This historic revision of building energy codes ensures a large investment in residential rooftop solar and energy efficiency as California pursues its mandate of getting 50% of its energy from renewables by 2030.

“The combination of rooftop solar and the option to add energy storage systems as an efficiency compliance credit provides builders with an attractive, cost-effective option to fully electrify homes,” Abigail Ross Hopper, president and CEO of the Solar Energy Industries Association, said in a statement. SEIA worked with the commission for more than two years to develop the new standards.

Already, the news has been a boon for solar developers such as Sunrun, Vivint Solar and First Solar. Bloomberg reported a surge in the stock of solar companies after the commission’s decision.

In a prior boost for solar, the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) had approved its net metering 2.0 rate design in January 2016, to the chagrin of the state’s investor-owned utilities. Utilities asserted that the net metered distributed generation from California’s electricity consumers shifted the costs for the system’s maintenance and infrastructure onto non-distributed generation owners.

Research from analysts at ClearView singled out Wednesday’s distributed solar mandate as a possible opening for utilities to argue that California regulators should reconsider the net metering reform proposal.

Utilities that objected to the new rate-design “could contend that the introduction of mandated distributed solar sufficiently alters the policy landscape to warrant further review of the compensation levels paid to excess generation,” ClearView said in their report, published ahead of the energy commission’s decision.

The updated codes also include new incentives for energy storage: integrating storage in new homes would lower the required size for solar systems. The state has been a leader in incentivizing energy storage. In January, the CPUC moved to allow multiple revenue streams for energy storage, such as spinning reserve services and frequency regulation.

SolarEdge reported record revenues and profitability for the first quarter of 2018 on Wednesday — along with plans to move into markets beyond solar power optimization.

On the energy storage front, SolarEdge announced an $11.5 million acquisition of Gamatronic Electronic Industries Ltd., an uninterruptible power supply (UPS) systems provider for commercial and industrial businesses around the world. CEO Guy Sella noted that the acquisition is the second major step for the company outside the solar arena, the first being last year’s launch of inverter-embedded electric vehicle charging systems.

Another came last week, with SolarEdge’s launch of a cloud-based virtual power plant management system, one that could turn its fleet of solar optimizers and inverters into nodes of a distributed energy resource control platform.

Last week’s launch marks the debut of a system that’s already controlling homes in projects in three countries, said Lior Handelsman, co-founder and vice president of marketing and product strategy, in a Monday interview.

In Vermont, utility Green Mountain Power is tapping SolarEdge’s capabilities to manage a small but growing fleet of smart homes equipped with Tesla Powerwall batteries, grid-controllable water heaters, Nest thermostats, and smart EV chargers, he said. In the Netherlands, utility Eneco is using the company’s platform for its CrowdNett home battery offering.

In Australia, utility AGL picked SolarEdge, along with Tesla and LG, to roll out its long-awaited residential VPP project, said Handelsman.

These projects are all using SolarEdge’s inverters as the home’s central control point for solar panels, batteries and electric vehicle chargers — constantly updating battery status, solar power output status, household load and other key data, he said. But they also serve as the end node for a cloud-based platform that orchestrates their operation in aggregate.

Iowa-based Ideal Energy is designing and building a 1.1 MW project at the Maharishi University of Management (MUM) in Fairfield, Iowa, using the NEXTracker NX Flow integrated solar-plus-storage system.

The project, built on five acres of university land, will produce enough energy to cover nearly one-third of the school’s annual electricity usage. In addition to those savings, the 1 MWh battery storage system will reduce the demand charge portion of MUM’s utility bill by around one-third, says Ideal Energy.

The NX Flow energy storage system integrates battery, solar tracker, inverter and software technologies to improve return on investment for owners of solar plants. At the core of the system is an advanced vanadium flow battery, which is DC-coupled with the photovoltaic array. With NX Flow, the battery charges directly off the array, enabling the battery to store “clipped” energy up to its capacity limit. Energy that has been lost to clipping can be used to generate additional kilowatt-hours of revenue, explains NEXTracker.

Ideal Energy will also be installing NEXTracker’s smart solar tracker, NX Horizon, for decentralized active tracking. Each row of solar panels has its own motor and sensors and integrates with smart control software to independently find the best angle for maximum electricity production.

