Neglected PV Maintenance Fuels Fire Risk

The N.C. Clean Energy Technology Center (NCCETC) released its Q3 2025 edition of The 50 States of Solar. The quarterly series provides insights on state regulatory and legislative discussions and actions on distributed solar policy, with a focus on net metering, distributed solar valuation, interconnection rules, community solar, residential fixed charges, residential demand and solar charges, financial incentives, and third-party ownership.

The report finds that 45 states, plus the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico, took some type of distributed solar policy action during Q3 2025 (see figure below), with the greatest number of actions continuing to address net metering policies (57), residential fixed charge or minimum bill increases (43), and community solar policies (40). A total of 217 distributed solar policy actions were taken during Q3 2025, with the most actions taken in Connecticut, Colorado, Minnesota, New York, Arizona, and California.

Q3 2025 Policy Action on Net Metering, Rate Design, and Solar Ownership

The report identifies three trends in solar policy activity taken in Q3 2025: (1) utilities continuing to transition to net billing tariffs, (2) states and utilities pursuing supporting mechanisms for community solar, and (3) states responding to the loss of federal incentives.

“After the federal government passed H.R. 1 in July, states are revising programs and guidelines to maximize use of the existing investment and production credits,” observed Rebekah de la Mora, Senior Policy Analyst at NCCETC. “Regulators are revising interconnection rules to help projects connect to the grid before the federal deadline for operating, implementing extensions and exceptions for projects under incentive programs, and considering program expansions to ‘make up’ for the loss of the credits.”

The report notes the top five distributed solar policy actions of Q3 2025:

• The Public Utilities Commission of Nevada adopting new demand charges for Nevada Power and a new netting interval for Sierra Power;
• PacifiCorp requesting approval for a net metering successor tariff in Washington;
• The West Virginia Public Service Commission approving net billing for Appalachian Power and Wheeling Power;
• The Puerto Rico Energy Bureau beginning an investigation into community solar; and
• Colorado Springs Utilities proposing exclusive rates for net metering customers.

“States and utilities continue grappling with the proper compensation structures for distributed generation. In Q3 2025, multiple utilities proposed and received approval for new net billing tariffs,” noted Brian Lips, Senior Project Manager at NCCETC. “Utilities’ netting billing tariff intervals typically range from instantaneous netting to hourly netting, in comparison to the standard monthly interval for net metering.”

View the 50 States of Solar Q3 2025 Quarterly Report Executive Summary

View and Purchase the 50 States of Solar Q3 2025 Quarterly Report 

View other 50 States Reports – Solar, Grid Modernization,  Electric Vehicles and Power Decarbonization

NC Clean Energy Technology Center | http://www.nccleantech.ncsu.edu

Yokogawa Corporation of America is pleased to confirm the dates for the next Yokogawa Users Conference and Exhibition, YNOW2026, taking place in New Orleans, Louisiana, September 1–3, 2026.

Building on the tremendous success of YNOW2024: Impact Your World in Houston, YNOW2026 will bring together hundreds of industry leaders, visionaries, and innovators as we continue shaping the future of industrial automation, digital transformation, and sustainability.

Over three transformational days, attendees will discover bold ideas, practical solutions, and visionary strategies designed to accelerate their digital journey. From expert-led sessions to valuable networking opportunities, YNOW is more than a conference, it is where the next chapter of industry innovation begins.

Registration will open in early 2026. In the meantime, customers and partners can join our Early Access List to be the first to receive event updates and announcements.

We look forward to welcoming you to New Orleans in 2026 for another inspiring YNOW experience.

Yokogawa Corporation of America | https://www.yokogawa.com/

GE Vernova Inc. (NYSE: GEV) announced that it has entered into an agreement with Greenvolt International Power to supply, install and commission 42 of its 6.1 MW–158m* onshore wind turbines to power the Ialomiţa wind farm in Ialomiţa, Romania. The wind farm will be capable of producing approximately 252 MW, supporting Romania’s goal of adding significantly more renewable energy by 2030.

The Ialomiţa deal was booked in the third quarter of 2025, and deliveries of the wind turbines for the project are scheduled to begin in 2026. The wind farms will generate enough electricity to power the equivalent of more than 110,000 homes and business annually in Romania.

