Markets

Half year data from UK certification body MCS reveal a step change in the number of heat pump installations in 2024, as well as a record breaking first six months for battery storage installations. At the current rate, the annual heat pump installation record will be broken by the end of 2024

Canada and Italy announced funds for hydrogen projects. Meanwhile, a team of researchers explained that Australia should ship hydrogen to Japan by 2030 via methyl cyclohexane (MCH) or liquid ammonia (LNH3), not completely rejecting the option of liquid hydrogen (LH2).

Between August 19 and 30, the ground-mounted PV tenders will accept up to 925 MW of projects, in parallel with the building-mounted PV call for tenders, between August 26 and September 6, which aims for a total capacity of 300 MW. The latter marks the end of the carbon footprint requirements based on life cycle analysis (LCA) in favor of a “country mix” approach.

Energy Charts and Agora Energiewende both report a production of 10.3 TWh of solar power last month. Almost 9.5 TWh of this was fed into the grid. In addition, there were more than 80 hours in July with negative electricity prices.

In a new weekly update for pv magazine, OPIS, a Dow Jones company, provides a quick look at the main price trends in the global PV industry.

Limburg, the southernmost province of the Netherlands, has announced investment in solar panel manufacturer Solarge. Solarge is planning to increase production capacity at its site in Limburg and also construct a new facility.

Solar Energy Corp. of India (SECI) is accepting bids to set up 2 GW of solar PV power projects with 1 GW/4 GWh energy storage systems on a build-own-operate basis. The projects can be located anywhere in India and must be connected to the interstate transmission system.

While the lucrative tax credits has attracted clean energy manufacturers from around the world to build factories in the U.S., the fact that many of the new manufacturing facilities are from Chinese companies has created a controversy that this new bill aims to solve.

The Portuguese Ministry of Energy has allocated €99.75 million ($107.6 million) for grid flexibility and energy storage projects which should be installed by the end of 2025.

Called SolarNet+, the novel framework is claimed to calculate cities’ PV potential not only by finding the orientation of roofs in areal imagery but also by identifying superstructures such as windows or chimneys. It was tested using areal photographs from Munich and Brussels and proved superior to reference frameworks.