Manufacturing

Urbeco, a new European alliance, aims to carry out smart and eco-friendly urbanization in developing countries. Belgium’s Groupmec and Switzerland’s Ovóla have joined MegaCell Engineering in the venture.

The testing and certification institute says the new certification marks a new age of risk reduction, quality and safety for solar plant assets while reducing the risk for PV power plant investors.

The company is set to build 30 solar systems for nine public agencies in the San Francisco Bay Area — SunEdison’s home turf.

Backed by the German government, the PV-Regel project aims to study how PV can balance power, particularly on an international level, and to develop requirement profiles for PV to balance power in the future.

Solar energy prices saw double-digit declines last year of between 12 and 19%. The trend is expected to continue in 2014 with further PV price drops of between 3 and 12%, according to NREL.

The Spanish company has a current development pipeline in the U.K. of more than 200 MW and is on track to meet its target of connecting 100 MW of PV capacity in the country by 2015.

The cooperation will lead to greater flight endurance for UAVs — critical for precision agriculture, search and rescue, land surveying and other commercial applications, according to the company.

More than 80,000 homes and 5,000 business and institutions in both continents have installed PV systems using Yingli solar panels, according to the company. Since 2013, Yingli has deployed more than 150 MW of panels in Latin America and the Caribbean.

The company’s latest solar installation in Chihuahua has won approval from the Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources and is to be constructed by the end of 2015.

Fraunhofer ISE and the company’s Global Advisory Board member Eicke Weber says the record module efficiency has moved Sunpreme “to the top of the class.”