Local utility Tucson Electric Power will sell between 6-10MW of generation capacity to Ventana Medical Systems under its Bright Tucson Community Solar initiative, which was launched in 2011 for residential and commercial customers to purchase energy from a local solar array in 150kWh blocks.

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The programme has been thriving, with 1,226 residential and 116 non-residential customers enrolled as of January 2017, purchasing a combined 20,771 solar blocks representing a total of 3,115,650kWh per month of energy.

The US community solar market is emerging as a promising source of demand, and has quadrupled between 2015 and 2016 and is set to double in 2017, reaching 400MW, according to the latest figures by GTM Research.

In other news, TEP recently announced plans to expand its wind and solar portfolio to enable it to provide at least 30% of its power from clean energy by 2030, adding around 800MW of new renewable capacity by that year also.

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