Asia

Investors are afraid of solar energy right now, but the long-term prospects of the industry are improving.

Sunseap Group has won the tender for one of Singapore’s largest solar projects. The SolarNova 4 project will require the installation of more than 170,000 solar panels on rooftops of Housing & Development Board (HDB) blocks.

Chinese state-owned PV manufacturer Jetion Solar says it has signed a deal with Italian government-owned oil and gas major Eni to develop a slew of new solar projects across five regions in the next three years in a deal worth €2 billion.

Scientists from NUST MISIS (Russia) and University of Rome Tor Vergata found out that a microscopic quantity of two-dimensional titanium carbide called MXene significantly improves collection of electrical charges in a perovskite solar cell, increasing the final efficiency above 20%. The results of the research were published in Nature Materials on September 9, 2019.

The government was forced to hold a tender for the 200 MW Cirata Dam scheme after originally awarding the deal to UAE developer Masdar. With August 19 named as the date to announce the auction results, nobody is any the wiser as yet.

Residents of the Verde Para Sempre extractivist reserve in the Brazilian Amazon protested as loudly as they could about the Tucuruí transmission line.

The nation’s plan for grid-parity solar – brought forward to ease a mounting public PV subsidy debt burden – could be left in ruins by a newly-announced scheme to part liberalize the electricity price, itself motivated by a need to bail out financially stricken state-owned power companies.

The exercise, conducted on Longi PERC bifacial modules by Germany’s TÜV SÜD at a test field in China, showed surprisingly higher gains in panels getting light reflection from painted-surface and grassland albedo. It also showed, Longi claimed, bifacial panels operate at lower temperatures than single-sided alternatives.

Saudi Arabia is expanding the reach of its 105 billion riyal (US$28 billion) industrial fund to spur renewables through loans to component manufacturers, to independent power projects and to projects spearheaded by firms in other industries.

Solar power installations out in the open are a common sight in many parts of the world, but how about household solar generators? A team of Swedish and Chinese scientists recently reported this might become part of our future after they successfully converted indoor light to electricity using organic photovoltaic cells.

Farmers who want to sell electricity to utilities generally lease land to power companies to build the panels.

Global experts are set to gather in Taipei in less than a month to take stock of the island’s strengths and challenges as it embarks on a multi-gigawatt renewable transformation by 2025.

De Raj Group and STC Energy have struck a deal to deploy an 88.371MW solar portfolio near Kiev, in a bid to capitalise on Ukraine’s feed-in tariff (FiT) scheme.

The plant—commissioned for Damodar Valley Corporation—will power six buildings at the headquarters of Ramakrishna Math and Ramakrishna Mission.

The authorities expect to add 300 MW of rooftop solar in the next four years thanks to net metering regulations and hope the nation’s extensive clothing and textile industry will be encouraged to adopt PV.