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The South African Department of Energy (DoE) has awarded a further 88MW of PV projects to the consortium consisting of SolarReserve, the Kensani Group and Intikon Energy. After the two 75MW projects Letsatsi and Lesedi Power Project, the Jasper solar energy project in Northern Cape is the third project the consortium has been awarded preferred bidder status. This brings the total of the projects to 238MW.
The government of India has issued a proposal to add approximately 10GW of solar energy to the grid between the years 2012 and 2017. The proposal has been submitted to the Indian planning commission and the full proposal further includes targets for other energies, such as wind power, bio-power and hydropower. The Indian Jawaharlal Nehru National Solar Mission has a target of adding 20GW of solar energy to the national grid by 2022.
Andes Mainstream Renewable Power has announced that it has entered the first stages of developing a 162MW PV plant in the Atacama Desert in Chile. The project is located near the town of Diego de Almagro, in the Chañaral region and will be equipped with approximately 519,000 polycrystalline PV modules at a total investment of US$420 million, according to a publication by the Chilean Environmental Impact Assessment Agency (SEIA).
E-CL and Quiborax are teaming up to build a 2MW solar park, which will be the first to be connected to the Northern Interconnected System (SING) in Chile. The project will help provide electricity to mining development in the XV region of Arica and Parinacota.
Ideal Power Converters (IPC) advised that its 30kW PV inverter, IPV-30kW-480 had been confirmed by Intertek as conforming to UL standard 1741 and is now included on the California Energy Commission’s (CEC) list of approved PC inverter products. As part of the CEC list, IPC’s inverter can be installed in California and across the US.
Executives at Martifer Solar USA advised that the company plans to exceed a 100MW project pipeline in 2012, and has an additional 30MW already signed. Martifer Solar expects to achieve its goal with plans to enter additional markets and continue its success with installations for schools, multi-site commercial projects, solar gardens and small utilities.
Late last week, Vermont’s Governor Shumlin signed the 2012 Energy Bill into law, which among other benefits saw the state’s CLEAN Program expand from 50MW to 127.5MW. The bill outlines that the capacity of any distributed generation facility that provides “sufficient benefits to the operation and management of the electric grid” because of its location or other characteristics will not count towards the overall program cap of 127.5MW. Thus, this portion of the legislation mandates that no limit exists on the amount of clean local energy produced from facilities providing locational benefits.
Israeli developer Arava Power Company has received funding for eight PV projects worth US$204 million in total, across Israel, the company has announced. In a statement, the company issued that it has closed deals on two PV plants in the Negev region, totaling 58MW. The company aims at installing over 400MW within Israel and completed the country’s largest solar park last June.
SolFocus has ordered 5MW of CPV cells from Solar Junction, the company has announced. SolFocus earlier announced the building of the 50MW first part of a 450MW PV project in Baja California, Mexico, due to commence construction in late 2012.
Kyocera has supplied 34MW of PV modules for a 127MW utility-scale PV plant in south western Arizona, the company has announced. The company will provide further modules, manufactured at its San Diego facility, for the project, producing through to 2013.
