Renewable Energy: California & Wyoming on Opposite Paths …& More Microgrid News — January 26, 2017

The international financial institution is offering the free, web-based resource in collaboration with the International Solar Alliance. The platform — which data provider Solaris designed to help policymakers, investors and prospective developers identify new locations in which solar projects can be built — allows users to zoom in on high-resolution regional and global maps, with a spatial resolution of 1 kilometer. The platform, which was unveiled on the sidelines of the World Future Energy Summit in Abu Dhabi, offers a range of site-specific information, including up-to-date figures on annual average solar potential, as well as geographic information system (GIS) data.

Blockchain Technology: a Hidden Gem of Innovation for the Solar Industry

Over the past few years, blockchain technology has proven itself as one of the defining technologies of the decade, yet its nature and function remain enigmatic to most. Blockchain technology, famed for its use in the cryptocurrency Bitcoin, can have an immense impact on the solar industry. Although it is currently only implemented in small-scale microgrids, at a larger scale blockchain technology could make utilities and government involvement obsolete, passing the savings onto the consumer. Blockchain technology eliminates the regulatory barriers that prevent members of a community from selling surplus solar energy to one another. Such microgrids aren’t merely a theoretical concept, they exist and have been successfully implemented in dozens of communities across the world, including one in Brooklyn.