USA

Bank OZK announced plans for a significant investment for the construction of a solar power plant which will provide enough renewable energy to power its new corporate headquarters and up to 40 other Arkansas locations, according to Tim Hicks, chief administrative officer and executive director of Investor Relations.

The Arizona Corporation Commission (ACC) voted to reject a request from the state’s investor-owned utilities to set two-year contract terms for renewable energy projects under the federal Public Utility Regulatory Policies Act (PURPA). Instead, commissioners voted unanimously to set contract terms at 18 years, providing renewable energy developers the financial certainty they need to develop new clean energy projects in the state.

Global solar O&M provider Belectric has been awarded a 10-year service contract for more than 20 MW of projects across the United States.

Florida Municipal Power Agency (FMPA), in partnership with 12 municipal electric utilities and Origis Energy, announced plans to expand the Florida Municipal Solar Project by adding 149 megawatts to what was already one of the largest municipal-backed solar projects in the nation.

Greenbacker Renewable Energy has reached an agreement with Prism Power Partners to obtain Electric City Solar, a 19-MW construction-ready solar project in Michigan using a 25-year municipal offtake agreement. The transaction marks yet another successful purchase of a contracted utility-scale solar endeavor for Greenbacker.

Hormel Foods Corporation and IGS Solar have declared the completion of the solar energy project in the Hormel Foods Swiss American Sausage Company facility in Lathrop, California. The completion was celebrated in a Flip the Switch Event at the production facility, which produces an assortment of pepperoni and salami for foodservice pizza toppings.

Elon Musk is talking, again, about his idea to turn 10,000 square miles in the U.S. desert into a solar farm that can power the entire nation.

A scientific group from two U.S.-based universities has discovered how to transfer the energy between the molecules of silicon and organic material. So far, this phenomenon was only theoretical. The discovery has vast prospects for medical, solar power, and quantum computing applications.

A group of researchers from Rice University of Texas have found out that introducing antisite defects into lithium iron phosphate lattice makes the roads for lithium ion broader.

According to a new study by Finland’s LUT University, solar PV consumes between 2% and 15% of the water that coal and nuclear power plants use to produce just 1 MWh of output; for wind, this percentage ranges from 0.1% to 14%. Under the researchers’ best policy scenario, water consumption could be reduced by 75.1% by 2030, compared to 2015 levels.

Ada, an AI-driven robot, searches for new solar cell designs at the University of British Columbia.

NREL has released a paper showing an experimental solar cell, using a unique method for wiring two different solar cells to a single, that raised the cell's efficiency by 4 percent. As well the document provides a respectable review of different technologies being developed.

Innovative Solar Systems offers 2 Texas-based utility-scale solar projects for immediate acquisition. The first array is located in Fisher County and has a generation capacity of 125 megawatts. The second project with a 300-megawatt capacity is in Jones County.

RP Construction Services, a Californian solar developer and installer, has completed over 1 gigawatt of photovoltaic projects.

It wasn’t as easy as flipping a switch but, when Colorado Springs Utilities (CSU) brought it’s newest and largest solar panel field online, it quadrupled how much energy it generates from the sun.