The Technological Institute for Solar Energy, Low Emissions Mining and Advanced Materials of Lithium and other materials, will be set up with a mixture of public funding and 30% private investment.

In a new report, BloombergNEF notes a significant uptake in renewable energy in developing countries, which are clearly outperforming OECD countries. The trend is due to reductions in equipment costs and new business models that enable access to capital. Still, many emerging markets are also the biggest installers of new coal capacity. India and China alone, are said to account for 81% of newly added coal-fired power stations.

The €240 million Parque Fotovoltaico Sol de Vallenar project is being developed by Spain’s Cox Energy in Chile’s northern region of Atacama.

CVE Chile has purchased four solar PV plants totaling 45 MW from Solarpack in Chile for a total of US$45 million.

The Chilean subsidiary of the Czech Republic’s Solek Group and CarbonFree Chile SpA has signed a framework agreement for the development and construction of up to 118 MW of PV projects in Chile. These will have a power range of 3 MW to 9 MW, and will be developed under Chile’s PMGD Program for distributed generation.

The sixth edition of Intersolar South America in Sao Paulo has showed unequivocally that both international and Brazilian players firmly believe in the big potential of the Brazilian solar market, despite the current political uncertainty and usual economic challenges. Overall, the event was larger and of a higher quality than last year, while in the absence of future dates for new large-scale solar auctions, and stable conditions for private PPAs, DG is emerging as the market’s main driver.

The updated version of the “PV Grid Parity Monitor” (GPM) provides an analysis for the commercial DG segment in representative cities of five countries: Germany, Chile, Spain, Italy and Mexico. Germany, Chile and Italy are the countries where good proximity to grid-parity and regulations favoring self-consumption are best combined.

A solar powered water desalination project in Chile has received an initial investment of $500 million. Trends Industrial and Almar Water Solutions will carry out the ENAPAC (Energías y Aguas del Pacífico) project, which will be the largest desalination plant by reverse osmosis (SWRO) in Latin America, and the first large-scale desalinator powered with PV.

The project was awarded by the Spanish government in an auction held in July. Fenosa plans to finish work on the facility by the end of this year

Spanish manufacturer of horizontal single-axis solar trackers Soltec, together with Black & Veatch and the Renewable Energy Test Center, have created a new evaluation center in Livermore, California. The inauguration will take place on July 9