South Africa to tender 6.4 GW of solar and wind, 513 MW of storage and 4.5 GW of conventional generation
The country’s regulator has approved a government plan to tender for 11.81 GW of power generation capacity on top of the 2 GW tender opened last month.
Chile connects first floating PV plant to grid under net billing scheme
Developer Solarity has completed the first floating PV array to be connected to the national distribution network under Chile’s net billing scheme. The plant will supply 100% of project owner Hortifrut’s energy needs, while allowing it to sell excess power to the grid.
Bulgaria wants another 2.6 GW of renewables by 2030 – and coal
The government’s energy strategy targets new clean energy capacity this decade but all existing coal power plants will also remain active, gas pipelines could be upgraded and new nuclear facilities deployed.
Indian rooftop PV capacity nears 6 GW
Bridge to India figures show dominance of Chinese inverters, which supplied almost 80% of installs from July last year to the end of June.
Chinese PV Industry Brief: New 10 GW module factory planned as 3.6 GW of cell capacity comes online
Power company Datang Group is reportedly planning to spend around $148 million replacing a coal-fired power plant with a 200 MW solar project in Shanxi province and two solar players are set to issue stock.
Gujarat opens 210 MW solar tender
Developers now have until September 23 to lodge bids for an earlier, 110 MW procurement round and can also toss their hat into the ring for a new tender in the district of Jamnagar which closes on October 5.
Active cooling for PV modules in floating arrays
Saudi Arabian and Pakistani scientists have created a serpentine cooling block structure to improve the efficiency of PV panels in floating solar projects by around 1.5%. The cooling block can be filled via a low-cost, 15.6 W commercial 12 V DC water pump with cool water.
Photovoltaic shade for greenhouses
French start-up Solar Cloth has secured a patent for a PV shade screen for solar greenhouses.
EU Green Recovery plan could support 2.3 GW of Spanish solar project capacity
Three big projects are candidates for support from the Covid recovery plan laid out by the bloc.
Keeping PV panels honest
Michelle McCann and Lawrence McIntosh, the partners behind the PV Lab panel-testing facility in Canberra, see Australia’s solar installations as a vast, aggregated virtual power plant.
