News Africa & Middle East

Scatec Solar has struck a US$1.1 billion deal to acquire leading hydropower developer SN Power, touting the potential for floating solar on hydro reservoirs.

Driven by increased investor interest and a growing project pipeline, utility-scale floating solar installations are set to take off globally over the next few years, a report from Fitch Solutions says.

Risen Energy has landed a 1.5GW bifacial module supply deal with an unnamed, yet “well-known” independent power producer.

Solar is the “new king” of electricity, the International Energy Agency has said, with the asset class set to deploy more new capacity then any other technology each year for the coming decades.

Global solar industry funding has rallied from a turbulent first half of the year as project acquisition activity soared in Q3, a report from Mercom Capital Group says.

A round-up of the latest project development news from the solar industry, as Vattenfall completes its maiden floating solar project, Acciona breaks ground on a 238MWp array in Chile and one of the Middle East’s largest bifacial solar projects completes three months early.

South Africa’s solar industry has welcomed new government plans to purchase 6.8GW of additional renewables from independent power producers as of 2022, but warned that an “urgent response” is needed to tackle the country’s ongoing energy crisis.

A multi-gigawatt co-location market looks set to take off within the next five years, however uncertainty over DC coupling, the need for costly symmetric grid connections and outdated regulatory frameworks risk stymying the market’s growth.

Global governments could divert massive amounts of public funds from cancelled, large-scale power generation projects, such as nuclear, towards solar and other renewables to deliver consumers more value for money.

The world will need to build five to six times as much solar and wind power per year as in 2019 if a carbon-zero economy is to be reached by the middle of the century, a study has said.

Ib vogt has sold its shareholding in its 64.1MWp ‘Infinity 50’ project, which makes up part of the Benban solar complex in Egypt, to Masdar.

A round-up of the latest solar industry news from around the world, as Aquila picks up its first solar projects in Portugal, one of Europe’s hottest solar markets, and Dehui lays claim to being Vietnam’s first module manufacturer to produce next-generation panels.

NTPC, India’s largest power company, is aiming to add more than 5GW of new solar capacity in the next two years as it builds its renewables presence overseas thanks to a collaboration with the International Solar Alliance (ISA).

Transporting green hydrogen produced using solar PV in North Africa could be up to 15% cheaper than producing it domestically in Italy, a new study compiled by think tank The European House – Ambrosetti and natural gas giant Snam has found.

Driven by declining module costs, solar was by far the world’s leading power-generating technology installed in 2019, making up 45% of new capacity, according to BloombergNEF.