New Mexico senator seeks solar sales tax to fund early childhood program
Senator Michael Padilla (D) of New Mexico has submitted the Renewable Energy Production Tax for consideration by the state. The 2.5% tax would fund early childhood education and care services, while exempting government and personal generation.
Morning Brief: Sigora Solar on the Virginia Clean Economy Act, Solar Frontier Americas has a financed project
Hello all and welcome to the last morning brief of the year! Today we’re looking at Global Solar layoffs, PG&E paying Topaz, a 100 MW Hecate project and more.
New Jersey approves 75 MW of community solar in 45 projects
The projects represent one-third of the state’s Community Solar Energy Pilot Program’s total capacity and will serve low- to moderate-income communities.
FERC appointees want 4¢/kWh clean energy tax to fund fossil fuel welfare
FERC’s PJM Interconnection ruling: all utility scale nuclear and renewable energy bids must meet a new “minimum offer price rule” equivalent to any state-level incentives in order to “level the playing field” with fossil fuels.
Net metering survives in Idaho
State regulators have overwhelmingly ruled to deny Idaho Power’s proposal to decrease the net metering rate for residential solar owners by 50%.
Here’s how utilities use their resource plans to block solar power
At least seven utilities chose to bias their resource modeling against solar in 2019. The good news is that transparent utility modeling could fix the problem.
Utility scale solar power as cheap as 70¢ per watt and still falling
Government researchers find that Florida has dethroned California as the largest market, trackers dominate, solar+storage compensation diversity, and a lot more in Berkeley Labs annual utility-scale solar power report.
5 stories that sparked conversation in 2019
Certain articles at pv magazine strike a chord with readers and spark greater discussion among the community. Here are the most discussed articles of 2019 at pv magazine USA.
Kauai was 100% renewably powered for 32 hours over the last month
The Hawaiian island of 70,000 residents has achieved this feat on 11 different occasions since before Thanksgiving, anchored by a five-hour period on December 10. Plus, a world tour of high-penetration renewable hotspots.
Minnesota first state to integrate potential national distributed energy interconnection standard
The state has integrated the IEEE Standard 1547-2018 into its interconnection application requirements for distributed energy — seeking to make solar power more valuable to the grid and faster to connect.
