The UK’s PV industry has just been through its latest annual rush to complete utility-scale solar farm projects and connect them to the grid before the deadline closed for their accredited level of financial support.
Germany installed just over 50MWp of new PV in February, marking the lowest tally since the federal registry opened and sparking fears the government could fail to hit its own targets for the third year running.
State Grid Corporation of China, Korea’s main utility, one of Japan’s biggest renewables developers and Russia’s grid operator have formally indicated their interest in building a massive interconnected grid across Asia.
Equipment manufacturer Foxconn has acquired a 66% stake in Sharp at a reduced price, with the two parties set to hold a press conference this Saturday, 2 April.
Community solar in the US could be a market worth as much as US$2.5 billion in revenues by 2020, but accommodating it will require a rethink of utility business models, a new report by Navigant Research claims.
A key theme of the Berlin Energy Transition Dialogue conference last week was how Germany’s Energiewende (‘energy transition’) has not only proven how to foster an explosion of renewable generation capacity through support schemes, but also how to integrate those renewables. Grid operators from Germany and Denmark discussed questions of feasibility, past, present and future.
The chief of California’s bulk transmission system operator has slammed net metering as a “subsidy” of wealthy households by poorer ones, claiming it represents an “economic justice issue”.
Puerto Rico’s financially troubled electric power authority PREPA will install a large-scale battery park at a 10MW PV farm, to help integrate the farm’s output and other renewables.
Saudi Arabia’s energy minister has said he believes it will be impossible to keep fossil fuel resources “in the ground” even in the next 50 years but nonetheless sees his country as an ideal potential manufacturer-exporter of PV panels.
