New rules making it easier to develop solar power on public lands
offer great promise for utility-scale solar sites in remote locations.
Robots equipped with AI can help with or completely take over the most strenuous parts of those projects to install panels faster with fewer workers.
While storage saw an uptick from California’s NEM 3.0, the standalone solar market went the opposite direction.
Some of the largest inverter manufacturers blamed the residential downturn in both the United States and Europe for financial struggles that led to closing down some operations and making massive job cuts.
In the next pages, we look into these trending topics and more to help illuminate this year in solar power.
Major residential inverter manufacturers weather industry headwinds
The recent residential solar industry downturn in the United States and Europe has required some inverter manufacturers to close down operations and cut jobs.
Net-metering changes in the biggest solar state of California resulted in the residential market's lowest quarter in nearly three years, according to the U.S. Solar Market Insight Q3 2024 report by SEIA and Wood Mackenzie. The report predicted a 19% contraction in residential solar nationwide in 2024.
This slowdown is having a clear impact on some of the biggest residential power electronics manufacturers, including SolarEdge, Enphase and SMA.
In November, Enphase announced it was laying off 17% of its global workforce to streamline operations in the midst of a slowing residential market in both the United States and Europe. The company ended contract manufacturing operations in Mexico, although it continues its partnerships with two contract manufacturing facilities in the United States to serve the domestic market.
SolarEdge also announced layoffs of 16% of its global workforce in January 2024, followed by another 400 employees in July, citing excess inventory and a downturn in the residential market,
particularly in Europe, according to Reuters. Then, in November, the company shuttered its large-scale energy storage manufacturing operations, resulting in cuts of 500 more jobs. The company said the measures were meant to increase profitability and financial stability through cost reductions.
“As SolarEdge weathers this difficult period in the company’s history, we are diligently pursuing three main priorities: financial stability, recapturing market share and refocusing on our core solar and storage opportunities,” said Ronen Faier, interim CEO.
SolarEdge’s Q3 2024 solar segment revenues were down 63% from $676.9 million in the same quarter last year.
Another top residential inverter maker, SMA, initiated company-wide restructuring in September 2024 "against the backdrop of a persistently challenging market," according to its earnings report. It followed up with plans to cut 1,100 jobs worldwide in November.
“The market continues to be very challenging for the home and C&I segments. To counter this trend, we initiated a comprehensive restructuring and transformation program for the entire group at the end of September," said Jürgen Reinert, CEO of SMA. "In the
coming months, we will be laying the financial and organizational foundation to be able to position SMA in the future even more decisively as a leading global provider of systems and solutions. Our approach will be to make the home and C&I segments viable for the future and continue building on our competitive edge in the large scale and project solutions segment.”
In the first nine months of 2024, external sales in SMA's Home Solutions segment fell by 69.8% year-over-year "due to the lower supply situation combined with high inventories at distributors," according to a quarterly statement.
Initial hype around IRA domestic manufacturing incentives for invertermakers, in some cases, has also petered out. Fronius announced its previous plans to make 1 GW of inverters in Portage, Indiana, are temporarily paused "due to current volatilities in the global solar inverter market, which do not presently support the expansion of additional manufacturing locations," according to a spokesman.
With a new U.S. presidential administration taking over that could place IRA incentives on the chopping block, uncertainty may be the only constant for the residential solar market.
Kelsey Misbrener • Managing Editor
SolarEdge is one manufacturer that made big changes due to residential solar woes.
US storage market continues upward trend into 2025
Sunny metaphors don’t really work in the storage market, but the future does look bright. The United States closed 2024 with record-breaking storage installation numbers, and each coming year is predicted to be more charged than the last. Whether installed solo on utilityscale sites or attached with solar in the residential market, battery energy storage has found its stride.
“The rapid energy storage deployment we’re seeing in the United States not only enhances reliability and affordability but also drives economic expansion. This additional storage capacity is helping meet increasing energy demand and is supporting growing industries like manufacturing and data centers,” said Noah Roberts, VP of energy storage for the American Clean Power Association (ACP), in a recent “U.S. Energy Storage Monitor” report. “Energy storage is crucial for energy security and to help outpace rising demand.”
Grid-scale storage takes up the lion’s share of install numbers. Q3 2024 reached a new record, with a total of 3.8 GW/9.9 GWh deployed, and 3.4 GW/9.1 GWh coming from grid-scale projects — 60% of grid-scale storage installed in Q3 happened in California.
California is also leading the country in residential storage installs, due to its updated net-metering compensation rates that require batteries to maximize economics. Solar and storage quoting platform EnergySage found the percentage of homeowners nationwide purchasing a battery with solar panels rose to 34% in the first half of 2024 — but California specifically had a 70% attachment rate.
