The NY Solar Map and Portal was launched today (June 20) at the 10th Annual NY Solar Summit. The map and portal offers New Yorkers throughout the state detailed information about the solar potential of their homes and buildings along with detailed technical and economic calculations of the cost of a solar system. 

Earlier this week Maryland’s Public Service Commission (PSC) approved regulations establishing a community solar pilot program in the state. The pilot has a focus of making sure community solar is accessible by low-income people in the state.

Few things beat concerts in the park on a sunny summer day, but San Diego’s North Park and Home Energy Systems (H.E.S.) found a way by powering the park’s summer concert series with solar power. The concerns will be powered by H.E.S.’s mobile solar system. 

This summer nearly 550 students from more than 30 California school districts will attend Solar Energy Academy, SunPower’s work-based learning program. It’s the fifth year for the program which uses science, technology, math and engineering (STEM) learning to help students learn about solar power and it’s opportunities.

The Clean Energy States Alliance (CESA) announced the winners of its 2016 State Leadership in Clean Energy Awards on June 15. This year the organization of public agencies awarded projects in six states: California, Connecticut, New Hampshire, New York, Oregon and Rhode Island, for innovative solar and clean energy programs. 

Creating a more efficient—and cheaper—solar photovoltaic (PV) device is a holy grail of sorts. One of the most promising low-cost technologies are perovskite crystals. Since December 2015 at least two organizations have created perovskite crystal solar devices that are more than 20 percent efficient, which puts them well within range of silicon and thin-film solar panels. Now Swiss researchers at Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) theorize that a hybrid perovskite and silicon solar device could reach 44 percent efficiency. 

The International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) published a new report today (June 15) The Power to Change: Solar and Wind Cost Reduction Potential to 2025 showing that the cost of solar photovoltaics (PVs) will continue to plummet over the next decade—falling another 60 percent. That’s on top of the 80 percent drop in solar panel costs since 2009!

More than 90 percent of utility and stakeholders anticipate that distributed energy resources (DER), like rooftop solar power, will cause a major change to utility business models. Rooftop solar is expected to be the most prevalent form of distributed energy by 2025. While utilities see the looming changes, many appear to believe that their key responsibilities will remain the same. 

Con Edison is piloting a “virtual power plant” made up of solar-powered homes connected to the grid. That’s thanks to a new partnership with SunPower and Sunverge which will allow more than 300 Con Edison customers in New York to get solar power systems with battery storage. At 1.8 megawatts of solar power and 1.8 megawatts of battery storage, which is equal to 4 megawatt hours, it will be the largest residential distributed energy storage system in the U.S. 

The latest edition of the Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF) report “New Energy Outlook 2016” finds that wind and solar power will start being the cheapest form of energy in many countries in the 2020s and most of the world by the 2030s—that’s starting in just about four years! It also anticipates that in the next couple of decades renewable energy will make up 60 percent of the world’s electric generation capacity.