CALMATTERS: Regulators know PG&E, Edison are slow to hook up solar. Why are there no penalties?

by Malena Carollo

The state’s two largest utilities routinely drag their feet connecting solar panels to the electric grid, missing state-mandated deadlines as much as 73% of the time, according to a complaint filed to regulators by solar advocates.

The complaint filed by a solar energy advocacy group urges the California Public Utilities Commission to hold utilities accountable when they fail to meet such deadlines. The commission is formally reviewing it. 

The advocates have complained for years that such delays hinder California’s transition to renewables. State utility regulators are separately revisiting the process for connecting rooftop solar to the grid, including examining whether and how the utility commission should require utilities to comply with the timelines it established years ago.

Solar Heat Worldwide 2025 highlights top countries globally

In 2024, China led the global market for industrial solar heat, while the Netherlands recorded the highest increase in newly installed solar district heating capacity in Europe. Germany topped the charts for newly installed hybrid photovoltaic-thermal (PVT) collectors. The newly released Solar Heat Worldwide 2025 report presents the latest data across key applications of solar heating and cooling, including residential water heating, district heating, process heat, solar cooling, and drying. The full report and accompanying infographics are available for free download here.

RYSE says it can’t fully use solar-powered emergency shelter due to PG&E delays

Richmond youth center’s community hub for climate-related emergencies is missing out on cost savings due to connection delays, officials say.

by Taylor Barton

Richmond’s RYSE Center, a nonprofit on Bissell Avenue that primarily serves youths of color, offers a safe haven for the city’s teens to organize with their peers, learn skills and heal from trauma. 

In response to the increasingly intense impacts of climate change, RYSE has expanded its services, adding two new buildings, including a health center and daily gathering space that doubles as a resiliency hub in climate emergencies. With a large solar array and solar storage battery, it’s designed to provide electricity during heat waves, power outages, wildfires, and other emergencies. In those situations, local youths and their families can seek shelter from the elements, get cool with air conditioning, breathe filtered air and use stored solar power to charge their electronics and life-saving medical equipment. 

CANARY MEDIA: California’s rooftop solar is a benefit, not a cost, to the state

A new study finds rooftop solar will save California $2.3B this year — a rebuttal to the ​‘cost-shift’ math that’s led regulators to stifle solar growth.

By Jeff St. John

For years, California utilities, regulators, and consumer advocates have argued that residents with solar panels on their rooftops are making electricity more expensive for everyone else in the state.

In August, a state agency released the latest report detailing this so-called cost shift caused by the rooftop solar industry. The report claimed that in 2024 alone rooftop solar will impose $8.5 billion in extra costs onto customers of Pacific Gas & Electric, Southern California Edison, and San Diego Gas & Electric, the state’s three major utilities.

But a new analysis commissioned by a distributed solar and storage trade group finds just the opposite — that California’s nation-leading 17 gigawatts of rooftop solar have actually saved customers about $2.3 billion on their utility bills this year.