Employment

Swedish company Exeger says the dye-sensitized ‘light-harvesting material’ it will produce at its facility will generate enough power to prevent the need to recharge portable electronic devices, lengthening battery lifespan perhaps indefinitely.

PV industry veteran Karl-Heinz Remmers recalls the trajectory of solar power this decade and predicts stronger than expected development for the ten years ahead.

Elon Musk has promised a fab near Berlin that will help create up to 10,000 new jobs. Tesla wants to build the facility near the city’s controversial new BER airport.

The latest study published by the International Renewable Energy Agency says the average solar electricity cost of $0.085/kWh produced by projects commissioned last year is set to fall to $0.048 next year, and $0.02-0.08 by 2030.

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

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.

The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development is lending €250 million for a project which has expanded from producing an initial 100,000 EV batteries per year to an hoped-for 1 million by 2022, creating 1,000 new jobs along the way.

The European Solar Manufacturing Council says a decision by policymakers to disregard the carbon footprint of imported solar products ‘makes absolutely no sense’. Talk of ‘jobs which require a rather low qualification’, meanwhile, is unlikely to heal the widening rift with solar project developers and panel installers.

Insolvency proceedings have been opened against the assets of the German thin-film solar manufacturer. A proposed reorganization failed because investors did not provide sufficient capital. Some 180 employees will lose their jobs.

Five PV power plants, each with a generation capacity of 15 MW, were grid-connected in the Russian Republic of Buryatia and the Zabaikalsky Territory. The projects were built under a program which offers generators capacity payments and the ability to trade on the wholesale energy market.