2020

The procurement exercise, which includes 250 MW of wind to be developed by Saudi Arabia’s ACWA Power, was launched in March. The plant will be built at a site located 75 kilometers southwest of Baku. The authorities have not provided any information on final auction prices.

The 4 MW plant will be deployed in Lagoon le Rocher on Mahé Island. Construction will likely begin in the second quarter of this year, while details of the 25-year power purchase agreement should be finalized by the end of March.

Is First Solar stalled in innovation and growth? Markus Beck, a thin-film solar expert and former chief technologist at First Solar, provides an industry perspective on the fate of thin-film PV in the United States.

Four bids have been lodged for 100 MW projects and fifth for a 90 MW facility, all in peninsular Malaysia, to indicate the 500 MW tender will fall short of its intended capacity. The lowest solar power price lodged is for $0.042/kWh.

Bidders can pitch for up to 300 MW of generation capacity per project with the deadline for proposals on February 4. The eighth tranche of inter-state transmission system program capacity offered by the Solar Energy Corporation of India comes with an energy price ceiling of $0.039/kWh.

With the third procurement round of the kingdom’s National Renewable Energy Program, the Renewable Energy Project Development Office is tendering four large-scale solar projects. Successful bidders will have to include at least 17% local content in their facilities.

The fourth auction held for systems with a generation capacity no larger than 1 MW saw solar secure 750 MW of projects to leave wind developers in the cold. Innogy took its first steps into Polish PV with 42 projects across three provinces.

U.S. researchers claim to have improved the stability of one of the most promising halide perovskites – α-FAPbI3 – by squeezing the compound’s crystal lattices. The authors of the research prevented the crystal assuming an hexagonal shape at the room temperatures required for a PV device to operate properly.

Danish developer Obton and Ireland’s Shannon Energy have promised to develop the projects within five years. Total investment is expected to be around €300 million and the companies have already acquired projects with a combined generation capacity of 150 MW.

A team at the U.S. National Renewable Energy Laboratory has come up with a new process that would reduce the production cost of highly expensive – and highly efficient – gallium arsenide cells.