Finance

The polysilicon manufacturer and solar project developer has finally managed to publish the annual figures for 2020 and appears to be placing a lot of faith in its less-energy-intensive granular silicon product. In the meantime, though, another debt repayment deadline is looming within a fortnight.

In a chat with pv magazine at the Key Energy event in Rimini, Roberta Valenziani, of Italian trade body Elettricità Futura, explained the factors preventing Italy’s PV market from having a renaissance. She said the country has Europe’s longest delays and highest costs for obtaining permits for large scale solar.

The input costs of the two biggest contributors to solar plant development expense have gone through the roof since the world began to come out of Covid-19 lockdowns, to leave project developers with some difficult choices.

An investigation into internal controls at the polysilicon maker found the company permitted deals to be signed off solely on paper in certain circumstances and also unearthed no evidence anyone had done their homework before handing over 865 million shares to secure a loan which, GCL says, never materialized in full.

Innovative solar wafer company Nexwafe has closed its latest financing round with €32 million. The round was lead by the Indian group Reliance, which contributed €25 million to the round. The Freiburg-based wafer manufacturer intends to use the funds to drive forward the production and commercialization of its kerfless PV wafers.

Norwegian hydropower giant and Europe’s largest renewable energy generator, Statkraft, has published its annual “Low Emissions Scenario”, which describes investment in green projects as “unstoppable”, while calling for a dramatic scaling up for renewables, electrification and green hydrogen.

Energy consultancy DNV was tasked by module manufacturing giant Longi Solar with comparing the balance of systems costs between modules utilizing 182mm and 210mm wafers, based on a 3.7 MW project in three different layouts. The results reveal a slim cost advantage for the smaller of the two, based on both fixed tilt and tracker systems.

Industrial shutdowns and reduced factory production capacity levels indicate the companies producing the raw materials used by solar manufacturers are being afflicted by electricity consumption measures just as other sectors are. It is not clear whether the solar industry will be afforded any favors by Beijing, as analyst Frank Haugwitz explains.

Re-Source 2021 took place in Amsterdam at the end of last week, and pv magazine was there to cover the event where the suppliers and sellers of renewable power purchase agreements (PPAs) meet the (largely corporate) buyers, though encouraging PPA uptake among small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) was among the major talking points, including ‘additionality’, de-risking renewable PPAs and 24/7 matching.

Fotowatio Renewable Ventures’ (FRV) Australian platform includes 637 MW (DC) in projects already operational or under construction, and a pipeline comprising 7 GW of solar projects and 1.3 GWh of battery storage.