UK

The inverter businesses have responded to the letter published by the UK Solar Trade Association which was critical of the former’s products and customer service record.

On August 9, a thunderstorm caused 1.5 GW of generation capacity to go offline within seconds in the U.K. The incident caused millions of households to temporarily lose power but the situation could have been considerably worse if not for the country’s battery storage reserves.

Solar PV has seen a “meteoric rise” over the past decade, with more capacity installed than any other power source, according to a new report by BloombergNEF and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).

The managing director of London-based energy infrastructure company Statera has told pv magazine a clean energy grid in the U.K. will require as much flexible gas plant capacity as battery storage.

Another large scale transaction by the electricity and gas supplier has enhanced its standing in the U.K. energy market, with the business now counting more than one million customers.

The Boys & Girls Club of Manchester has transitioned to solar energy. ReVision Energy installed 408 solar panels this summer on three rooftops, at the Union Street Clubhouse (81.3 kW) in Manchester, New Hampshire, and the Pool House and Stebbins Family Hall buildings at Camp Foster in Bedford (49.3 kW).

One of Europe’s leading utility-scale solar investors has said that the continent’s subsidy-free solar market has “developed rapidly” in recent months.

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.

URE Energy repeatedly missed deadlines to settle a £209,000 bill after it failed to source enough of the electricity it supplied two years ago from renewable generation.

The UK’s post-subsidy large-scale solar pipeline has swelled to more than 5GW after a flurry of activity in the first half of 2019.

Energy analysts from the United Kingdom have found that many of the world’s largest car manufacturers that are launching EVs, or looking to launch EVs, are engaged in an “unprecedented” level of collaboration in order to share the costs and risks inherent in EV development. Cornwall Insight found that the collaboration could see a major boom in supply from the early 2020s.

The costs of residential solar-plus-storage have already dropped or will only take a few years to drop to nation-wide grid averages across key European markets, according to Wood Mackenzie.

U.K. solar developer Lightsource BP plans to host a community information event in the town of Mannum, South Australia, to outline a proposal to fund, build and operate a 100 MW solar project.

Scientists at the U.K.’s Faraday Institution have been able to observe degradation mechanisms at the lithium metal anode in a solid state battery, and made several discoveries which could improve the performance and design of future solid-state lithium-ion batteries.

Spain has an opportunity in its upcoming reform of electricity charging to clear hurdles for self-consumption and electric vehicles (EVs), according to national PV body UNEF.