The Vietnamese authorities have approved a new price framework for importing renewable energy from Laos, with base import prices for wind and hydropower set to take effect at the end of 2025.

The Canadian government has put another CAD 500 million ($363.1 million) in its funding stream to finance renewable energy and grid modernization technologies. Canadian utilities, system operators, and industry organizations are eligible to apply for support for projects that help strengthen the grid.

A team from the University of California Santa Barbara used ultrafast electron microscopy to record photocarriers as they diffuse across a silicon and germanium heterojunction. It is the first time the movement, which lasts picoseconds, has been captured as a moving visual.

The latest report from the International Energy Agency (IEA) Photovoltaic Power Systems Programme (PVPS) says solar records were broken across the United States in 2023, as international trade issues decreased and financial certainty increased, driven by the implementation of the US Inflation Reduction Act.

A new policy paper from the African Policy Research Institute (APRI) recommends that Africa adopt a regionalized PV strategy to successfully integrate into the global solar value chain. It warns that without a coordinated approach, individual countries are unlikely to integrate into the global market.

The International Energy Agency says renewables are on course to meet almost half of global electricity demand by 2030, with solar accounting for 80% of the growth in capacity.

The city of Cape Town, South Africa, has started building a 7 MW solar plant that it will own and operate. It has also launched a tender for a 5 MW/8 MWh battery energy storage system to be built at the same site.

Better Energy says it has signed a power purchase agreement (PPA) for its first solar park in Finland. It will build the 38 GW project on a former parking lot in southern Finland.

AleaSoft Energy Forecasting says rising gas prices coupled with lower solar and wind production had an upward influence on European electricity prices in most markets last week. France, Portugal and Spain all broke their daily solar production records in October.

The European Heat Pump Association’s (EHPA) recent two-day event in Brussels came as heat pump sales across 13 European countries fell 47% year on year. Attendees discussed how policy and the industry can reverse the decline, stressing the need to better communicate the benefits of heat pumps to customers.