investment

JA Solar has closed financing for the equipment at a 1.5GW wafer plant in Vietnam.

French energy major Total has completed the acquisition of a 73.04% stake in gas and renewable power provider Direct Energie.

Sonnedix Japan has reached financial close on a JPY16.5 billion (US$149 million) non-recourse financing with Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation (SMBC) for the 41.6MW Sano solar PV plant in the Tochigi prefecture, Japan.

A Saudi Arabian sovereign wealth fund has taken a 15.2% stake in ACWA Power, a dominant solar power developer in the Middle East.

A consortium of investors have purchased the project rights for 42MW of capacity awarded in the country’s contracts for difference (CfDs) scheme.

Leading polysilicon and solar wafer producer GCL-Poly Energy Holdings is to form a joint venture (JV) with Japanese conglomerate, Mitsui to invest in new-generation energy and infrastructure related businesses in China as well as other ‘selected’ overseas countries.

As an investor from a matured solar market in the West looking at India, Jonathan Selwyn, chairman of the UK retail investor-backed Downing Indian Solar EIS, discusses the experience of investing in Indian solar.

The French independent power producer (IPP) REDEN Solar has refinanced the bulk of its domestic assets raising €270 million (US$312 million) in the process.

German utility Innogy will add 440MW of US PV projects to its pipeline as part of a deal with North Carolina-based Birdseye Renewable Energy.

Lightsource BP has completed its first utility-scale solar farm in India after bringing online a 60MW project in Maharashtra, having won the contract through a competitive 450MW tender process completed in September 2016.