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Folsom Labs: Another Example Why Solar Is The Future [View all]
Folsom Labs: Another Example Why Solar Is The Future
1/13/2014
...Getting final bank approval is one of the most arduous, and needlessly expensive, processes in putting together commercial or utility solar power plants. Developers seeking loans have to provide meticulous information about performance, product specifications and projected output to banks. Incorporating a particular inverter or other piece of technology can kill a deal or require the developers to return to the drawing board.
Soft costs like financing account for 64% of the cost of a system, according to the National Renewable Energy Labs. Financing rates aren’t cheap either: the Rocky Mountain Institute estimated that the cost of credit for utility and commercial projects on average in 2012 came to 9 to 9.2 percent.
HelioScope, a cloud-based platform from a new company called Folsom Labs, is part of an industry-wide effort to change that. HelioScope effectively lets engineers create accurate, granular models of solar power plants. Current modeling tools create models generally take a top-down approach to modeling and operate on various assumptions, claims founder Paul Grana.
“We do the physics from the bottom up,” he says, resulting in a more accurate projection. Just as important, it’s fast. Let’s say a developer designed a 100-megawatt system with a particular brand of solar panel. The bank sneers. An engineer can quickly swap in a higher-performance (albeit more expensive) panel and in a few minutes you have a complete new model of the solar farm based on the different panel.
Going back to the drawing board is far less arduous, which in turn cuts the time and energy required to obtain financing...
1/13/2014
...Getting final bank approval is one of the most arduous, and needlessly expensive, processes in putting together commercial or utility solar power plants. Developers seeking loans have to provide meticulous information about performance, product specifications and projected output to banks. Incorporating a particular inverter or other piece of technology can kill a deal or require the developers to return to the drawing board.
Soft costs like financing account for 64% of the cost of a system, according to the National Renewable Energy Labs. Financing rates aren’t cheap either: the Rocky Mountain Institute estimated that the cost of credit for utility and commercial projects on average in 2012 came to 9 to 9.2 percent.
HelioScope, a cloud-based platform from a new company called Folsom Labs, is part of an industry-wide effort to change that. HelioScope effectively lets engineers create accurate, granular models of solar power plants. Current modeling tools create models generally take a top-down approach to modeling and operate on various assumptions, claims founder Paul Grana.
“We do the physics from the bottom up,” he says, resulting in a more accurate projection. Just as important, it’s fast. Let’s say a developer designed a 100-megawatt system with a particular brand of solar panel. The bank sneers. An engineer can quickly swap in a higher-performance (albeit more expensive) panel and in a few minutes you have a complete new model of the solar farm based on the different panel.
Going back to the drawing board is far less arduous, which in turn cuts the time and energy required to obtain financing...
http://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelkanellos/2014/01/13/folsom-labs-once-again-shows-why-solar-is-the-future/
6 replies
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