Pension fund, The California Public Employees' Retirement System (CalPERS), has agreed to purchase a 25% stake in Desert Sunlight Investment Holdings, the owner of two major solar PV projects with a combined capacity of 550MW near Palm Springs, California.
Tokyo-based egg producer ISE Group, French energy company Total and SunPower Corporation, have started construction of a 27MW solar PV plant at Nanao, Ishikawa Prefecture, on Honshu Island in Japan.
Integrated PV manufacturer REC Solar is to invest a total of $200 million Singapore dollars (US$182.3 million) in expanding and upgrading production at its facilities in Singapore. The company also plans to invest a further US$50 million in R&D activities at the Solar Energy Research Institute of Singapore (SERIS), with emphasis on a type of PV module.
China-based PV energy provider (PVEP) United Photovoltaics Group has received back its US$64.4 million deposit originally given to Hareon Solar to start build 930MW of PV power plants, which were never actually built.
Indian state-owned utility NTPC has issued a request for selection (RfS) for solar developers to set up a 250MW solar PV project in the Kadapa Ultra Mega Solar Park in Kadapa District of the state of Andhra Pradesh.
Australia is redirecting AU$1 billion from the Clean Energy Finance Corporation’s (CEFC) AU$10 billion (US$760 million) allocation into a new Clean Energy Innovation Fund (CEIF), Australian prime minister Malcolm Turnbull has announced.
US residential and commercial PV provider SolarCity has raised US$131 million through a new tax equity fund in order to finance residential, commercial and military solar projects.