Solar Power World

We talked to Carlos Moreno, general partner of CNG Solar Engineering, a Woodland Hills, Calif.-based company that handles permitting issues for solar installers in five states. He offers his insights into why the permitting system in the United States is a mess — and what steps can be taken to clean it up.

Cal Morton, sales and marketing executive at Texas Solar Outfitters (a 2014 Solar Power World Top 400 Contractor), discusses how the company got its start, what has led to its success and the growing solar market in Houston.

We spoke with Joe Harrison, Senior Project Developer of San Diego, California-based EPC Borrego Solar Systems (No. 22 on Solar Power World’s 2014 Top 400 Contractors list), with lots of experience with landfill solar projects.

We invited Helioscope’s developers — Paul Gibbs and Paul Grana of Folsom Labs — to discuss why they felt the software was necessary and the feedback they are receiving from their current customers.

Solar Power World Managing Editor Kathie Zipp checked in with the HDPV Alliance at Intersolar NA 2014 in San Francisco. Representatives had much to talk about as they reported how membership has grown, Bonfiglioli’s HDPV-compliant inverter launch and how HDPV innovation is enabling developers to source a 2,000-V system using 1,000-V components.

For years, the industry has tried to figure out how to rank solar panels by the amount of energy they produce, but it’s been difficult to decide what criteria should be used. The Principal Solar Institute, a leading educational organization created by public utility Principal Solar, has created just such a ranking system — and Matthew A. Thompson, the institute’s executive director, dropped by Solar Speaks to talk about it.

Principal Solar announced it had reached the financial critical mass it needed to purchase and finance multiple solar projects, which fits into its overall strategy to become a distributed solar utility. We talked to Michael Martin, executive vice president, business development at the Dallas-based, publicly traded solar energy holding company, about what this means for the company’s future.

In this Solar Speaks podcast, Exosun’s Vice President of Business Development, Jay Johnson, discusses: Why the company entered the U.S. market The Exotrack HZ single-axis tracker How Exosun tests its products for reliability The advantages of manufacturing in the U.S. Differences between the U.S. and French solar markets What Exosun is planning for the future

From new training programs, to conference sessions, to speakers, to networking events, Solar Promotion International has big plans for its Intersolar North America 2014 event. The event organizer’s CEO Markus Elsässer spoke with us about what else to expect as the show returns for its seventh year in San Francisco, California July 7 to 10.

You may have heard of Solar Power World Top 250 Contractor Vivint Solar’s acquisition of solar testing equipment manufacturer Solmetric. And if the possibility of Solmetric’s products coming off the market concerned you, rest assured. We spoke with Solmetric’s Keith Rose who cleared up some confusion about the acquisition, and explained how the two companies are working together on some pretty exciting ideas. He also tells us why solar analyzing is so important, and relates his own interesting background of how he got into solar too.

Joining us is Stephen Irvin from Amicus Solar Cooperative and Adrian De Luca from Locus Energy.

According to research, women are the chief financial officers in most homes and make 80% of the home improvement buying decisions. Hear what nearly 300 women from 34 states had to say about what you should be doing to reach them.

Adrian De Luca, vice president of sales and marketing, and Michael Herzig, CEO, of Locus Energy, a Hoboken, New Jersey-based solar monitoring company, agreed to dissect this coming solar boom and the role monitoring will play in its evolution.

Greg Butterfield, CEO of Vivint Solar, talks about what he sees as the best value proposition going today: residential solar power. In this episode of Contractors Corner, Butterfield breaks down the key to Vivint Solar’s explosive growth.

We caught up with Barry Cinnamon, owner and founder of Cinnamon Solar (and former president of Westinghouse Solar), who says he found some important flaws in some of the older mounting systems because installers improvised the systems instead of following the protocols.

We spoke with Geoff Stenrick, to find our more about his St. Paul-Minnesota based solar distribution company, as well as why SimpleRay is taking part in the Midwest Solar EXPO and why you should too.

We spoke with SolarBridge Technologies‘ Craig Lawrence and Paul Parker to see how the microinverter manufacturer is pushing the industry to do something about the issue.

Green Charge Networks says it’s come up with a solution to address grid storage challenges by bringing the public and private sectors together. We spoke with the company’s CEO Vic Shao to learn how his company will use Department Of Energy funding to develop agreements that help businesses cut their electricity bills by using a combination of energy storage and predictive algorithms.

In this Contractors Corner podcast, learn how Run on Sun attracts clients, the reason it switched to micro-inverters and why co-founder Jim Jenal wrote a book about commercial solar installation, titled Commercial Solar: Step-By-Step.

While an enclosure isn’t the most complex component you’ll find in a solar installation, it’s certainly an important one. A proper enclosure protects vital system electronics that can affect uptime, and therefore the system’s return on investment. We spoke with Bill DeRoche of Ohio enclosure manufacturer Allied Moulded Products to find out why enclosures are more than just a box.