Last Wednesday, the US Senate passed a long-awaited energy bill as a bipartisan measure to modernise the nation’s oil, gas and electricity systems and align them with more climate-friendly solutions.
SunPower has teamed up with AT&T, one of the US’ biggest multinational telecommunications corporations, to bring Internet of Things (IoT) technology to the residential market via the ‘Equinox’ solar PV system.
On Friday in New York, the historic UN global climate agreement was officially signed by a host of world leaders, signifying the unified global effort to tackle one of the world’s most insurmountable environmental and economic issues.
Shifting solar power for several hours using flow batteries will quickly become economically viable if the energy storage systems are also allowed to provide other services, such as grid-balancing, one maker of the devices has claimed.
Ghana will soon update its feed-in tariff (FiT) programme for solar to include the possibility of having contracts last for 20 years, according to Wisdom Ahiataku-Togobo, director of renewables and alternative energy at the Ministry of Power Ghana.
Ghana could be a frontrunner for clean energy integration and energy exports across the West African power pool, according to a United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) report.
Significant increases of utility tariffs in Nigeria and Ghana are improving the business case for solar by providing money to utilities and bringing competition to the power market, according to energy developers.
Clean energy corridors of up to 2GW capacity are being planned for the West African region under plans put forward by the ECOWAS Regional Centre for Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency (ECREEE).
Midway across southern Ghana, near the historic port fishing town of Winneba, lies East and West Africa’s largest solar PV plant. Ghana suffers a severe energy deficit with only around 70% of the population having access to electricity, so it was welcome news that the project was connected to the grid at the end of last week. PV Tech visited the new project, built by China-based power firm BXC Ghana, just ahead of the Solar and Off-grid Renewables West Africa 2016 conference in Accra, Ghana.
