Netherlands

Two government agencies and the Port of Rotterdam are planning to deploy the installation at De Slufter, a 250-hectare depot for contaminated sediment.

While relatively small compared to its more populous neighbors, the Netherlands has a history of punching above its weight. This is certainly true of its solar market in 2019, writes Rolf Heynen from Dutch New Energy Research. And for companies awake to the nuances of its policy settings and market opportunities, The Netherlands could prove a jewel in the European solar crown.

The Netherlands’ Organisation for Applied Scientific Research says renewables would not only contribute to a cheaper energy system but would also create more opportunities for new business, exports and jobs – as well as a cleaner environment.

The world had more than half a terawatt of PV generation capacity at the end of last year as emerging solar markets picked up the slack caused by Beijing’s subsidy about-turn to the tune of a 20% rise in installations outside China.

According to an investigation conducted by public bodies, cross-mating of connectors was the main common denominator of the incidents studied.

Dutch developer Groenleven is planning a 48 MW floating installation at a depleted sand extraction site near Emmen, in Drenthe province.

The company — which owns a 100 MW solar panel factory in Zaanstad, in the Dutch province of North Holland — is seeking to implement a restart under controlled administration. It cited delays in the delivery of production equipment and a working capital deficit as the main reasons for the insolvency proceedings.

The Dutch Institute for Sustainable Process Technology has launched the Gigawatt Elektrolysefabriek project, which aims to produce green hydrogen at the gigawatt scale from wind and solar parks in the Netherlands.

University of Groningen in the Netherlands is adding its name to the growing list of research institutes that have developed an “industrially scalable” technique for the production of perovskite solar cells. In a separate publication, Russian scientists have reviewed the suitability of one group of perovskite materials for use in space.

If the world of solar was a newspaper, it would be a tabloid. There is no sector where gossip spreads quite so quickly and ultimately does not contribute much. For an example, Good! New Energy’s Rolf Heynen looks back to 2013, when Europe introduced the Minimum Import Price on Chinese solar panels.