General Electric has had an interesting time with solar power in the past. It’s invested in numerous solar power and photovoltaic companies, including PrimeStar Solar, a thin-film PV manufacturer, whose technology the company ultimately sold to First Solar. Now it appears that the Power & Water division of the international company is ready to re-enter the solar market in the U.S. in another way—as an engineering, procurement and contractor (EPC) provider. The company announced today (May 29) that it is installing a 2 megawatt PV array for President Container Group (PCG) in Middletown, N.Y.

This July Georgia Power, the Southern Co. subsidiary that supplies almost all of the electricity in Georgia, is diving into rooftop solar power. The move comes as solar has become more popular in the southeastern U.S. and more utilities are finding ways in which they can compete or remain in control of distributed energy generation. 

Yesterday (May 26) the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBL) unveiled its newest building, the Solar Energy Research Center (SERC), named Chu Hall. The new, 40,000 square foot, research center is named after Steven Chu, the most recent former DOE Secretary and Nobel Prize-winning scientist. 

Today (May 26) the Department of Energy announced $12 million to help train Americans for jobs in the solar industry. That’s in addition to $15 million it will invest in new designs for concentrating solar power (CSP) systems and $5 million it is investing in funding projects that will increase transparency in datasets. The funding is intended to further reduce the cost of solar power in the U.S. 

Earlier this month MOVE Systems began to pilot 500 MRV100 solar-powered food carts in New York City to replace the gas, Diesel or propane-powered carts that people sidle up to throughout the day for anything from coffee to curry. With more than 5,000 licensed food carts throughout the Big Apple, the pilot program represents a significant portion of the carts in the city for a pilot. MOVE is offering the new carts free to the first 500 vendors that sign up for the program.

The University of South Florida St. Petersburg (USFSP) is testing a 200 kilowatt battery with a 100 kilowatt solar array thanks to a $1 million grant from Duke Energy Florida. The project will dive into the data to determine the effectiveness of the system. 

Much has been said of modernizing the electric grid to make it easier to integrate more solar power on feeder lines but in many cases the work still needs to be done. Under a new partnership with Southern California Edison (SCE)—that may be a harbinger of future deals like it—SunEdison will modernize the electric grid throughout Orange County and Inland Empire industrial corridors and will install 33 megawatts of rooftop solar power in the utility’s service area. 

Solar power has become increasingly popular in the U.S. in the past decade, during that time the cost of solar power also has come down significantly. That said it still enjoys some support from the federal government in the form of the 30 percent Investment Tax Credit (ITC), but now that credit is set to expire—and it won’t be such a soft landing. Thankfully California Rep. Mike Thompson (D, CA-5) has filed (H.R. 2412) to extend the ITC another five years. You can ask your Congressperson to support the legislation by clicking here.

In an effort to see how California’s efforts to curb greenhouse gas emissions through renewable energy and energy efficiency stack up against those of other major polluters across the world, California-based nonprofit Next 10 introduced its 2015 California Green Innovation Index, International Edition. The new report  was presented today ahead of the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP21) in Paris this week. 

China and the U.S. haven’t always played nice over renewable energy. Chinese solar panel manufacturers have been accused of selling PV panels at lower prices in an attempt to gain market share, which led to sanctions against Chinese solar panel imports in the U.S. But China and the U.S. also have been working to ease those sanctions and pricing issues and tensions they’ve caused. Now the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) and the China PV Investment and Finance Alliance (CPVFA) partnered to help with investing in solar developments in China.