Commercial and industrial PV installer Starsight Energy says business is on the up thanks to rising wholesale energy costs in the country.

Norwegian analyst Rystad Energy has warned the solar industry could suffer the same effects of rising input prices as onshore wind developers grappling with ever more costly steel, with much hinging on how much solar panel raw material polysilicon can be manufactured.

With the Polish government planning to commission five gas power plants over the next five years, London-based thinktank Carbon Tracker has estimated just how costly the move will be, compared to deploying solar plants and energy storage instead.

The Chinese solar module manufacturer and its German EPC partner Intec have landed a contract to develop BeGreen’s Danish solar portfolio.

With the Italian government temporarily limiting the returns available from solar plants on the wholesale energy market, Swiss investor SUSI Partners says the underlying strength of the country’s PV industry remains.

BloombergNEF’s Jenny Chase has surveyed the state of affairs in world solar for clean energy journal Joule and said the technology’s historic ability to surmount obstacles – and persistently confound analysts’ predictions – should offer a reason for hope.

JA Solar is expected to put another 3.5GW of cell capacity into operation by the end of June and Hong Kong-based IDG Energy Investment will venture into cell manufacturing by establishing a “foreign invested” project company.

The European Commission wants to introduce legislation to back semiconductor research and to address the immediate problem of supply chain bottlenecks by drumming up more than €43 billion, with member states and the private sector expected to contribute.

Mario Draghi’s administration has replaced market-driven electricity prices for the rest of the year and replaced them with tariffs based on historical averages. With solar plant operators among those affected, the European trade body for PV is not amused.

Utility Nova Scotia Power wanted to impose a monthly charge on net-metered solar system owners which the Canadian Renewable Energy Association said could have doubled the payback period for household and commercial arrays.