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According to reports from Bloomberg, AES Gener, a division of AES Corp., is preparing to construct a US$572 million solar farm in northern Chile, which will help bring electricity to copper mines in the Atacama Desert. The company is pursuing a permit to build the farm in Chile’s Antogafasts region where, Bloomberg reports, BHP Billiton and state-owned Codelco, manage copper mines.
Kings Mountain, North Carolina has a new 5MW solar power plant developed by Strata Solar and Chint/Astronergy. The 5MW plant uses 22,000 panels and is said to be one of the state’s largest solar farms to date. The Kings Mountain PV plant will produce enough electricity to power over 600 average homes.
GCube and Munich Re announced that they had entered into a partnership. GCube noted that the new capacity from Munich Re was a step in a direction that it hopes will allow the company to meet a wider clean technology industry clientele and future underwriting needs.
The US DOE has advised of a US$12 million investment in the SunShot Incubator program; funding which will go towards advancements in hardware, reduction of soft costs and the development of pilot manufacturing and production projects in the American solar energy and manufacturing industry. The Incubator program is best known as a launchpad for new start-ups and business units within existing companies to move solar technology development forward at a faster pace.
New solar maps for South Africa, Lesotho and Swaziland have been released by GeoModel Solar, showing the direct solar radiation on the African continent. “Uniqueness of these maps is reflected in their very high spatial resolution of 250 metres. As regards temporal resolution, the underlying solar database represents more than 18 years of historical data (1994 - to present) with a time step of up to 15 minutes,” said Marcel Suri, managing director of GeoModel Solar.
GoIndustry DoveBid, an asset manager company, has been retained by Renewable Energy Corporation (REC) to handle the disposal of three solar manufacturing plants in Norway. GoIndustry has placed the factories on the global market with a total estimated value of €50 million. REC initially disclosed that it was closing its 500MW capacity wafer plant in Herøya, its 275MW wafer multi-plant in Glomfjord and its 200MW capacity solar cell plant in Narvik last October.
A US$646 million US DOE loan and loan guarantee for First Solar’s 230MW Antelope Valley Solar Ranch One (AVSR) PV power plant project in northern Los Angeles County, California has hit a snag over an outstanding construction permit issue. The timeframe for initial funding of the loan has been pushed back to February 24, 2012 but if the issue isn’t resolved by that date, First solar said it could have to acquire the project from customer, Exelon for approximately US$75 million.
A petition, sent by 40 representatives of energy and environmental agencies, has fallen on deaf ears.
PV LEGAL has conducted a two-and-a-half-year initiative investigating the extent of renewable energy up-take in Europe. The study found France, Greece, Germany, the Netherlands and Portugal have all been successful in encouraging access to renewable energy. However, Italy, Spain, Bulgaria and the UK are yet to make satisfactory progress.
The European Commission’s Joint Research centre has published a report analysing the potential for renewable energy sources in Africa.
