Utility Scale PV

The US Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) has updated its annual cost modeling tool in light of the US Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). It has identified higher labor costs for utility-scale solar projects and falling hardware costs due to new manufacturing tax credits.

Israeli developer Teralight says it is buying 16.5 MW of solar projects for ILS 25 million ($6.4 million) from gas supplier Electra Power. It expects to generate ILS 320 million of income over the lifetime of the projects.

Econergy and NoFar Energy unveiled their jointly managed 155 MW Rătești PV Park in Romania’s south last week, which is claimed to be the country’s largest PV facility. An Econergy spokesperson told pv magazine that the plant, spread across 170 hectares, will be connected to the electricity grid by the end of the month.

An international team of scientists has assessed different strategies for volume-based and fixed-amount subsidy auctions for large-scale wind and solar projects. They have found that higher subsidy levels in auctions lead to lower final prices.

Mining giant Fortescue has abandoned plans to build a 5.4 GW solar, wind and battery energy storage project that was set to provide renewable energy to power its iron ore mining operations in Western Australia.

Will a redeployable solar and energy storage solution be the answer to unreliable grid electricity across much of Africa, as its developer proposes? Or will it merely be a temporary solution that will see cash-strapped utilities kick the can of universal energy access further down the road?

Italian energy group Enel says it is scrapping its plans to build a hydrogen project in La Spezia, Italy, despite €13.72 million ($14.7 million) in European subsidies, while Toyota has introduced its new Crown Sedan fuel cell electric vehicles (FCEV) in Japan.

In a new weekly update for pv magazine, Solcast, a DNV company, reports that solar asset operators across North America experienced a shift in October’s solar performance, as regions that experienced higher than normal irradiance in September saw a reversal in trends.

The new SolarSTEPS forecasting method improves ensemble forecast quality by 9.3% compared to approaches that consider only cloud advective motion.

The National Solar Energy Federation of India will serve as the secretariat of the newly formed India Agrivoltaics Alliance (IAA). The IAA includes 12 organizations and is supported by the India Climate Collaborative and Bloomberg Philanthropies.