Solar Markets & Finance News

Ukraine’s favorite solar module manufacturer has posted another encouraging set of returns, after a difficult year in 2018. And Risen – which boasted 6.6 GW of annual production capacity at the end of last year, according to analysts at PV InfoLink – is committed to adding another 2.5 GW before 2022.

The Algerian Electricity and Gas Regulation Commission has concluded a tender launched in June. The one solar project selected will sell power at DZD8.28/kWh. The authority reportedly only published ceiling prices for energy bids on the day the exercise was completed.

The Balkan nation is planning a tender for 50 MW of utility scale solar capacity on a public-private partnership basis with help from the International Finance Corporation. The World Bank’s private finance arm is procuring a technical, environmental and social consulting firm to advise on the project.

Iberdrola’s record investment into renewables and networks is outperforming expectations, freeing the utility to invest even more creating a “virtuous circle of growth”, the company’s chairman has said.

Energias de Portugal (EDP), through its subsidiary EDP Renewables North America LLC, has acquired a 50% stake in a 278MW US solar portfolio that was developed by First Solar.

The French development agency AFD has signed off on a EUR24.2 million (US$26.9 million) loan for a 49MW solar project in Gia Lai Province, Vietnam, with the country's monopoly utility EVN.

The government of the Philippines will spend $500 million on solar-powered water supply and desalination in remote areas of Mindanao, the second-largest island in the archipelago. Elsewhere, a Finnish study has suggested drought-hit Iran could benefit from renewable-powered desalination.

Where seasonal storage is paramount, hydrogen comes into play. Under-the-radar solar market Sweden has presented its hydrogen projects and technological solutions to overcome the country’s natural solar barriers.

Hopes are high up to 5 GW of residential solar capacity will have been added by the time this month’s figures are added, as the household solar feed-in tariff still applies – but only until Thursday. However, the AECEA consultancy has again revised down its overall new capacity expectation for the year.

SunPower building 35MW project to supply Chevron's Lost Hills Oil Field. Assam tenders for 25MW solar project. Constant Energy partners Sodexo Thailand

Italian asset manager Green Arrow Capital (GAC) has agreed to acquire a 320MW portfolio of renewable energy projects from London-based Quercus Investment Partners for an undisclosed sum.

Japanese trading corporation Mitsui & Co has sold its interest in a 679MW portfolio of operational Canadian wind and solar to Canadian infrastructure management firm Axium.

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.