North America

The new budget looks to lower the cost of energy for households by turning to distributed energy, energy efficiency and community energy programs. To this end, several billion Canadian dollars will be spent.

Chinese module manufacturing giant JinkoSolar today published its financial results for the full year 2018. While the company achieved an impressive 16% growth in shipments over the previous year, its total revenue took a 5.4% hit compared to 2017, thanks to falling module prices throughout the year.

Canadian Solar recorded net income of $237.1 million in 2018, from $99.6 million a year earlier, on annual PV module shipments of 6.62 GW.

Stonepeak Infrastructure Partners has invested $200 million in a new distributed solar company — Madison Energy Investments — focused on ground-mount, rooftop and carport projects ranging from 500 kw to 20 MW.

Maine will restore net metering, Kentucky is gutting it and Arkansas has opened the door to any one of a number of changes, as the foundational policy for distributed solar sees ups and downs across the nation.

Things are hotting up in the tracker world as the desire to squeeze down the price per Watt of solar power intensifies. And the rise of the trackers is attracting some well-known businesses to buy their way into the field.

On Saturday afternoon, utility-scale solar output on California’s grid peaked at 10,745 MW – its highest level since last summer. More importantly, California is wringing greater flexibility out of its imports, meaning more renewables with less curtailment.

pv magazine’s Charles Thurston has written about the potential of solar carports in this month’s, hot-off-the-presses edition of the magazine. As a taster, here’s a few extra points on the topic that came in too late for the print deadline.

The Swiss solar equipment maker has endorsed a claim by Chinese solar manufacturer Longi that the technology it uses differs from that at the center of Hanwha Q Cells’ patent infringement complaints.

With the passage of the Energy Transition Act in both houses of New Mexico’s legislature, the state is poised to join California and Hawaii in setting a mandate to fully decarbonize its electricity system by 2045.