Rooftop solar power jumped to 5,434 megawatts at the end of 2015 from 3,612 megawatts  at the end of 2014. While the 1,822 megawatts of new rooftop solar installed last year was impressive, the utility-sector trounced that with 3,486 new megawatts of solar power last year.

In what’s likely to be one of the largest battery installations to date Tucson Electric Power will use the 10 megawatt Iron Horse Battery Energy Storage Project and a 2 MW solar array to help manage the electric grid in the region. The battery system is being installed by E.ON Climate & Renewables North America and Greensmith Energy at the University of Arizona Science and Technology Park southeast of Tucson.

Landing in Abu Dhabi at 4 in the morning Solar Impulse completed its round the world flight powered only by the sun, breaking records all the way, including the longest duration flight and the first circumnavigation of the globe powered only by the sun. 

Large solar projects need land. It’s the one big impact they have. They can be built on almost anything, from old farmland to old landfills, industrial sites and more offering landowners an extra income opportunity. 

In late June Elon Musk’s Tesla Motors made an up to $2.8 billion bid to purchase SolarCity, the nation’s largest rooftop solar installer, owned by his cousin Lyndon Rive. Last week, almost a month to the SolarCity announcement, Musk announced his “Master Plan, Part Deux” building on the original plan that discussed solar and SolarCity.

As more solar power and particularly rooftop comes online utilities will have to keep changing how they charge and reimburse customers with solar power. To help ensure that charges are fair the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) and  partners including TechNet, the Sierra Club and more have introduced “Rate Design for a Distributed Grid.”

The states with the greatest amounts of solar power per person are those that are seeing the steepest opposition from utilities. For instance, Nevada, which ranked first among states for solar power per person—it had three solar panels installed for every two residents by the end of 2015—eliminated net metering at the end of the year thanks to utilities’ efforts.

Today (July 21) Facebook announced the first flight of Aquila, a solar-powered autonomous flying wing that will be able to beam the internet to users from 60,000 feet in the air across a 60 mile diameter for months at a time. Mark Zuckerberg’s company is hoping to start bringing the Internet and its promises to more of the 4 billion people without access to it (Check out a video of the maiden voyage here).

Soon rooftops at the University of Massachusetts Amherst will be generating savings for the campus—an estimated $6.2 million in savings over the next 20 years. That will be thanks to eight solar arrays, six rooftop installations and two parking canopies, being installed on campus. In all the campus will have 5.5 megawatts of solar panels generating its electricity by the end of 2016. 

Sunrun continues its run into the summer months with a new $33 million to finance a portfolio of solar renewable energy credits (SRECs), which will help reduce costs for its new residential customers in certain states. The financing builds on $40 million it raised last month to support solar projects in New York.