Solar Technology Will Just Keep Getting Better: Here’s Why

With the federal Investment Tax Credit phasing out, it’s a good time to take stock of the solar industry – both taking a look at where it has come from and where it is headed, especially in terms of innovation and evolving technology.  
There are few individuals more qualified to discuss this topic than Jenya Meydbray, Founder and CEO of PVEL (PV Evolution Labs).   His company – founded in 2010 – performs independent qualification of photovoltaic solar equipment on behalf of large buyers and investors (PVEL tests both thin film and crystal silicon panels, but the vast majority of technology in the market is crystal silicon – which is where investors and developers are seeking the data).  

A solar power plant is a capital-intensive venture, with an expected lifespan of as many as several decades.  Operations and maintenance costs are relatively marginal, and the fuel is free, so the quality of the panels is perhaps the most critical element to consider in the overall equation.  
#solar #solarenergy

https://www.forbes.com/sites/peterdetwiler/2019/09/26/solar-technology-will-just-keep-getting-better-heres-why/

‘Farming the sun:’ As water goes scarce, can solar farms prop up the Valley?

On the Changala family farm in Tulare County, the past and future are separated by a dirt road and a barbed-wire fence.
On the south side sits a wheat field. On the north, a solar farm, built three years ago, sending electricity to thousands of Southern Californians.
Alan Changala sees little difference between the two.

“We’re still farming the sun,” he said.
Farmers in the San Joaquin Valley are finding a lucrative new cash crop: solar electricity. As they struggle to cope with the Valley’s chronic water shortages, they’ve increasing turned to solar as a means of supplementing their revenue and keeping the remainder of their farming operations afloat. An estimated 13,000 acres of Valley farmland already have been converted to solar farms, said Erica Brand, the California energy program director at the Nature Conservancy.
And now solar energy is about to swallow even larger patches of Valley farmland.



Beginning in January, California’s Sustainable Groundwater Management Act, or SGMA, will require farmers across the state to gradually reduce the amount of groundwater they can extract from their wells. In the Valley, where groundwater basins have been seriously depleted by decades of over-pumping, the Public Policy Institute of California predicts that at least 535,000 acres of Valley farmland could be permanently retired over the next 20 years as farmers curtail their water consumption.
The institute estimated that 50,000 idled acres could go solar, converting some of the world’s most productive tomato farms, pistachio orchards and dairies into vast fields of teal-colored photovoltaic panels, delivering electricity to the four corners of California’s power grid.
But the solar rush won’t rescue the Valley’s struggling economic base from the ravages of the groundwater law. Simply put, solar farms create few permanent jobs. They’re major employers when they’re under construction but turn into ghost towns once the solar panels become operational.
When panels were being installed on the Changala farm in 2015 and 2016, workers were everywhere. “They brought them in, in school buses,” Changala said.
#solarenergy

https://www.sacbee.com/news/california/big-valley/article234189497.html