North America

In the early years of the 21st century, distributed generation systems in Latin America were mainly installed off-grid in remote rural areas, writes Maria Chea, solar analyst at IHS Markit. As the El Niño phenomenon and high oil prices continued to exacerbate high electricity prices and power shortages, governments began to turn their attention to distributed generation, including PV systems, to assuage strains on their national grid networks.

Two subscribers who signed up to a 20% discounted shares subscription in mid June ended up yesterday paying almost the same percentage as a premium on the trading price of the stock.

Elon Musk is trying just about everything to reimagine the solar business. But will this one work?

US renewables giant Invenergy discussed its plans to develop an 127MW solar project in southwest Colorado at a county meeting in early August.

17TeraWatts announced the launch of Bodhi, a digital assistant for solar homeowners. Bodhi helps solar companies engage their homeowners to generate more referrals and follow-on sales.

Solar Module Super League’ (SMSL) member, Canadian Solar plans to increase module assembly capacity to 12,220MW in 2019, an increase of 1,000MW on strong demand.

Brookfield Asset Management is reported to be considering merging its own TerraForm Power business with the U.S. wind operator.

Global retail brand Gap moved one step closer to its goal of fully renewably-powered operations by 2030 after signing a power purchase agreement (PPA) with Enel Green Power North America. It has purchased 90MW of energy from the renewables giant's North Dakota wind project for a period of 12 years.

Scientists at the Australia National University have observed a key stage in the process of photosynthesis which could be copied to greatly increase the efficiency of sunlight-powered water splitting processes used to produce hydrogen.

Researchers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst’s College of Information and Computer Sciences (CICS) have developed a method for automatically assessing rooftops for solar potential.

Sixteen members of Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems (UAMPS) are further decarbonizing their energy portfolios by adding solar electricity from a new project in southeastern Utah.

Apex Clean Energy Inc. has selected Power Factors LLC, an independent software and services provider for renewable energy, to provide a technical asset management platform.

The Swiss battery maker Leclanché will build a 35.6 MW / 44.2 MWh solar-plus-storage power plant, which will provide with clean power state-owned St.Kitts electric utility Skelec over a 20-year period. The new facility will be able to cover around a fourth of the archipelago’s total electricity demand.

Chinese thin film producer Hanergy has set a new record of 24.85% module efficiency for silicon heterojunction technology. The record was achieved at the company’s research & development center in Chengdu, China, and has been confirmed by the Institute for Solar Energy Research in Hamelin, Germany.

US residential solar installer Vivint has secured a US$325 million revolving warehouse facility to refinance existing debt.