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Some of the nation’s largest electric utilities are calling on Congress to provide uniform rules for clean energy to help them meet self-established goals for reducing carbon emissions.

Down a gravel road close to what constitutes downtown Slovan in rural Washington County, roughly 3,500 solar panels stand in a field of green grass, their blue-hued faces tilted toward the sun.

The development, one of the largest solar farms in Western Pennsylvania, spans 4.5 acres and can power about 750 homes. It’s just a small part of a national trend infiltrating the Pennsylvania landscape.

Solar will soon be able to out-compete gas-fired plants around the world on a levelized cost basis*. That doesn’t mean it will be any easier to make a living in the solar business.

“By 2023, we think solar’s going to be cheaper than gas almost everywhere around the world,” Tom Heggarty, senior solar analyst for Wood Mackenzie Power & Renewables, said Tuesday at GTM Solar Summit in Phoenix.

Exelon Generation on Wednesday acknowledged that a proposed $500 million Pennsylvania nuclear rescue had failed to win sufficient support for passage and said that the company will move forward, as promised, to shut down its money-losing Three Mile Island reactor this fall.