Orders are rising again in the U.S. solar market, but “the rate of that recovery is questionable,” says SolarEdge CEO Zvi Lando. Residential solar inverter rivals SolarEdge and Enphase faced the same headwinds from the COVID-19 pandemic in the second quarter, with both companies reporting a downturn in Q2 revenue. However, both companies also laid out […]
What Other Countries Can Learn From Australia’s Roaring Rooftop Solar Market
Australia is deploying renewables 10 times faster than the global average, with rooftop solar in the lead. What’s going on? Policymakers looking to speed up renewable energy deployment have a best-practice case study to look to: Australia is rolling out renewables 10 times faster than the global average, offering lessons as to what factors can […]
What Other Countries Can Learn From Australia’s Roaring Rooftop Solar Market
Australia is deploying renewables 10 times faster than the global average, with rooftop solar in the lead. What’s going on? Policymakers looking to speed up renewable energy deployment have a best-practice case study to look to: Australia is rolling out renewables 10 times faster than the global average, offering lessons as to what factors can […]
Portland General Electric Jumps Into Virtual Power Plant Business
Oregon’s largest electric utility wants a better understanding of the value of home batteries in grid operation and planning. Portland General Electric, the largest utility in Oregon, is jumping into the cutting-edge business of turning home batteries into grid resources. The company announced this week that it has received approval from regulators to link up […]
SunPower Halts All Global Manufacturing, Cuts Employee Workweek
The stoppage does not affect SunPower’s plan to spin off its manufacturing arm, called Maxeon Solar Technologies, by the middle of the year. SunPower on Monday announced a pause on its global manufacturing and work cutbacks for all other employees, while further reducing executive salaries. A filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission detailing the […]
What a Year! 10 Stories That Propelled Energy Storage in 2019
More batteries installed. More markets opening up. And grid storage making itself indispensable in unanticipated ways. For too long, the rhetoric around what storage can do for the grid vastly outweighed the actual doing. This year, the industry closed that gap more than ever before. Exceedingly few batteries actually live up to the vision of […]
With 2 Weeks to Go, Builders Brace for California’s 2020 Home Solar Mandate
An in-depth look at the preparations and lingering controversies around California’s landmark home solar requirement. One in five newly constructed California homes now comes topped with a solar installation. Starting in January, that needs to jump to five out of five. A year ago, California gave final approval to updated building codes that require all […]
Residential Solar Hits New Peak in US with Record Q3 Installations
The quarterly record came amid weakness in northeastern states, traditionally a stronghold for rooftop installers. The U.S. residential solar industry pulled off an all-time record for installations in the third quarter, according to new research from Wood Mackenzie and the Solar Energy Industries Association. And it happened with Northeastern states — traditionally powerhouses in the […]
Loanpal Now No. 1 in the Booming Solar Loan Market
WoodMac finds that loans now claim a majority of the solar financing market, but third-party ownership isn’t going away anytime soon. Solar loans started outperforming third-party-owned solar in early 2018. According to a new WoodMac report, the first half of 2019 saw loans claim a majority of the solar financing market first time, at 55 […]
Fast Times for the US Residential Solar Market
Scale rivaling utility players. Power shutoffs. And a whole lot of batteries. Here are the latest trends in the U.S. home solar market. Fall earnings season brought a barrage of new data on the performance of rooftop solar installers, since all the large national players are publicly traded. For one thing, the national residential solar […]