Despite the latest report by the Independent Competition and Regulatory Commission (ICRC) advising that the feed-in tariff rates in Australia’s Capital Territory (ACT) need to be reduced, the Territory’s Minister for Energy, Simon Corbell, said the rates would remain unchanged.
Water is not a surface that immediately springs to mind when contemplating where to install a solar array, however, this may not be the case for much longer thanks to Sunengy’s ground-breaking Liquid Solar Array (LSA) technology. Sunengy hopes to build a pilot LSA plant in India before the end of the year and has enlisted the help of India’s largest integrated private power utility, Tata Power, to help realise this goal.
According to the latest report by the Independent Competition and Regulatory Commission (ICRC) the feed-in tariff rates in Australia’s Capital Territory (ACT) need to be reduced. The report proposes that the premium cash rate paid to generators of renewable energy - including those with home solar energy systems - should drop from 45.7c a kilowatt hour to 39c a kilowatt hour. Any changes made will only affect new market entrants who install after July 1, 2011.
Eaga has signed a £300-million equity and debt financing agreement to help it install solar panels on more than 30,000 homes across the U.K., reports Solar Power Portal.
Photon Consulting’s soon-to-be released report, “Solar Power Markets: Eastern Sunrise” has compiled analysis prompting the company to predict that the Asia-Pacific region holds the biggest sustainable, global growth opportunity for solar energy through 2015. The market study details how the region’s PV economics, cumulative economic growth curve and electricity needs have primed the area for impressive PV expansion over the next four years.
SolFocus has promoted chief operating officer Bob Legendre to president and COO, reporting to CEO Mark Crowley. In his new, expanded position, Legendre will oversee a broad range of activities including manufacturing, supply chain, engineering and deployment. As the COO, Legendre led SolFocus’s engineering organization and finalized SolFocus’s product realization and product certification for deployment in EMEA, Australia and North America.
Trina Solar has signed a licensing, sales and marketing agreement with module-integrated installation hardware manufacturer Zep Solar. Trina hopes to begin selling its Zep compatible modules along with Zep’s System II hardware in North America, Europe and Australia from Q3 onwards.
Germany and Italy are forecasted to drive solar demand to new highs in 2011, with rumours of installations up to 22GW on the cards for this year. The German and Italian markets, scheduled to peak in 2011 and 2012, respectively, face a potential problem in terms of where to sell their modules if these two countries cannot accommodate 10GW of installations per year. The emerging markets can solve part of this challenge and will deliver new opportunities to the solar industry. Some Asian, European and Middle Eastern regions will require up to of 6GW of solar-generated electricity, while the Americas, Africa and Australia are each projected to install approximately 1GW in 2014. This paper takes a look at the development of these emerging markets and provides a projection of likely installation figures up to 2015.
Trina Solar squeezed a little more module shipments out of the factory gate in 2010 than previously guided. Shipments were approximately 351MW for the fourth quarter of 2010, compared to previous guidance of approximately 300MW, resulting in total 2010 module shipments reaching approximately 1.06GW in 2010.
Australia’s Capital Territory (ACT) feed-in tariff has been expanded to include medium to large-scale solar projects in order to cater for larger commercial and industrial farms as well as community groups. According to the Australian Solar Energy Society, the gross feed-in tariff, which pays a premium for all solar energy generated, is now available for solar panel installations 30kW to 200kW.
