Strategic Alliances

In a little over ten years, Northvolt aims to pour 150 GWh of batteries onto the European market, annually. The company is also working to source end-of-life batteries for half its raw materials.

The falling cost of PV has increasingly driven the adoption of solar technology in recent years. But for a long time, the solar industry was fully dependent on subsidies. German PV project developer BayWa r.e. made headlines in 2018 with its 175 MW Don Rodrigo plant just outside of Seville, in southern Spain. The company backed the array with a 15-year power purchase agreement (PPA), marking the first time a project of that size had been refinanced in Europe without the help of subsidies. It later charted new territory again with the completion of Germany’s first subsidy-free PV project in 2019.

Through its key regional partner Omnisun Srl, Growatt has offered its products to the Italian market since 2012 – making it one of the first Chinese inverter brands operating in the country. pv magazine caught up with Omnisun’s chief technology officer, Giovanni Marino, to discuss Covid-19, reliable partners, new energy technologies, and his expectations for the Italian PV market.

RES4Africa’s plan to offer a one-stop-shop to tap consolidate all the European sources of funding for African renewables aims to de-risk investments in large-scale renewable energy projects in the continent. The 171-page report entitled “Scaling Up Africa’s renewable power” provides an update on the “renewAfrica Initiative” launched by the RES4Africa foundation together with a range of European stakeholders one year ago.

Chinese manufacturers including Trina Solar, Risen Energy and JA Solar have established a group to design and produce bigger PV modules. The 39-member alliance also includes inverter suppliers including Huawei, Sungrow and SMA.

The Italian utility, fresh from securing its first 300 MW of PV generation capacity in the country in a recent, record-setting tender, has teamed up with the state-owned Norwegian Investment Fund to commit to further clean energy facilities in India.

The European Commission has outlined a long-anticipated plan it says could unlock up to €340 billion for new solar and wind projects over the next decade. The 30-year strategy envisages up to €470 billion being spent on electrolyzer capacity.

The fossil fuel company will become a partner in the fund, which invests in clean energy projects.

The new, bigger Sunrun will have 500,000 customers and more than 3 GW of solar power assets. Is there value in scale in residential solar?

A study into the clean energy tech innovation rate required to keep global heating under control may suggest concepts such as lithium-air could yet keep us to the mid-century ambition, but it is also starting to contemplate the temperature rise to be expected if we only achieve net-zero by 2070.