8. December 2012: Solar Power World’s Inaugural Top 100 Solar Contractors List

Yeah, we went there. Our December issue asked our solar contractor readers to apply to be part of the first Solar Power World Top 100 Solar Contractors list, and the industry responded overwhelmingly positively to our efforts. The issue printed not only the Top 100 list, but insights from the Top 5 in each category: residential, commercial and utility. If you want to know something about solar contractors in the United States, this was the issue for you.

Oh, and Peter Lynch from the Principal Solar Institute made another appearance, asking the question that we at Solar Power World have asked for months: since feed-in-tariffs have been so wildly successful everywhere in the world they’ve been tried, why on earth can’t the United States make use of them to encourage solar development?

December also marked the debut of Matt Claney as an associate graphic artist, who did this great layout of a REFUsol (now Advanced Energy) article on power generation in mixed rooftop/solar carport installations.

And if you had never heard of the Solar Marketing Group, we introduced them to you with our new marketing column, written by the irrepressible Carter Lavin. The first one focused on how installers can become their own best policy advocates, with not a large investment of time or money.