While some utilities are trying to gut their residential solar programs and focus instead on large-scale solar projects or not even going after solar at all, Houston’s Reliant Energy and its parent NRG are ramping up their offerings—and promising their net-metered customers savings.

Solar power is booming across the U.S. like never before, homeowners, utilities, businesses, schools and others are putting solar on their rooftops as prices come down and financing options increase. That’s scaring some people, like the Koch brothers, whose American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), has supported legislation in states across the U.S. that would make it harder for people to go solar. For the large part those efforts have not had too much effect, but that may, unfortunately for solar advocates, be changing. 

Zero-Energy homes are becoming part of the vernacular—finally! Such homes are designed to be highly energy efficient, needing no more energy than they can produce via solar arrays and other energy sources. To help raise awareness and increase visibility of such projects the Department of Energy just held its first Challenge Home Student Design Competition. 

It’s being called the largest single photovoltaic power plant in the world and NRG Energy, Inc. and partner MidAmerican Solar said the 290 megawatt Agua Caliente Solar Photovoltaic Facility is substantially complete today (April 29). The new facility, which was designed and constructed by First Solar, is on  2,400 acres of land between Yuma and Phoenix, Ariz., and will provide enough power for 230,000 homes at peak capacity.

The amount of solar installed in the U.S. and the world last year easily dwarfed previous years’ records but new data out from the Solar Electric Power Association (SEPA) shows that the majority of new solar installed in the U.S. was highly concentrated among just a few utilities. Across the US just 10 utilities integrated fully 82 percent of all the solar power installed that country last year.

There aren’t that many “Rosie the Riveters” on rooftops installing solar these days but that may change. Grid Alternatives and SunEdison announced earlier this year that they were partnering to help bring more women into the solar industry and today (April 25) they’re launching the new initiative with an all-woman installation crew installing two rooftop solar panels on low-income homes in Denver. 

SolarMart has opened its first retail solar and energy efficiency store for home and business owners in Denver. The SolarMart is part of solar contractor Colorado Energy Experts and the company announced the new store on April 23. 

That’s according to information released by the Department of Energy’s Energy Information Administration (EIA) yesterday (April 22). The EIA reported that since 2010 the number of solar installations has grown 418 percent to 12,057 megawatts (1.3 percent of the nation’s energy capacity) by February 2014 from 2,326 megawatts in 2010, a nearly 10,000 megawatt gain. 

This morning (April 23) SunPower and Google announced that they partnered on a new, $250 million fund to finance rooftop solar arrays on homes across the U.S. While the tech giant has created funds to support home solar installations in the past, the fund with SunPower is primarily funded by the solar company and not the search engine.

Atop a skyscraper in New York City utility Con Edison is using solar to power its headquarters. The company said today (April 21) that it installed a 40 kilowatt solar array using more than 200 Suniva PV modules on the 19th story of its building in Manhattan, which can power two of the building’s floors.