As solar and wind become bigger contributors to utilities’ energy generation they're talking more and more about grid resiliency. Clean Energy Group just introduced two new reports to help cities become more resilient. 

Last week the board of Arizona’s Salt River Project (SRP), a nonprofit public utility, chose to impose draconian fees on customers with new solar installations—despite public protests. The utility will impose rate increases across all of its customers and impose additional grid maintenance fees on solar users. 

Yesterday (Feb. 26) SolarCity announced a new, $750 million fund to support residential solar in the U.S. Included in that fund is a $300 million investment from Google. SolarCity is calling the partnership “Google and SolarCity 2.0” since Google has invested with the residential and commercial installer before. 

Yesterday (Feb. 25) at the Colorado Solar Energy industries Association’s (COSEIA’s) Conference: 2015 Solar Power Colorado: The Next 25 Years the organization introduced its new grassroots nonprofit Solar CitiSuns. The new nonprofit is aimed at engaging Coloradans in advocating for clean energy policy and making sure solar remains a viable industry in the state. 

A day ahead of SunPower's and First Solar's 2014 earnings calls on Feb. 24 the companies, the two largest vertically-integrated solar companies in the U.S., announced they are partnering to create a yieldco. It's a deal kind of like Ford and General Motors partnering to bring 9 and 10 speed transmissions to fruition together. 

For a while concentrating photovoltaics (CPV) looked like an interesting alternative to regular photovoltaic solar panels. Then the cost of silicon PV dropped significantly making CPV technology comparatively more costly. Many companies in the CPV industry disappeared shortly after launching but now Arzon Solar is planning to give it another go. Perhaps because some are anticipating that CPV will be more cost-competitive by the end of the decade. 

The Taxpayer Protection Alliance (TPA), a Koch brother-backed organization has issued a new report, Filling the Solar Sinkhole, which claimed that the U.S. has given $39 billion in subsidies annually to the solar industry. It's poppycock, responded the solar industry. It’s an attack aimed directly at ending the Investment Tax Credit (ITC), which is currently at 30 percent and set to fall in 2017.

That’s the question asked in a new outlook from Wood Mackenzie. The outlook found that solar has the potential to upend the gas and power markets throughout the world. 

The theme of this year’s Solar Power Colorado 2015, the annual conference held by the Colorado Solar Energy Industries Association (COSEIA), is the next 25 years in solar. The conference, which runs from Feb. 23 to Feb. 25 at the  Omni Interlocken Hotel, in Broomfield, Col., will focus on ways the solar industry is expected to change over the next 25 years. 

The solar industry now employs 173,807 workers across the U.S. That’s according to figures released from The Solar Foundation’s National Solar Jobs Census for 2014 last week.