Cost and prices

The third party residential solar company showed its highest volume of quarterly installations since late 2016 and record revenues. However losses rose as well, driven by an industry-wide trend of rising customer acquisition costs.

The same report that expects utility-scale PV costs to fall 54% from 2017 to 2021 also presents a constant-cost scenario from 2018 onward, on an equal footing with the “mid” and “low” cost scenarios. Utilities could be tempted to use the constant (high) cost scenario in their resource plans, and thus plan little or no added solar.

While the rest of the nation moves towards clean energy, both houses of the Ohio legislature have passed HB6, which will gut the state’s renewable portfolio standard and bail out coal and nuclear power plants.

A new report released by Environment Texas Research and Policy Center calls on state regulators to seriously consider the vast benefits provided by distributed generation and promote it as a leading option for our energy future.

EnergySage has released an all-new solar buyers guide which provides data and assessments of thousands of different solar modules and inverters, as well as scores of residential batteries.

Wood Mackenzie has released a report entitled “Deep decarbonization requires deep pockets” estimating that it would cost $4.5 trillion to fully decarbonize the U.S. power grid by 2030, but is the avoided cost greater than the upfront?

As contract lengths shorten, U.S. solar developers and investors are relying more and more on sales of power in the spot market as the future.

The investment banking firm expects an increase of bifacial imports from Southeast Asia, and says that this could drop U.S. average selling prices below 40 cents per watt.

Federal trade authorities have ruled that bifacial solar modules are no longer subject to the Section 201 ruling, which currently apply a 25% tariff to most solar modules imported to the United States.

The company’s multi-year rate case filing seeks a more than 10% return on equity for more than $300 million per year of investments in the distribution grid and a $21.60 fixed charge on residential customers – all to enable Washington D.C.’s transition to clean energy.