Finance

“Junior” figures at state-owned Sinomec Refinery & Chemical Corp told investigators from then-GCL auditor Deloitte that most of an advance payment made for a granular silicon plant had been passed on, in a bid to dissuade GCL from halting the EPC contract, the solar manufacturer said on Friday.

Solar Philippines will tap stock market investors to back the first section of a solar project in Luzon it says will eventually be the largest in the region.

The company is planning another sell-off of solar projects, with two solar farms with a total generation capacity of 93 MW earmarked for divestment to state-owned China National Nuclear Power – provided the sites can come up with their rent arrears.

The city state is aiming to install panels on more than 1,200 public housing blocks of flats under the fourth phase of its national rooftop solar initiative.

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.