Community solar is an innovative solution that can help democratize solar energy. This model enables multiple participants to benefit from a single, off-site solar farm. By subscribing to a share of the solar energy produced, participants receive credits on their electricity bills without the installation of solar panels on the roofs of their homes or businesses.

Mother Nature handed out several invaluable lessons over the last two weeks of May 2024: on May 17, strong weather events downed multiple transmission line towers in the Houston area, and on May 20-21, tornadoes destroyed several wind turbines in southwest Iowa. What lessons should we draw from these back-to-back events? Is this a wake-up call? If it is, what is the message of the call? What are the consequences associated with these types of failures and what are the weak links in our nation’s power system? Do we need to rethink how we design wind turbines, or do we need to work harder to slow down the accelerating pattern of more frequent and more extreme weather events? Let’s explore!

US stakeholders are invited to offer input on IEC design standards relative to wind turbine support structures and their foundations through the US mirror committee coordinated by Jomaa Ben Hassine. Current activity includes Amendment 1 and Edition 2 of IEC 61400-6. Find out how to get involved in this community blog entry.

The ACI Foundation Technology Forum is the annual rendez-vous for those dedicated to staying up-to-date with the latest in concrete materials and technology. This year, it is taking place in Santa Fe, New Mexico, on May 14-16 and the early-bird registration window closes this Friday, April 23. So, hurry up and register!

“ACI Code-323 Low-Carbon Concrete - Code Requirements and Commentary” is a draft ACI standard currently open for public discussion from March 31 to May 15, 2024. So, what’s Low-Carbon Concrete (LCC) and how does this Code propose to achieve it?

With the first batch of utility-scale wind projects built in the first years of this millennium reaching their 20-year design life, there is increased interest in repowering through life extension and remaining life assessments. What if the question of expected service life had been considered during project design? Well, now there is an ACI design specification intended just for the purpose of providing minimum requirements for performing a service life prediction for new concrete structures. Public comments are being sought on ACI CODE-365. Read more about it here.

In this blog entry, we intend to maintain a list publications of relevance to Civil Renewables, Inc., and by extension, to our clients and our colleagues within the industry.

We welcome addition proposals in the comments sections.

As the industry migrated from the popular octagonal shape and mostly settled on the perfectly round shape, have we reached the limits of shape optimization of shallow wind turbine foundations? In this blog, we present a historical account of this question and explore potential future optimization trends.

If you are new to renewable energy projects, you must have come across abbreviations that you had to accept to appear knowledgeable but had to look up later. In this blog post, we create a list of such abbreviations with their meanings.

Wind projects are not born overnight. Before we see wind turbine generators (WTGs) spinning and generating clean energy, many years are are required in development, design and construction. These distinct but often overlapping phases come with their own sets of tasks, timelines and narrowing opportunities for reducing risks stemming from geohazards. Let’s delve into these phases and into ways we can minimize the impacts of geotechnical hazards.