The Maine Public Utilities Commission (PUC) held a public hearing yesterday to discuss the state’s proposed amendment to existing net metering policy – namely, to cut existing financial incentives for new and existing users.
Leading US residential installer SolarCity announced yesterday that it has partnered with Credit Suisse to finance more than US$300 million in solar projects.
The Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) on Friday officially launched an operations and maintenance (O&M) working group that will be open to the entire association’s membership for the purposes of “standardising O&M contracts and set service expectations”.
Community solar is emerging as an auspicious new source of demand in the US, opening up access to solar among previously excluded groups. Ethical Electric, a Washington-based renewable energy company providing 100% clean electricity to retail customers, recently launched a community solar division under the new name of CleanChoice Energy to get on board with the disruption. Managing director Laura Pagliarulo and chief impact officer Richard Graves discussed with PV Tech the company’s plans, its recent SunShot Initiative award, and how community solar is set to become ‘retail 2.0’.
Former China-based integrated PV manufacturer LDK Solar, which entered liquidation proceedings in the Cayman Islands and bankruptcy in mainland China has resulted in major creditor losses and its wafer and cell production operations being acquired.
The Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) has committed up to AU$18 million in funding to build the first phase of a AU$120 million solar-wind-storage project by Windlab and Eurus that will deliver renewable energy on demand.
Financiers Connor, Clark & Lund Infrastructure and Samsung Renewable Energy have closed a CA$633 million solar bond financing for the 100MW Kingston Solar project in Canada.
After a week in Taiwan, overlapping with the PV Taiwan exhibition and conference in Taipei last week, my main takeaway is the scale of new capacity that is confirmed to be coming online over the next 3-6 months, no matter what is happening today regarding supply levels and end-market demand. This and other conclusions from my week in Taiwan are covered in two blogs this week on PV-Tech.
In an unexpected development of the planned merger of Tesla and SolarCity, the electric car manufacturer has said that it had tentatively agreed with Japanese electronics firm, Panasonic to begin solar cell and module production at SolarCity’s Riverbend production plant in Buffalo, New York state in 2017.
In this week's Movers & Shakers segment, PV Tech reports on management shuffles in yieldcos and Chinese module manufacturers. In addition, a Canadian energy company continues its US expansion, the REEEAC appoints new members and CleanChoice Energy reveals how community solar can become 'retail 2.0'.
