Hungary

The solar plant is located in Kaposvàr, southwest Hungary, and will sell power at €0.09/kWh under the country’s feed-in tariff regime.

The two companies have concluded a settlement after several years of stalling. Ecosolifer will pay for part of the cell production line ordered in 2015 but Meyer Burger will incur a net loss of almost CHF2 million.

A Dutch-Hungarian research team has measured, for 12 years, the degradation rates of PV modules installed in an off-grid system located in Ghana. It found that the panels had an average annual decline in power yield of 3.19%.

According to the Hungarian authorities, 253 of the procurement exercise’s 255 pre-selected projects are for photovoltaic plants. Around 390 GWh will be contracted in an auction that has been significantly oversubscribed.

Power company MVM will add new generation capacity to the 100 MW of solar it already operates in its homeland.

The EU Council has rejected a Covid-inspired European Commission proposal for a €40 billion warchest to help coal-dependent regions shift to renewables, with the heads of member states instead allocating €17.5 billion. Despite the final figure being €10 billion higher than that suggested by the commission before coronavirus battered Europe, questions have been asked about how useful the program will be.

Analysts at Wood Mackenzie have looked at plans for the incoming decade and concluded that about 119 manufacturing sites will be up and running by 2030. China currently sits firmly in the driving seat, with Asia Pacific comprising 80% of global manufacturing capacity, but Europe is catching up.

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.

A Pakistani research team has assessed the performance of a passive heat sink cooling technique in two different configurations: one using rectangular fins and one based on circular fins. The rectangular configuration was the best in terms of heat rejection. Modules mounted with this solution had a 6 C lower temperature than modules without cooling systems.

The solar plant developer, which is now based in the States, was upbeat in its first-quarter figures but balance sheet borrowings remain a concern.