North America

Utility Ameren Missouri is planning three grid-scale solar facilities with energy storage, marking what is claimed will be the first ever instance of an energy company in the US Mid-West state powering its customers’ homes with batteries.

Renewables firm BayWa r.e. looks set to bolster its digital technology services offering with the acquisition of Toronto-based PowerHub.

Developer 8minute’s groundbreaking solar project is caught up in a disagreement over the city’s clean energy transition.

The 100-megawatt club is about to get a lot busier. Here are the world’s eight largest battery storage projects.

Scientists at the institution have achieved 21.6% efficiency with a perovskite cell measuring 1cm². The landmark has been verified as a new world record for perovskites at this size.

The tender produced lower bids than previous rounds but again allocated less generation capacity than planned. The Japanese government initially accepted bids for a combined 589.9 MW but ended up assigning only 195.8 MW of capacity. The final average price for procured solar power was $0.1222/kWh.

A new coating developed by scientists at Stanford promises to bring lithium metal batteries ‘closer to reality’, by significantly extending their operational lifetime and limiting the occurrence of dendrites at the anode, which can cause short circuiting and fires.

Mathematicians at Canada’s University of Waterloo who turned their attention to solar power have developed an algorithm they say offers better control over PV plant output. The researchers estimate the algorithm could improve the output of a 100 MW power plant by almost a million kilowatt-hours per year.

The US Solar Fund (USF) has closed on both the acquisition and financing of 100% of the cash equity interests in the 128MW Milford Solar Project, located in Beaver County, Utah.

Fifth Third Bancorp and SunEnergy1 have opened the 120MWdc/80MWac Aulander Holloman Solar Facility in Hertford County, North Carolina. The facility, developed by SunEnergy1, is expected to generate clean power that is more than or equal to the total that Fifth Third uses in a year, which is enough to cut out 143,000 metric tons of greenhouse gases and power 25,000 households.

The pressure building for the US to water down decades-old federal energy policy risks further tilting the scales in utilities’ favour, according to the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA).

Tara Doyle started her career in the solar energy industry more than 15 years ago, and today serves as the chief commercial officer at PVEL, which claims to be one of the first testing laboratories to focus on bankability for the downstream PV buyer community. The lab serves developers, financiers, O&M companies, asset owners, and insurers.

New analysis predicts more than 150 GW of tracker capacity will be installed in the next five years – around a third of all ground mount projects up to 2024. Rapid growth in Europe, the Middle East and Africa; and the better cost structures possible from combining trackers and bifacial modules are singled out as key trends.

Today we have heard of farmers in Australia unhappy at the approval given for three solar projects on agricultural land and also learned the benefits PV can bring for fish and shrimp farmers. In this op-ed for pv magazine USA, Stoel Rives LLP attorneys Sara Bergan and Thomas Braun discuss the balancing act to be made between solar and agriculture in the emerging Midwestern PV market.

While based in Munich in Germany’s south, renewable asset management software provider 3megawatt’s first major clients were in the United States. However, as the European markets have transitioned beyond feed-in tariffs to the complexity of subsidy-free solar and wind arrays, the understanding of the need for asset management tools is rapidly increasing, says 3megawatt founder and CEO Edmee Kelsey.