Commonwealth Edison, an electric utility with operations in the Chicago area, plans to leverage its 130,000-unit network of smart meters to determine how the smart grid of the future will look.

ComEd announced this week that it is planning a five-pronged strategy in its smart grid initiative, dubbed the Smart Grid Innovation Corridor. One component of its study will involve solar photovoltaic equipment; the solar PV test will determine how solar energy affects the ComEd grid and look at the customer benefits of solar power...

Detroit Edison, an electric utility operating in southeast Michigan, is giving new life to some of its old solar panels.

The company installed a solar array in Scio Township, Michigan in 1997. It's retiring the panels used in that installation and replacing them with newer technology - but the retired panels are going to good use...

The California Energy Commission announced this week that it had approved the first loan under its Clean Energy Business Financing Program.

The $5 million loan will go to a firm called Calisolar. It will use the funds to purchase solar-cell production equipment: Calisolar's annual output will go from 60 megawatts today to 75 megawatts when its expansion is complete...

The government of Reno, Nevada is installing 1.3 megawatts of solar power - and, thanks to rebates, subsidies and a long-term energy-procurement deal, it's doing so for free.

The city's utility, NV Energy, is providing some incentive payments; the federal government is providing even more. And Reno will pay over many years for the energy its new solar arrays produce, bringing its net out-of-pocket cost to zero...

The Hilton Hotel at the Baltimore-Washington International Airport is going solar, and it expects to save a significant amount of money in the process.

Distributed Sun, a solar developer operating in the Washington, D.C. area, announced this week that the BWI Hilton had contracted to buy nearly 60 megawatt-hours per year of renewable power. Over the useful life of the array that Distributed Sun is building for the hotel, more than 2 gigawatt-hours of clean energy will be produced...

The town of Oconomowoc, Wisconsin is greening its school bus fleet.

The bus company that serves Oconomowoc's school district now owns 11 plug-in hybrid school buses, Milwaukee's Journal-Sentinel reports. Not only will the buses use electric power to save fuel - they will be juiced up with the help of solar energy. Oconomowoc Transport Co. operates the state's first solar-electric charging station...