Installations

The Minerals Council South Africa has urged the government to solve the country’s energy crisis by adding more power generation capacity from both distributed and large-scale renewables. Meanwhile, several mining companies operating in South Africa are planning their own big solar parks, including two 200 MW facilities under development by Sibanye-Stillwater and Vedanta.

Corporations contracted a record amount of wind and solar energy through power purchase agreements in 2019, up more than 40% from the previous year’s record, says a new report from BloombergNEF. The bulk of this purchasing occurred in the U.S. with tech companies and oil and gas majors leading the charge.

A new report from Enervis shows that Spain is currently the most attractive European market for PV projects with a PPA, with 4.39 GW of contracted capacity. Italy and Germany are the second and third markets for this type of project, with 1.91 GW and 1.05 GW, respectively.

French water management agency Société du Canal de Provence (SCP) is planning an innovative floating project to test its combination with a solar tracking system. The 250 kW project was awarded a fixed tariff in a special tender for innovative PV projects held by The French Energy Regulatory Commission (CRE) in February 2018. The plant will be deployed on a water surface managed by SCP in Southern France.

An international research team is proposing a fuzzy logic approach for optimal site selection of large-scale wind, solar and hybrid wind-solar power projects. The new methodology is based on criterial components for energy optimization through climatological, topographic and human factors.

Only one 5 MW solar project was selected in the 500 MW auction, while wind project developers secured the remaining 495 MW. Final price for the selected solar park was €60/MWh.

Swiss renewable energy association VESE has reported an average 4% increase for owners of PV systems not exceeding 10 kW in size. However, the remuneration continues to vary widely between the 30 largest network operators in the country.

UK scientists are proposing a new approach to calculating the optimum angular-tilt of PV panels for a planar surface at a particular site. In their view, the new technique may unlock innovative yield optimization methods for the installation of PV systems.

Only 39.8 MW of PV projects were allocated in the fifth round of Japan’s procurement program for large-scale solar. The lowest price offered was ¥10.99/kWh ($0.10) and the highest ¥13.0, for an average price of ¥12.57.

The generous tariff is considered crucial by the Vietnamese government to maintain high levels of development in the rooftop segment until 2021.