From the perspective of homeowners and businesses looking to go solar, the bigger the solar rebate the better. From the perspective of the utilities and government agencies that finance those rebates, often the opposite is true. Usually, the decided upon rebate level ends up somewhere between these two parties’ preferences. That appears to be the [...]

Last month, we profiled a new lineup of energy-efficient homes from Meritage Homes. Not to be outdone, KB Home today announced plans to make solar panels a standard feature at its new community in southern California. Having recently acquired land in West Hills Village in Valencia, the company will build energy-efficient homes on 43 lots. [...]

Last fall Los Angeles’ main utility, Los Angeles Department of Water & Power (LADWP), was weighing a 30-percent cut to its solar rebate. Now, due to “record demand” for the rebates, DWP last Friday suspended the application process for at least 90 days. The numbers tell all: some 2,000 rebate applications remain unprocessed, representing more than [...]

Cupertino Electric in northern California’s Silicon Valley has installed a photovoltaic (PV) system atop the World Cruise Ship Terminal at the Port of Los Angeles, California that is expected to produce 1.2 million kilowatt-hours (kWh) of energy each year.

Regreen has already completed a retrofit of the lighting system within the towers that slashed the total energy use of the towers by 20 percent. On August 18, Regreen announced that it had received $2 million from Nara Bank (NasdaqGS: NARA) to install a 255-kilowatt (kW) solar photovoltaic (PV) system at the Metro Park Towers.

Last year, San Diego was named California’s top solar city by advocacy group Environment America, but Los Angeles has been making headlines left and right with some of the most daring solar plans in the country. So which city really deserves the title “Hottest California Solar Market”? The July 2009 report (PDF) gave San Diego [...]

According to eSolar, the plant addresses many of the shortcomings that have plagued the use of widespread solar thermal power generation and kept it from becoming a mainsource of electricity, including environmental sustainability, cost and speed.

In this post, we’re reviewing the solar incentives offered by the municipal utilities of Vernon, Azusa, Pasadena, Glendale and Burbank. Check out Part One of our LA coverage for details of SCE and LADWP solar rebates and for a review of terms. In order to participate in most rebate programs, the process is usually as [...]

A swath of land with enormous solar potential, it’s no wonder that Los Angeles County offers a wealth of opportunities to go solar. The California Solar Initiative (CSI) mandated four years ago that all investor-owned utilities in the state must offer a solar rebate, and in 2008  began requiring municipal utilities to do so as [...]

Not long after the turn of the 20th century, Los Angeles city planners thought it would be a great idea to divert the water from 100-square-mile Owens Lake into the city’s aqueduct. They may have imagined how grateful their descendants would be for the water supply–but they probably didn’t imagine the nasty side effect of [...]