Highlights

With folks housebound by Covid-19 restrictions and more conscious of their home energy needs, April proved a banner month for companies generating digital leads through their own accelerated transition to a new way of working.

Four years ago, there were just two floating solar arrays in the United States. But by the end of this year, there will be more than 20.

The state government of Western Australia is expanding its range of solar-smoothing energy storage systems with plans to deploy a big project at the old Kwinana fossil fuel power station near Perth.

Scientists led by staff from Germany’s Fraunhofer ISE have demonstrated a new laser printing process in pilot production, which could replace silver paste and screen printing in solar cell manufacturing. The system is said to offer much more flexibility in the layout of contact fingers on the cell surface and a wider choice of metallization materials.

Sustainability-linked debt financing is experiencing ever increasing popularity and the success of green bonds has driven other products linked to social performance and other sustainability criteria. The total volume of such investments to date passed the $2 trillion point this year.

The Solar Energy Corporation of India has issued a call for expressions of interest to supply clean energy to isolated off-grid communities and warned components will probably have to be transported manually.

The Spanish solar tracker maker is hoping to debut on the stock markets of Madrid, Barcelona, Bilbao and Valencia this year.

Startup SunDrive has secured US$2.2 million in funding from the Australian Renewable Energy Agency to help scale its low-cost, high-efficiency solar cell manufacturing process.

Researchers in the UK have analyzed 25 years of electricity-production and carbon emissions data from 123 countries. Their findings show renewables are considerably more effective than nuclear in reducing carbon emissions from energy generation and that the two technologies tend to get in each other’s way when considered in a joint approach.

A research team from Pakistan has modeled the addition of a floating PV array to an existing dam project to increase the availability of power during peak load hours.