Middle East

European markets: Growth in solar installations returned to European shores in 2017, with some of the usual suspects posting big numbers, and several new players awakening to the possibilities of PV. Here, pv magazine provides an overview of the latest movements on the continent.

With a growing global residential PV market, software solutions to optimize rooftop systems have spawned. Last year the PV market grew by 29% with no sign of decelartion in sight. Optimizing installations and making them as convenient as possible has thus become a hotter market recently.

The company resumed production at its manufacturing facility in western Turkey. Additional equipment, aimed at making production vertically integrated, was recently acquired from two Greek manufacturers

Despite recent developments in China, the European solar association believes global newly installed PV capacity this year will reach 102 GW, only 5 GW lower than its previous guidance.

Physicists at MIT and in Haifa have come up with a theory for slowing down light that could dramatically improve solar PV cell efficiency – the question now is whether it will work in practice, and on silicon.

With Palestinian developers keeping a low-profile since the advent of the Trump administration, Chinese government money is funding PV projects to support electricity supplies in the disputed nation’s crumbling infrastructure.

After securing a financial hedge for its Talasol solar plant in January, Israeli solar company Ellomay has now entered agreement with Deutsche Bank for the structuring of non-recourse senior debt financing for the project.

Most of the capacity, around 27 MW, was deployed in the emirate over the past eight months.

Planned wheeling station will be backed to the tune of up to $8.5m by a private equity fund and is expected to be operational by July next year.

British oil giant BP has announced a $20 million investment into battery developer Storedot, whose batteries use chemically synthesized organic molecules to build an organic polymer, in addition to lithium. Storedot says the astonishing properties of the new material enable electric vehicle charging times of just five minutes