Power Plants

Two Chinese companies, Winsway and Guangdong East Power, will partner on 200MW of PV projects in Japan, according to news reports.

Tesla’s lithium-ion ‘Gigafactory’ will be built in Nevada, company officials including chief executive Elon Musk revealed alongside the US state’s governor at a press conference yesterday afternoon.

PV developer OCI Solar Power is making progress on a number of solar projects that will add 145MW of solar power to Texas’ energy mix this year.

Solar power provider SolarCity is expanding its operations once again with the addition of 20 new operations centres in seven states.

China-based PV manufacturer and developer Hareon Solar said a framework agreement had been signed with real estate developer, Jiangshan Yongtai Investment Holdings to develop ground and distributed generation (DG) projects totalling as much as 1GW over the next three years.

Utah’s Public Services Commission has rejected for now proposals for a net metering charge on solar users in the state.

Major monocrystalline wafer producer, LONGi Silicon Materials has reported wafer sales of 789MW for the first half of 2014, an increase 41% compared to the same period a year ago.

Clean energy consultant, Mercom Capital, has readjusted its forecast for 2014 solar installations in India from 1GW to 900MW in its quarterly update of the Indian Solar market.

Major PV mounting systems specialist, Powerway has started ground screw foundation work at the 100MW Quaid-e-Azam Solar Energy Park in Bahawalpur, Pakistan.

Trade body the European Photovoltaic Industry Association has called on the European Council to set binding renewable energy targets for individual EU countries at its next meeting.