Virginia

The Solar Workgroup of Southwest Virginia, spurred on by Virginia’s pro-solar legislative spring, has released a request for qualifications, seeking a partner to co-develop commercial-scale solar projects in seven coal counties.

Also in the brief: Powin Energy announces 20-year lithium-ion energy storage system, solar coming to Orange County Public Schools and more.

Also in the brief: Consumers Energy is providing 100,000 Google Nest thermostats to Michigan households, Tesla has quietly made Model 3 ready for bidirectional charging, SolSmart adds new partners.

The pre-life of the Spotsylvania solar energy project has been riddled with financial and societal difficulties. As much as these issues have made a quagmire of development, it also provides a case study on the logistics of getting such a large project built.

Also in the brief: solar on schools in Virginia and a Hawaiian microgrid.

Under the utility’s latest IRP, Dominion plans to procure 16 GW of solar, 2.7 GW of storage and 5.1 GW of offshore wind in the next 15 years. Kicking off these new plans comes a request for proposals of 1 GW of solar or wind and 250 MW of energy storage.

The number of large solar projects (say, 100 MW and bigger) is rapidly increasing in the U.S. — and pv magazine is keeping track. We’ve rounded up this week’s big news in big solar.

Also in the brief: Ohio regulators have approved an 80 MW array, Sierra Club responds to Duke’s climate report, Rhode Island funds brownfield projects and more.

Gov. Ralph Northam has signed the Virginia Clean Economy Act, which requires the state’s utilities to switch to 100% clean energy by 2050, while also adding 16 GW of solar and onshore wind, 3 GW of energy storage and the closing of all the state’s coal power plants by 2024.

The Southern Alliance for Clean Energy has made that determination after studying the annual maximum peaks for 22 different utility planning authorities over from 1998 to 2018.