By Frank Andorka By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent In the birthplace of American independence, the solar industry will celebrate later this morning as the mayor, council and solar advocates gather for Solar Day in a ceremony designed to recognize the number of solar jobs in the Greater Philadelphia area and to unveil the latest class…
By Frank Andorka The Energy Show: By Barry Cinnamon The electric utility industry is undergoing rapid change. There used to be two types of utilities: investor owned utilities (IOUs, such as Pacific Gas and Electric and ConEd) and municipally owned utilities (MOUs, such as LADWP and Silicon Valley Power). Now there is a third hybrid…
By Frank Andorka By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent Easily lost amidst the excitement and thrill of building more solar capacity is a real concern: What do we do with the solar modules after the typical 25-year lifespan of a particular project? Fortunately, thanks the the European Union, a German manufacturer is on the case and…
By Frank Andorka By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent The Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) has returned to full strength, adding two members to its executive team: one who saw the association through some tough trade times and one outsider to bring a new perspective to the association as it looks to navigate the near-term and…
By Frank Andorka By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent The latest solar bills in Illinois – an emerging market thanks to the Future Energy Jobs Act – hopes to balance farmer concerns about land use with the development of large-scale ground-mounted utility and small commercial projects. Under the legislation signed into law by Governor Bruce Rauner…
By Frank Andorka The Energy Show: By Barry Cinnamon Over a million buildings in the U.S. have rooftop solar. These systems are extremely reliable: solar panels are guaranteed for 25 years, and inverters are guaranteed for 10-25 years. Our experience as a contractor since 2001 bears out the terrific reliability record of rooftop solar. Nevertheless,…
By Frank Andorka By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent In a previous life, writer Frank Andorka spent his Februarys at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington D.C. attending the Legislative Day for the pest management industry. He’s always been surprised there isn’t such a national conference/day for the solar industry, but he did discover that the California…
By Frank Andorka By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent It took forty years for clean energy – solar and wind specifically – installations to reach 1 TW of installed capacity. BNEF says we’re only five years away from reaching the next TW. Talk about an accelerated adoption speed. Read Full Article Here For more great articles:…
By Frank Andorka By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent Baby steps. That’s what you could call the Oklahoma Attorney General’s recent opinion that says third-party solar contracts – PPAs, leases and loans – would not result in solar installers or consumers being considered utilities. This is a debate that has swept the country, and most recently…
By Frank Andorka By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent California’s Assembly has a huge opportunity before it right now, and they should seize it posthaste. Before them is a bill to move the state’s renewable portfolio standard (RPS) to 100% by 2045. It would match the most aggressive RPS in the nation (Hawaii) and put the…
By Frank Andorka By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent Sometimes, the dumb is so breathtaking it’s hard to put into words. Such was the America First Energy Conference, which Reuters reporter Collin Eaton dutifully reported on this week from New Orleans. If Reuters doesn’t provide him some hazardous duty pay for locking himself in a room…
By Frank Andorka By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent What’s happening in Nevada right now is frankly amazing. If you had told most observers that Nevada would ever hit net metering caps after its Public Utilities Commission ended the program without warning at the end of 2015, they would have told you that you were crazy….
By Frank Andorka By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent Corporate renewable energy procurement has hit a new record high in 2018, according to the Business Renewables Center, an arm of the Rocky Mountain Institute. Procurement levels reached 3.57 GW, beating the previous record of 3.12 GW in 2015 and increasing nearly three quarters of a gigawatt…
By Frank Andorka By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent Knoxville, Iowa, has been working on developing a solar plan for the city that would save it nearly $400,000 over the lifespan of a 30-year power-purchase agreement (PPA). But when it came to the final vote, MidAmerican Energy – the city’s utility – came in and tried…
By SolarWakeup By Yann Brandt, Managing Editor In this episode of the Energy Wakeup podcast, we sat down with Jon Carson, founder of Trajectory Energy Partners, to discuss early solar project development in Illinois—and the politics of solar. Carson has spent nearly a lifetime in Illinois politics, first running Tammy Duckworth’s successful Congressional campaign and…