Storage has long been expected to be the handmaiden of a renewable energy world and its long awaited advances started to finally emerge in the third quarter as researchers posited R&D achievements ranging from potentially potent tungsten disulfide nanotubes to the business case for 10-year solar panels.

Intersolar Europe is always a key date in the solar calendar but this year’s show had it all, including three panel-smuggling arrests. Elsewhere, wafers were getting bigger, efficiency records were tumbling and new technologies were emerging. There was also more news on the solar car ports fad and Hanwha’s ongoing legal tussle.

Finnish lender Nordea has called in a NOK150 million indemnity loan thought to have been taken out by REC Silicon ASA as a result of the bankruptcy of its Norwegian wafer manufacturing arm seven years ago.

The first part of pv magazine’s review of 2019 considers Q1, when solar early adopter Italy offered an optimistic start to the year by fleshing out its plans for PV but uncertainty still clouded the world’s biggest solar market. The potential for household solar installations to rocket the world over – helped by ever cheaper panels – prompted strategic decisions in the inverter market and analyst expectations were confounded as the cobalt and lithium price plummeted, bringing the EV revolution a big step nearer.

The Beijing-owned electric utility is still carrying out due diligence of solar project assets in the GCL New Energy portfolio, having walked away from a full state bail-out of the GCL business last month.

Oman Power and Water Procurement Co. has named eight of the nine bidders vying to develop twin 500-600 MW solar plants in the sultanate, but the energy off-taker has sown doubt by claiming that the contracts will be awarded to private sector entities.

The British company, which has tested its liquid air energy storage technology in the U.K., says it is preparing to deploy its first plant on U.S. soil. Highview claims its CRYOBattery is half the price of utility scale lithium-ion storage.

The chief executive of the Finnish manufacturer – which this month missed another deadline to complete payment for the Lithuanian cell factory it acquired from Solitek – has insisted the €3.5 million convertible bond issue which was today extended by three months will not determine the fate of his company.

The Norwegian PV developer was allocated three of the five projects available in the procurement exercise, having reportedly offered to accept $0.025/kWh from utility Société Tunisienne de l’Electricité et du Gaz for the clean power produced by the largest, 200 MW slice of generation capacity available.

The debt-saddled Chinese PV developer hopes the holders of notes due to mature next month will be persuaded to hold off settlement for two years as it awaits a shareholder vote related to its latest proposed injection of public funds.