In a new weekly update for pv magazine, Solcast, a DNV company, reports that April 2026 brought mixed solar irradiance conditions across South America, with above-average GHI along Colombia’s Pacific and Caribbean coasts and parts of southern Argentina, while eastern and northern temperate regions — including Buenos Aires to Bolivia — saw reduced irradiance due to persistent cloud cover and wetter-than-average conditions.

Escalating Middle East tensions and global energy supply risks are accelerating Europe’s shift toward solar and storage, particularly in commercial, industrial, and utility-scale segments where energy security, resilience, and price stability are becoming central investment drivers. At the same time, expanding manufacturing capacity in China and India is redirecting surplus solar and storage supply toward Europe, creating a highly competitive and increasingly selective market where long-term success depends on quality, reliability, ESG alignment, and strategic market positioning.

The upcoming Solar Manufacturing USA 2026 conference in Austin will focus on real U.S. solar manufacturing progress, shifting attention from capacity announcements to actual production, costs, yields, and technology choices across the full value chain. It will also examine how policy changes and tariffs are driving domestic expansion in ingots, wafers, cells, and modules, while highlighting competing technologies like back contact, heterojunction and TOPCon.

Over a 30-year asset life, corrosion can evolve into a structural, electrical, and fire safety issue. Corrosion drives up operations and maintenance (O&M) costs, reduces resilience to extreme events, and in some cases, can force premature decommissioning or complete structural replacement Intertek CEA’s Nicholas Hudson and Ankil Sanghvi advise on best practices.

For years, the battery energy storage (BESS) story has followed a familiar script: costs fall, deployment accelerates, economics improve. Even when cell costs rose and system prices briefly flattened during the 2021-22 lithium price spike, the narrative largely held. Paola Perez Peña, senior principal analyst at S&P Global Energy, examines why the latest jump in lithium prices has only had limited impacts on overall BESS costs so far.

California is asserting state authority to revive the $700 million Soda Mountain project, marking a new era where Sacramento can reclaim authority from local counties to force stalled utility-scale solar and storage across the finish line.

The Italian authorities have dentified seven Trentino-based photovoltaic companies, controlled by an unspecified German operator, accused of allegedly evading over €60 million in taxes and improperly obtaining €33 million in incentives from the state energy agency GSE.

Soluxtec has entered provisional insolvency proceedings as declining module prices and international competition continue to pressure European solar manufacturers. The company said it plans to restructure operations, maintain module deliveries, and preserve jobs while seeking investors.

Mozambique’s energy regulator has reopened pre-qualification for a 30 MW solar project in Sofala province, after a previous award to Total Eren under the same program in 2022.

Researchers in Canada designed an air-source heat pump integrated with an air-based solar collector and radiant floor heating for cold climates, showing that the proposed system configuratuon could improve the coefficient of performance from 2–4 to 2–6 and reduce significantly annual energy consumption.

The system features AI-driven energy management, 10,000-cycle battery life, and scalable expansion up to 126 kWh.

Spain and Portugal are 53% less exposed to gas price volatility than they were three years ago, according to a new report from Positive Money.

Spanish researchers found that combining agrivoltaics with regulated deficit irrigation (RDI) can cut tomato irrigation water use by about 50%, while improving land-use efficiency through simultaneous crop and solar energy production.

In Q1 2026, grid-scale solar generation jumped 648 MW compared to the same period in 2025, recording an all-time quarterly high of 2,706 MW output, according to new figures released by the Australian Energy Market Operator.

Korea Rural Community Corp. (KRC) says it plans to increase floating solar capacity on agricultural reservoirs to 3 GW by 2030, from 105 MW currently in operation.

Researchers at the University of Queensland have developed a scalable, lead-free perovskite solar cell manufacturing process that achieves record indoor-light efficiency while avoiding toxic materials and enabling flexible consumer electronics applications.

Researchers in Austria found that unusually high photovoltaic efficiency in lead-halide perovskites can be explained by internal electric fields generated at strain-induced domain walls, which separate charge carriers and enable long-range transport. Their experiments indicated that these effects arise from mesoscopic structural inhomogeneities rather than a uniform crystal structure, providing a general mechanism for charge separation in these materials.

While the exact specifications of the new product, such as dimensions and weight, haven’t been disclosed, available imagery suggests potential transportation challenges.

The announcement of the company’s latest module power electronics project came alongside Q1 2026 earnings that showed a 20.6% decrease in year-over-year revenue numbers amid a steep decline in domestic demand.

In a week marked by the largest sodium-ion battery order to date, widely seen as a watershed moment for the technology’s commercialization at scale, one of Europe’s emerging players, Spain’s Bihar Batteries, is strengthening the outlook for European-made sodium-ion batteries.

Rosi has raised more than €20 million in a Series B funding round to scale its photovoltaic module recycling business and build a new 10,000-tonne-per-year facility in Teruel, Spain. The company uses pyrolysis-based technology to recover high-purity materials including silver, silicon, copper, aluminium and glass from end-of-life solar modules.

A UNSW-led research team proposed two low-power ride-through strategies for standalone PV–electrolyzer systems to maintain stability during sudden solar power fluctuations without using battery storage.

Indian scientists developed a cadmium-free CIS thin-film solar cell using indium oxide as an electron transport layer, achieving a simulated efficiency of 29.79% with SCAPS-1D modeling. Through sensitivity analysis, they showed that low defect density, optimized absorber thickness, and effective thermal management are critical for minimizing recombination losses and enabling high-performance, scalable devices.

A Vietnamese research team has developed a low-cost passive cooling system for PV modules based on hydrogel-coated paper that combines water flow and interfacial evaporation to reduce operating temperatures. Outdoor tests showed temperature reductions of up to 14 C and efficiency gains of up to 16.8%, with stable operation achieved using both freshwater and natural seawater.

Longi claims to have achieved the world’s highest efficiency for a silicon solar cell. The result was confirmed by Germany’s Institute for Solar Energy Research Hamelin (ISFH).

The first operational round of the EU Hydrogen Facility matched 265 supply-side opportunities with 45 demand projects, with 87% of offers receiving at least one expression of interest and half attracting multiple buyers.

The March 2026 Energy Sector Construction and Investment Projects Report, released by the Chilean Ministry of Energy, records 38 storage systems under construction, for 4,597 MW and 18,780 MWh.

Some of the consequences of the blackout include a 589% increase in installed BESS capacity in Spain between April 2025 and April 2026, the introduction of renewable participation in voltage control, a greater role for gas in the generation mix, and continued progress on interconnections.

Solar Energy Corporation of India has invited proposals to set up interstate transmission system (ISTS)-connected renewable energy projects for assured peak power supply of 1,500 MWh (500 MW for three hours) under a contract-for-difference (CfD) mechanism.

Sungrow has released a mining microgrid power solutions white paper in partnership with TÜV Rheinland and the China Electrotechnical Society covering application scenarios from 2.5 MW up to more than 100 MW.