The biggest year for new solar power in Minnesota was 2016 when the state saw 207 megawatts (MWs) of new solar power come online. But it looks like 2017 is going to blow that away. Already in the first quarter of 2017 alone, the state has seen 203 new MWs of solar power come online and it’s expecting to bring on about 600 more MWs of solar power in 2017.

The Department of Energy’s (DOE's) SunShot Initiative worked with IBM and its supercomputing capacity to improve solar forecasting accuracy by as much as 30 percent. Solar forecasting can help utilities and solar owners better predict how a system will perform and operate over time. 

Solar continues to grow, finds the news last week. A new report anticipated that the global solar industry could grow to 429 gigawatts of new installations annually by 2026 and some utilities and cities are already announcing plans for greatly expanding their use of solar power. Meanwhile two of the nation’s largest solar installers made the news last week, too, Sungevity and SolarCity. 

A group of 3,000 small and medium sized businesses, Green America’s Green Business Network, is urging President Donald Trump (R) to remain committed to the Paris Climate Agreement. The organization pointed to the number of jobs the industry supports as well as the negative impacts climate change will on the US economy. 

President Donald Trump’s (R) Energy Secretary, Rick Perry appointed Daniel Simmons, an advocate of fossil fuels to head the Energy Department’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE). The move drew criticism from renewable energy advocates like the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS).

A new report out from Redfin and Sun Number found that in at least 10 large Midwestern cities solar adds more than enough value to homes to pay for itself in resale value. For instance, in Chicago the median sale price for a home with solar was $303,500 compared to a median sale price of $195,000 for a home without solar power in the city. 

Another city has committed to sourcing all its energy from renewables. This time it’s Atlanta, the largest southern city in the US to make such a commitment, and the first in Georgia. It joins 25 other cities that have committed to 100 percent renewable energy, seven of which have already realized that goal and comes as The Sierra Club launches the Mayors For 100% Clean Energy campaign. 

Solar power is on the upswing just about everywhere and likely one of the biggest opportunities may be in distributed solar across the world. How big an opportunity? A new Navigant Research report anticipated that by 2026 each year could see 429 new gigawatts of distributed solar installed across the world—that’s more than the 74.8 GWs installed across all sectors of the solar industry throughout the world in 2016. 

Door-to-door sales are one of the key ways in which solar companies have reached out to new customers. However, the nation’s largest rooftop solar installer, SolarCity, which was acquired by Elon Musk's Tesla last year, will get out of the door-to-door sales of rooftop solar systems. 

A group of clean energy advocates representing the fastest growing source of energy and one of the fastest growing sectors of employment in the US has issued a letter to Department of Energy (DOE) Secretary Rick Perry urging him to make the his department’s review of energy markets and reliability open and transparent.