Today (July 24) Colorado’s Public Utilities Commission took up the debate over the future of net-metered solar rooftops in the state. At the same time SunEdison announced that it purchased the state’s largest solar farm to date, the 156 megawatt Comanche Solar farm, which has a power-purchase agreement with Xcel Energy.

They didn’t get 49 points out of the 51 possible LEED points, but with a respectable 41 points the San Francisco 49ers' new Levi's Stadium became the first stadium to achieve LEED Gold status as a newly constructed facility. Other stadiums have achieved LEED status but only as part of additional construction. The stadium, which officially cut the ribbon last Thursday (July 17) announced that it achieved LEED Gold yesterday (July 22).

Suniva announced that it is opening up a new photovoltaic manufacturing facility in Saginaw, Mich. Construction at the new facility is slated to begin in August and Suniva plans to start manufacturing its crystalline silicon solar cells and modules in the fourth quarter of this year. Once completed the factory will be capable of manufacturing up to 200 megawatts of PV annually. 

Today (July 21) both Solexel and Ascent Solar makers of different types thin-film solar photovoltaics announced they are raising new funds to expand. The announcements signal that perhaps at least one sector of PV manufacturing may start to expand again with investments from the private sector. 

SunEdison and its subsidiary TerraForm Power introduced their initial public offering today of more than 20 million shares at $25.00 per share. The shares will be used to repay debt and fund more solar projects. The company is trading on NASDAQ under the symbol TERP. 

A new report, the PV Module Reliability Scorecard 2014, by GTM Research and PV Evolution Labs, now DNV GL, found that PV manufacturer’s solar panels performed relatively well across all metrics. 

The Interstate Renewable Energy Council (IREC) released its seventh annual U.S. Solar Market Trends Report which finds that, among other things, solar is an increasingly vital part of the U.S. economy. For instance, in 2013 the only new energy source to outpace solar (31 percent of all new electric generation) was natural gas (45 percent of all new electric generation). 

A new study by GlobalData found that solar Photovoltaics (PVs) are already leading the world in the distributed power market consisting of 48 percent of the total distributed power capacity installed last year. In addition, the amount of annually installed distributed generation is slate to increase from 190 gigawatts in 2013 to roughly 389 gigawatts in 2019. 

World Trade Organization (WTO) judges found today (July 14) that the United States violated global trade rules in 2012 when it implemented duties on Chinese-made solar panels. The rulings could change the cost of PV modules in the U.S., potentially bringing them down. But it is too early to know what the impact to the U.S. solar industry will be. 

Today (July 11) the Iowa Supreme Court ruled that power purchase agreements (PPAs) do not violate state law or utilities’ monopoly status and exclusive rights to sell energy to consumers in their service areas, upholding a decision from a lower court. The decision means that it just got a lot easier to go solar in the state.