Power Plants

Internet giant and increasingly active clean-tech player, Google, is offering a US$1 million prize for a proposal to shrink the “humble” solar inverter to the size of a laptop.

Changes to Germany’s EEG energy policies and the introduction of new renewable energy auctions in the UK have won state aid approval from the EU.

The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) is to begin construction of its 250MW Beacon Solar project.

Yingli Green is to supply 108,000 of its YGE 72 cell series modules to a 32MW PV power plant project to be built next year in Okayama, Japan.

The UK subsidiary of insolvent German distributor Wagner & Co has bought out its German-held stake and re-launched as an independent entity.

Leading PV manufacturer, Yingli Green is targeting supplying PV modules to large-scale projects in Chile, having established a new office in Santiago, Chile and headhunted industry veteran Robert Muhn from Trina Solar to serve as Managing Director of Yingli Green Energy Chile.

The first grid-connected energy storage facility in Canada, in the country’s leading solar province, Ontario, is now operational.

Rises in consumer electricity prices, caused in part by a backlog of unbuilt PV projects, could put Japan’s solar industry in serious danger of losing support, a Tokyo-based analyst has warned.

A Pakistan PV wholesaler has told PV Tech the country’s nascent solar industry could face “total collapse” unless a tax on imported solar equipment is lifted.

United Photovoltaics has completed the acquisition of a 20MW solar project in Qinghai province, China.