One of the schemes is linked to household and commercial electricity customers who want to install a PV array to charge electric vehicles.

The nation’s first independently developed solar farm will have a generation capacity of 20 MW and will sell electricity to the national utility under a 25-year contract.

The solar manufacturer has lowered the prices of its wafers by up to 9%. Elsewhere, Luoyang Glass wants to sell off three information display business units to focus its efforts on solar panel glass.

Furthermore, polysilicon manufacturer Daqo will increase investments in its plans to expand capacity and Canadian Solar closed a strategic co-operation agreement with battery giant CATL.

Clean energy trade group the Canadian Renewable Energy Association has told policymakers CA$8 billion worth of solar and wind projects will be needed each year to decarbonize the electricity supply by 2035 and remove net emissions by mid century.

Competitive bidding for onshore solar and wind will establish a clean-power strike price acceptable to successful developers under the contracts-for-difference approach. The incentive scheme is also applicable to biogas, biomass, landfill gas, hydropower, concentrated solar power, and geothermal plants.

Two investors backed by the charitable foundations set up by energy giants have seed-funded the cash pot to lend to African solar companies, who will be able to buy solar kit cheaper thanks to the economies of scale offered by the aggregation of orders.

The energy storage system, which is set to be up and running in around a year’s time, will be supplied by Finnish company Wärtsilä and will provide services including reserve power and frequency control response.

Industry association SolarPower Europe expects little change in the line-up of Europe’s biggest residential battery markets in four years’ time, with a rush of retrofits as turn-of-the-century solar feed-in tariffs begin to expire, set to keep Germany way ahead of the pack.

Elsewhere, Longi has announced it has secured a wafer supply deal from Zhejiang-based TOPCon module manufacturer Dal Solar, and glassmaker Irico New Energy is planning an initial public offering.