News in Brief: Santa Barbara, California, is the 30th US city to vote in a 100% renewable energy mandate, North Carolina legislators instate a competitive bidding process and leasing programme for solar PV while South Carolina's SCE&G launches the state's largest community solar programme; there's also more community solar online in Texas, and the Massachusetts Department of Energy Resources releases its final guidelines for its solar incentive SMART programme.
Nevada solar moved up in a big way earlier this week, with the state legislature passing several bills to ensure the industry will return to its former heights.
Following on from the successful year for solar that was 2016, the US market added 2,044MW of new capacity in Q1 2017 alone. As installations grow, prices continue to fall to new lows and utility-scale system prices dropped below US$1/Watt for the first time according to GTM Research.
Solarcentury continues to expand its presence in the emerging Latin American PV market, this time by completing a 40MW solar park in Chile for local electricity company Energía Cerro El Morado.
News in Brief: SunPower collaborates with Michigan's largest utility for a residential pilot programme, UOSSM's Syria Solar Initiative completes a 127kWp solar system to provide electricity to hospitals, an Australian aboriginal community starts construction on a solar-diesel hybrid project backed by ARENA and Utah's Legend Solar acquires Aspire Energy.
The Ivory Coast plans to build a 25MW solar PV plant in the north of the country in Benguébougou, Korhogo, which will be one of the first solar plants in the country.
Tucson Electric Power (TEP) has entered the US into a new realm of solar at below 3 cents/kWh, after similar prices have been regularly achieved in other countries such as Dubai, Chile and Mexico for over a year now.
