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Want to invest in a hot technology, earn a decent rate of return, create Michigan jobs, and battle climate change—all at the same time? Thanks to an innovative state law that allows “crowdfunded” investments by state residents in new or existing businesse...
Abhilash Kantamneni, a Ph.D. candidate in computer science at Michigan Technological University, has an unexpected, spot-on message for Michiganders living in the cold, snowy, and, when it comes to energy costs, pricey Upper Peninsula: There is a large, u...
The Solar Powering Michigan conference on Sept. 12 in Traverse City could be arriving at just the right time, as more lawmakers and advocates are exploring ways to make sure solar is part of Michigan's clean energy future. Organizers say the conference is...
Michigan is far behind other states in generating solar power. But it’s hardly a cloud-cover problem: After all, solar is soaring in states no sunnier than ours. What Michigan has is a solar policy problem. A “solar work group,” composed of MPSC staff, ut...
What if a profitable monopoly with an unshakable grip on its customers refused all pleas to establish a program that, cost free, would create lots of good jobs in Michigan and aid the rise of a crucial global industry here? That’s Michigan’s situation, th...
Four months of meetings have failed to produce an agreement among state regulators, solar energy advocates, and the state’s top two utilities about expanding the companies’ highly popular customer-owned rooftop solar programs....
Solar advocates and staff from Michigan’s two largest utilities are mulling over a draft report that suggests ways the state could start catching up with the nation’s accelerating, jobs-rich boom in roof-top solar energy without raising customers’ rates s...
All the slide shows and presentations are handed in; advocates and opponents have made and rested their cases; and the state’s Solar Working Group has had its last meeting on the future of sun power in Michigan. Now it’s the Michigan Public Service Commis...
The SWG holds its last information-gathering meeting May 20 before the state issues a draft report in June that could recommend new ways to develop more customer-owned, rooftop solar power in Michigan. The meeting might be contentious: It features a prese...
As work group meetings continue, interviews with solar panel owners confirmed that they are glad they built their systems, but have suggestions for improving the utilities’ solar pilots and the state’s net metering rules....
Five years ago, when DTE Energy and Consumers Energy launched small pilot programs offering premium rates to customers for power from their solar panels, Oak Electric and Four Elements Energy became very busy installing solar systems on homes and small bu...
Representatives of Michigan’s two largest utilities, DTE Energy and Consumers Energy, made their first presentation to the state’s solar work group, and expressed little enthusiasm for expanding the use of customer-generated, jobs-producing, clean solar e...
Karl Rábago's crowning achievement, so far, is his success at Austin Energy, where he parlayed an obscure phrase—Value of Solar—into a guiding principal that helped the public electric utility’s customers “go solar,” big-time. Value of Solar shows in exac...
About 40 energy experts gathered in Lansing last week for their second discussion about ways the state’s top utilities can spur more solar power development in Michigan, which is now well behind many other states in deploying the booming clean-energy tech...
A specially assembled “solar work group” of state regulators, officials from the state’s two largest utilities, and clean-energy business advocates is considering ways to deploy more solar energy in Michigan that help, not hurt the firms’ bottom lines; pr...
