Good news for Arizona homeowners: you will soon have (yet another) online source for solar-related information.
The Phoenix Business Journal yesterday reported that the Arizona Corporation Commission (ACC) will on Wednesday launch a new solar energy information website. Dubbed Arizona Goes Solar, the site will “provide a one-stop source of information on what residents and businesses [...]

Now, pending approval from the attorney general and a final vote by the five-person ACC panel in the Fall, the state’s natural gas companies will be required to slash their fuel sales by six percent by that same 2020 deadline.

Pointing out that three quarters of the world’s renewable energy was installed with support from a feed in tariff (FIT), Paul Newman of the Arizona Corporation Commission explained that Arizona “is pushing the possibility of a FIT to get some renewable infrastructure in the ground.”

Unlike up front rebates based on the size of a system [...]

It goes without saying that solar electric systems do well in sunny climates. All else equal, the more sun, the better. Regions that get the most sun, however, often come with a lot of dust, which can be a drag on solar panel efficiency. In the absence of rain showers — which typically do a fine [...]

Rebates available in Tucson Electric Power’s service area make residential solar hot water systems very affordable. The payback period for this technology in Southern Arizona is 7 years.

ASU is taking on a brand new, 17,000-panel solar energy installation, this time at its West campus in Phoenix, Arizona. 10,000 of those panels will be installed in the form of a shade canopy over the top of three of the campus’ south-facing parking lots. The other 7,000 panels will stand to the left of the parking lots in an open field where poles will be punched into the ground to hold the panels up to the sun.

The system will stretch across seven separate carports at Tucson, Arizona’s Souther Arizona VA Health Care System.

Now, in an attempt to make HHI, “the center of the international photovoltaic (PV) industry,” according to HHI’s CEO Min Keh-sik, the company announced yesterday that it has taken preliminary steps in joining an international partnership to build a solar PV plant in southeastern Arizona.

By December 2010, construction will be completed and the University of Arizona’s TechPark – a solar industry research and demonstration integration center – will play host to a 1.6-megawatt (MW) solar energy system dually built by SOLON Corporation and TEP.

This prime solar state offers an enticing return on investment for solar hot water. First, being smack dab in the middle of the Sunbelt means that owners of solar hot water systems will benefit from some of the world’s most consistent sunlight as well as relatively high temperatures. The high outdoor temperatures are especially helpful, [...]