While the Solar Impulse plane is lumbering across the world’s skies showing that solar-powered flight is possible—albeit slow, other companies are getting ready to use solar power in their ariel vehicles pretty quickly. Case in point, Airbus just signed a contract with MicroLink to provide its multijunction solar sheets for Airbus’ Zephyr S, a high altitude pseudo-satellite (HAPS).

Solar power with energy storage leads to energy savings for low-income renters in California. That’s according to a new study by the Clean Energy Group and its partners, which is making the case for expanding access to solar power to low-income residents in California.

Over the past few weeks not one but two countries have reported that renewables provided almost all of their electric needs, in fact renewables like wind and solar did provide all of one nation’s needs for days! 

When the Obama Administration and the Department of Energy introduced the SunShot Initiaitve in 2011 the goal of reducing the cost of installed solar power to $1 a watt over a decade seemed outlandish. After all, at the time solar power cost roughly $3.80 per watt installed. 

Researchers at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) in Australia have produced a solar module that reached 34.5 percent conversion efficiency, which they claim set a new world record in its category of photovoltaic devices. The results were verified by the U.S. National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL).

The Department of Energy is expanding the Solar Ready Vets Job Training program, adding 5 New Locations. At the same time it’s supporting 10 new projects in the Solar Training and Education for Professionals (STEP) program. 

Last month the Solar Energy Industries Association created the Million Solar Strong campaign to recognize that the U.S. had reached more than 1 million solar installations—and that it’s likely to double that to 2 million in the next years! Now two Senators, Martin Heinrich (D-NM) and Cory Gardner (R-CO) on the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources have introduced a resolution in support of the milestone and the next major goal for solar power. 

Researchers at Pennsylvania State University have developed a method to create huge sheets of thin-film silicon semiconductors, which could create extremely low-cost solar cells. The researchers say they could produce solar panels that are roughly a square kilometer in size in a small device and do it at very low cost, greatly reducing the price to produce solar panels. 

Today (May 16) Duke Energy announced that it’s received approval from the North Carolina Utilities Commission (NCUC) to construct two new solar farms totaling 75.4 megawatts in two different counties. It continues the utility’s efforts to make North Carolina the biggest state for solar power in southeast U.S.

A recent report from the Investor Responsibility Research Center Institute (IRRCi) looked into the lobbying efforts of the U.S.’s 25 largest utilities and found that over the last four years these giant companies spent $400 million in lobbying. They’ve railed against rooftop solar, renewable energy standards and solar incentives in that time.