Tag Archives: solar power

Georgia House tees up solar bill

by Dave Williams
ATLANTA 1/13/15 — After several false starts, legislation letting property owners in Georgia contract directly with solar companies to finance and install solar panels is on the fast track in the General Assembly.

A legislative subcommittee signed off on the bill Tuesday after Georgia Rep. Mike Dudgeon, R-Johns Creek, presented a compromise hammered out during the last 10 months by representatives of the solar industry and Georgia utility companies.

“It’s been an adventure,” Dudgeon said in describing the months of negotiations that began after his bill failed during last year’s legislative session for lack of support from the utilities. “I don’t think this is the ideal bill for everybody. But if most people are happy, we’ve probably reached a pretty good compromise.”

Read the whole article: Atlanta Business Chronicle

Republican-led group launches ballot petition to boost solar power in Florida

by Ivan Penn
1/6/15 Tampa — Backers of broader use of solar energy in Florida have quietly launched a petition for the 2016 ballot that would allow those who generate electricity from the sun to sell the power directly to other consumers.

If the measure passes, solar proponents argue that it would open up Florida’s solar energy market, which has largely stagnated for years. The measure would allow business or property owners to produce up to 2 megawatts of solar power and then sell that power directly to others, such as tenants, without having to go through a utility.

Read the whole article: Tampa Bay Times

How solar will destroy the power companies, in 5 easy steps

by Rob Wile
6/3/14 — Barclays recently downgraded the entire U.S. electric utilities sector to “underweight” on the threat posed by widespread adoption of solar-storage. These systems allow homeowners to use rooftop solar panels and a battery to cut all but the figurative emergency backup cord to their local electric grid, putting a severe strain on an industry that has been a defacto monopoly.

The firm’s sweeping case focused in large part on debt markets’ apparent ignorance to challenge utilities are facing. We wanted to zero in on the astonishingly simple steps that makes Barclays lays out to make shaking up utilities quite possible.

Read the whole article: Business Insider

As nuclear power dies, solar rises

by Denis Hayes and Scott Denman
(CNN) — 4/22/14 At long last, this Earth Day we celebrate the true dawn of the Solar Age. That sunrise is hastened, here and abroad, by the slow demise of the once-touted “too-cheap-to-meter” Atomic Age of nuclear power.

As utilities find nuclear power less and less cost effective, new solar photovoltaic installations in the United States are springing up. New solar installations in 2013 reached a record 4.2 gigawatts, bringing the total to 10. On average, one gigawatt of solar photovoltaics powers 164,000 U.S. homes. That means power for 1.6 million homes.

Read the whole article: CNN

Citigroup says the ‘Age of Renewables’ has begun

by Giles Parkinson
3/27/14 — Investment banking giant Citigroup has hailed the start of the “age of renewables” in the United States, the world’s biggest electricity market, saying that solar and wind energy are getting competitive with natural gas peaking and baseload plants – even in the US where gas prices are said to be low.

In a major new analysis released this week, Citi says the big decision makers within the US power industry are focused on securing low cost power, fuel diversity and stable cash flows, and this is drawing them increasingly to the “economics” of solar and wind, and how they compare with other technologies.

Much of the mainstream media – in the US and abroad – has been swallowing the fossil fuel Kool-Aid and hailing the arrival of cheap gas, through the fracking boom, as a new energy “revolution”, as if this would be a permanent state of affairs. But as we wrote last week, solar costs continue to fall even as gas prices double.

Citi’s report echoes that conclusion. Gas prices, it notes, are rising and becoming more volatile. This has made wind and solar and other renewable energy sources more attractive because they are not sensitive to fuel price volatility.

Read the whole article: Renew Economy

Fight over Rooftop Solar Forecasts a Bright Future for Cleaner Energy

by David Biello
3/25/14 — Americans have begun to battle over sunshine. In sun-scorched Arizona a regulatory skirmish has broken out over arrays of blue-black silicon panels on rooftops, threatening the local utilities that have ruled electricity generation for a century or more. With some of the best access to sunshine on the planet, Arizona boasts the second-most solar power in the U.S.—more than 1,000 megawatts and counting. The state hosts vast photovoltaic arrays in the desert as well as the nation’s first commercial power plant with the technology to use sunshine at night—by storing daytime heat in molten salts.

Read the whole article: Scientific American

Steven Chu Solves Utility Companies’ Death Spiral

by Jeff McMahon
3/21/14 — Utility companies have been looking for new regulations and higher connection charges to save them from a “death spiral” spurred by a surge in rooftop solar installations. Instead, says former Energy Secretary Steven Chu, they should get into the rooftop solar business.

Utilities are in danger of being FedExed, Chu said, “like the Post Office got FedExed,” as rooftop solar modules drop in price.

“The cost of modules has plummeted. In California where I live, that means for $10,000 you can generate a lot of electricity. The cost of batteries is plummeting, so that in five maybe 10 years at the outside, a $10,000 or $12,000 system will allow me to go, on average, 80 percent off grid.

“That’s pretty exciting. So this is a technology that could be disruptive to electricity production and generation.”

Read the whole article: Forbes

Infographic: US Solar’s Best Year Ever

GTM Research looks back at 2013, a record-breaking year.

by Mike Munsell, Jacob Rosenburg

3/6/14 — This week, GTM Research and SEIA released the Q4 2013 U.S. Solar Market Insight report. The infographic below highlights some key findings from the year-in-review report.

Read the whole article: greentechsolar:

Ga. Republican unveils solar bill

by Dave Williams
ATLANTA 1/28/14 — Georgia property owners would be able to contract directly with solar energy installers to finance the installation of solar panels under legislation introduced in the General Assembly Tuesday.

The bill would let property owners lease solar panels instead of having to buy them with cash up front, said Georgia Rep. Mike Dudgeon, R-Johns Creek, the bill’s sponsor.

“We want to make it clear that you can use whatever financing is available to finance your solar panel,” Dudgeon said.

Previous attempts by other lawmakers to grow Georgia’s solar industry by opening the market to third party financing have failed to gain headway in the General Assembly.

Read the whole article: Atlanta Business Chronicle

Fissures in G.O.P. as Some Conservatives Embrace Renewable Energy

by John Schwartz
SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. 1/25/14 — In conservative politics, solar power is often dismissed as an affectation, part of a liberal agenda to funnel money to “solar cronies” of the Obama administration and further the “global warming hoax.”

So one would not expect to see Barry Goldwater Jr., the very picture of modern conservatism and son of the 1964 Republican nominee for president, arguing passionately on behalf of solar energy customers. But there he was last fall, very publicly opposing a push by Arizona’s biggest utility to charge as much as $100 a month to people who put solar panels on their roofs.

The utilities, backed by conservative business interests, argue that solar users who have lower power bills because of government subsidies are not paying their fair share to maintain the power grid. Mr. Goldwater and other advocates have struck back by calling the proposed fees a “solar tax,” and have pushed their message in ads on Fox News and the Drudge Report.

Similar conflicts are going on in California and Colorado, with many more to come. And as the issue pops up, conservatives are even joining forces with environmental groups. In Georgia, a Tea Party activist and the Sierra Club formed a “Green Tea Coalition.”

Read the whole article: The New York Times

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