Commercial & Industrial PV

Firming up the payment system for solar energy exported back into the grid from PV-powered pumps will offer owners a new revenue stream, eat into a $1 billion annual diesel fuel bill and reduce strain on the grid by up to 1.5 GW daily during the agricultural season.

Electricity regulator ANEEL has proposed applying a fee for solar systems with up to 5 MW of generation capacity and reducing energy payments for participants in the nation’s net metering program.

The microgrid utility has raised enough capital from Shell New Energies to deploy systems across sub-Saharan Africa.

The telecommunications company opened a large data center near the Turkish capital. Turkcell said it wants to improve data security by storing more information on Turkish soil.

The Smart Energy Hub can operate in electrolysis mode to store renewable energy as hydrogen, or in fuel cell mode to produce electricity and heat from previously produced hydrogen or methane. Its developers are the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission and start-up Sylfen.

The Swiss multinational has opened a production facility for energy storage systems for the mobility market and placed a 900 kW rooftop array on one of its Italian factories.

The Institute for Essential Services Reform (IESR), an Indonesian think tank, has reported that the country has the potential to install up to 655 GW of rooftop PV capacity. Contrast that with a current installed capacity of just 100 MW, and it’s clear that solar PV still has a long way to go before it reaches its potential throughout Indonesia. Given the poor air quality in many heavily populated cities across the archipelago, PV deployment is long overdue in the Southeast Asian nation.

Analysts at Fitch Solutions have published a report singling out Spain and Brazil as ‘outperformers’ in the global solar market and labelled Vietnam the “market to watch”. The analysts expect surging growth from the Southeast Asian nation to continue in the coming decade.

Industry body Gogla and the World Bank’s Lighting Global program said the last six months set a record for off-grid solar deployment. Solar home systems and other small off-grid appliances are being used in ever larger numbers.

The government has amended two regulations and introduced a new one to spur development of rooftop PV. The new provisions increase the size of systems eligible for net metering payments and reduce fees for industrial installations.