As the 2016 presidential elections gain momentum candidates were thrown a new challenge, the Solar Throwdown. The challenge, launched by residential solar company Sungevity, asks candidates to demonstrate their leadership in clean energy by installing solar on their homes. After all, since one of these candidates will spend the next presidential term in a home powered by the sun, they should get used to it.

Earlier this week (June 27), NY Green Bank closed a $25 million loan allowing Sunrun to cover the up-front cost of materials and construction for over 5,000 residential solar projects in New York state. The loan follows a previously announced a $25 million NY Green Bank loan with Sunrun to provide long-term financing for the projects, enabling homeowners to save on their electric bills. Now, with a total of $50 million in funding the two loans to Sunrun will work together to lower the cost of solar for homeowners while increasing the amount of solar energy installed statewide. 

Denver-based nonprofit Mercy Housing partnered with Promise Energy, Inc. to increase solar energy use across Mercy Housing’s portfolio of affordable housing throughout the US. The partnership will help low-income residents in multi-family dwellings who cannot otherwise afford to invest in or have the ability to install solar power to reap the benefits of lower energy costs. 

In effort to better inform consumers about the most common residential transactions in the solar industry, Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) introduced its new standardized disclosure statements—documents that allow customers to compare solar offers and understand the terms of a proposal before choosing what type of solar energy agreement to enter. The documents, the SEIA Solar Power Purchase Agreement Disclosure statement and the revised SEIA Solar Lease Disclosure are intended to help standardize information for consumers, making it easier for them to compare offers from solar installers.

Solar Impulse—the first manned solar-powered airplane capable of flying throughout the night thanks to its batteries—departed from the John F. Kennedy (JFK) airport in New York early on June 20, the morning of the Strawberry Moon and the summer solstice, to fly across the Atlantic Ocean towards Spain. Cofounder and pilot Bertrand Piccard is manning the plane for this ocean crossing and the team anticipated landing at Spain’s Seville Airport on June 23.

Hospital Lumiere, a primary care and medical-surgical facility located in Bon Fin, Haiti will now get its electricity from the sun, thanks to a new 50 kilowatt (kW) solar array with a battery backup system totaling 84 kW of electricity thanks to a donation from SolarWorld installed by Pennsylvania’s Smucker’s Energy. The recently announced project will replace the hospital’s former reliance on hydroelectric and diesel generators, helping to reduce maintenance cost and prevent power disruptions that undermine patient treatment.

Stellar Homes Group of Fort Lauderdale said it will become the first company in southern Florida to install photovoltaic (PV) solar panels as a standard feature on all its new homes in the region. Stellar will offer the solar arrays at no extra cost to homebuyers, and can save homeowners more than $80,000 in energy costs over two decades. 

Recently Mississippi Power, Origis Energy and the Area Development Partnership (ADP) held a ceremony to celebrate what will be the state’s largest solar facility, the 52 megawatt (MW) Lamar County solar farm. Once completed it will provide enough electricity to power approximately 8,000 homes in the region.

The World Bank recently approved a $625 million loan to support a program that will generate electricity from a countrywide installations of rooftop solar systems in India. The project will be implemented by the State Bank of India (SBI), which will lend funds to solar developers/aggregators to install commercial and industrial rooftop PV systems. The project will finance the installation of at least 400 megawatts (MW) of grid-connected rooftop photovoltaic (GRPV) across the country.

Continuing as a leader among companies installing solar, Ikea recently revealed that it will install the largest rooftop solar system in the state of Tennessee at its new Memphis location, which is set to open in Fall 2016. The 1.5 megawatt (MW) array will cover a 250,675 square-foot with 4,424 solar panels. The system will produce roughly 2 million kilowatt hours (kWh) of electricity annually.