Your daily dose of photovoltaic technology developments and solar news

The Arizona Corporation Commission has approved the AZ Sun program, which local utility Arizona Public Service says will provide a major step forward in enhancing its ability to deliver solar photovoltaic energy to its customers. Through the expected four-year life of the program, APS plans to invest up to $500 million for 100MW of turnkey PV power plants across the state.

Puglia, south-east Italy is the site for the new solar power plant that is to be constructed by Iberdrola Ingeniería y Construcción following the company’s successful bid for the title of developer for the project. The 8MW facility will cost in the region of €27 million, which is being financed by Unicredit Mediocredito Centrale and commissioned by Pugliasolar.

In one of the biggest solar projects yet announced in South America, T-Solar and Solarpack have signed an agreement with the government of Peru to build 80MW of PV power plants in the southern part of the country. The two Spanish companies' contract stipulates an annual supply of 173GWh of PV energy over a period of 20 years.

SunWize Technologies' commercial power systems division has won solar power contracts exceeding $7.8 million by the U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs. The company said that the contracts consist of 10 hospital projects that call for more than 1.1MW of photovoltaic systems, ranging in size from <50KW to >400KW, to be installed in locations across the United States and one of its overseas territories.

Astronergy Solar has been awarded at least six of the 275 "Golden Sun" PV power plant demonstration projects announced by the Chinese Ministry of Finance. The combined capacity of the projects will be 7.86MW, the company said.

First Solar and Enbridge have signed a deal for the Canadian energy company to buy a 20MW solar farm that the PV firm has developed and is building near Sarnia, Ontario. The project, which will be the largest PV installation in Canada when it's completed by the end of the year, is being built by First Solar under a fixed-price engineering, procurement, and construction contract and will use more than 370,000 of the company's CdTe thin-film modules. In other news, First Solar has been added to the S&P500 stock index.

In a ground-breaking ceremony held Aug. 19, RGE Energy started construction of a 45MWp solar power plant, equipped with BP Solar modules, on 116 undeveloped hectares at the site of a former military airfield in Köthen, Saxony-Anhalt. When completed, the developers say that project will be the largest solar power plant in the German state and the world´s largest to be outfitted with string inverters.

S.A.G. Solarstrom  will build a 13-MWp photovoltaic power plant at a former military site in Stříbro, Czech Republic--the company's first in the country and its largest project to date. The installation, said to be the biggest PV system planned in the republic, is scheduled to begin construction in July and be completed by the fall.