Europe

The Greek Parliament passes an austerity package, which included a tax on existing solar power plants.

Domestic PV installations in Denmark have grown exponentially in 2012 reaching 223MW this month from just 17.5MW at the end of last year.

EPC contractor, SunEnergy Europe, has announced that a 5.3MW power plant has been connected to the grid in Hessia, southern Germany.

Law firm Metaxas & Associates has submitted an action for annulment on behalf of several unnamed Greek and foreign PV investors to the Greek Council of State. The action of annulment calls for a u-turn on the council’s decision to suspend the submission of new PV project applications for grid connection.

China Sunergy (CSUN), a solar cell and module manufacturer, has announced it will develop its first two solar projects in the UK.

Beneq, a Finland-based provider of equipment for advanced thin-film coatings, has announced plans to establish a subsidiary in Russia and set up operations in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS).

Energy management company Schneider Electric has secured over 100MW worth of projects in India with its new Conext Core XC Inverter in the three months since its launch.

EPC specialist Enerparc has finished building and connected a 52.7MW solar park in Brandenburg, Germany. The construction took just three months to complete.

The Serbian government and Luxembourg-based investor Securum Equity Partners have signed a binding framework agreement for a 1GW PV deal.

Sandia National Laboratories, the Electric Power Research Institute and European Distributed Energies Research Laboratories are organising a workshop looking at the experience of utilities in integrating high levels of electricity from PV on to the grid.