The Solar Industry Continues to Heat Up!

Hello Everyone! We have been extremely busy lately and apologize for our online absence of late. These past couple years have been busier than ever and the last couple months have seen us max out our production capacity. We have always been huge proponents of solar energy but our enthusiasm continues to grow everyday. Here are some of the top stories from the solar industry during the past couple months.

 

Solar and Wind Now Rapidly Catching Up with Fossil Fuels: A German minister in charge of rolling out the country’s massively successful renewable energy program has gone on record saying that solar and wind energy is now less expensive than fossil fuel or nuclear energy. In 2015, investment in renewable energy was double the size of fossil fuel investment. Despite extremely low oil prices, the solar industry nearly doubled for the 8^th time in 15 years.

 

Nevada Passes Crippling Anti-Solar Legislation: The Nevada Public Utility Commission recently voted to raise the monthly fee on solar customers by 40% while at the same time lowering the value of excess energy created and sold through net metering. This change also applies to existing systems. Systems with that originally had payback of 5-7 years might not pay themselves off for 8-10 years now. With this legislation, one of the most sun-exposed states has become a dead zone for solar. A class action lawsuit has been filed and awaits a verdict.

 

US Solar Company Now Producing Panels at a Lower Price than China: First Solar is now creating solar panels for nearly 40 cents a watt. This is almost 15 cents cheaper than the next best competitor in China. The new panels are a result of massive $775,000,000 investment the company made in their technology wing.

 

Solar Industry Continues to Create Record Number of Jobs: 35,000 jobs were created by the solar industry in 2015, bringing the grand total to 209,000. Solar employment has gone up 123% since 2010 which is 12 times faster than the national average