“NX Flow’s solar-plus-storage solution for Maharishi University of Management will make it a benchmark for advanced energy in Iowa,” comments Alex Au, chief technology officer of NEXTracker. “NEXTracker looks forward to pairing more storage solutions with the leading solar plant installation expertise of Ideal Energy and partnering with utilities for win-win solutions. Together, we can help drive the fast growth trajectory of the Midwestern market for advanced renewable energy solutions. We’re also pleased to help lessen the demand charges and utility bills faced by customers in Iowa.”

Tesla has continued to grow its energy storage business, but is also seeing a continued slide in slow solar power deployments per its First Quarter 2018 update.

The company appears to be on target to triple its 2017 energy storage deployment volume of 410 MW. The company is also optimistic about its solar business, and the company’e quarterly letter to shareholders says that Tesla expects to “experience mild growth for another quarter or two before our revised sales strategy starts to show its full impact in final deployments”.

At one point in yesterday’s investor call, Elon Musk also suggested that a gigawatt sized energy storage system will be announced within the next few months.

But despite Tesla’s rosy view, we’re still seeing solar power deployments fall. The 76 MW installed in Q1 is Tesla/SolarCity’s lowest level since the 78 MW deployed in Q3 2013. The last twelve months saw approximately 448 MW of solar power installed – also a low since 2014, when 429 MW was deployed.

The Buffalo Gigafactory was not mentioned, nor were Solar Roofs talked about on the investor call, as most attention was on the Model 3 ramp. The investor letter does, multiple times, reference the second half of 2018 being an important time for solar power to scale.

The company noted that a ‘significant part’ of its customer base is holding off on installing their residential solar power systems, until they can install a PowerWall alongside their solar. This aligns with market research suggesting 74% of solar power customers are interested in energy storage, but also Tesla’s emphasis on energy storage.

Tesla has also continued to push away from the solar leasing business, with cash and loan system sales making up 66% of residential deployments in the quarter, an increase from 31% in Q1 2017 and 9% in Q1 2016. Those percentages mean cash and loan sales were 50 MW of total solar, leaving under 26 MW of solar leasing in the quarter.

But in contrast with the lull in solar deployment, energy storage is on a definite upswing.

Nevada law has included net metering provisions for more than 20 years. Net metering is an arrangement that allows energy generated by a customer’s leased or purchased solar system to offset monthly power bills. It also permits excess energy supplied to the grid to earn credits, which are then automatically applied to future billing periods in which more energy is consumed than produced.

Historically, net metering was a one-for-one transaction in Nevada. For every kWh supplied to the grid, a credit was given to the customer for one kWh in the future. The scheme changed in 2015 when the Nevada Public Utilities Commission (PUC) created a laddered approach that ratcheted down the value of customer-generated energy over a period of years to about 2¢/kWh, which was much less than the retail rate of about 11¢/kWh. The change effectively stopped all construction on new residential rooftop solar systems.

Through Assembly Bill 405 (AB 405), the Nevada Legislature modified the net metering rate structure effective June 15, 2017. The bill allows Nevadans who choose to net meter to fall under a rate structure codified in the law. The rate structure applies to renewable energy systems of 25 kW or less, which is typical of a rooftop solar system installed on a home or small business. The net metering rate structure is tiered and will decrease over time as the amount of electricity produced by net metering systems reaches 80-MW benchmarks.

The first tier offers a net metering rate that is 95% of the retail rate. As of April 26, 2018, nearly 20 MW of installed capacity had been applied toward the first 80-MW tier. The net metering rate for the second tier is 88% of the retail rate, with tiers three and four crediting 81% and 75%, respectively.

Furthermore, on March 14, 2018, the PUC approved numerous new time-variant rates pursuant to AB 405. The rates are designed to incentivize the use of battery storage at residential and small commercial sites. Under the new structure, utility customers with battery storage are allowed to shift their grid usage to times when energy is less costly. The result is a reduced load on the system during peak times coupled with energy savings for the customer. The development provides a natural incentive for customers to deploy behind-the-meter battery storage.