$7 billion Solar for All program canceled

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on Thursday terminated a $7 billion grant program intended to help pay for residential solar projects for more than 900,000 lower-income U.S. households.

The funding, part of the Biden-era's Solar for All program, was awarded to 60 recipients for redistribution, including states, tribes and regions for investments in rooftop and community solar.

Only $53 million of the original $7 billion awarded has been spent so far, according to a tally by the research firm Atlas Public Policy. A number of policy insiders contend that the EPA has no legal authority to terminate grants already appropriated by Congress. The issue is now headed to the courts for resolution.

Solar panels from India latest to face tariffs

President Trump signed a new executive order last week imposing steep country-wide tariffs on India. The U.S. government will impose an additional 25 percent tariff on imports from India, effective Aug. 27, 2025. The tariffs are on top of an existing 25 percent tariff imposed under an April 2nd executive order.

India has increasingly become an important source for solar panels within the US - serving as a less expensive alternative to panels that had been imported originally from China, and then from Malaysia, Cambodia, Vietnam and Thailand.

In May of this year, the International Trade Commission affirmed a ruling by the US Dept of Commerce that imposed steep tariffs on these nations. Tariffs on imported panels from Cambodia range from 650 percent to 3,500 percent; Malaysian tariffs range from 14 percent to 250 percent; Thai tariffs range from 375 percent to 972 percent; and Vietnamese tariffs range from 120 percent to 81 percent.

6-MW floating solar array begins construction in Ohio

D3Energy has officially launched construction on a 6-MW floating solar system for the Village of Monroeville, which is set to become the largest floating solar installation in Ohio and one of the largest in the country.

Spearheaded by the Village of Monroeville and developed in partnership with D3Energy, the system will feed into the village's local distribution grid, delivering energy to homes and businesses throughout the community. Under a long-term PPA, the Village will purchase electricity produced by the system from Gardner Capital, the project's owner.

By using the Village's existing reservoir, the project preserves over 30 acres of land that would otherwise have been required for a traditional ground-mounted system. In addition to land conservation, floating solar offers environmental benefits such as reduced evaporation and improved water quality.

Sodium-ion battery storage startup Peak Energy has announced its first shipment of its storage system that will be used in a shared pilot with nine utility and independent power producers (IPP) later this summer.

The Colorado-based company touts its battery as the first ever fully passive megawatt-hour (MWh) scale battery storage system, the largest sodium-ion phosphate pyrophosphate (NFPP) battery system in the world, and the first grid-scale sodium-ion storage solution deployed to the U.S. grid.

A passive storage system does not require active cooling processes such as fans, pumps, and other moving parts, to prevent the batteries from overheating. Peak Energy claims its 3.5 MWh battery energy storage system (BESS) eliminates over 85 percent of the root causes behind historical BESS failures. According to Peak, their sodium-ion system allows the battery to operate across a wide range of temperatures without requiring cooling systems, which are typically required to prevent overheating in lithium-ion systems.

Performance testing by Peak indicated the sodium-ion systems could reduce auxiliary power use by up to 90 percent, saving approximately $1 million annually per gigawatt-hour installed compared to lithium iron phosphate (LFP) systems and will last longer, cutting battery degradation by 33 percent over a 20-year period.