Highlights

A program designed to finance solar projects for local authorities in Palestine has opened with an initial $25 million investment from the Palestine Monetary Authority in collaboration with Austria, Finland and Norway.

Spain has expanded its energy community programme with 20 new projects, bringing the national total to 262 and unlocking €108.4 million in EU-backed funding. Unevenly distributed across regions, the energy communities deployed in Spain to date combine solar generation, storage, efficiency, and mobility solutions, delivering 175.3 MW of PV capacity and involving more than 111,000 citizens.

The Czech government is reviewing proposals to streamline procedures for new solar power plants, including increasing the threshold for paying electricity tax to 100 kW and preventing double taxation on projects installing both solar and storage.

The European Commission has allocated €1.09 billion in support through the third European Hydrogen Bank auction, selecting nine projects across seven countries. The procurement exercise was significantly oversubscribed with 58 bids from 11 countries. It awarded fixed hydrogen production premiums ranging from €0.44 ($0.51)/kg to €3.49/kg.

Finnish energy company Fortum has switched on two industrial-scale heat pumps in southern Finland that will utilize excess heat from two local data centres belonging to Microsoft from next year. The company states data centre waste heat could cover around 40% of the total 2 TWh annual district heating demand of users in the area.

Negative electricity prices are making a strong comeback in the French energy market. Driven by rising photovoltaic output and reduced nuclear flexibility, they dominated much of April, often falling close to the regulatory floor.

Korea Electric Power Corp. (KEPCO) says it will install 95 MW of solar capacity across 500 substation sites nationwide by 2030, using surplus substation land to meet South Korea’s K-RE100 public-sector renewable energy target.

Two of Argentine’s most popular football clubs – River Plate and Vélez Sarsfield – are advancing solar energy projects at their Buenos Aires stadiums to cut operating costs and expand on-site renewable generation.

Continuous negative and zero wholesale electricity prices, weak demand, and Greece’s inadequate energy storage policy are leaving small- and medium-sized PV investors exposed, despite abundant solar resources.

Propelled by a select group of high-capacity manufacturers including T1 Energy and Canadian Solar, Texas is set to exceed 15 GW of solar PV module production in 2026, accounting for nearly half of all U.S. silicon-based manufacturing and serving as the primary hub for the inaugural Solar Manufacturing USA conference in Austin this September.