Installations

The Swiss-based power producer reported its Q1 2018 financial results. After the company ditched its Chilean project portfolio, some numbers look grim, but performance in the Japanese market appears more promising.

The purchased electricity will be used to power the companies’ purifiers, waste water lifting stations, treatment plants of drinking water, cathodic protection systems, and several offices.

The Hungarian government has amended its recently issued support scheme METAR, in order to introduce a tight deadline for residential and commercial PV, which will, in reality, mean the end of most of projects in this segment. The METAR scheme had been approved by the European Commission last summer.

The 5 GW PV park, planned for the Dholera Special Investment Region of Gujarat, will become the world’s largest project of its kind, when complete. It is expected to attract an investment of US$3.7 billion and generate employment for more than 20,000 people, says Jai Prakash Shivahare, managing director at Dholera Industrial City Development Limited. He takes time out to speak to pv magazine about the mega solar project.

PV in India: The seemingly serene solar journey that India was on has hit stormy waters in recent months as issues regarding tariff duties, domestic content and financial backing have served to shake confidence in the industry. But there still exists fantastic potential across the nation for PV to really embed itself as India’s favored power source, provided it can address these three key questions.

The Nepal Electricity Authority is seeking bids for projects ranging from 1 MW to 5 MW across 25 sites.

The net metering scheme, which is open to rooftop solar PV projects not exceeding 30 kW in size, was introduced by the Ukrainian government in 2015.

In a conversation with pv magazine, Mouloud Bakli, president of the Algerian solar energy association, Club Energia (branch of FCE), says that multiple solar pipelines are set to be restarted by the Algerian government. Furthermore, two new tenders, for Independent Power Producer, and solar hybrid power, projects, will be issued by the end of Q2 2018. For all of these plans, local content requirement rules will apply. The existing local PV module industry, on the other hand, is expected to reach a combined annual capacity of 550 MW by the end of the year, while several manufacturers of mounting structures, cables, solar glass and junction boxes are already operating in the market.

In the past financial year, India missed its rooftop solar PV targets, although it did exceed those for both grid-connected ground-mounted and off-grid systems, reports the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy. Bridge to India believes the government’s rooftop targets have been set at the wrong level and that around 10 GW will be installed by 2022, rather than 40 GW.

U.K.-based water company, Northumbrian Water has entered into a partnership with Lightsource BP for the development of 10 new solar farms at its sites, which are expected to generate 10 GWh of clean electricity each year to help power its operations.