Europe

Colombia’s still-dormant solar scene is poised for a major boost under a new partnership, bringing together a European and a Latin American player.

Dutch system operator TenneT has announced that it will invest €215 million (US$237 million) to accommodate 2GW of solar and wind capacity towards the country's north.

Batteries that power our smartphones need lithium – an increasingly precious resource. Could Bolivia supply the world?

American John B. Goodenough, Brit Stanley Whittingham and Akira Yoshino, from Japan, have received the Nobel Prize for Chemistry for developing the lithium-ion battery. A statement from the Royal Academy of Sciences of Sweden said the invention “laid the foundations of a society without wires and fossil fuels, and [they] are of great benefit to humanity”.

The new. more ambitious target is part of a climate protection program Berlin is now defining. The solar sector believes, however, 98 GW will not be enough to ensure the country’s energy transition.

The sizeable rooftop array will feature latest-generation inverters. The project planners claim using 1500 V technology on a commercial rooftop allowed them to drive down costs 10-15%.

After turning to clean energy last year, the Spanish oil company plans to deploy 4.5 GW of renewables generation capacity by 2024.

The winners of the eighth round of France’s rooftop PV tender series have drawn lower average prices than peers awarded just four months ago, new results show.

Chancellor Angela Merkel’s coalition is wavering on whether to focus on wind or solar power over the next decade to help Germany cut carbon emissions.

Ambitious proposals have emerged to power a major Angus pharmaceutical plant with electricity from a giant solar farm on land a few miles away.

Although the Wiki-solar website ranking only gives a snapshot of PV project engineering, procurement and construction contracts outside China, it is nevertheless a useful indicator of the changing shape of the global solar market.

The central Italian province of Viterbo has 1,359 MW of solar generation capacity in the development and approvals process. The mass of projects has raised opposition from some locals and developers are in talks with government officials to discuss how concerns can be addressed.

Poland’s fourth largest energy company, Enea, will build a 30 MW solar plant for the Bogdanka coal mine in which the utility is majority shareholder. The project will sell power to the mine through a long-term supply deal.

A group of scientists at Netherlands based research institute AMOLF have discovered a method for electrochemical printing at the nanoscale. With further optimizations, the group theorizes, the technique could allow for the development of new, three dimensional solar cells.

The final average price for power generated by solar systems with a capacity of 100-500 kW came in at €97.48/MWh. The price for 500 kW-8 MW installations was €86.54/MWh. Only the latter category saw a fall in price compared to the previous commercial solar tender.