Central & South America

With figures at the end of last year boosted by profitable PV project sales, the manufacturer and developer is now nursing unflattering comparisons and aims to get more projects built and sold by the end of next month.

With clean energy being generated at lower and lower prices around the world, solar power is playing a leading role in bringing the curtain down on coal, and will help the decarbonization of transport and space heating too.

The $99 million financing was provided by the CAF development bank of Latin America. The large scale solar facility will be in the Atacama desert.

Zodiac Aerospace Equipo de Mexico has agreed to buy solar power from a 13 MW slice of the 80 MW Los Santos Solar II project in the Mexican state of Chihuahua.

In the first five months of the year, 16 solar projects with generation capacities larger than 99 MW were approved by the Colombian authorities. One of the projects may reach a 700 MW capacity, another has 240 MW and five more can generate up to 200 MW as around 3.55 GW of PV capacity has been added to the national pipeline.

While the world’s biggest solar manufacturers are confident there are plenty of alternative markets for a rising volume of panel exports, the message spelled out by first-quarter shipment figures is that protectionism works.

The government of Haiti and the World Bank have put in place a financial instrument to provide access to capital for companies active in clean off-grid energy solutions. The aim is to power 200,000 households over 10 years.

The Spanish developer has acquired the Tacna Solar and Panamericana Solar projects which it developed and built for X-Elio in 2012.

After being excluded from the A-6 auction last year, solar will now be entitled to compete for 20-year PPAs alongside wind, hydro and thermal power projects in future procurements. The next auction will be held on September 26.

The government of the Central American country with the highest installed PV capacity wants to renegotiate contracts awarded in 2015 under an incentive regime. While domestic companies have reportedly agreed to reduce tariffs, international investors are said to be in no mood to capitulate.