Americas

The Peruvian arm of Italian renewables firm Enel Green Power has been granted permission to conduct a feasibility study for a 40MW PV project in southern Peru.

Over 142,000 people are employed by the solar industry in the USA, with over a third based in California, a series of reports published by non-profit organisation The Solar Foundation has revealed.

PV equipment and technology specialist, Amtech Systems reported a noticeable rebound in sales for its fiscal first quarter of 2014.

US-based start-up, Siva Power formerly Solexant, has reported a CIGS cell efficiency of 18.8% that it claims was verified by NREL in December 2013.

SolarWorld chairman Frank Asbeck, the chief agitator in a string of trade cases against the Chinese PV industry, has been accused of “reckless” behaviour that could put thousands of US solar jobs at risk.

Another solar power project in the subsidy-less country of Chile has received the stamp of approval from the environmental authorities.

The latest solar trade case brought in the US could see American companies produce “Chinese” solar products, if the petitioner SolarWorld’s terms were met, according to a lawyer representing Chinese PV manufacturers.

SunEnergy1, a preferred EPC to Duke Energy Renewables has completed five PV projects in North Carolina totalling 56MW (dc).

US installer REC Solar has announced that it is set to focus its future efforts solely on the commercial PV market, offloading its residential segment to solar developer and financier Sunrun.

Ontario’s energy regulator received almost 500MW of project proposals, including 463MW of photovoltaics (PV), in the five-and-a-half week period that the feed-in tariff (FiT) window was last open.