Authored Works

insight

Executive Summary of Achieving Low-Cost Solar PV: Industry Workshop Recommendations for Near-Term Balance-of-System Cost Reductions

May 17, 2010  |  By

• Eric Maurer
• Sam Newman

The executive summary provides a high-level overview of key technical and process best practices that emerged from RMI’s June 2010 “Solar PV Balance of System” design charrette. BoS costs—all the upfront costs associated with a PV system except the module—account for over half of PV system cost and pose a…

insight

Presentation of Achieving Low-Cost Solar PV: Industry Workshop Recommendations for Near-Term Balance-of-System Cost Reductions

May 17, 2010  |  By

• Sam Newman

This presentation provides a high-level overview of key technical and process best practices that emerged from RMI’s June 2010 “Solar PV Balance of System” design charrette in a graphical format. It includes the main charts and graphs that summarize the report analysis and recommendations. BoS costs—all the upfront costs associated…

insight

Achieving Low-Cost Solar PV: Industry Workshop Recommendations for Near-Term Balance-of-System Cost Reductions

May 17, 2010  |  By

• Eric Maurer
• Sam Newman

This report synthesizes the specific design strategies and technical and process best practices that emerged from RMI’s June 2010 “Solar PV Balance of System” design charrette. BoS costs—all the upfront costs associated with a PV system except the module—account for over half of PV system cost and pose a barrier…

insight

Accelerating Solar Power Adoption: Compounding Cost Savings Across the Value Chain

May 17, 2009  |  By

• Sam Newman
• Virginia Lacy

This paper discusses common barriers to solar power adoption and techniques for getting around those barriers. The authors argue that for solar power to become a significant contributor to energy supply, and hence greenhouse gas emissions reductions, the industry has to achieve high annual growth rates for decades. The challenge…

insight

Systems Thinking for Radically Efficient and Profitable Data Centers

May 17, 2008  |  By

• Sam Newman

This presentation shows how to apply a whole-system approach to the energy use in data centers in order to provide 95–99% energy savings. The authors present strategies for saving energy that have been applied effectively to new and existing data centers. For example, using a centralized cooling system can cut…