Installations

Renewable energy developers connected roughly 1.29 GW of new capacity to the Canadian grid in 2016, but solar remains a negligible part of that growth, accounting for just 0.5% of total nationwide electricity generation last year, according to the National Energy Board (NEB).

The energy minister of the Belgian French-speaking macro-region said that residential solar is now profitable without incentives in Belgium, and that no retroactive measures will be introduced.

The solar park consisting of two different sites was built near Manisa, in Turkey’s western Aegean Region.

Leading module manufacturer, Canadian Solar has been awarded a 112 MW project in Brazil, after the country allocated around 574 MW of PV in its recent A-4 power auction.

The project’s lenders are the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), Deutsche Investitions- Und Entwicklungsgesellschaft Mbh (DEG) and Arab Bank to Risha for Solar Power Projects PSC. The facility will be built in the eastern province of Risha by the first quarter of 2019.

Troubleshooting in solar plants requires not only trying to find a diagnosis of why the performance ratio is reduced, but also to localize faulty modules. In a recent pv magazine webinar, experts discussed four troubleshooting cases and explored whether module-resolved monitoring would help reduce the effort, and thereby decrease LCOE.

A new scheme aimed at supporting all rooftop PV segments is expected to be launched soon by the government. The new mechanism includes net metering, although with an additional grid fee covering storage costs, and FITs for small-scale solar. The government is also planning new auctions for rooftop solar geared towards new models of entrepreneurship.

The developers of the five newly selected PV projects, which were initially excluded from the round, have agreed to reduce their prices to the levels of those selected in late November. The additional solar capacity has raised the total assigned power for PV up to 816.3 MW.

Chinese media reports on development of the Jinan City Expressway, where weight-bearing solar panels are being laid for the 2km that stretches into the city of Jinan, which is the provincial capital of Shandong.

The U.S. development division of the Japanese thin film PV maker has now developed and sold six utility-scale solar projects totaling 173 MW.