In an announcement that was celebrated by the solar industry, yesterday U.S. trade officials said that bi-facial solar modules, which are solar modules that produce energy on both sides of the panel, would be exempt from import tariffs. [...]

In the years since its passage, Section 210 of the Public Utility Regulatory Policies Act (PURPA) has provided one of the few options for small producers of renewable energy to access electric generation markets controlled by monopoly utilities. The law requires a monopoly utility to purchase the output of certain small power producers known as “qualifying facilities” (QFs) at the utility’s “avoided cost”—that is, the cost the utility would incur to generate or purchase power in the [...]

In a world first, Germany generated 54.5 percent of electricity from renewable energy in March 2019. This is according to data collected by the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems. [...]

Two large-scale solar farms are set to make Warrington Borough Council the first local authority in the UK to produce all its own electricity from clean energy. [...]

The Czech Solar Association is sounding the alarm about planned legislation that would exclude solar PV projects being entered into future Renewable Energy Auctions. The Czech Ministry for Industry and Trade has recently submitted an amendment proposal to the law which explicitly bars solar energy from future auctions. If passed in its current version (Act. No. 165/2012 Coll., on promoted energy sources) the law would lead the Czech Republic down a needlessly expensive path, warns the Solar Asso [...]

Mid-2018 China’s central government threw the entire PV industry, including observers and pundits, into a panic by making drastic changes to its PV deployment that included temporarily halting utility scale deployment, lowering the FiT, shifting economic responsibility to the provinces and, in a related move, attempting (one-more-time) to control the country’s debt problem. Forecasts were lowered, and gloom descended on top of the entire solar industry. [...]

Next to a wheat field north of London, banks of solar panels in 35 neat rows are generating electricity without any support from the government. [...]

Yingli Green Energy Holding Co., once the world’s biggest solar-panel manufacturer, has been delisted from the New York Stock Exchange as its value has plummeted. [...]

In this episode, Ron DiFelice of Energy Intelligence Partners puts the challenges and opportunities of entering the energy storage market into perspective for businesses interested in everything from energy markets to big solar plus storage pairings. [...]

Republican senators from five states with big solar farms are asking the Trump administration to exempt the workhorse of industrial solar panels from tariffs imposed earlier this year. [...]

The Trump administration’s tariffs have loomed over the U.S. solar industry all year, and they were a reoccurring topic at this week’s Midwest Solar Expo in Minneapolis. [...]

Please join us on this week’s Energy Show for Jeff Brown's candid insights into the factors that are reducing the benefits of rooftop solar — which then are leading to the next phase (spoiler alert: energy storage) of the rooftop solar industry. [...]

Investment banks aren’t interested, and neighborhood banks just don’t understand. So where is someone who has a great commercial solar project supposed to get funding? [...]

Attached is information that Xcel Energy circulated at a recent stakeholder meeting . It  shows interesting trends in a number of solar market categories. SHG Meeting – 09.22.2017   The post ​Materials from Xcel’s recent stakeholder meeting appeared first on Colorado Solar Energy Industries Association. [...]

There are few original ideas for new technologies, products and/or services. Most of what is termed new is a mutation of an idea, which itself is a mutation of an idea all the way back to the original discovery or light bulb moment. Basically, there is not much that is new, or, put another way, that deserves to be called new.  [...]

Here are a couple of updates on teams competing in this year's Solar Decathlon in Denver in October. [...]

As with advice, conjecture is easy to give as typically the conjecturers, as with advice givers, have little at stake and sometimes much to gain. First and foremost, conjecturers gain attention, second but not necessarily second-most, if the eventual outcome falls anywhere in the vicinity of the initial conjecture, the giver gains credibility.  [...]

This document provides a recap of Xcel’s recent solar stakeholder meeting, which included topics on Solar*Rewards, Solar Connect, and other items.     The post Recap from Xcel’s Solar Stakeholder Meeting 6/27 appeared first on Colorado Solar Energy Industries Association. [...]

Researchers have developed a solar paint that can absorb water vapour and split it to generate hydrogen — the cleanest source of energy. [...]

I’ve been thinking a lot about innovation this month. I wrote about how wind construction companies are innovating to lower costs in our cover story and talked about that in my video above. But I’m also thinking about BIG innovation — the world-changing kind. In April, I attended the Powering Progress Together (PPT) forum, hosted by Shell and the Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI). Visionaries from both organizations presented their views of the future of energy. Cho Khong, Chief Political Ana [...]

Whether the market makes a flawed decision or not, the market is always the decider, and whether its decisions are based on price, personal beliefs, wanting to be part of the newest trend or fad or technology direction or for any number of other reasons, the market is the ultimate judge of whether a product or technology will meet success or fade away. [...]

On Friday, May 26, on what was expected to be one of the hottest days of the year, solar panels in the UK generated a record amount of power, enough to meet almost 25 percent of demand. This is according to data compiled by National Grid Plc and Sheffield University. At noon London-time, 8.75 GW of power was being generated by the solar PV, breaking a previous record of 8.49 GW, overtaking nuclear power in the country.   [...]

There is nothing new about protectionism just as there is nothing new about aggressive pricing for market share, dumping of overproduction at low prices and the cascade of unintended consequences of government intervention on markets. [...]

In the satiric movie Network, Howard Beale said: “Edward George Ruddy died today! Edward George Ruddy was the Chairman of the Board of the Union Broadcasting Systems and he died at eleven o'clock this morning of a heart condition! And woe is us! We're in a lot of trouble!!” [...]