Solar Markets & Finance News

Renewable energy developer and financing company Empower Energies has joined with investor Hannon Armstrong to build renewable energy projects in the commercial & industrial (C&I), municipal, university, school and hospital markets across the United States.

The regulator received 26 proposals overall for a project intended to make the kingdom less dependent on power imports from troubled South African utility Eskom.

Canadian business Caledonia Mining Corporation plc wants to build a power plant at its Blanket mine near Gwanda, in southern Zimbabwe.

The factory, backed by the Turkish government in September, was originally intended to be built with the support of Korean solar manufacturer Hanwha Q Cells. The new partner is China Electronics Technology Group Corporation (CETC). Production is planned to start next year.

PV manufacturers receive 10% of the value of their exported products as an incentive and the nation’s central bank has extended the program to cover this financial year. Bangladesh’s solar manufacturers have called for more, however, and point to more generous schemes to the west.

According to official figures released by China’s National Energy Administration, new solar capacity installations in the third quarter of 2019 slumped to only 4.6GW under new support mechanisms that were implemented mid-year.

Luminous Energy has commenced connection works on its 162MWac solar farm in Australia, with the developer eyeing up 1.2GW of works across multiple markets.

Dominion Energy has acquired a 72MW PV project from First Solar that is expected to enter service in late 2019. The installation will provide power and renewable energy attributes under a Dominion Energy South Carolina contract that was previously filed and accepted in South Carolina.

After several years of stagnation, Spain has started to see a revival in its PV market, writes IHS Markit’s Maria Chea. The country’s newfound growth has been due to a combination of tender and private PPA projects, along with decreasing component costs.

The South African utility has issued a 20-strong tender for 50 kW solar inverters and mounting structures, to be used in four power plants. Although it is unclear whether the tender marks the energy company’s first step into solar energy, the procurement follows the recent publication of South Africa’s Integrated Resource Plan. Eskom is reportedly developing a renewables-linked large scale storage project which may explain the need for inverters.

U.S. oil major Chevron did not respond to pv magazine’s questions. Exxon Mobil and BP did not produce figures for their clean energy investment activity and Total responded only with its ‘low carbon electricity’ spending. Shell stated it had invested €1.6 billion in clean energy from late 2016 up to June.

The facility will be developed under the World Bank’s Scaling Solar initiative on a public-private partnership basis in Herat province.

Leading US solar developer 8minute Solar Energy is to collaborate with Doosan GridTech to use advanced, predictive software controls to dispatch energy from solar-plus-storage plant in California.

Nordic renewables giant Statkraft has confirmed its entry into Ireland’s nascent solar power market, acquiring nine solar projects in the country.

One of the largest solar arrays in Vermont has a new owner.