USA

A group of ten bipartisan senators such as Marco Rubio (R-FL), Susan Collins (R-ME) and Joe Manchin (D-WV) sent a letter to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), calling on it to take action to fight the national security threat introduced by Huawei's entrance to the U.S. solar sector.

A sizeable batch of DC Solar stock is to go under the hammer this week in a bid to liquidate assets from the now-defunct Californian PV firm, undone by a high-profile FBI investigation.

BlackRock, the global biggest fund managing company, has closed 1bn USD of a 2.5bn USD fund aimed at wind, solar and storage. However, this is only a small part of the financial giant’s 6.96tn USD balance and nothing in comparison with 17.5bn invested in coal projects.

Crystal Springs Resort has started commercial operations of the biggest resort-based solar farm in the Northeastern United States. Developed in partnership with New Jersey-based Marina Energy, the 25-acre, 3.5-MW solar area has over 19,000 solar panels.

New England solar installer Key Solar has finished a 3-MW solar venture for a UPS hub in Chelmsford, Massachusetts.

Huntsinger Farms, the world’s largest grower and processor of horseradish and the parent company of Silver Spring Foods, has won a $28,902.60 Focus on Energy grant to subsidize a new solar power installation on its Eau Claire, Wisconsin farm. Carlson Electric of Hudson will install the solar farm in Spring 2020.

Rooftop solar, energy storage and other less-mainstream green energy technologies are among the targets of a new colossal renewable fund, the creation of the world’s largest asset manager.

Nevada utility NV Energy has secured approval from the state’s public utility commission for a solar-plus-storage push that could see 1,190MW of PV capacity installed in southern Nevada by January 2024 alongside 590MW of energy storage.

Spanish-Japanese renewables company Univergy International has established a new subsidiary, Univergy Polska SP, in the Polish city of Sopot in order to help develop a five-project PV pipeline.

The recent study has shown that metal chalcogenide perovskite materials may be utilized for conversion of heat energy into consumable electrical power. These compounds, suitable for solar cell production, feature excellent aqueous and thermal stability. Another benefit is nontoxicity of their elements.

Soltec, a leading solar tracker manufacturer, has announced the results of bifacial PV panel and tracker functionality testing from the BiTEC test centre at Livermore, the state of California, revealing an advantage in using two-module-in-portrait as well as a general gain of 15.7 percent.

Tariffs introduced to imported solar cells and modules have caused “devastating harm” to the US solar industry, new analysis compiled by the Solar Energy Industries Association has claimed.

Researchers have introduced a new metric for determination of the highest allowable cost for cell efficiency increase and levelized cost of electricity optimization. The scientists have called this new parameter ‘value of efficiency’.

A group of American scientists have selected 133 thousand prospective molecules for batt electrolyte from the list of 166bn with the help of newly created machine learning algorithm. The new approach is said to minimize the cost of computational examination without compromising the investigation accuracy.

Global generation of solar powered energy is actively expanding. According BloombergNEF, it is likely to increase from the current 2 percent of the global electricity production up to 22 percent by the middle of the century.