CHARLOTTE – Duke Energy, one of the largest energy holding companies in the U.S., said it reached a pair of “milestone” agreements that will spur its solar power growth in the Carolinas following months of disputes with solar developers, the energy giant says.

North Carolina already is the No. 2 state for producing solar power, trailing only California.

In the release, Duke Energy said it reached an agreement with most of the major solar industry developers and organizations in North Carolina and South Carolina to resolve several long-standing formal and informal interconnection disputes. According to the press release, the parties also agreed to a “defined process and timeline which a substantial additional amount of solar generation will be interconnected to the Duke Energy distribution system.”

The company added that it expects to finish “solar projects totaling several hundred megawatts (MW)” in 2021 and 2022.

A notice has been filed with the N.C. Utilities Commission and the Public Service Commission of S.C. for approval necessary to implement the agreement.

Elsewhere, the company said it reached a resolution with the North Carolina Energy Business Alliance and the North Carolina Sustainable Energy Association to clear out the lengthy queue of solar projects waiting to be built in the Carolinas.

Commonly referred to as “queue reform,” this new interconnection process will analyze requests in a series of clusters reducing the time it takes to study the grid impacts of solar projects leading to faster interconnection.

Implementation of queue reform will require approval also by the NCUC, SCPSC and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.

“These agreements continue to advance renewable energy in the Carolinas,” Duke Energy’s North Carolina president Stephen De May said in a statement.

He added: “Collaborative engagement was key to taking this important step forward.”

Shares of Duke (DUK) slipped 37 cents to last trade near $82.21 on Thursday.

The full filing is available here.

This story is from the North Carolina Business News Wire, a service of UNC-Chapel Hill’s Hussman School of Journalism and Media