Tag Archive for: solarindustry

Smart Solar Billing is set to begin in IL on Jan. 1, 2025. Solar advocates have launched a website to teach consumers about the new system.

Illinois moving to “Smart Solar Billing” in 2025

Smart Solar Billing is set to begin in Illinois on January 1, 2025, and solar industry partners have launched a new webpage for consumers and companies to learn everything they need to know about the new billing system. Solar customers and businesses can visit the Solar Powers Illinois website to learn more about the changes to net metering and the new Smart Solar Billing system that will change the way residential solar and storage owners are reimbursed for the energy they sell back to their utilities.

Current residential solar and storage customers will be considered “legacy” customers and will continue to receive the same net metering benefits throughout the lifetime of their systems. Current Ameren customers are also able to expand their system by 100% and retain the “legacy” Net Metering benefit for the lifetime of the system expansion.

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Source: Solar Power World

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Solar grazing helps farmers feed their flocks while the expanding solar industry provides more clean energy to the grid.

Under a Texas sun, agrivoltaics offer farmers a new way to make money

At the Azure Sky solar and storage project in Haskell County, Tex., 700,000 photovoltaic panels stretch in uniform rows across the desert landscape, shimmering under a relentless summer sun. Beneath the panels, hundreds of Dorper sheep graze on Bermuda and Johnson grasses, driven there by two border collies named Bucky and Johnny.

The sheep belong to Chad Raines, owner of Key Farms in Lamesa, Tex., and they are part of a new initiative called solar grazing. In addition to providing a low cost, eco-friendly mowing service to energy companies, Raines manages a solar site that provides an estimated 586 gigawatts annually to the booming Texas solar industry.

“We still farm and do everything we used to,” said Raines, “except underneath solar panels.”

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Source: The Washington Post

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The US now has more than 31 GW of solar module manufacturing capacity, almost four times more than before the IRA was passed in 2022.

US solar sector tops 31 GW of module manufacturing in Q2

The US now has more than 31 GW of solar module manufacturing capacity, almost four times more than before the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) was passed in 2022, according to a report today by the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) and Wood Mackenzie.

In the second quarter of 2024, the US solar sector installed 9.4 GW DC of power generation capacity, more than in any second quarter so far, the US Solar Market Insight Q3 2024 report showed. A total of 75 GW of solar was added since the IRA was signed into law.

However, the solar industry currently presents many challenges to navigate, said Michelle Davis, head of global solar at Wood Mackenzie and lead author of the report.

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Source: Renewables Now

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After decades of mostly manufacturing in Asia, Canadian Solar is pivoting back to the US as it sees a real chance for solar industry revival.

This solar giant is moving manufacturing back to the US

Whenever you see a solar panel, most parts of it probably come from China. The US invented the technology and once dominated its production, but over the past two decades, government subsidies and low costs in China have led most of the solar manufacturing supply chain to be concentrated there. The country will soon be responsible for over 80% of solar manufacturing capacity around the world.

But the US government is trying to change that. Through high tariffs on imports and hefty domestic tax credits, it is trying to make the cost of manufacturing solar panels in the US competitive enough for companies to want to come back and set up factories. The International Energy Agency has forecast that by 2027, solar-generated energy will be the largest source of power capacity in the world, exceeding both natural gas and coal—making it a market that already attracts over $300 billion in investment every year.

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Source: MIT Technology Review

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Qcells' opened its first factory in 2019 and an even larger plant in phases since, what the company describes as the largest solar investment in American history.

Major solar panel plant opens in US amid backdrop of industry worries about low-priced Asian imports

A South Korean company has begun production at a huge new solar panel factory in Georgia even as industry leaders say surging Asian imports could dampen efforts to make more solar components in the United States.

Qcells, a unit of South Korea’s Hanwha Group, said Wednesday that it can now turn out enough solar panels to generate 5.1 gigawatts of power yearly at a two-factory complex in the northwest Georgia city of Dalton. That’s almost 40% of U.S. solar panel capacity, according to figures from the Solar Energy Industries Association.

Qcells’ opened its first factory in 2019 and an even larger plant in phases since, what the company describes as the largest solar investment in American history.

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Source: ABC News

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Four companies are joining the board of directors of the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA).

US Solar Trade Association expands board of directors

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Four companies, CEP Renewables, Kiewit Energy Group, Monarch Private Capital, and Moss & Associates, are joining the board of directors of the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA). Additionally, the association named Laura Stern, co-CEO of Nautilus Solar Energy, vice-chair of its executive committee.

SEIA’s board of directors now consists of more than 50 companies from across the solar value chain, including installers, developers, manufacturers, financiers and service providers. SEIA is the national trade association for the U.S. solar and storage industries.

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Source: Clean Technica

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