Crescent Dunes Solar Energy Facility

24-hour solar energy: molten salt makes it possible, and prices are falling fast

by Robert Dieterich, InsideClimate News The first thing you see of the Crescent Dunes Solar Energy Facility, and you can be miles away, is a light so bright you can’t look directly at it. This sits atop a 640-foot cement tower, rising from the flat, empty Nevada desert around the halfway point on the highway […]

Xcel Energy’s Community Solar Program Hits Major Milestones in Year 3

by Laura Hannah, Greentech Media It’s been a big year for Xcel Energy’s community solar program in Minnesota, with approximately 200 megawatts of projects crossing the finish line. Launched as a result of policy shaped and driven by Fresh Energy and its partners in 2013, community solar allows utility customers to participate in a solar […]

Two reasons to trust Community Choice agencies – they are not monopolies and they are local

In November, private utility Southern California Edison (SCE) published a document titled “The Clean Power and Electrification Pathway.” It is essentially SCE’s integrated blueprint for California to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and air pollution via electrification of everything. The utility envisions seven million electric cars on the road, thirty percent of heating systems in homes […]

Huainan City, China boasts world's largest floating solar farm

China on pace for record solar-power installations

by Feifei Shen, Bloomberg China, the world’s biggest carbon emitter, is poised to install a record amount of solar-power capacity this year, prompting researchers to boost forecasts as much as 80 percent. About 54 gigawatts will be put in place this year, Bloomberg New Energy Finance said Monday, raising a forecast of more than 30 gigawatts made in July. That […]

SoCal Edison’s plan to ‘electrify everything’ could help the climate — and SCE’s profits

by Sammy Roth, The Desert Sun Seven million electric cars on the road. Thirty percent of heating systems in homes and businesses powered by electricity. And 80 percent of California’s electricity generated by climate-friendly power sources like solar, wind and water. That’s what Southern California Edison says will be needed by 2030 to meet the […]

Puerto Rico’s solar future takes shape at children’s hospital, with Tesla batteries

by Lyndsey Gilpin, Insideclimate News Solar panels began filling a parking lot outside a children’s hospital this week as Elon Musk’s first major solar-plus-storage project in Puerto Rico took shape, demonstrating how quickly solar microgrids can be established for long-term clean, resilient power. It’s one small but telling step in a U.S. territory of 3.4 […]

Solar power crushes its own record for cheapest electricity ‘ever, anywhere, by any technology’

by Joe Romm, Think Progress Prices for new solar power projects are falling so fast that the cheapest prices from 2016 have become the ceiling price for solar today. In April 2016, Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF) reported that the record low unsubsidized solar energy price was 3.6 cents per kilowatt-hour (kWh), in a March […]

Republican mayor transforms California city into ‘the solar capital of the universe’

by Jeremy Deaton, Think Progress Some cities were hit hard by the Great Recession. Lancaster, California was positively clobbered. In the summer of 2009, the unemployment rate reached 17 percent, housing prices bottomed out, and foreclosures were rampant. Since then, the city has turned things around, thanks in part to the efforts of three-time Republican mayor […]

Suniva, SolarWorld and their opponents file new trade remedy proposals

by Julia Pyper and Julian Spector, Greentech Media The Section 201 solar trade case moved into the remedy phase this week as stakeholders filed recommendations on how to shore up the U.S. solar cell and module manufacturing business. The proposals were submitted in response to the U.S. International Trade Commission’s determination last week that imported […]

Riverside County solar project scores $131-million deal with Central Valley farm district

by Sammy Roth, The Desert Sun California Gov. Jerry Brown couldn’t get a 100 percent renewable energy mandate across the finish line in Sacramento this month, and the Trump administration is eyeing protectionist trade policies that critics say would drive up the price of solar panels. But despite those headwinds, clean energy is still a […]