Installations

The Pacific Gas and Electric Company, founded 114 years ago, is filing for bankruptcy and may be broken up by regulators. None of which is good news for solar project owners holding contracts with the utility.

Global Infra Partners, KKR, Brookfield, I Squared Capital and Macquarie are reported to be among those eyeing the renewable energy assets of debt riddled Infrastructure Leasing and Financial Services.

The domestic company has cleared a third debt funding facility of $9 million with Kenya-based SunFunder, responsAbility and Oikocredit. The credit means 2.5 MW of off-grid capacity, enough to bring energy to 70.000 people.

With the International Renewable Energy Agency’s number-crunchers predicting almost 5.4 GW of new solar across the six Gulf Cooperation Council nations today, Suhail Mohammed Faraj Al Mazroui said his nation alone would install 6-7 GW of new renewables capacity by 2024, as pv magazine editor-in-chief Jonathan Gifford reports.

Norway’s state-owned hydropower and wind company intends to deploy a 2 MW floating installation at its 72 MW hydropower plant in Albania’s Elbasan district.

A Californian company which provides PV power to maternity clinics in the developing world was an award winner alongside British pay-as-you-go electricity provider BBOXX. And a school in Tajikistan which aims to go fully solar powered secured a cool $100,000 towards that ambition.

The UK cities of Bristol and Plymouth and the county of Devon will get £1.9 million to develop energy efficiency, sustainability, and clean energy projects. Bristol in 2014 received a £50 million grant to accelerate its plans to be carbon neutral by 2050. Devon has ambitious plans of becoming 80% carbon neutral by the same date.

Through the procurement, now at the pre-qualification stage, Moroccan state-owned utility ONE aims to build seven large-scale PV plants in the south and east of the country. German development bank KfW is a partner in the project.

Danish developer European Energy has secured a 12-year agreement from Axpo Italia, the local unit of Swiss energy provider Axpo. Around half the 300 MW of solar projects the company is developing in Italy are now ready to build.

Togo, Mauritius and Guyana will all receive backing for solar projects in the latest round of funding from the Abu Dhabi Fund for Development-IRENA Project Facility.