California

The national residential installer has fired an employee and taken other actions in the wake of a lawsuit filed by a former employee alleging multiple shocking allegations of racism and harassment by his coworkers and supervisor.

Thanks in no small part to modules stockpiled before the Section 201 tariffs hit, both the utility-scale and “non-residential” market segments grew year-over-year in Q1. And while the duties are expected to play a greater role in 2019, there are other factors supporting ongoing market growth.

Community choice aggregator CleanPowerSF has signed a 22-year PPA with sPower for a 100 MW project in Lancaster, California. The project is expected to be online in 2019.

While Tesla/SolarCity, Vivint and Sunrun still made up the top three in 2017, the “long tail” of installers is gaining market share.

San Diego Gas & Electric has received approval by the CPUC for five energy storage projects totaling 83.5 MW of instantaneous power output, with a four hour rating.

During May utility-scale solar provided 17% of generation on California’s grid, outpacing gas for the first time on a monthly basis.

Marin Clean Energy, a non-profit community choice aggregation group from California, has received an ‘Investment Grade’ Baa2 rating from Moody’s.

Analysis by the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory shows that California’s electric car mandate could relieve “duck curve” stress at much better pricing than new standalone energy storage, if properly utilized.

The Chinese inverter maker will be supplying inverters, batteries and management systems for projects in California, Massachusetts and Ontario.

SB 1088, which would have effectively barred customer or third-party owned solar or batteries from providing reliability services for the distribution system has been altered before leaving the Senate Appropriations Committee.