Bloomberg New Energy Finance chief editor Angus McCrone had a sobering piece last week on the potential impact on renewable energy financial investments in the event of an increase in interest rates by central banks.

This week the kWh Analytics team attended the Intersolar North America Conference, the world’s leading exhibition series for the solar industry and its partners. Along with other industry professionals, Richard Matsui (CEO) and Jason Kaminsky (VP of Partnerships) were honored to be speakers at multiple conference sessions, covering topics such as the bankability of solar and the “billion dollar opportunity” in solar asset management.

With all the recent news about the oil slump, it’s OK to admit times are tough. The biggest immediate challenge is the price per barrel is down – here in California, gasoline costs as much today as it did when I first started driving.

Imagine, for a moment, that you are an investor and somebody is in your office pitching you on magical beanstalks. The magical beanstalk industry is growing, and you have been asked to invest in a plot of land that will be developed into a magical beanstalk farm.

While everyone is talking about Nevada’s recent battles on net metering, few are discussing California’s impending electricity rate reform.

kWh Analytics is proud to announce that we are the recipient of a Department of Energy grant under their Technology to Market funding program.

Last week, we were invited to participate in the Infocast Solar Capital Markets Conference in New York City.

This week we were pleased to participate in Infocast’s Renewable Energy Asset Management Conference in Carlsbad, CA. Jason Kaminsky, our Vice President of Partnerships, moderated a panel entitled Ownership Strategies for the New Breed of Investors.

Investors in rooftop solar companies and portfolios, and lenders to the sector, are using big data to draw useful insights and improve their valuation techniques, creating an opportunity for thoughtful developers to differentiate their operations by skillfully demonstrating transparency into the performance of their assets.

Renewable energy’s share of our overall energy mix is at the highest level in over 70 years — even with the drought-induced decline in Western hydropower output.

With the notable exception of Intersolar North America, it’s surprisingly rare for a major solar conference to be held here in San Francisco. So when Solarplaza extended an invitation for us to speak at its 2nd annual Solar Asset Management conference here in the city, we leapt at the opportunity.

This past week, our CEO Richard Matsui joined 6,000 structured finance professionals in Las Vegas to discuss the latest trends in asset backed securities.

Now that 2014 has come to an end and we’ve seen a preview of what 2015 has in store, we felt it was the right time to put together our projections for the year. We look forward to picking this back up in 2016 and seeing how many of these actually materialized over the course of the year.

We are proud to announce that the Department of Energy is providing kWh Analytics with a $500,000 award to support our mission of using the data to statistically quantify risks in the solar asset class.

We followed with great interest this week as SolarCity unveiled their MyPower residential loan product.

This past Wednesday (10/9), 30 leaders from the solar industry descended upon Washington to attend an invite-only meeting convened by the White House on “Increasing Capital Flows into the Solar Market.”

kWh Analytics CEO Richard Matsui is honored to be joining other solar industry leaders at the White House at an invite-only discussion about the future of the industry on October 8, 2014.

kWh Analytics CEO Richard Matsui joined 3,000 structured finance professionals in Miami to discuss the nascent solar asset class.

In May 2014, the SunShot Initiative held a peer review to receive unbiased expertise from industry, government agencies, nonprofit organizations, utilities, and consultants on the performance of the SunShot Initiative.