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Spain’s Santander and Germany’s Bayerische Landesbank arranged funding for the projects, which will be owned by SunEdison’s yieldco subsidiary TerraForm Power.

The PV manufacturer has announced plans to end its production operations in Germany in March and relocate them to more affordable locations. IHS analyst Stefan de Haan sees the main reasons for the move in the floundering European PV markets and the lack of scale effects.

When Saudi developer ACWA won Dubai’s 200 MW reverse auction for a PV power plant with a bid of only US$5.84c/kWh over 25 years, the low price stunned the PV industry. The founder of Bloomberg New Energy Finance, Michael Liebreich, believes that it will also send a strong signal to the MENA region of just how cheap renewable energy can be delivered. Liebreich describes it as “the starting gun for something pretty substantial.” He spoke to pv magazine at the World Future Energy Summit this week in Abu Dhabi.

The global PV market reached between 40 GW and 42 GW in 2014, demonstrating moderate growth on 37 GW in 2013. This is according to figures released today by the PV Market Alliance.

On the same day that former U.S. Vice President Al Gore expressed optimism that an agreement on greenhouse gas emissions would be reached in Paris later this year, Jake Werksman, the European Union’s lead negotiator in these negotiations, shared Gore’s optimism that Paris would prove successful after the failure of the last round of negotiations in Copenhagen to reach a consensus.

In his annual State of the Union speech delivered to Congress and the nation Tuesday evening, President Barack Obama highlighted the rapid expansion of solar power in the United States since he moved into the White House.

A new study titled Managing Flexibility in European Electricity Grids by Frost and Sullivan finds that grid flexibility is crucial to integrate renewable energy sources in Europe. Technical, geographical, managerial and above all political obstacles remain though.

Saudi Arabia has postponed the roll-out of its renewable energy plans by eight years, now setting its its capacity target to 2040, according to reports citing Hashim Yamani, president of the King Abdullah City for Atomic and Renewable Energy (K.A.CARE).

The company’s German site will cease production as of March 1. The German facility has production capacities of 230 MW for cells and 130 MW for modules. Hanwha will relocate part of the fab to Malaysia, where costs are cheaper.

Three engineers from the power and automation company will work alongside the Solar Impulse team as it embarks on its solar-powered circumnavigation of the globe.