This week's Movers & Shakers focuses on big career moves in Germany, India and the US. SMA Americas plans a major push into the US market, the International Solar Alliance welcomes a new interim director and India's Hartek Group takes on BHEL's Jeet Chhatwal to develop innovative automated systems and procedures for day-to-day activities which further improve productivity and bring more efficiency.
Many key PV manufacturers in Taiwan are still reporting monthly sales in February, 2017 that are well below the levels set in the first half of 2016, due primarily to the expected boom in China’s downstream PV market, which has yet to take hold.
‘Silicon Module Super League’ (SMSL) member Hanwha Q CELLS is allocating only US$50 million to capital expenditures in 2017, indicating there would be no new in-house capacity expansions in 2017.
A consortium between Essel Infra, an arm of Indian conglomerate Essel group, and China’s GCL Poly Energy Holdings will start initial site development of a major solar PV manufacturing plant in the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh within two months.
Australian solar energy software provider Solar Analytics announced Wednesday that it has received $2.1 million in grant funding from the government’s Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) to support the deployment of smart monitoring for residential solar within the country.
The price of Chinese module imports to India has dropped 8% over the last quarter and 29% year-on-year, according to new price indices calculated by consultancy firm Bridge to India.
Despite India tripling solar deployments to reach 10GW in less than three years, the country's ultimate target of 100GW by 2022 will be extremely difficult without better enforcement of the Renewable Purchase Obligation (RPO), according to Mercom Capital Group’s latest market intelligence report.
The energy nodal agency in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu has put in a bid for 50MW of solar in a 500MW retender due to insufficient interest from other players, according to consultancy firm Mercom Capital Group reporting a Tamil Nadu Energy Development Agency (TEDA) official.