Solar Plants News

A mixture of development support, market economics and awareness programmes have propelled Papua New Guinea to the forefront of global off-grid solar, according to a new report.

Chinese PV module maker Risen Energy says it has achieved its highest jump in solar module sales in the Australian market in a one-year period.

The largest U.S. residential solar installer hit deployment expectations and built out its battery business in the second quarter.

Hawaii’s residential solar market continues to contract, a phenomenon the industry largely attributes to policy changes that went into effect after the state ended net energy metering in 2015.

Portugal has unveiled the final results of the solar auction held over the summer, identifying a handful of major foreign winners of a tender hailed as a worldwide milestone.

Back-contact module manufacturing equipment supplier Eurotron said its previous MWT (Metal Wrap Through) order from China-based PV module manufacturer, Sunport Power had been installed, qualified and begun volume production.

The Swiss battery maker Leclanché will build a 35.6 MW / 44.2 MWh solar-plus-storage power plant, which will provide with clean power state-owned St.Kitts electric utility Skelec over a 20-year period. The new facility will be able to cover around a fourth of the archipelago’s total electricity demand.

Pestech, a Malaysia-based electrical power technology company, has entered into a partnership with Chinese inverter maker Sungrow to jointly develop new floating solar solutions.

French renewables developer Neoen has won development approval from the South Australian government for a major renewable energy project, with 125 MW of wind, 150 MW of solar PV and 130 MW/400 MWh of lithium-ion battery storage. The project could also include up to 50 MW of on-site hydrogen production capability.

Earlier this week, the French government published a list of winning projects for the sixth round of its tender for large-scale solar. There were a few changes from the preceding round, with French companies such as Urbasolar, Engie and Total consolidating their positions. However, even though a higher number of projects were submitted, prices increased slightly in the end. In a short conversation with pv magazine, Xavier Daval — a representative of SER, the French renewable energy association — explained the reasons for this.

One of Spain’s largest banks has gotten behind a utility-scale solar portfolio, planned without support from auctions nor power purchase agreements (PPAs).

EDP Renewables’ American subsidiary will sell 100MW of energy and 10MW of energy storage from a project in central California to the city of San Jose's default electricity utility, San Jose Clean Energy.

Of the 38 new renewable energy projects that have been awarded, 13 are PV plants, representing 96.75 MW of capacity. The average price for solar was $57.58/MWh, and the minimum was $54.22/MWh.

Major PV inverter manufacturer, SolarEdge Technologies has been forced to accelerate expedited shipping via air freight, despite a 25% increase in manufacturing capacity as the company continues to set quarter sales records.

The costs of residential solar-plus-storage have already dropped or will only take a few years to drop to nation-wide grid averages across key European markets, according to Wood Mackenzie.