UTILITY-SCALE SOLAR

UK-headquartered solar developer Solarcentury has actually offered its property solar arm to Svea Solar, permitting the company to redouble its initiatives totally on utility-scale advancements.

Think tank the Australia Institute has urged Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s federal government to carve out fresh funding for the Australia Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) in its 2022-23 and 2023-24 budgets.

Global technology giant Huawei is tapping into its telecoms-led, AI and 5G technologies to bolster the levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) in utility-scale solar projects.

Leading module manufacturer JinkoSolar is to supply 150MW worth of its high-efficiency Cheetah solar panels for projects in Cambodia.

Genex Power, ASX-listed power generation development company, has secured US$117m of investment for financing a new venture and refinancing an existing facility, both located in Australia, with 50 megawatts of capacity each.

Utility giant Iberdrola has revealed 400MW of additional large-scale solar it intends to bring forward in Spain, unveiling its 2020 development pipeline in the process.

Ørsted has commenced construction on the company’s first utility-scale solar plus battery storage project, the 460-MWAC Permian Energy Center. The facility is located in Andrews County, Texas, and will come online in mid-2021.

A new Harvard study shows that to achieve the biggest improvements in public health and the greatest benefits from renewable energy, wind turbines should be installed in the Upper Midwest and solar power should be installed in the Great Lakes and Mid-Atlantic regions. When adjusting for energy produced, the benefits ranged from $28 per MWh of energy produced from wind in California, to $113 per MWh of wind in the Upper Midwest and for utility-scale solar in the Great Lakes and Mid-Atlantic.

Penn State University, in partnership with Lightsource BP, has broken ground on the largest solar project in the state of Pennsylvania. The project is expected to provide 25% of the university’s electricity over the next 25 years. Lightsource BP will build, own and operate the facility and sell the electricity to Penn State under a long-term power sales contract.

Deals for utility-scale solar installations are accelerating on tribal lands in the Southwest U.S., according to a report published by the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA).

That would take the country to 8.28 GW of generation capacity by the end of the next decade with the government stating up to 6 GW of small scale capacity could be required on top. By that stage, however, coal would still amount to 43% of generation capacity and gas and diesel a combined 8.1%, under the new Integrated Resource Plan.

Spanish developer Enerside will start construction of a 322.06MW solar park in northeastern Brazil early next year, government officials said over the weekend.

UK solar developer Solarcentury and Dutch counterpart PowerField have unveiled plans to build the “largest” solar project in the Netherlands on behalf of Impax, the British asset manager that owns the site.

The US now has a record-breaking 37.9GW of utility-scale solar in the works after 11.2GW of new projects were announced in H1 2019, according to a new report from Wood Mackenzie and the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA).

A ground-mounted solar project billed as Saudi Arabia’s largest to date has reached the finish line, and is now set to power the operations of a food and beverage conglomerate.