Markets & Policy

The U.S. company’s transformation from solar manufacturer to the second-largest residential PV company in the nation is complete after it spun off its high-efficiency cell and module production unit into a new entity, in partnership with Chinese wafer maker TZS.

With hundreds of homes and businesses having received solar-plus-storage systems and monitoring equipment, an algorithm is managing a market for flexibility and capacity in Cornwall. Homeowners with storage can place bids to sell energy from their systems to the distribution system owner on an intraday basis.

A new handbook published by the World Bank and Solar Research Institute of Singapore contains advice on how to plan and build floating PV. The guide is intended to help developers with site identification; feasibility studies; finance; environmental and social issues; procurement and construction; and operations and maintenance.

The module maker has started producing solar modules at its fab in Liebenfels.

The company says its network is the largest fleet of batteries under virtual power plant management worldwide.

Grid operator Polskie Sieci Elektroenergetyczne has published figures demonstrating the country had 1,007.2 MW of solar at the end of September, with 600 MW of new PV coming online in the first nine months of the year. The Polish government expects total capacity to reach 1.3 GW this year.

Corporations in the auto industry, battery manufacturing and mining have joined forces to establish reliable due diligence reporting on raw minerals. Volvo will be among the first to move on the issue by putting its cobalt supply chain under scrutiny early next year.

A project on Isabela Island in Ecuador’s Galapagos archipelago has given its 3,500 inhabitants energy generated by local resources, including plant oil produced on the continent. Preferable to a logistically challenging and hyper expensive extension of the mainland grid, if the $13 million island system were installed today, it would be cheaper than when it was contracted four years ago.

A 20 MW solar park is planned near a Stockholm highway to generate power for a tenants association. The project is expected to generate cheaper power than grid electricity and will also trade clean energy certificates on the Swedish-Norwegian market.

Amid high hopes for the European Commission presidency that is about to start, attendees at a recent event in Berlin tempered optimism by renewing calls for an industrial policy for the bloc.