Their petition calls on elected officials to transition the state to 100% renewables; end Duke Energy’s monopoly on generation; refuse to accept campaign contributions from the utility; and appoint citizen-oriented utility commissioners.

Solar, wind and storage can provide 7 essential grid services, which will help enable them to gain an ever-increasing share of electricity generation.

Installers in Massachusetts, New York and New Jersey stole the show, while good prospects are seen for advancing solar in the region, especially in New York and Maine. Snapshot stories included.

While installers in Florida added the most distributed solar last year, South Carolina leads on a per-capita basis, and Georgia, North Carolina and Louisiana round out the leaderboard. Snapshot stories included.

The profile permits standardized communications between a utility (or aggregator) and distributed solar and storage resources. The profile will permit access to an expansive set of solar and storage capabilities.

The utility aims for at least 66% participation in a residential demand response pilot. It also gives customers the option of moving to a lower rate structure by allowing the utility to automatically reduce their consumption during peak periods.

Added transmission, varying levels of distributed generation, and increasing levels of “load modernization” are all under consideration in an NREL study. The results could illuminate paths for California and other states to reach 100% zero-carbon or renewable energy targets.

Japan’s JGC Corporation reports an efficient method of converting hydrogen to ammonia, which can later be combusted to generate carbon-free electricity. Ammonia, according to JGC, has various advantages over hydrogen in terms of safety and cost effectiveness.

While large utility-scale projects grab the headlines, installation firms in the region racked up 7400 small-scale (under 1 MW) solar installations in 2018. Snapshot stories included.