Gilan Sabatier, Chief Commercial Officer for GE Vernova’s Onshore Wind business in International Markets, said “We appreciate the confidence that Greenvolt has shown in GE Vernova’s teams and our technology.  This project reinforces the value of our workhorse product strategy and demonstrates our ability to add value for customers in Romania and across Europe.”

GE Vernova's Onshore Wind has a total installed base of approximately 57,000 turbines and nearly 120 GW of installed capacity worldwide. Committed to its customers' success for more than two decades, its product portfolio offers next-generation high-powered turbines at scale that drives decarbonization through high-quality, affordable, and sustainable renewable energy.

GE Vernova | https://www.gevernova.com/

Qcells, the largest solar manufacturer of its kind in the U.S. and a leader in clean energy solutions, announced a strategic partnership between its new solar recycling division, EcoRecycle by Qcells, and Greentech Renewables, a national leader in solar equipment distribution. This joint initiative establishes a key community collection hub at Greentech’s Tampa and Palmetto, Florida locations, marking the launch of a long-term effort to build a nationwide solar panel recycling infrastructure.

These sites will serve as the first of many public-facing locations designed to accept decommissioned or damaged solar panels from both industry professionals and residential owners. By offering a convenient drop-off point for end-of-life (EOL) materials, the hub creates a vital local solution to one of the clean energy sector’s fastest-growing sustainability challenges: landfill diversion of aging solar panels.

The partnership is designed not only to solve local waste challenges but also to scale nationally. The hubs will serve as a prototype for similar collection sites across Florida, the broader Southeast, and eventually the country, as EcoRecycle continues to expand its recycling facilities and builds out its partner network. With an estimated 500,000 panels to be recycled annually at its flagship facility in White, Georgia, Qcells is positioning EcoRecycle as the logistical and operational backbone of a national circular platform for the solar industry.

This collaboration lays the foundation for a fully circular economy model in U.S. to ensure critical solar panel components can be reused to build the next generation of solar technology. Using proprietary high-purity separation technology, EcoRecycle will recover valuable materials such as glass, aluminum, copper, and silver, which will then be reintegrated into Qcells’ U.S.-based solar manufacturing operations. This closed-loop process significantly reduces carbon emissions, strengthens domestic supply chains, and helps decreasing reliance on imported materials.

“Effectively managing solar panel waste is essential to the health of the clean energy transition. Through this collaboration, we are offering customers and communities a no-landfill, truly circular solution that supports their sustainability goals while driving progress for the entire industry,” said Kelly Weger, Senior Director of Sustainability at Qcells.

"With solar distribution centers strategically located across Florida, Greentech Renewables is making it easier for customers of all sizes to participate in this recycling initiative and advance the circular solar economy,” said Hunter David, at Greentech Renewables. “We take pride in supporting solar panel recycling and repurposing valuable components to power the next generation of solar innovation.”

Together, Qcells and Greentech Renewables are demonstrating what leadership in solar sustainability looks like—aligning the forces of manufacturing and distribution to close the loop on solar and storage waste. This partnership represents a blueprint for how industry can come together to support domestic manufacturing while building value and resilience into America’s carbon free energy future.

Qcells | https://qcells.com/us

EcoRecycle | https://ecorecyclebyqcells.com/

Greentech Renewables | https://www.greentechrenewables.com/

The SolarAPP Foundation, the non-profit dedicated to lowering clean energy costs, announced that it has been awarded a $3.99M grant from the CEC’s BRIDGE (California Energy Commission’s Bringing Rapid Innovation Development to Green Energy) 2024 program. BRIDGE supports innovative, clean energy technologies that benefit California ratepayers by improving grid reliability, reducing costs, and accelerating the state’s transition to 100% clean energy.

Today, SolarAPP+® (Automated Permit Processing) is a software tool for jurisdictions that automates the plan review process and issues permits to licensed contractors installing code-compliant residential solar and storage systems. Through the BRIDGE program, the CEC is funding the expansion of SolarAPP+ to modernize digital permitting and inspection systems that enable faster, safer, and more equitable deployment of solar, storage, and EV (electric vehicle) charging infrastructure.

