Remote schools in West Africa can suffer from high levels of dropouts, a lack of enthusiasm and low rates of literacy and numeracy, but solar technology is now offering a chance to reinvigorate some of the lowest performing schools. PV Tech visited a school that is benefiting from such solar and software installations in the Greater Accra region of Ghana.
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.
Tesla is predicting it could sell more stationary storage to SolarCity during 2016 than was deployed in the entire behind-the-meter segment of the US market last year, according to analysis by GTM Research.
Solar Impulse 2, the pioneering ‘zero fuel plane’ which began a worldwide round trip last year, landed safely in San Francisco after its 62-hour, record-setting flight over the Pacific Ocean.
Abu Dhabi’s renewable energy firm Masdar has launched four utility-scale clean energy projects as well as thousands of residential solar systems in remote areas across Egypt.
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.
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.
The impact of distributed solar-plus-storage, including aggregated systems, will be included in an assessment of electricity storage’s participation in wholesale electricity markets by the US’ national regulator, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC).
GCL System Integration has bought a 51% stake in One Stop Warehouse, an Australian wholesale distributor of solar products, claiming it has been partly pushed by anti-dumping rules affecting its module supply business in Europe and the US.
Solar Impulse 2, the “zero fuel airplane” which began a round-the-world attempt last year, is set to resume flying from the Hawaii base where it has been grounded since last July.
