Solar PV in/out dual meters and 200A upgrade

An existing 100A underground service with standard meter and timer-interrupted OP meter (OP tariff no longer available)

Mandolin and I have spent a couple beautiful days this week upgrading an underground service from 100A to 200A, and re-configuring the metering to support the net output of an upcoming solar PV installation by frequent partner and friends,  Sumintra, LLC.

PECO requires two meters for grid-tied solar PV installations: 1 to measure what they deliver, and the 2nd to measure what you provide to the grid. The difference is what you pay, and PECO settles up any overpayment at the end of each year.

Since I could not make the underground service RMC raceway (‘conduit’) and service entrance raceway connect directly to any arrangement of right- or left-hand meter enclosures, I had to install a wiring trough between the existing pipe work and the new meter configuration. As it turned out, the short conductors of the original installation required a splice box in any case, since they would never have stretched across the generous wiring space of a 200A underground meter enclosure.

Using the trough also allowed me to shift the new meter setup to the right of its previous location, providing proper safe working clearance for this equipment.

Learning from Sandy: is Philly prepared for natural disaster? / 2013-02-21

The Academy of Natural Sciences will host a panel discussion on how we can learn from 2012′s super storm Sandy in improving city planning, disaster preparedness planning, engineering, and policy.

The event takes place this Thursday, 6pm-8pm, February 21, 2013.

View details and register.

Mid-Atlantic Residents May Consider Backup Power Options in the Wake of Super-storm Sandy

Read about options for backup power, such as retrofitting a grid-only solar PV installation for battery backup power

PA DEP reboots its Sunshine Rebate Program for solar PV and hot water

Since 2008, Pennsylvania’s Sunshine Rebate Program has provided rebate money as a flat figure per unit of installed capacity, for residential and commercial solar photovoltaic (solar PV: at $0.75/Watt up to $7,500 for a 10kW system) and solar hot water (solar hydronic) systems.

Read more on PA Sunshine’s ‘reboot’ by DEP

Alternative Energy Portfolio Standard (AEPS) needs more Solar PV (SREC’s)

When our state legislature instituted a program to encourage development of a solar PV industry in Pennsylvania, we responded with a resounding ‘YES!’. So much so that we built more solar than the new AEPS program had hoped to foster, and now we need our legislature to respond with tweaks to its long-term incentive plan.

Read more on incubating the market for clean energy with AEPS schedule changes

GE Spokesperson puts solar PV at grid parity within the decade

See also:

• SolarCities (U.S. DOE) graphic visualization tool for consumer residential and commercial PV levelized cost vs. grid energy cost, does not seem to incorporate GE’s projections, but does include subsidies and tax credits for 25 cities around the country on an interactive graph.

Smart inverters, distributed deployment make small PV worthwhile

An interesting article from the online magazine Electric Lighting & Power on PV’s developing role on utility electrical grids has swerved my thinking on distributed, small solar PV (capacity denominated in kW, or thousands of Watts) vs. utility-scale large solar PV (capacity denominated in MW, or millions of Watts). Having been a part of installations ranging from tiny 2.5 kW to pretty-big 150 kW in DC generating capacity, I began thinking the economies of scale on the larger installations undercut the rationale for offering incentives to individual homeowners for the 2-20 kW installations typical on these smaller properties. Electric Power & Light points up the fact, though, that as PV becomes a significant portion of total energy inputs to the grid (at least 0.5% by 2021 rather than the even more-paultry .0203% today, under the AEPS renewable energy portfolio standards enacted by PA legislature), it will need to play better with the grid. Especially large solar farms over 1MW will need to act more like conventional power plants, delivering energy when expected, or, at the minimum, not suddenly dropping off even when a big cloud rolls by. Distributed solar solves these problems inherently by averaging a cloud-spotted day over a land-spotted deployment of solar collectors.

Small, Distributed PV + Smart Grid = Dynamic Duo for grid support

Read more >>

Solar PV: from manufactured equipment > brewed material

From Forbes

This kind of technology could transform solar PV from an industry dominated by expensive manufacture of high-tech equipment to something more like brewing vats of energy-producing goop (roofing tar?) that molds hard and you tap electrodes from it to light a lamp or charge a laptop. Mass-producing nano-engineered materials with this kind of power and functionality could have side effects, though, that citizens should carefully watch.