The U.S. firm expects France will reach a cumulative capacity of 28 GW by 2027, 3 GW more than previously forecast. The reasons for the increase are the renewed efforts of the French government to push for more solar, and the solar plans of big energy players such as EDF and Total.

The Italian wind energy specialist has joined forces with UK-based investment firm Quercus Investment Partners LLP to acquire another 150 MW of PV plants in Italy.

A timetable has been set for the merger of three of Taiwan’s largest solar cell manufacturers, according to reports from the state-owned Central News Agency. The companies held separate board meetings last week and confirmed the transaction is set to be completed on October 1.

The social media titan is the world’s biggest corporate buyer of renewable energy so far this year. BNEF figures show the company has already secured 1.1 GW of green power this year, helping the corporate world break last year’s landmark.

New developments in inverter architecture suggest that string inverters have charged forwards again to take on the challenge and kick central inverters off the throne in the utility-scale market. Hardware design innovations allowing to cut down BoS capex and improve efficiency of the plants might push string inverters further to take more space in the utility-scale market place.

Huawei spoke to pv magazine in response to the latest allegations made by SolarEdge regarding the latter’s allegedly infringed intellectual property. Huawei is adamant it is one of the world’s largest owners of intellectual property rights and fully supports the protection of IP. The Chinese manufacturer denies the claims made by SolarEdge and points to its extensive IP and research and development (R&D) efforts to support its defense.

Circular Energy Storage, a London-based research and consulting group, reports a strong business case for reconstituted electric vehicle batteries for energy storage applications. As the EV and static storage system markets grow rapidly, synergies could be a useful tool for continued cost optimization.

According to a new report published by consultancy Greener, the price of DG systems keeps falling in Brazil and total installed capacity has surpassed 308 MW. In the first half of the year, newly installed capacity was around 126 MW – more than the country installed in all of last year.

Shanghai Electric’s move to take over GCL-Poly’s Jiangsu Zhongneng has fallen through because conditions are not ‘mature enough’. The development, announced this afternoon to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, will be closely watched by the global solar industry.