The distributed renewable energy (DRE) sector, necessary in a world with millions of people without power, is being held back by a chronic shortage of skilled workers. Indeed, Sub-Saharan Africa (excluding South Africa) has just 16,000 people working in renewable energy in a region with 600 million un-electrified people, according to the founders of a new campaign aiming to fill this skills gap.
Karnataka Renewable Energy Development Limited (KREDL) has awarded 150MW (3x50MW) of solar projects to Giriraj Renewables at a tariff of INR2.92/kWh (US$0.04), and awarded 100MW (5x20MW) to Asian Fab Tec with a tariff of INR2.89/kWh (US$0.039).
Silicon Module Super League (SMSL) member JinkoSolar will supply 255MW of its HC Cheetah series solar modules to Decmil Australia for the Sunraysia Solar Farm project in New South Wales developed by Australian-Chinese firm Maoneng Group.
South Korea’s government is planning for nearly 3GW of solar PV alongside smaller capacities of wind and batteries on reclaimed land in Saemangeum, an area of land created by a huge Seawall project completed in 2010.
Two community energy groups in California have partnered to buy the energy output of a 150MW solar farm with 180MWh of battery energy storage from Recurrent Energy, the US-based utility-scale solar project developer subsidiary of Canadian Solar.
An extra AU$100 million (US$70.76 million) of funding could be put into a rebate scheme for households buying energy storage systems in South Australia, after a peer-to-peer lending group stepped in.
US-headquartered high-efficiency PV module producer SunPower Corp is expecting to sell further assets and increase its loans in 2019 to avert bankruptcy due to looming liquidity issues as the company expects to remain loss making next year, while current net losses in the first nine months of 2018 have reached US$745.3 million.
Major Malaysian utility Tenaga Nasional Bhd (TNB) has started supplying power to the national grid from a part-completed 50MW solar power project in Selangor, Peninsula Malaysia, which will be the largest project in the country once completed.
With Petroleum Development Oman (PDO) as its sole offtaker, the 100MW project in Amin, Oman, is said to be the world's first utility-scale PV project to have an oil and gas company as the sole wholesale buyer of power.
‘Europe’s largest’ energy storage pilot project at an industrial site, combining 2MWp of rooftop solar with a total of 4.2MWh of energy storage across a lithium-ion battery system and two flow batteries has been inaugurated in Belgium.
