Enel will invest around 1,400 million BRL ($390 million) in the construction of the São Gonçalo solar plant, located in the state of Piauí. The 475 MW project is currently the largest PV plant under construction in South America.

Italian, Spanish and Portuguese scientists have published a study about energy consumption and the environmental footprint of the use of solar-hybrid irrigation systems in olive plantations in Portugal and Morocco.

A few days after the Spanish government introduced new rules for self-consumption and canceled the solar tax, the Spanish Parliament is now reviewing new provisions to reduce the time frame of the registration for a project under the self-consumption regime, while also simplifying bureaucratic procedures.

The Spanish Cabinet has approved a royal decree, which introduces a package of urgent measures to boost the country’s energy transition. It includes the already announced elimination of the “sun tax”, and other important measures, such as compliance with renewable energy objectives, electric vehicle adoption, reduced electricity prices, a social bonus for heating, consumer protection measures, and the extension of an electric social bond.

pv magazine interviewed Ricardo Arias González, who holds a PhD in Physical Sciences and introduced the Optical Tweezers applied to biology in Spain. It is one of the tools of photonics for which Arthur Ashkin received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2018, together with Donna Strickland and Gérard Mourou.

Unlike its three previous funds, which focused on plants in operation, the Spanish asset manager will raise €300 million for the construction of plants without subsidies.

The Chilean subsidiary of the Czech Republic’s Solek Group and CarbonFree Chile SpA has signed a framework agreement for the development and construction of up to 118 MW of PV projects in Chile. These will have a power range of 3 MW to 9 MW, and will be developed under Chile’s PMGD Program for distributed generation.

The Chinese manufacturer will provide 250,000 monocrystalline modules for the 80 MW El Paso solar plant, which Enel is building in the Colombian department of Cesar. It is slated to be operational by the end of the year.

Spain’s Enel unit Endesa plans to invest €59 million in the construction of a 84.9 MW solar park in the town of Totana, in the southern region of Murcia. In other news, Catalonia is also seeking independence through energy. In this vein, Barcelona Energy, a public metropolitan electricity operator that will supply renewable electricity to the City Council and other municipal companies, as well as street lighting, began operations yesterday.

The updated version of the “PV Grid Parity Monitor” (GPM) provides an analysis for the commercial DG segment in representative cities of five countries: Germany, Chile, Spain, Italy and Mexico. Germany, Chile and Italy are the countries where good proximity to grid-parity and regulations favoring self-consumption are best combined.