germany

Despite additional solar and wind contributing to a record reduction in global coal generation last year, new renewable energy projects are still not being built quickly enough to keep pace with rising electricity demand.

Berlin-based greentech startup Zolar has raised an additional €10 million (US$11.9 million) in an investment round led by Energy Impact Partners, bringing its series B funding to €35 million.

Sungrow has provided its central inverters to a 187MW solar project in Germany that has been developed by utility EnBW without state funding.

BayWa r.e. has bolstered its digital services offer through the acquisition of software platforms and data science teams of German firm Kaiserwetter.

Fraunhofer ISE spin-off NexWafe has raised €10 million in a new Series B round of funding as the company moves to another pilot production phase.

The rapid scale-up of solar capacity in the European Union drove the growth of renewable electricity generation, which overtook that of fossil fuels for the first time last year.

Meyer Burger has been pledged a total of €22.5 million in regional German government grants when the company starts ramping volume production capacity to 1.4GW for its heterojunction (HJ) solar cell and module assembly.

The European solar sector has defied expectations to record its second-best year ever for deployment, according to a new study from trade association SolarPower Europe (SPE).

Meyer Burger Technology has agreed a settlement with Swiss headquartered PV manufacturer, EcoSolifer over a 2015 on heterojunction (HJ) solar cell line contract that will result in a CHF 1.97 million (US$2.22 million) loss for Mayer Burger.

Solar inverter manufacturer SMA will supply German grid operator TransnetBW with feed-in data from regional power installations to alleviate grid bottlenecking issues as home-consumption and battery storage grows in popularity.