Already in use by over 275 jurisdictions across California, the addition of artificial intelligence-enabled virtual inspections and automated permitting of residential EV chargers will expand SolarAPP’s impact and further its ability to drive down solar costs and expand equitable clean energy access to underserved and disadvantaged communities across California. These areas of focus are a natural extension of SolarAPP+’s current compliance checks and plan review processes.

EV Charging

This will follow the same solution as SolarAPP+, making it easier for homes adopting EVs to quickly and affordably install EV chargers. This will be accomplished by creating automated and instant plan review and permitting that takes into account utility ESR (Electrical Service Requirements), fire codes, and standards to ensure statewide compliance and efficiency.

Virtual Inspections

Building AI-supported, code-compliant virtual inspection tools that allow jurisdictions to conduct remote, asynchronous inspections is a major expansion. This capability enables an end-to-end offering that ensures code compliance from “as planned” to “as built.” Virtual inspections will go beyond basic photos from the job site, and employ AI-tools to check the quality of work. Jurisdictions benefit by having confidence in work quality. Installers benefit from increased confidence in clearing inspection the first time. Both benefit from saving time and money.

SolarAPP will work to provide training, documentation, and stakeholder engagement for building officials, installers, and utilities to support statewide adoption of these digital permitting and inspection tools. This project will lead to reduced permitting costs and delays and expand access to clean-energy savings for households and installers across the state.

“California is leading the way by investing in solutions that leverage technology in ways that make public services more effective and efficient, and accelerate the deployment of clean energy technologies,” said SolarAPP CEO, Matthew McAllister. “The California Energy Commission has championed programs that reduce the soft costs of clean energy, and we’re building on that momentum with this project. We’re grateful to the Commission for their support and leadership.”

The unanimous vote in favor of this grant that took place on October 8, 2025 marks the beginning of work to make these solutions a reality for a state advancing the next generation of clean-energy infrastructure through digital permitting and inspection modernization.

SolarAPP Foundation | gosolarapp.org

Sunairio, pioneer of next-generation grid forecasting software that provides critical weather and energy insights, announced that it has launched Sunairio ONE (an Omniscale Next-generation Ensemble). Sunairio ONE now powers the company’s award-winning software for modern energy risk management.

Anticipating granular grid risk today is a daunting task that’s frustrated by a disjointed and inadequate technology landscape. Conventional weather forecasts are complex and slow, limiting their usefulness to modeling near-term events over relatively large areas — with forecast scenarios that misrepresent the chance of extremes. Longer-term forecasts are so inaccurate that the meteorological agencies themselves warn against using the data directly, forcing the industry to rely on historical analogues instead. And the new AI weather forecasts are unfortunately linked to these problems because they train off the same old data. 

Sunairio ONE makes these approaches obsolete.

“We built Sunairio ONE from the ground up to solve these challenges, enabling unparalleled resolution, accuracy, and correct probabilities, complete with seamless coverage for the next hour, the next 15 years — and anywhere in between,” said Rob Cirincione, CEO, Sunairio.. “The key is our unique data — Sunairio ONE is trained on the Sunairio High-resolution Earth Dataset (the SHED), our proprietary, high-resolution historical weather data archive that’s purpose-built to replicate granular risks for the modern grid.”  

Sunairio started with the industry’s benchmark historical weather data, leveraged machine learning to sharpen resolution by 100x, then trained ONE on that data while incorporating changing climate fundamentals. Sunairio ONE generates 1,000-member hourly ensembles compared to traditional methods that stop at 50. The result is unprecedented forecast fidelity for load, renewables, and grid stress across all time scales.

“Alternative forecast methods rarely issue more than 50 forecast scenarios, preventing users from seeing the make-or-break events,” Cirincione explained. “Imagine if I told you there was a 1-in-50 chance of winning the lottery, except you don’t win the lottery, you black out the power grid or bankrupt your company. That’s the risk we’re taking with these limited forecasts.”

“More recently, there’s been a burst of new AI-powered weather forecasts, but what often gets overlooked is that these AI models are only as good as the data they’re trained on — and these models have all been trained on the same public, relatively low-resolution archive,” continued Cirincione. “That means they’re all susceptible to missing the same events — especially extreme events — which are critical in modern power grids where just 1% of hours account for 30% of grid stress.”

A larger forecast ensemble also improves accuracy. For example, compared to grid-level forecasts provided by ISO operator ERCOT, Sunairio’s hourly wind and solar forecasts are up to 20% more accurate on average while capturing the true risk of forecast misses and unprecedented extremes in the ensemble distribution.

