IKEA has powered up the solar energy system installed at its store in Portland, Ore. The 62,500-square-foot solar photovoltaic (PV) array is a 497.3-kW system, built with 2,072 panels. IKEA Portland’s system will produce approximately 568,900 kWh of clean electricity annually.

U.S. Bancorp and SolarCity have announced the creation of a renewable energy tax equity fund that will help to initiate the first phase of project SolarStrong, SolarCity’s five-year, nationwide initiative to provide existing privatized military housing with access to affordable solar power.

The campus of Lawrenceville School, a centuries-old boarding school in Lawrenceville, N.J., is now home to 6.1 megawatts of solar panels from SolarWorld. The photovoltaic system, ground-mounted on 30 acres of school-owned farm land, is believed to be the largest installed at a United States primary or secondary school.

McCormick & Company Inc. and Constellation Energy, a business unit of Exelon, have announced that McCormick’s 363,000-square-foot distribution center in Belcamp, Md., now generates more electricity than it uses though the implementation of energy efficiency and solar power.

The Monterey County Office of Education (MCOE), along with Chevron Energy Solutions, unveiled a new solar power and energy efficiency project that is expected to reduce MCOE’s overall energy demand by as much as 75 percent while yielding an expected savings of $2.2 million during the first 25 years of the project.

Despite the difficult market environment for the solar industry as a whole, the opportunity for building integrated photovoltaics (BIPV) looks extremely promising, according to a new report from Pike Research, a part of Navigant’s Energy Practice.

The U.S. solar industry notched its second-best quarter in history, installing 742 megawatts of solar power in the second quarter of 2012, according to a report from the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA).

Solar3D Inc., developer of a new three-dimensional solar cell technology to maximize conversion of sunlight into electricity, has announced the successful fabrication and operation of a working three-dimensional solar cell that the company says produces at least 250 percent of the power of a basic silicon solar cell.

According to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), about three in four residential buildings have physical restrictions to going solar. However, things are changing, and in the last several years or so, “shared solar” has started to take root in many states across the country. What exactly is shared solar?

The Catholic University of America (CUA) dedicated the largest solar photovoltaic (PV) panel system in Washington, D.C., featuring more than 2,600 solar panels designed to generate in excess of 830,000 kilowatt-hours of clean electricity per year, including a canopy of 714 panels over more than 70 parking spaces.