The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), the University of Florida and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) will lead the consortia that will form the US-India Joint Clean Energy Research and Development Center (JCERDC), funded by the Department of Energy (DOE) with US$125 million. The US institutions are teaming up with three Indian institutions: the Indian Institute of Science-Bangalore, the Indian Institute of Chemical Technology-Hyderabad and the CEPT University-Ahmedabad.
Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E), San Diego Gas and Electric (SDG&E) and Southern California Edison need to explain their methods in calculating the quantity of net-metered energy to the grid, the Californian Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) has announced.
Subsequent to the announcement last week of Los Angeles’ approval of a feed-in tariff, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa has signed an ordinance authorizing the city’s Department of Water and Power to now establish a pilot program. Approval of the program by the Board of Water and Power Commissioners has been scheduled for April 17.
Despite our reports in March and earlier this month, the Brazilian Secretary of Energy Planning and Development of the Ministry of Mines and Energy, Altino Ventura Filho, has announced that solar energy will not form part of auctions in order to augment generation of solar power.
Heliotrop’s HCPV1024 consortium was recently awarded €16 million by the French Environment and Energy Management Agency (ADEME), which will support a total investment program of €44 million to build manufacturing facilities and install Heliotrop CPV modules.
In the first quarter of 2012, financial investment in clean energy has been the weakest since 2009, states Bloomberg New Energy Finance. The figures published demonstrate investment was down 28% from Q4 2011 to just US$27 billion – 22% lower than the equivalent figure in the first quarter of last year. This includes venture capital, private equity, public markets and asset finance, but excludes small-scale projects and corporate and government RD&D.
One of the largest installations in the Southeast US has been completed using US-based Suniva modules. The 5MW solar power plant located in Haywood County, Tennessee was Designed and built by Signal Energy, and managed by the University of Tennessee Research Foundation (UTRF).
Areva Solar will be developing what is being called the largest CSP plant in Asia to date with the construction of a 250MW concentrating solar power project for Reliance Power in Rajasthan. The project is part of the country’s program to increase clean energy production by 20,000MW of solar power by 2022.
RWE is supposedly looking to invest in solar power plants, citing solar module prices as one of its key determining factors. According to Bloomberg, up until now Germany’s second-biggest utility, which owns a stake in Spain’s Andasol 3 solar thermal power plant, has distanced itself from investing in PV generation because of what it considered too high of a cost for the technology. However, now that prices for solar modules are considerably lower than in the past, the utility is taking a second look.
Isofoton advised that it has signed a joint development agreement with Korea’s Posco Plant Engineering for the international development of solar projects. The EPC company and solar module company noted that the projects will mainly be focused in the US, a locale in which Isofoton plans to install a 100MW solar plant later this year. Isofoton acknowledged that this partnership was a way to help broaden its international presence.