“We’ve seen a significant increase in storage adoption, driven by evolving policies, lower lithium prices and consumer demand for energy resilience,”
said Emily Walker, senior research analyst at EnergySage. “The high attachment rates across the country signal that more homeowners are prioritizing energy independence alongside solar as they become more economical.”
Extreme weather events like Hurricanes Helene and Milton and wildfires in the Southwest and even New York caused extended power outages and led more homeowners to consider alternative power backups. A recent survey by battery maker FranklinWH found 74% of consumers were concerned about extreme weather events becoming more frequent or damaging, and the same number said a power outage during the summer months would be a “critical problem.”
“These very real concerns are causing consumers to cut the electrical cord in favor of renewable energy, battery storage and other products that can help them become energy independent,” said Vincent Ambrose, FranklinWH chief commercial officer.
ACP and Wood Mackenzie, co-authors of the U.S. market report, expected storage installations to grow 30% in 2024, the country’s strongest year yet. They acknowledged that growth will continue, but likely not at the same exponential rate. Uncertainties around a new presidential administration and changes to storagefriendly tax credits or increased tariffs could slow the pace of energy storage adoption. Nothing will stop American interest in clean energy backup, though.
Kelly Pickerel • Editor in Chief
A FranklinWH survey found 74% of consumers are concerned about extreme weather events causing power outages.
Millions of federal acres to soon open to solar construction out west
Billy Ludt • Senior Editor
The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) has expanded the scope of potential solar development on federal lands, opening several more western states to gigawatts of PV deployment.
In January 2024, the Dept. of the Interior issued an update for the Solar Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement, also known as the Western Solar Plan, which formalized the processes for building solar on federal land west of the Rocky Mountains. The Western Solar Plan was published in 2012 and initially opened designated federal land in California, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, Arizona and New Mexico to solar development. This latest update to the plan expands federal land in Idaho, Montana, Oregon, Washington and Wyoming to solar development, as well.
“Solar energy is an affordable and fast-growing component of the nation’s modern power supply and is helping the United States build a strong and resilient clean energy economy. The updated Western Solar Plan will ensure that solar project permitting is more efficient and offers clarity for project developers while maintaining flexibility to adapt to local needs and concerns,” said Steve Feldgus, principal deputy assistant secretary for land and minerals management, in a press release.
The 2012 version of the Western Solar Plan established a framework for permitting solar projects larger than 20 MW on federal land in those six initial states. It identified "solar energy zones," or sites ripe for solar project development, and created parameters for PV project designs. It also laid out protections for minimizing construction impacts in those environments.
The updated Western Solar Plan designates 31 million acres of federal land across those 11 states for potential utilityscale solar deployment, representing nearly 13% of the federal land the bureau oversees in the West. However, the BLM doesn't expect renewable energy development plans to exceed 700,000
acres of that land by 2045. It prioritized selecting remote land that was previously disturbed near transmission lines, and avoided plots with special protections, cultural resources, critical wildlife habitat and other active purposes.
Since 2021, the BLM approved 45 renewable energy projects on federal land (nine being solar), exceeding a national goal to permit 25 GW of clean energy projects on federal land by 2025. The Biden administration expects this momentum in federal project approval to increase because of streamlined permitting processes.
The White House issued a statement in August 2024 claiming that it reduced the median time necessary to complete hefty environmental impact statements by six months. The administration also said it more than doubled the number of clean energy projects developed on public lands compared to the Trump administration's initial term.
“The updated Western Solar Plan is a responsible, pragmatic strategy for developing solar energy on our nation’s public lands that supports national clean energy goals and long-term national energy security,” said BLM Director Tracy Stone-Manning in a press release. “It will drive responsible solar development to locations with fewer potential conflicts while helping the nation transition to a clean energy economy, furthering the BLM’s mission to sustain the health, diversity and productivity of public lands for the use and enjoyment of present and future generations.”
The BLM moved to approve the updated Western Solar Plan on December 20, 2024. Barring any interference from the incoming presidential administration, the potential for utility-scale solar deployment on federal lands could grow exponentially, substantially supporting the country’s goal to power the grid with clean energy by 2035.
Alliant Energy
Solar panel patent battles could alter domestic manufacturing landscape
Kelly Pickerel • Editor in Chief
The silicon solar panel market has somewhat settled into uniformity.
After decades of R&D, manufacturers determined that PERC (passivated emitter rear contact) technology would be the foundational building block to all silicon solar panels. To improve beyond that central design, manufacturers can expand into either HJT (heterojunction technology) or TOPCon (tunnel oxide passivated contact). HJT’s more complex formula that adds amorphous silicon thin film into the mix has led most of the industry to take the TOPCon path, which only requires adding one oxide layer to PERC cells.
