Solar Large-Scale Plants News

Dominion Energy has acquired a 72-MW solar project still under construction in Beaufort county, South Carolina, from First Solar.

The New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) and Citizens Energy Corporation announced the completion of a 1.4-MW solar project in the Mohawk Valley. Located in Oneida County, Upstate Cerebral Palsy is the sole beneficiary of the commercial solar project.

Sunworks, a provider of solar power solutions for agriculture, commercial, industrial (ACI), public works and residential markets, has been awarded an EPC contract to develop a 657-kW roof-mount PV solar project for a Southern California residential complex in partnership with Bright Power.

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.

TicketNetwork, a leading software development company in the ticket resale marketplace, has deployed a 1.4-MW solar system on the roof of its Connecticut headquarters. The system, which was completed in the spring of this year, will offset nearly 70% of the company’s annual energy use and dramatically reduce its carbon footprint.

The Norwegian power company acquired the projects for around $17.3 million. The transaction indicates interest in large scale solar is on the rise in Ireland and unsubsidized projects are viable.

German developer JP Joule is set to begin construction of a 25.4 MW solar plant to sell power on the spot market as part of a diversified plant portfolio. The facility, in the province of Alberta, will expand the increasing list of unsubsidized projects announced in the region in recent months.

The Netherlands-administered Caribbean island last year saw almost half its power demand provided by a 4.1 MW solar-plus-storage plant, commissioned in late 2017. The facility generated 6.5 million kWh of the 14.3 million kWh of electricity consumed in the territory in 2018.

A study has estimated the cost of PV project soiling may increase from €3-5 billion last year to €4-7 billion by 2023 due to more extensive deployment in high insolation and soiling-affected regions, such as China and India. The authors of the paper outlined the potential of soiling mitigation technologies while stressing more R&D is needed to reduce costs and for the adoption of such measures on a larger scale.

The Australian utility-scale PV and wind industries have just gone through a record two years of construction and commissioning. More specifically, writes Rystad Energy’s David Dixon, utility-scale PV has transformed from a megawatt-scale market to one measured in gigawatts. The resultant boom in utility-scale PV in the country has attracted developers, EPCs and OEMs, from at home and across the globe.

‘Solar Module Super League’ (SMSL) member, First Solar said it was sold out of thin-film cadmium telluride (CdTe) solar modules through the second half of 2021 as the company continues to ramp its Series 6 larger-area modules.

United Arab Emirates (UAE) has witnessed the installation of what is being billed as its leading distributed solar project to date, scattered across dozens of locations.

DE Shaw Renewable Investments has purchased two neighbouring PV projects in Utah contracted to provide power to Facebook from developer First Solar.

Distributed Solar Development (DSD), a business backed by BlackRock Real Assets’ Global Renewable Power platform and GE Renewable Energy, has closed on a US$250 million fund financed by Morgan Stanley, Silicon Valley Bank and Fifth Third Bank that will be utilised to fund a portfolio of distributed generation projects through 2020.

Western Canada's largest and first utility-scale solar project could soon get a whole lot bigger.