Utility scale solar has historically been the biggest market for solar power in the U.S. Currently, most of the largest plants are located in the southwest U.S. states where there is plenty of sunny, relatively unused land. The largest of these projects are slightly over 500 megawatts using in the neighborhood of 2 million solar panels. Thats a lot of solar panels -- but also a lot of solar panel racking.

On any large ground mounted project, most of the on-site labor relates to installing the solar panel racking (by comparison, installing the panels on the racks and wiring them together goes relatively quickly). As the solar industry strives to reduce costs, less expensive and easier to install racking becomes critical to the financial benefits of a project. The traditional galvanized pipe in concrete pier mounting structures have become a thing of the past.

One such innovation comes from Solar FlexRack. In 2009 they designed a ground mount racking system that ships compactly, then expands on-site like an accordion. The result is a drastic reduction in the amount of field labor required to bolt the racking components together. Steve Daniel, EVP of Sales and Marketing at Solar FlexRack is our guest this week on the Energy Show on Renewable Energy World. Please join me as Steve discusses the benefits of easy to install ground mount racking, and talks about the value-added services that are necessary to provide turnkey solutions to utility scale customers.