It's difficult to stand apart in the crowded TOPCon market, so it’s only natural for patent infringement cries to be heard. While patent claims are common in every industry, these TOPCon patent battles shouldn’t be ignored as everyday business dealings. Who owns what solar panel process could reshape the domestic manufacturing landscape and has already caused companies to pivot in this unstable market.
TOPCon was introduced to the industry in 2013 by the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems in Germany and has been used by mainstream Chinese manufacturers since at least 2019 before becoming globally dominant in the last two years. Testing lab Kiwa PVEL assesses hundreds of solar panels for its annual PV Module Reliability Scorecard and found 2023 to be TOPCon’s breakthrough moment. Just one TOPCon module was submitted for testing in 2022 before jumping to 37 modules in 2023 — 160 TOPCon models were tested in 2024.
Maxeon was the first to dive into TOPCon patent infringement claims, filing separately against Canadian Solar and both REC and Qcells earlier this year. Maxeon holds three patents related to TOPCon technology, which were initially granted to SunPower and assigned to Maxeon in 2022.
“Maxeon has a strong heritage in developing solar cell technology, leading
the development and commercialization of tunnel oxide passivated contacts,” said Marc Robinson, associate general counsel for Maxeon. “Years before the moniker ‘TOPCon’ started to be used in the industry to describe a tunnel oxide passivated contact-based solar cell, our scientists and engineers had developed several ways to implement TOPCon technology into both back-contact and front-contact solar cells.”
Then came Trina Solar’s filings, first against Runergy and Adani, before also claiming patent infringement against Canadian Solar. Trina escalated things by requesting the U.S. International Trade Commission complete investigations of the three companies under Sec. 337 of the Tariff Act of 1930, which would direct U.S. Customs to stop infringing imports from entering the United States. Trina was only able to file a Sec. 337 investigation request because it was considered a U.S. manufacturer that needed protection, although in November, Trina sold its Texas manufacturing plant to FREYR.
But that’s not all — a non-silicon solar panel manufacturer is also getting into the silicon patent battle. First Solar, which makes thin-film solar panels that don’t use silicon, holds TOPCon patents too. America’s largest solar panel manufacturer secured the patents through its 2013 acquisition of TetraSun, a silicon cell startup. First Solar said it still retains the TOPCon-related patents through 2030 and is investigating several silicon solar manufacturers for potential infringement. The company has yet to officially file any complaints against its fellow U.S. manufacturers, but First Solar will go after the dominant silicon technology if it feels it has merit.
These threats are having direct effects on U.S. solar panel market entrants. New manufacturer Solarix said it will make HJT panels in Virginia to avoid stepping on TOPCon landmines.
“There are many variations of TOPCon that have been patented by many
companies. We knew at some point there was going to be some TOPCon patent infringement [allegations],” said Carlos Class, Solarix CEO. “These companies that were developing their manufacturing lines here to use TOPCon in their modules, now they’re putting a moratorium in their 2025 production plans for domestic content.”
In November, Toyo and VSUN announced plans to set up solar panel assembly operations in Houston. A few weeks later, JinkoSolar filed TOPCon patent infringement claims against the two companies and their affiliates. Construction plans are continuing, but a positive infringement finding could halt their domestic production. The same can be said for any of the companies battling things out. A 2020 patent infringement suit between Solaria and Canadian Solar was eventually settled with Canadian Solar prevented from selling shingled solar panels in the U.S. market for seven years. Whether the long list of U.S. manufacturing hopefuls get off the ground could come down to who owns which TOPCon patent.
Solar canopies adapt to residential customer needs
Billy Ludt • Senior Editor
The size and aesthetic of solar carports and canopies are changing thanks to demand for these products in the residential market. An influx of new manufacturers producing solar canopies have scaled these structures to fit within the confines of residential properties and designed them to look closer to a pergola than the towering carports covering parking lots and garages.
While they certainly cost more than installing a solar array of a similar size on a rooftop, these solar canopies boast functionality beyond energy generation. They are relatively simple to construct and offer overhead cover from precipitation for vehicles or people beneath them.
“The big advantage is the secondary use for it. I think the industry underestimates how much people want solar, but they just don’t want to put in on their roof,” said Aleksandr Bernhard, CEO of Pavilion Solar, a Florida-based PV canopy manufacturer.
Solar carports have already offered integration with accessories like EV
chargers and overhead lighting. Residential solar canopies are expanding that to include items found in a backyard pergola, like fans, TVs, weatherproofing canvas and even walls to enclose the space.
These canopies straddle the line between boutique product and practical solar solution. Pavilion Solar just hit the scene in 2024 with EnPod, a solar carport/canopy that is certified to function in high-velocity hurricane zones. While a product like EnPod can withstand wind speeds of 175 mph, the structure is also inspired by Italian and Northern European design sensibilities and is meant to blend naturally in a residential yard.
