Highlights

Australia’s federal Labor party has pledged to roll out PV generation and batteries at schools across the nation, and to create VPPs supporting up to 365 MW of capacity.

The new manufacturing facility will be located in Leshan, in China’s Sichuan province and will produce monocrystalline wafers. It will raise the group’s wafer capacity to around 11.5 GW. Meanwhile, large supply deals are said to have come from markets including Vietnam, Mexico and Spain.

The world’s number one monosilicon module maker is not intending to give up its crown any time soon, and has announced further plans to expand its already huge annual production capacities for ingots, wafers, cells and modules.

The volume of U.S. electricity generated by renewable energy is set to surpass the level sourced from coal for the first time this month and the trend is expected to continue in May, according to Department of Energy data.

A new project is in line with the target of the Island Council of Tenerife to cover all electricity demand with renewable energy. The development of electromobility and storage is key to the ambition.

World Bank Group member the IFC has signed an agreement to implement tendered projects with the Egyptian Electricity Transmission Company. The tender for the solar complex was launched at the end of 2017.

According to the Korean manufacturer, its Q.Peak Duo-G6 module is produced with larger wafers than those used in the G5. This is said to increase module yield by around 6% for a power output ranging from 355-420 W.

The slew of new capacity will come from projects allocated from the bids received for the autumn 2018 round of the SDE+ program for large scale renewables. The Dutch Central Agency for Statistics revealed new PV additions last year were 200 MW more than predicted, at 1.5 GW, and the government last week announced net metering conditions for rooftop solar would be maintained until 2023.

In late January 2019, California’s largest investor-owned utility Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) declared bankruptcy for the second time, causing anxiety for investors, ratepayers, employees, PPA holders, elected government officials and, lest we forget, fire and gas explosion victims. Judge Alsup, who is overseeing PG&E’s probation from its felony conviction, lambasted the company for violating its probation. “To my mind, there’s a very clear-cut pattern here: that PG&E is starting these fires,” Alsup said. “What do we do? Does the judge just turn a blind eye and say, ‘PG&E continue your business as usual. Kill more people by starting more fires.”

Developers and manufacturers looking to enter France’s utility-scale segment must deal with controversial rules which prioritize projects relying on low-carbon emission modules. But what makes a low-emission module? Clearly ones that are made in France or elsewhere in Europe, according to market data. But despite clearly increasing project costs, the rules do not seem to be an obstacle for the planned gigawatt-scale growth of solar in the country over the coming years.