Australia election: What can solar expect under Morrison’s coalition?
As India awaits the results of the world’s largest democratic election on Thursday, and the EU begins to go to the polls on the same day, pv magazine Australia considers the “miracle” victory by a right-wing Liberal-National coalition in Australia at the weekend, and finds the nation’s solar sector has little reason to rejoice.
Little benefit to US solar as Trump lifts Canadian steel and aluminum tariffs
While the lifting of any tariffs is welcome news to the U.S. solar industry, manufacturers say low materials prices are unlikely to return as long as protectionist measures elsewhere remain in place.
Kazatomprom sells 75% of solar manufacturing business
The Kazakh state-owned national atomic energy company has sold its three manufacturing units to an international consortium. The sale of its solar business has been planned since May 2017.
Solarpack buys 43 MW of solar generation capacity in Peru
The Spanish developer has acquired the Tacna Solar and Panamericana Solar projects which it developed and built for X-Elio in 2012.
Enertrag, Enel and Leclanche commission 22 MW storage project in Germany
The companies have invested €17 million in the project. The energy stored, in the Brandenburg project, will be used to stabilize the grid and minimize the curtailment of wind farms.
Hanergy Thin Film shareholders vote through share swap deal – just
The Chinese solar manufacturer is set to transfer independent shareholders’ stakes into a special purpose vehicle while one of its affiliate businesses seeks a listing on Beijing’s A-share index. Inevitably, though, the process has not been a smooth one.
Dutch scientists use fluoride to make perovskite solar cells more stable
Researchers claim the cell they have developed is able to retain 90% of its efficiency after 1,000 hours under extreme light and heat conditions.
Bangladesh considers funding for solar home system expansion
The body responsible for the installation of more than 4 million residential PV installations has asked its government masters to provide interest-free financing for its program and Dhaka is considering the proposal.
Turkey introduces net metering for residential PV and new rules for unlicensed solar
The government has finally issued a net metering scheme for solar systems not exceeding 10 kW of generation capacity – the country’s first attempt to support small scale PV. New rules for larger, unlicensed projects have also been introduced, with the size limit for eligible systems raised to 5 MW.
100 GW: PV in its teens
With almost 100 GW commissioned in 2018 (the same level as in 2017), the PV market was stable at a global level, writes Becquerel Institute’s Gaëtan Masson. This hides different market developments, as for example the decline of the Chinese PV market from 53 to 45 GW, and growth in other markets. The global market, exempting China, grew from 41 GW in 2016 to 46 GW in 2017, a rather big jump as it reached close to 55 GW in 2018.
