By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent Privately owned solar arrays in Pima County, New Mexico, have saved the county $220,000 since 2015, according to a report by Arizona Public Media’s Zachary Ziegler. The irony is that the savings could even be higher than reported, but three of the arrays haven’t provided savings yet because of some issues with a rebate program from Tucson Electric Power, facilities management Director Lisa Josker told Ziegler. [wds id=”3″] The news comes as the county considers entering into 15 more deals to purchase electricity at lower rates from privately owned solar arrays than the rates they … Read More →

By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent As you might imagine, the word on everyone’s lips at Intersolar North America – in addition to solar – is storage. Specifically, the question is how much storage can the United States expect to have installed and how quickly it can come. Fortunately, Kelly Speakes-Backman, CEO of the Energy Storage Association, was attending the show to answer exactly those kinds of questions. Speakes-Backman informed the audience at the insanely broadly titled “The Future of PV” session that the United States installed 1 GW of storage last year and is on pace to double that this … Read More →

By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent One of the many things I learned from a former colleague of mine (he knows who he is) is the importance of baseload power. Or, as he would say, the absolute non-importance of baseload power. Basically, distributed resources like solar and wind make traditional electricity producers crazy. So crazy, in fact, that they say things like, “What happens if the sun isn’t shining or the wind isn’t blowing? We need baseload power supplies so we can keep the lights on 24/7.” To which Angelina M. Galiteva, founder and board chair of Renewables 100 Policy Institute, … Read More →

By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent Tony Seba set the Intersolar North America crowd on fire at his opening session, saying that if the trend in battery prices continue their downward plunge, solar + storage could supply 100% of the U.S. electricity supply by 2030. “That’s not too bad for an industry in crisis, is it?” Seba told the crowd to hearty laughter. “But as the country becomes ever-more electrified, it’s going to happen.” [wds id=”3″] Seba predicted that as battery prices continue to plunge, solar + storage will be lower than transmission costs, making solar the only logical choice for … Read More →

By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent We can all agree that the solar industry is one of the fastest-growing industries in the United States, right? Heck, The Solar Foundation tells us so every year with its National Solar Jobs Census (well, except for this year, because tariffs, but for the past decade or so it’s been on a huge growth trajectory – and we believe will shortly be again). But how can you find workers for this specialized industry and bring them into this well-paying career? Well, the trick is workforce development, and now The Solar Foundation has released a 94-page … Read More →

By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent My Intersolar North America sojourn started yesterday, standing in the 90-degree heat looking at a new testing facility for bifacial solar modules. Run by Soltec but informed by input from some of the industry’s leading manufacturers and National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), The Bifacial Tracker Evaluation Center (BiTEC) will perform rigorous assessment of installation and control parameter influences on bifacial tracker performance compared to other PV applications. [wds id=”3″] One of the key challenges holding back the widespread use of bifacial modules is a lack of real-world data on how they perform in the field, … Read More →

By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent The invaluable Ryan Randazzo at AZCentral.com revealed today that the executive director of the Arizona Corporation Commission (ACC), which oversees public utilities in the state, has had to resign because his wife worked for the lobbying firm that represents – wait for it – the state’s largest utility, Arizona Public Service. Although there is no evidence of direct influence, the scent of conflicted interests surrounding Executive Director Tom Vogt was so strong that he resigned ahead of an emergency meeting the commissioners had called to discuss whether he had in fact violated state law by … Read More →

By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent There’s always a creative tension about covering the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) as a solar reporter. On the one hand, they don’t have anything directly to do with energy policy, so some solar reporters feel it’s not worth covering. On the other hand, as a solar reporter, it’s impossible to completely separate the environment and the Solar Revolution, since one of solar’s biggest selling points is that it helps reduce greenhouse gases and thereby helps the environment. Therefore, policy set by the EPA can have an indirect effect on the solar industry whether it wants … Read More →

By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent It’s our distinct pleasure to announce that the National Rifle Association (NRA) and Greenpeace have come to a historic agreement. And that historic agreement is this: Solar. Rocks. According to a new survey by Swytch, a blockchain platform that tracks, verifies and rewards those reducing the global carbon footprint, 75% of both NRA and Greenpeace members believe businesses that switch to clean energy should be rewarded – and NRA members are more than twice as likely to own solar electrical systems than the general public. [wds id=”3″] Those are the headlines from the new survey, … Read More →

The Energy Show: By Barry Cinnamon What are the best solar panels? That’s a question we are asked all the time. When customers look for the “best” solar panels they consider efficiency, reliability, quality and cost. Cost and efficiency are closely related – all solar panels generate the same amount of electricity (kwh) on a per watt basis. Your appliances can’t tell the difference if they get their electrons from super-efficient panels made in the USA, or the cheapest panels made somewhere in Asia. Nevertheless, there are clear cut differences among solar panels when it comes to aesthetics (all black … Read More →