Sunairio ONE is an evolution of the company’s award-winning, long-term generative forecast technology — previously recognized by the National Science Foundation, American Clean Power Association, and EPRI. The company’s high-resolution, large-ensemble approach to forecasting now spans both seasonal and climate scales (from 15 days to 15 years) as well as shorter-term 1- to 15-day forecasts.

"No other solution gives us weather and energy forecasts from a 1,000-member ensemble and continuously tracks changes to load growth and infrastructure buildout," said Josh Henson, Vice President, Wholesale Trading, Constellation. “We’ve been pleased with Sunairio as a platform to model probabilistic weather and energy risks for longer-term power markets. Sunairio ONE provides those same insights for short-term markets enabling better business decision-making that benefits our customers.”

Sunairio ONE forecasts support actionable intelligence for reliable planning across power markets and utility operations. It is designed to support a range of use cases, including:

• Probabilistic energy trading and hedging strategy: Ensembles predict future energy price ranges and show potential for risk versus reward.
• Asset-level renewables forecasting: Sunairio ONE provides probabilistic forecasting for individual renewable energy assets (including availability and curtailment losses) for independent power providers, utilities, and public market participants.
• Climate-aware portfolio risk management: Accurately calculates the risk to energy investments resulting from weather-driven impacts across load, wind, and solar.

“Some of the greatest risks to power grids are hiding in plain sight. They don’t always look like hurricanes, which makes them more insidious. Increasingly, they look more like unusual combinations of weather that increase demand while reducing renewables output: heat that lingers past twilight or polar vortex cold snaps that arrive with calm winds,” said Raiden Hasegewa, PhD, Director of Data Science, Sunairio. “By combining weather and energy in a sophisticated forecast model, we’re giving companies insight they can’t get anywhere else.”

All of Sunairio’s energy and market models built on top of Sunairio ONE automatically update and retrain continuously, keeping pace with fast-moving fundamentals.

Sunairio | sunairio.com

Recently, Sineng Electric, in close collaboration with the project owner and Hunan Electric Test Research Institute Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as “Hunan Xiangdian”), successfully completed a full-process grid-forming, grid-following, and off-grid test at the Changsha Ningxiang Guanshan 100MW/200MWh Energy Storage Power Station. The successful completion of the tests signifies that Sineng Electric’s grid-forming energy storage technology has entered a new stage of large-scale global application.

As the first energy storage power station in Hunan Province equipped with grid-forming capability, the project is powered by Sineng Electric’s new-generation 1250kW Central PCS and 5MW Central PCS MV Turnkey Station, featuring the company’s second-generation Enhanced Hybrid Grid-Forming Technology.

Prior to the test, Sineng Electric worked closely with an expert panel led by Hunan Xiangdian, comprising the China Electric Power Research Institute (CEPRI) and DNV’s Asia-Pacific Energy Storage Team, among other leading institutions in the grid-forming field. Over a period of more than three months, the parties conducted multiple rounds of technical discussions and joint assessments, forming a comprehensive test plan based on multiple national and industry-leading standards.

Despite challenges such as high on-site temperatures, tight schedules, and complex multi-party coordination, the team completed the entire test campaign within one week. The scope covered nine major categories—inertia response, primary frequency regulation, damping control, black-start, phase jump tolerance, active power control, grid voltage adaptability, continuous fault ride-through, three-times overload capability—comprising hundreds of operating conditions. All tests were completed in a single attempt under the full witness of DNV. According to the test report issued by Hunan Xiangdian, the comprehensive data and practical results once again verified the superiority and reliability of Sineng Electric’s second-generation Enhanced Hybrid Grid-Forming Technology.

From its self-developed grid-forming verification platform, hardware-in-the-loop simulation certification by CEPRI, and CQC full-unit certification, to this station-level validation with third-party on-site witnessing, Sineng Electric has become the first in the industry to achieve a full-stack “true grid-forming” verification loop. Looking ahead, Sineng Electric will continue to advance innovations in grid-forming technology, create greater value for customers, and contribute to the development of China’s new power system and the realization of the “carbon neutrality” goal.

Sineng Electric | https://en.si-neng.com/