Japan

Japanese materials company Toray has announced plans to open a facility for manufacturing battery separator films for use in lithium-ion batteries. The factory is expected to begin operations in July 2021 and will increase Toray’s production material for the component by around 20%.

After the bombshell new this week, the Italian inverter manufacturer’s CEO spoke to pv magazine about the future of ABB’s R&D hubs, manufacturing sites, hundreds of employees and of course Fimer’s outlook.

The car will be road tested at Toyota City in Japan. Solar charging technology for the vehicle will then be further optimized before the vehicle goes on sale.

While Spain, Sweden, Ukraine and Brazil attracted more funds than last year, China’s transition to an auction-based procurement system and slow performance overall in Europe saw worldwide backing decrease. BloombergNEF does expect investments to ramp up in the second half, however.

The U.S. project developer and Chinese manufacturing giant have both moved to extend borrowing for Japanese operations as Sumitomo Mitsui has given another lift to its domestic PV market.

The energy services firm will use software from California’s AutoGrid to develop a VPP which will draw on PV generation, energy storage and demand response technology. ENERES wants businesses to come on board and burnish their renewables credentials.

As the solar industry digests yesterday’s announcement by Theresa May of a net zero carbon ambition by 2050, developer Solarcentury says Downing Street is hugely underestimating the role PV can play in achieving that milestone.

The Japanese government has issued a policy to reduce 80% of vehicle-related emissions, but high-power charging facilities for e-buses should also be aligned with distributed PV generation. Kyocera is now optimizing its virtual power plant technologies for this use case.

A unit of the Japanese electronics group has finished building a 49 MW solar array in Quang Ngai province, in collaboration with Thailand’s Sermsang Power.

Mahindra Susten will retain a majority 51% stake in its Marvel Solren unit, which operates 16 MW of solar at four sites in India. It aims to jointly build up to 150 MW of capacity with the Japanese trading house by 2023.