With every new solar-on-schools contract more people learn how it’s done, share what they know, and make it easier for neighboring school districts to follow the same path. U.S. schools could host up to 30 gigawatts of solar.

Distributed energy management systems can capture added value from solar and storage by shaving peak loads, providing grid services, and deferring grid investments. Utilities testing such systems have shared their lessons learned, while Western Australia leapfrogs ahead.

Unnecessary grid investments raise costs for all customers, displace solar and distributed solutions, and could be unfairly charged to solar customers. Vote Solar’s director of grid integration Ed Smeloff shares his insights in this pv magazine interview.

Dynamic pricing could advance renewables while cutting both customer costs and system costs, suggests a petition from solar and storage industry participants. They call for a rulemaking process to give all customers the option to choose real-time pricing.

Citing Hawaii’s potential to reach 80 percent renewables by 2030, saving $6.5 billion in the process, the investment fund’s founder says Hawaiian Electric “has the potential to be the utility of the future.”

The Puerto Rico utility’s favored generation plan, in a report prepared by Siemens, involves an LNG terminal at San Juan and would achieve only 55% renewables by 2038. A scenario without LNG would reach 79% renewables by 2038 at comparable cost, based on undisclosed cost assumptions.

Governors-elect in Colorado and Connecticut want a 100% renewables mandate. Approaching 100% is the goal for governors-elect in Illinois, Nevada and Maine.

The new governors favor policies such as a higher renewables mandate, community solar, increased use of storage, and expanding the Western grid, reports the nonprofit Advanced Energy Economy.

A new web tool lets consumers in six Southern states see how their utility is embracing solar or blocking it; the tool could help consumers promote improved solar policy.

A solar plant can increase its output by starting from a curtailment status and then reducing curtailment. If grid operators schedule in advance both solar curtailment and increased solar output, the cost-saving level of solar increases substantially.