Yesterday (Sept. 12) SolarCity announced that it raised $305 million to support its growth across the US. The announcement comes before Tesla’s purchase of SolarCity is complete. The latest transaction is a cash equity transaction that the company said includes a first-of-its-kind fully-amortizing, long-term loan.

When it comes to financing a solar array for a home, one size does not fit all. Depending on the homeowner’s needs and the solar installer, homeowners can choose from a number options from buying it outright to financing it with no up-front costs. The latter is a huge driver behind the residential solar industry’s boom in the past few years and companies are finding innovative ways to offer these options to homeowners. Spruce Finance is among such companies and added a new solar loan option to its portfolio of home solar offerings along with the introduction of its new SpruceFlow platform. 

As both solar power and wildfires increase in the west, the latter is having an impact on the former, finds a new report from environmental measurement firm Vaisala. What’s more is that the two reach both their peaks at the same time. As solar systems are producing the most power in the summer because of increased irradiance, it’s also the height of the wildfire season, which can bring production of solar plants down. 

In the second quarter of 2016 the US installed 2,051 megawatts of photovoltaic (PV) solar panels, a record for the quarter and a 43 percent increase over the same quarter in 2015 and 26 percent of all the newly installed electric generation in the US. That’s according to the most recent U.S. Solar Market Insight report GTM Research and the Solar Energy Industries Association’s (SEIA) report released today (Sept. 12).

As renewable energy like solar power is growing in the US energy storage is becoming more important. It provides an energy hedge against fluctuation on the grid and fluctuation of energy prices. Thankfully energy storage is stepping up with more battery and other energy storage systems being deployed. 

This past weekend President Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping officially signed the Paris Agreement on climate change with UN Secretary Ban Ki-moon. With that the world’s two largest economies, which produce roughly 40 percent of the world’s emissions, have joined other countries that have now ratified the historic accord to fight climate change. In agreeing to curb emissions the Presidents also reaffirmed their interests in using clean energy like solar power. 

The future of solar power in the US is closer than ever with Solar Power International 2016 around the corner. The location of this year’s conference is indicative of some of the challenges facing the solar industry and what will face the new leader (who has yet to be chosen) of the nation’s largest solar advocacy group, the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA).

Over time Solar power helps provide stabilized energy costs but there’s still some risk as to a solar array’s energy production over time. Now, PowerLock, a new offering from kWh Analytics, is providing an insurance-backed production guarantee for solar power on the residential, commercial or industrial levels. The company raised $5 million in a Series A fundraising to help scale the PowerLock offering, which was led by Anthemis and joined by ENGIE. 

Sharp entered the solar energy plus storage market in New Mexico in an impactful way, by installing an energy storage system at the Roadrunner Food Bank. The new installation couples two 30 kilowatt hour Sharp SmartStorage units with the site’s existing 366 kW rooftop solar array from Affordable Solar Installation to allow the food bank, which offers food to the poor, to save money while ensuring it can meet its mission of feeding the hungry in the state. 

On the whole, the southern US isn’t considered a stronghold for solar power. But solar power is beneficial to those who have installed in the region. That’s why the Southern Environmental Law Center (SELC) launched its new “Stories of Solar” video testimonial campaign, to show others how real people, small businesses and more are benefitting from solar power in the south.