California

Solar workforce development can help win independence from systemic racism

Industry participants noted the significance of a real-time pricing project on a single distribution circuit in California. State officials are evaluating real-time pricing as a means to help integrate more solar and wind power on the grid.

Also in the brief: Project development galore from EDF, Pine Gate, Silver Creek, Idemitsu, and Origis Energy.

Also in the brief, SunPower provides a Maxeon update, Solar Support, DEPCOM Power and Power Factor partner on disaster recovery, KB home is the first builder to offer OneRoof and more.

This investment comes on top of the $100 million invested in 2018. Venture capital and corporate funding of new energy technologies continues despite — or perhaps because of — the pandemic.

The Bureau of Land Management “has ignored most possibilities” for utility-scale solar “on its vast land holdings across the solar-rich Southwest,” says a paper. Renewable energy development accounts for less than 1% of economic activity on BLM lands, while oil and gas account for 70%, according to BLM data.

Also in the brief: Verizon is back at the bottom of Green America’s Clean Energy Wireless Scorecard, Solar United Neighbors and Vote Solar have submitted over 20,000 public comments against NERA, an early coal plant retirement and more.

PetersenDean came to solar from the roofing world and has long been a top-ten U.S. solar installer with a multi-state regional practice.

It’s during the interconnection review and approval processes that most developers run into the NEM integrity issue with California’s big utilities.

With a data point of one (California solar interconnection data through the end of April), the author makes optimistic inferences about U.S. solar in Q2 and 2020.