Policy

Texas-based FTC Solar said it expects a “significant rebound” in its business in the final three months of this year, if it can secure sufficient supplies of PV panels.

An international group of researchers from 15 universities has said that there is growing consensus among scientists that an energy system based on 100% renewables could be achieved cost effectively by 2050.

The US House of Representatives is set to vote on a bill this week that could provide a new production tax credit for green hydrogen production, while the European Commission has approved plans to support renewable hydrogen in Romania.

PV system operators in Germany recorded high revenues in July, as solar generation continued to break record after record.

Infrastructure Development Co. (IDCOL), a Bangladeshi state infrastructure investor, has secured €80 million ($81.4 million) of loans from Germany’s KfW Development Bank to help companies to install solar plants and solar irrigation pumps.

Solar industry leaders weigh in on Senate passage of the IRA, the bill that carries $370 billion in energy security and climate spending.

As two US grid operators have flagged a shortage of qualified engineers to conduct interconnection studies, pv magazine USA recently spoke with Kalyan Chilukuri, vice president of Electric Power Engineers, about industry staffing challenges and measures that might help.

Scientists in Denmark have modeled the likely impacts of reduced gas supply on the European energy mix up to 2050. Their research finds that if the continent is to achieve the Paris Agreement goal of limiting global average temperature increase to 1.5 C, then gas consumption would need to be heavily reduced, anyway. In less ambitious climate scenarios, however, limited gas supplies could delay the phase-out of coal-fired electricity and lead to longer-term uncertainty over fuel and electricity prices.

President Ramaphosa’s speech this week included momentous plans for new solar and battery procurement as well as efforts to cut licensing and permitting delays as national utility Eskom scrambles to reduce the scale of black-outs.

A provincial government in the Philippines has installed a solar pump that will move water to a reservoir where fish can now be bred. The $124,000 system will also irrigate vegetables and high-value crops for two farmers’ groups.