With senators having called for plantation-wide solar powered pumping projects, funded by public money, the country’s National Irrigation Administration has agreed and said it wants to embrace floating solar facilities too.

Clean energy facilities have been ordered offline in the nation since Thursday as the national grid ran an exercise to establish how it would function in isolation from the power networks of Russia and Belarus.

A business based at a Namibian mine has signed a 15-year power purchase agreement which will back the construction of a 5.4MW solar project. Elsewhere, the AfDB wants to roll-out solar panels to provide electricity access to six million people across six nations over the next six years.

Also, heterojunction module manufacturer Huasun has begun assembling production lines at its new 2GW factory and Trina Solar has agreed to buy 290 million wafers from Beijing Jingyuntong Technology.

Xinyi Solar has proposed a dividend for the second year running as it announced shareholders would bank net profits of $630 million despite rising materials and shipping costs last year.

US analyst Clean Energy Associates made some notable predictions in its Q4 survey of the world solar manufacturing market, including echoing predictions made elsewhere that the new polysilicon production capacity coming online now will help arrest the spike in solar panel prices.

In other news, Longi announced it further raised wafer prices and the China Photovoltaic Industry Association (CPIA) said the Chinese PV market may reach a size of up to 90 GW in 2022.

The EU’s executive body will supply €10 million to the European Battery Academy program launched in Brussels yesterday which aims to train the 800,000 battery workforce it has been estimated will be required in three years’ time.

Panel maker Trina Solar and wafer manufacturing compatriot Shuangliang Eco-Energy have announced bumper profits from last year as polysilicon producer GCL ponders a rebrand.

Data company IHS Markit expects almost nine out of ten big solar projects in the Americas over the next three years to be tracker mounted. More than a terrawatt of new solar will be added from this year to the end of 2025, the analyst predicted.