Eastern Europe

Hevel Group has announced it will source all the 65 GWh required annually to run its Novocheboksarsk factory from renewables sources via the wholesale market.

The 6.5 MW solar project will be built with PV modules supplied by Croatian manufacturer Solvis d.o.o.

Plus, one Australian installer says residents who had installed solar and storage at home will be cushioned against thumping, coronavirus-related electricity bill rises this quarter and there are signs of recovery in overall energy consumption levels.

They are words to chill the soul of solar project owners when uttered in relation to feed-in tariffs: retroactive FIT cuts. A Ukrainian government smarting at the cost of funding an overly successful solar incentive program appears bent on emulating the approach of governments in Spain, Italy and Czechia by reopening signed payment contracts to reset the monies paid for clean power, despite the costly lawsuits that have greeted such moves in the past.

The government is said to be working on amending its renewable energy legislation to enable people without their own roofspace to benefit from the solar boom.

The EU-funded Nextbase project aims to manufacture heterojunction, interdigitated back-contact solar modules for less than €0.275/W. Solar panels featuring the Nextbase cell tech are expected to have a conversion efficiency of 23.2%, according to the European Commission.

A new report by Instytut Energetyki Odnawialnej shows how Poland will deploy more large-scale PV. Growth is expected to be high in the 2021-22 period, with new capacity additions set to hit 2.8 GW.

The maximum size of eligible projects has been increased from 20 MW to 50 MW. The Hungarian government aims to contract around 390 GWh of generating capacity per year, with 40h GW to be reserved for the Small PVPP category, including installations between 300 kW and 1 MW in size. It will set aside 350 GWh for the Large PVPP group, which includes projects ranging in size from 1 MW to 50 MW.

Norway’s Statkraft is building a 2 MW floating PV array, first announced a year and a half ago, at its 72 MW hydropower plant in Albania’s Elbasan region. Norwegian floating PV specialist Ocean Sun has agreed to supply tech for the €2 million plant.

SolarPower Europe has predicted the volume of new PV capacity added this year will be 4% less than last year’s figure because of the Covid-19 crisis. At the end of 2019, the world had topped 630 GW of solar. For 2020, around 112 GW of new PV capacity is expected, and in 2021, newly installed capacity could be 149.9 GW if governments support renewables in their coronavirus economic recovery plans.