Installations

The Lavumisa 10 MW Solar PV Plant be located in the homonymous area in the southeastern part of Swaziland. The Swaziland Electricity Company (SEC) intends to develop the plant on two phases of 5 MW each.

With a growing global residential PV market, software solutions to optimize rooftop systems have spawned. Last year the PV market grew by 29% with no sign of decelartion in sight. Optimizing installations and making them as convenient as possible has thus become a hotter market recently.

The updated version of the “PV Grid Parity Monitor” (GPM) provides an analysis for the commercial DG segment in representative cities of five countries: Germany, Chile, Spain, Italy and Mexico. Germany, Chile and Italy are the countries where good proximity to grid-parity and regulations favoring self-consumption are best combined.

A solar powered water desalination project in Chile has received an initial investment of $500 million. Trends Industrial and Almar Water Solutions will carry out the ENAPAC (Energías y Aguas del Pacífico) project, which will be the largest desalination plant by reverse osmosis (SWRO) in Latin America, and the first large-scale desalinator powered with PV.

With new amendments to the Electricity Market Act, the Baltic country will now have its first technology-neutral auctions for renewable energy projects ranging in size from 50 kW to 1 MW, its feed-in premium scheme limited to generators up to 50 kW (which may favor solar), and more chances to create direct lines with single final customers.

Despite recent developments in China, the European solar association believes global newly installed PV capacity this year will reach 102 GW, only 5 GW lower than its previous guidance.

The failure of the tender depended on a series of factors, the most important of which was the clarification of policy around fiscal exemptions for solar self-consumption in the case of third-party investment.

With Palestinian developers keeping a low-profile since the advent of the Trump administration, Chinese government money is funding PV projects to support electricity supplies in the disputed nation’s crumbling infrastructure.

Vancouver-based B2Gold says the new facility up and running at its Otjikoto mine is “one of the first fully-autonomous hybrid plants in the world”. The Canadian company is mulling leaving the 7 MW scheme in place for the nearby community after the mine closes.

After securing a financial hedge for its Talasol solar plant in January, Israeli solar company Ellomay has now entered agreement with Deutsche Bank for the structuring of non-recourse senior debt financing for the project.