Europe

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.

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 French energy giant will provide supermarket Tesco with electricity from 17 rooftop PV installations and two wind farms for a renewables portfolio generation capacity of 59 MW. The groceries retailer has announced plans to install 187 solar rooftops.

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.

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

BayWa r.e. has taken two utility-scale floating solar projects to the finish line in the Netherlands, bringing a sizeable installed capacity boost to the segment in Europe.

The Swiss solar equipment maker has already sold its corporate headquarters this week as it aims to generate a fighting fund until the hoped-for returns of a European PV manufacturing renaissance materialize.

The manufacturing facility, idled a few years ago, will produce bifacial modules. The company claims panel efficiency exceeds 20.5% and the factory has an annual production capacity of around 200 MW.

The regulations will come into effect on January 1 and will improve upon the regime introduced in 2014. The new provisions will for the first time provide a legislative framework for energy communities and storage deployment.

The Norwegian power company acquired the projects for around $17.3 million. The transaction indicates interest in large scale solar is on the rise in Ireland and unsubsidized projects are viable.

The Netherlands-administered Caribbean island last year saw almost half its power demand provided by a 4.1 MW solar-plus-storage plant, commissioned in late 2017. The facility generated 6.5 million kWh of the 14.3 million kWh of electricity consumed in the territory in 2018.

The UK’s opposition Labour Party has pledged to almost treble the country’s solar PV capacity, taking it to 35GW by 2030.

The Italian fossil fuel company is not hanging around when it comes to diversifying into PV, with almost 1.5 GW of generation capacity plugged in since the start of last year.

The Chinese manufacturer has officially unveiled its high-efficiency product in Melbourne after celebrating a 13.6 MW panel order from the nascent Hungarian PV market.

The Swiss equipment maker has announced a fresh, CHF18 million order from Oxford PV but the news may have been strategically timed ahead of today’s update that it has completed the sale of its headquarters building.