California opens second SGIP round after awarding $50 million on May 1
The state’s popular Self-Generation Incentive Program accepted the first round of funding requests that nearly sold out in one day. The second round of applications will be accepted some time in June, with the goal of awarding $100 million for energy storage projects.
Sunrun bucks the trend and grows during Q1 2017
While other large residential solar companies are contracting or even going bankrupt, Sunrun gained market share during Q1 2017.
Smaller, leaner Vivint moves to direct sales (with chart)
Like other large third-party solar companies Vivint is increasingly moving away from the leasing model to direct sales.
California grid operator gets ready for August eclipse (with graph)
With California getting a higher portion of its electricity from solar than any non-island nation, the stakes are high with this summer’s eclipse. Fortunately, Europe has already been down this road.
Residential storage boosted by PetersenDean, Sunverge
The national solar installer and U.S.-based storage solutions provider have teamed up to bring energy-storage systems to California homeowners.
California transmission fee overhaul could set a new deal for distributed solar
SB 692 has passed the California Senate. Clean Coalition says the bill would assign transmission access charges more fairly for distributed solar.
SEC investigates Tesla, Sunrun over cancelled contracts
SEC has subpoenaed Sunrun, and is also looking into the number of Tesla customers who have backed out of leases, after state officials received hundreds of complaints about sales practices.
Tesla scales down solar deployment in Q1, readies Solar Roof
The first full quarter since Tesla’s acquisition of SolarCity shows a 30% fall in watts of solar deployed, as the company focuses on preparations for the roll-out of its Solar Roof and Model 3 electric vehicle, including expanded battery production.
SGIP Step 1 (mostly) sells out in 24 hours
Lotteries have been triggered in the service areas of all four participating utilities, meaning that most incentives were fully subscribed in the first 24 hours. Deployment of the systems supported will more than double distributed battery storage capacities in California.
Utilities try new tactics to discourage solar, but still aren’t getting what they want
The latest NCCETC report on state solar policies finds some new twists as part of an ongoing attempt by utilities to weaken the economics of customer-owned solar, but regulators still mostly aren’t on board.
