New York is at an important juncture in its Reforming the Energy Vision (REV) development as a working group is currently assessing proposals for mass market rate design, two of which include demand charges. Considering the whole point of REV is to build toward a distributed future, this raised ourRead More

Wider, transparent access to utility data will be crucial for growing the solar industry, and Urjanet, already a leader in utility data aggregation, is making things even easier for solar installers with its new Urjanet Solar Quickstart program. This suite of web-based tools streamline the link between customer utility accountsRead More

After sifting through a ton of entries to our Project of the Year awards, we narrowed the field to 16 candidates that stood out for a variety of reasons. Some overcame the odds. Some will have lasting effects in their community. All of them now look to you, dear reader,Read More

While PV technology has made considerable gains in terms of cost reduction and increased efficiency over the last decade, many authorities having jurisdiction (AHJs) around the country have not. Government often gets credit for growing the solar market through subsidies, but this ignores regulatory hurdles in the way of projectRead More

In our cover feature for Sept/Oct, we look at the inefficiencies in local permitting and interconnection processes that are holding back solar energy adoption in pockets across the country. Check out the full feature here. On the flip side of the issues noted are communities making an effort to reviseRead More

The retail industry is facing challenging times. Business Insider reported that electronics, grocery stores, department stores and drug stores are among the sectors threatened by online retailers, such as Amazon. Businesses that were considered “too big to fail” such as Toys “R” Us, Payless and Radio Shack are among theRead More

Massachusetts lawmakers passed An Act to Advance Clean Energy yesterday that will pretty much do what it says, with one really important victory for the solar industry, and one potential setback. The victory was a call for Eversource to revise the demand charge it tried to impose (this was theRead More

A long-term, problem-free commercial flat roof solar installation starts with knowing about the roof systems themselves and how to keep them protected. This isn’t easy. For one, there is an alphabet soup of acronyms: PVC, TPO, EPDM, SBS, APP, BUR, PUF, PIB, CSPE, EPS and XPS. The roof industry lingoRead More

Keep part counts low The Low Profile QuickBOLT with Microflashing from SolarRoofHook can be installed in less than 60 seconds, and the key is its Microflashing technology, which is installed on top of the shingles and eliminates the need to pry apart shingles and shove oversized aluminum flashing underneath. “WeRead More

Shaving the peaks off commercial and industrial (C&I) electric bills is the top revenue stream for energy storage systems, and given the trend in increasing utility charges for time-of-use consumption, peak shaving can pay for a system in as little as three years, system providers say. Just how high theRead More