News

First Solar reported a bumper quarter during Q2 by most metrics. The company’s net sales of $585 million were nearly double the previous year, on shipments 1.4 GW of product – the most in its history. Additionally, First Solar booked more than 2.1 GW of orders in July alone, a very positive start to Q3.

Jair Bolsonaro has given the green light to a new solar scheme in Brazil’s northeast, marking its launch as he attended the opening of a separate floating project.

Energy provider New Jersey Resources (NJR) is selling US$150 million of green bonds to finance six commercial solar plants with a combined capacity of 50MW.

Major China-based polysilicon producer, Xinte Energy has signalled a significant decline in expected profits for the first half of 2019, due to polysilicon ASPs declining 43% from the prior year period.

A major ground-mounted PV auction in France is set to boost the country’s solar capacity by 10%, with 107 developers successfully bidding on 858MW of capacity spread evenly across the country.

Solar has emerged as the overall cheapest technology in Argentina’s latest clean energy tender, aimed at smaller-scale installations.

The cancellation of an 80-megawatt project with no financial penalty raises questions about a monopoly utility competing against private developers.

Supported by an innovative portfolio contract with its power purchasers, Ormat Technologies has now started commercial operations of its innovative hybrid solar-geothermal power plant at Tungsten Mountain, Nevada.

New textile-based solar cells developed by Fraunhofer researchers, semitrailers could soon be producing the electricity needed to power cooling systems or other onboard equipment. In short, textile-based solar cells could soon be adding a whole new dimension to photovoltaics, complementing the use of conventional silicon-based solar cells.

Researchers at Siberian Federal University, together with colleagues from the Royal Institute of Technology (Stockholm, Sweden), discovered new properties of material based on palladium, which can increase the performance of solar cells.

The €29.7 million financing package was awarded by Banco Sabadell. Renovalia’s 79.2 MW solar park will be Spain’s first PV facility to sell all of its output on the spot market.

U.K. solar developer Lightsource BP plans to host a community information event in the town of Mannum, South Australia, to outline a proposal to fund, build and operate a 100 MW solar project.

French floating PV specialist Ciel&Terre is teaming up with SCG, an Asian petrochemical company, to develop floating solar plants at hydroelectric dams in Thailand.

Scientists at the U.K.’s Faraday Institution have been able to observe degradation mechanisms at the lithium metal anode in a solid state battery, and made several discoveries which could improve the performance and design of future solid-state lithium-ion batteries.

The Shapoorji Pallonji Group’s solar EPC business will hit the capital markets with an initial public offering on Aug. 6.