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Winter is here and many parts of the country have already seen snow. Although at first blush it may seem that solar power is ideal for the summer, solar panels actually produce useful power throughout all four seasons — including when they're covered in snow.

More accurate solar forecasting — day-ahead predictions of solar energy generation levels — could save American ratepayers millions of dollars. But it’s hard to predict the future, so new SunShot Initiative funding and research is working to fix that.

For the first time ever, the latest edition of the Tracking the Sun report is publicly sharing the data used in the report analysis, which is a win-win for both solar companies and solar customers.

Solar power is now more affordable in the United States than at any other point in history, and new analysis shows it has the potential to gain popularity in low- and moderate-income communities across the country.

The Energy Department’s SunShot Initiative is taking new steps to reduce solar energy costs. Social sciences research is helping to explore the forces behind solar adoption in the United States.

Engineers at Idaho National Lab and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory helped build the world’s first triple hybrid renewable energy plant. It combines geothermal power, solar panels and concentrating solar power into one reliable energy source.

Every second that ticks by, six solar cells come off U.S. manufacturing lines that contain crystalline silicon. In 10 years, the Energy Department’s SunShot Initiative expects nearly three-times that amount to be racing across the lines, helping to make America a leader in high-tech solar manufacturing.

As the recently released Revolution..Now report details, the declining cost of solar power has enabled a massive increase in the amount of solar capacity installed in America. The next step is ensuring the nation's electric grid is ready for a solar-powered future.

How wind, solar, LEDs and electric vehicles are leading the way in America's clean energy revolution, visualized in six simple charts.

Our SunShot Initiative is funding important research into how to get more power out of solar panels by improving their durability, efficiency and performance in real-world conditions.

The software space is a growing market for small startups to thrive in the solar industry. These companies help to address crucial information gaps for data that solar project developers need to find a suitable location and for utilities to run interconnection studies.

Earlier this year, the solar industry passed a key milestone: 1 million solar installations are connected to the nation’s electricity grid. Now, we’re looking forward to 2 million solar installations—a record that is expected to be reached in 2018. This large influx of solar, which is by nature an intermittent energy source, creates unique challenges for our country’s more than 3,000 electric utility companies.

The SunShot Initiative welcomes Dr. Charlie Gay, the program’s new director, a solar industry pioneer who has witnessed its rise from a niche technology that powered microwave repeaters on isolated mountaintops to the robust business it is today.

Over the past 50 years, the Energy Department's national laboratories have played a major role in the advancement of solar energy technology. That’s why SunShot created the SunShot National Laboratory Multiyear Partnership funding program, which awards funding to national labs to continue addressing the most critical barriers that remain to achieving our SunShot goals.

The Department of Energy’s SunShot Initiative funds cutting-edge science that helps dramatically reduce the cost of solar energy. Drawn from diverse inspiration in the optical and medical fields, and featuring one with new uses for sound waves, these newly announced SunShot research and development projects may hold the key to low-cost solar energy.

After you’ve made the decision to go solar, the next step is figuring out how to pay for it. Assuming you don’t have the cash to buy your solar energy system upfront, like the vast majority of Americans, there are a variety of financing options to help you hitch onto the solar bandwagon and start increasing the value of your home.

Solar homes are being sold across the country, but they can be hard to find and compare. Teams from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and Elevate Energy are working to ensure that solar is properly represented in multiple listing services, the searchable databases used by real estate professionals and house hunters.

The amount of solar connected to the grid has grown exponentially in the past several years, and with all of this interest and so much information available, let’s take a moment to separate fact from fiction. The SunShot Initiative has debunked the top 5 myths about residential solar.

Recent research shows that adding solar to your home — much like renovating the kitchen or finishing the basement — can boost your home's value and resulting home sale price.

The utility sector is going through a rapid transformation as more renewables come online and more Americans choose to go solar. Adding large quantities of distributed energy onto the grid requires the workforce to acquire new knowledge and skills, which SunShot is enabling through its GEARED program.

Dormitory mini fridges, dishwashers in dining halls, and campus computer labs are just a few of the things that can create large utility bills for colleges and universities across the country. The SunShot Initiative is working to make it easier for college campuses to use solar energy to help ease the financial burden of around-the-clock operation.

The SunShot Initiative’s new systems integration program manager, Dr. Guohui Yuan, maintains a steadfast commitment to add more solar energy onto the nation’s electrical grid while always striving to achieve the office’s broader goals. “Because of my physics background I always look at problems at the system level — not just the issue, but the big picture,” he says.

Counting down our list of top things you didn't know about solar energy -- read on for more on the most abundant energy resource known to mankind.

If a utility pole falls in a forest and no energy company employee is around to hear it, does it make a sound? Currently, the answer is no. The Energy Department’s SunShot Initiative is trying to fix this problem to alleviate issues for both utilities and their customers.

Halfway through the Energy Department’s decade-long SunShot Initiative, today we released a series of reports showing how the solar industry has progressed in the past five years, while looking forward to the challenges and opportunities it now faces. The On the Path to SunShot study series, developed with our national labs, examines the state of the solar industry, which has grown significantly in the last five years and is 70% of the way toward our goal to make solar fully cost-competitive with traditional forms of energy without incentives.