United States

The Texas company says its new front-of-the-meter distributed battery program with El Paso Electric will help the utility manage demand and provide resilience for homeowners who host the systems.

After nine years at the helm of U.S. solar’s main trade body, Abigail Ross Hopper announced she would step down as president and CEO of the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA), effective Feb. 1, 2026. pv magazine spoke with Hopper about her tenure and the sector’s rapid growth since 2017.

Octopus Energy will acquire a solar and storage project in California that is expected to be operational by July as part of its investment. The UK-based company, active across major markets in Europe, Australia, China and the United States, says California’s clean technology sector will “bring innovation, growth and returns to the UK.”

Mexico is attracting US data centers seeking faster power connections, but these facilities will initially rely on firm gas generation from the Comisión Federal de Electricidad (CFE), with renewables as a potential future option, Mexican energy expert Santiago Barcón told pv magazine.

Researchers at NREL found that UV exposure can cause significant, partly non-recoverable degradation in TOPCon solar cells, with strong cell-to-cell and intra-cell variability linked to passivation and processing inconsistencies. While some UV-related losses recover quickly under light and are unlikely to affect field performance, the findings highlight gaps in current qualification tests and the need for improved UV aging standards.

The passing of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) in July 2025 brought forward deadlines for PV projects to receive U.S. tax credits introduced by previous legislation, and set new requirements to demonstrate start of construction and other eligibility criteria. Project developers must move quickly to adapt to this new regulatory landscape.

According to SolarGIS, single-year irradiance anomalies shouldn’t be used to reveal long-term trends or structural shifts in solar resource risk.

A study led by two energy lawyers documents the causes of “lagging” battery energy storage deployment in the Eastern U.S. and recommends 15 policy solutions that could help scale BESS deployment.

Legacy solar models focused on daytime production, but the shift to battery-driven self-consumption is creating a performance gap that puts long-term ROI at risk.

On February 1, 2026, California’s batteries bridged the solar gap with seamless precision. After discharging through the night until sunrise, they spent the daylight hours charging, then pivoted back to exporting power well past midnight—effectively sustaining the state on solar energy for a full 24-hour cycle.