Solar Commercial Plants News

PV technology has made significant progress in a short amount of time, leaving solar enthusiasts chuffed. Opponents, on the other hand, brand it as unworkable boondoggle, surviving on the crutches of subsidies and only salving the conscience of the green-minded companies cosseted by political forces. The naysayers do have partial truth in their argument - governments the world over have been supporting the growth of this child with the moniker “solar” with public finances. So, this is the partial truth and the enthusiasts have just enough firepower to say that all energy is, after all, subsidised one way or another – in terms of uncompensated costs of air pollution, congestion and global warming and the consequential irreversible damage these fossil fuels have done to the planet. Perhaps more important and statistically relevant is a report published by the IMF in 2015, which had pegged subsidies to fossil fuels at US$5.3 trillion.

The state enterprise Solar Energy Corporation of India (SECI) issued at the beginning of the month a tender for 1,200MW of renewable power that can be used to alleviate peak demand issued on the grid, in effect mandating the use of energy storage systems (ESS).

‘Solar Module Super League’ (SMSL) member JA Solar has supplied its bifacial double-glass PERC modules to a 2.5MW rooftop project at a Goodyear tire manufacturing facility in Shah Alam, Malaysia, the country's largest such project.

Soventix has been singled out by the Nicaraguan government as the potential developer of a major solar project, the latest in a series of PV moves by the Central American state.

A German player has become the owner of a distributed solar pipeline in El Salvador, laying the groundwork for construction to launch later this year.

Global asset management firm Capital Dynamics has purchased an 180MWac / 231MWdc solar project that includes a 90MWac / 360MWh energy storage facility in Boulder City, Nevada for an undisclosed sum.

Amazon revealed plans for a 45MW / 100,000MWh solar farm in Virginia and a 23.2MW / 68,000MWh wind farm in Cork, Ireland on Thursday.

With grid capacity a limiting factor, the Middle Eastern country has moved to foster private-to-private solar projects to meet industrial power demand.

In collaboration with Raptor Maps, FLIR has created a five-part series with four videos and a webinar on the use of thermal drones for solar inspection.

The final segment in pv magazine’s look at unsung solar markets heads to Ukraine, where a generous feed in tariff and developments in the corporate PPA segment looks likely to push installations past the 1 GW mark for 2019.

Unico Solar announced plans to develop 19 C&I solar projects across Colorado’s Front Range totaling 14.75 MW of capacity.

A private power distribution company in India issued a tender to procure energy from solar-wind hybrid projects with a goal to fulfill its Renewable Purchase Obligation, and possibly, to reduce the cost of power procurement.

sPower, a company handling development, construction and operation of solar power facilities, and PSEG Long Island, a major electric utility provider, have completed a 20-MWac solar plant in Riverhead, New York. The project will provide power for approximately 2,870 homes annually, as New York moves to completely decarbonize its electricity system by 2040.

Through the procurement exercise, the Ecuadorian government will select wind, solar and mini hydropower projects. Selected developers will be granted a 25-year PPA, while the sole off-taker of the generated energy will be state-owned utility Corporacion Electrica de Ecuador, S.A. (CELEC).

Renewable energy investment platform CleanCapital has announced its largest acquisition to date, a 75.2 MW solar portfolio made up of 15 operating projects in New Jersey.