In late January, the City of Sacramento and Ygrene Energy Fund, a provider of clean energy finance programs for local governments, announced in a press release a new initiative to bring green technology upgrades to the metro’s businesses and residences through 100 percent private funding. Clean Energy Sacramento will enable property owners to make energy efficiency, renewable power and water conservation upgrades at no upfront cost in order to help the city achieve its goal of reducing electricity…

We consistently report on the latest trends in the field of solar energy and how more home and business owners are turning to solar power to lower their burden on the power grid. This is especially true in California, where residents throughout the state have been lining up in droves to have photovoltaic installations completed on their properties Now, the small town of Sebastopol in the Sonoma Valley wine country has become the second community in…

The California Center for Sustainable Energy (CCSE) has received a grant of $1.3 million from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) to launch a major effort at reducing the soft costs of solar photovoltaic (PV) installations. The grant, which was funded by the DOE’s SunShot Initiative, will be used to create a program aimed at standardizing and streamlining the installation process in a number of ways. The soft costs of solar are defined as those…

While we’re personally big fans of Bay Area solar power, the fact is that utilities are not. The accelerating growth of the solar energy industry has left them in a position that could eventually become unsustainable. The problem lies with the fact that photovoltaics (PV) create a feedback loop in which customers convert to solar power, thereby shrinking the customer base over which the utility company has to distribute the costs of maintaining the electric…

Solar panels could have a positive effect on the value of your home, according to a new report from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. The San Francisco Chronicle reports that homeowners who decide to switch to solar power could eventually earn a premium on the sale price of their house from buyers looking to go solar themselves. The specific amount depends largely on circumstances such as how old the panels are and other factors, but the report found that…

One of the issues that limits the growth of Bay Area solar at a utility scale, particularly for photovoltaics (PV), is the fact that current energy storage solutions are not capable of handling the massive amounts of power that would be needed during hours when the sun isn’t shining and the panels aren’t producing electricity. This is why the state is now investing hundreds of millions of dollars into developing a storage technology that can be…

Senator Ed Markey has introduced a bill in Congress that would require utilities across the country to derive at least 25 percent of their electrical production from renewable sources by 2025. The bill is similar to laws that have been enacted in California, Colorado and other states that aim to promote the growth of alternative energy sources such as solar and wind power. If enacted, Senator Markey predicts that the bill would create 400,000 American jobs…

A new report by the North American Electric Reliability Corp (NERC) and the California Independent System Operator (ISO) predicts that wind and solar power generation in California will double by 2020. This is exciting news for anyone who follows the solar energy solutions industry. But buried in the NERC’s recommendations is a surprising argument for the importance of natural gas resources to the further expansion of renewable energy. Indeed, this may seem like a contradiction. Solar and…

Anyone who has driven down the Interstate 5 from Orange County to San Diego is likely familiar with the bizarre looking domes of the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station. The owner of the plant, Edison International, announced on June 7 that the 2,150 megawatt (MW) capacity plant will be permanently shut down. This is a troubling sign for the nuclear power industry in the United States, which has had a tough time promoting its technology since the…

A major obstacle to wider adoption of renewable energy, such as Bay Area solar and wind power, for utility companies is the fact that these technologies produced major fluctuations in output that are difficult for grids to handle on a large scale. Solar only creates electricity during the day, and wind turbines generate lots of power when the wind is blowing, but create nothing on days when the air is still. This means that electrical companies must…

The California Solar Energy Industry Association, an organization that advocates on behalf of solar power in the Golden State, has announced the appointment of Bernadette Del Chiaro as the new executive director of the group. Del Chiaro has been involved in the communications and policy areas of the renewable energy industry for over a decade. She was formerly the Director of Clean Energy and Global Warming Programs at Environment California, an environmental advocacy nonprofit, and worked on virtually all renewables…

In an effort to expand access to solar energy among California residents, lawmakers are attempting to establish a “shared renewables” program that would enable thousands of Golden State home and business owners to go solar without requiring them to install their own panels. Rather than generating their own power on-site, individuals would have the opportunity to subscribe to an off-site renewable energy project and receive credit on their utility bills for the amount of clean electricity…