SunPower

The Total Solar International PV unit of the French oil giant has started construction of a large scale plant in Osato, in the prefecture of Miyagi, Japan. With its third solar project in Japan, Total will reach 100 MW of installed generation capacity in less than two years.

Japan risks saddling its citizens with an inefficient, economically obsolete power fleet if it doesn’t rethink its current plans for a large-scale roll-out of new coal, experts have warned.

U.S. manufacturers First Solar and SunPower could be among the winners following the announcement that the Trump administration will impose a 25% tariff on bifacial panels, although analysts warned that the new tariffs could be an overall negative for the industry.

The US government has extended its solar import tariffs to bifacial modules, in a policy u-turn set to partially redraw the global trade flows of the fast maturing technology.

The project is in Giuncaggio, in the northeastern part of the French island, and was built with Tesla Powerpack batteries, a Nidec power management system and a new power management device from the project’s developer Corsica Sole.

US solar firm SunPower is to deploy 3.7MW of solar carports across 10 locations in Contra Costa County, California, with some of the sites using energy storage.

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

Goldman Sachs Renewable Power, a subsidiary of the investment banking giant, has reached an equity pool of $4 billion, which will serve to expand on the hundreds of megawatts in portfolios the company has acquired in the last 12 months alone.

On the first day of this year’s EU PVSEC conference, veteran solar researcher Pierre J Verlinden won the Becquerel Prize for Outstanding Merits in Photovoltaics. The award recognized more than 40 years as a leading PV researcher in academia and at leading companies including Sunpower and Trina Solar. Its recipient spoke to pv magazine about what is needed from solar to stave off catastrophic climate change.

SunPower has launched a web application that can design rooftop solar projects in seconds. SunPower’s Design Studio combines SunPowers’s Instant Design technology, Google Cloud and Google Sunroof to deliver customizable residential solar designs that take into account roof size, shading and energy potential. Homeowners can modify their design based on their energy needs, resulting in more accurate predictions of electricity bill and energy savings.

London-based renewables investor Actis has raised US$1.23 billion for a new investment fund destined for existing infrastructure assets in emerging markets, starting with its own 100MW PV plant in Chile.

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.

Leading microinverter supplier, Enphase Energy shipped over 1.2 million units in the second quarter of 2019, with its latest IQ 7 model accounting for around 98% of shipment total.

Elon Musk’s EV and energy company is becoming increasingly irrelevant in the rooftop solar market, but battery sales are booming.