Con Edison will soon be the US’s second-largest owner of solar projects in the country. That's if its planned $1.54 billion acquisition of Sempra Energy’s 981 megawatts of renewable energy projects is approved. Con Edison leaders said the purchase will help cement it as a leader in the renewables industries and it may take on additional projects because of the purchase. 

The solar industry wants to increase diversity in its workforce further. To expand those efforts the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) has partnered with the Historically Black Colleges and Universities Community Development Action Coalition (HBCU-CDAC) to recruit African-American students to the industry.

Kaiser Permanente recently announced that it has a made a new power-purchase agreement (PPA) for 181 megawatts of solar and wind power being built by NextEra Energy Resources, which will allow it to become carbon neutral in 2020. The non-profit health organization said it’s making the move in part to help insure the health of its consumers.

The latest Solar Market Insight report showed that installations in the second quarter of 2018 slowed down, attributing the slow down largely to Trump’s tariffs. Still, other signs show that solar and renewable energy are proving resilient as cities and California are moving to 100 percent clean energy. 

For the first time the project pipeline of utility-scale solar projects in the country has surpassed not just wind projects but also natural gas projects. That’s one key takeaway from the Lawrence Berkeley Lab’s sixth annual Utility-Scale Solar report, which found that the 188.5 gigawatt pipeline of PV projects is eight times more than the amount of solar power that’s installed in the US. 

The second quarter of 2018 offered proof of the impact of Trump’s tariffs on imported solar panels as solar installers and developers installed 2.3 gigawatts in the quarter. That’s less than in the previous quarter. Still, solar accounted for 29 percent of the electric generation installed in the first half of the year and the solar industry is expecting to see more development in the second half of the year, the latest U.S. Solar Market Insight Report shows.

More than 80 cities in the US have now committed to moving toward 100 percent clean energy, cutting their emissions and expanding their use of wind and solar power. That’s according to the latest annual Ready for 100 report from The Sierra Club. 

It’s official, California will move to 100 percent clean energy and achieve carbon neutrality by 2045. Yesterday (Sept. 10), Gov. Jerry Brown (D) signed SB100 into law, which doubles the renewable portfolio standard goals that Brown signed into law slightly less than three years ago and raises the timeline on transitioning to clean energy. He also signed an executive order committing the state to carbon neutrality by 2045 as well.

As rooftop solar power continues to grow utilities are still mixed on how to work with it. Case in point, in South Carolina Duke Energy wants to bring net-metering back but the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) is imposing new fees to make rooftop solar less affordable and is being sued by advocates over the controversial decision.

Earlier this year Duke Energy reached its capacity for net-metering rooftop solar power in South Carolina when it began sourcing 2 percent of its energy from distributed solar arrays. Now it’s taking the relatively unusual step of asking regulators if it can add more net-metering in.