Manufacturers are now focusing on aesthetic design and offering more than a factory finish for their carport and canopy structures.
Among the five residential winners of Solar Power World’s 2024 Top Products competition, two are solar canopy manufacturers: Infinity Rack and Lumos Solar. Both produce canopies with
residential spaces in mind. Then there are companies like Brooklyn Solar Canopy Co. that make them for rooftops on city buildings.
The residential solar canopy market is still expanding. Bernhard said he started Pavilion Solar because he couldn’t find a solar canopy that could withstand the weather demands of his Florida home. But since making a canopy for himself, he’s found there’s enough demand for even this specific type of solar canopy to warrant mass production.
“We get all of our insights from solar installers, because those are our partners,” Bernhard said. “What we’re seeing from them is they have a growing amount of people asking for carports and pergolas and cabanas around pools. I don’t know why that is, but I do know that solar installers, universally, are saying they’re getting more requests for this kind of product.”
As interest increases, perhaps someday soon the solar canopy will be as ubiquitous as the backyard patio or carport garage.
Infinity Rack displayed a solar canopy for the residential market at RE+ 2024.
New robotic tools handle toughest tasks on utility solar sites
Kelsey Misbrener • Managing Editor
Installing huge utility-scale solar projects usually requires large field crews performing tedious tasks hundreds of times across many acres of land. New AI and robotics inventions are simplifying some of these job duties, sometimes replacing human workers altogether.
Companies like Moog Construction, the AES Corporation and Ozzie's have all released new solutions that take over the most strenuous tasks of lifting and placing solar panels on miles of ground-mounted racks. The different solutions offer varying levels of autonomy, from assisting with lifting heavy panels to doing all the work themselves.
Moog Construction describes its robot CrewMate as a "semi-autonomous lift-assist" tool. The standalone CrewMate hauls panels around a site, then lifts and aligns them with the racking so workers can simply secure them and move on to the next module. The CrewMate completed its first trial installation with Montante Solar in fall 2024 on a capped landfill near Niagara Falls, New York.
“CrewMate is an innovation we believe can safely increase productivity and help meet the demand for new solar farms and workers,” said Steven Erck, VP of Montante Solar, in a press statement. “The PV panels in this field test are among the largest and heaviest installed by crews; CrewMate took the strain out of installation work that’s often done in high temperatures and remote areas.”
Heavy machine manufacturer Ozzie's released a lift-assist tool in 2023 that uses a vacuum system to hoist and place solar panels. The OMH-40 attaches to six-ton excavators and can operate in up to 35-mph winds. Ozzie’s solution was also a Best of Show winner in Solar Power World’s 2024 Top Products competition.
AES Corp.'s installation robot Maximo eliminates all of the human labor of moving, placing and securing solar panels on utility-scale sites. Each Maximo robot is operated by two people.
"Now all that they have to do is essentially just watch the robot, which is like a tool for them, and just click a button, and then the machine does it all by itself," said Deise Yumi Asami, Maximo's founder and member of the AES Next team that developed the robot.
AES would not disclose the number of robots it has, but Yumi Asami said Maximo has already surpassed 10 MW of installed projects and is targeting 100 MW by the end of 2025 with more robots deployed.
"For us to have an impact on a project, we have to have a fleet of those robots," she said.
Worker shortages have long plagued the utility-scale solar space, with Wood Mackenzie and SEIA listing labor in its U.S. Solar Market Insight Q3 2024 report as one of the elements stalling future growth, along with interconnection backlogs and equipment shortages. Tools like these
can drastically cut the number of workers needed on a site — particularly helpful for remote locations with a small labor pool to draw from. Replacing installers with robots can also lessen the apprentice requirements on IRA projects.
While automating the hardest parts of installations could be helpful as modules get heavier and larger, ensuring goodpaying entry level solar jobs are still available for humans is still important if the green revolution is to benefit as many populations as possible. Yumi Asami pointed out robots like Maximo do create some new jobs, like routine robot maintenance and repairs as well as fleet management roles.
For Yumi Asami, Maximo is just the beginning of potential automation solutions for massive solar projects.
"Maximo is, I would say, just 10% of what I had initially envisioned," she said. "I think there's great potential for [automating] anything that is repeated activity, especially in this case, like heavy lifting. I think there's great opportunity for adopting robotics in general, but I also feel like the overarching autonomous vehicles and platforms can help a lot with staging of the parts throughout the whole site. There's a lot more that I think the solar industry will end up adopting in order to deliver more in less time."
The Maximo robot from AES Corp. Right: Ozzie’s lift-assist tool
