Sub-Saharan solar minigrid market worth $128 billion by 2030
BloombergNEF and Sustainable Energy for All have jointly published a report by the Mini-Grid Partnership proposing solar minigrids as a critical technology to bring electricity to the 789 million people who still lack access.
Covid-19 weekly round-up: Ups and downs from the US residential market and one Swedish city tries to attract Europe’s best and brightest
Industry body SolarPower Europe is trying to stay bullish about the lingering effects as the continent starts to come out of lockdown and one analyst has predicted a healthy large scale solar market will carry the US through the crisis.
Covid-19 weekly round-up: US job losses raise concern but France and China continued to add new solar
Cell supply shortages could kick-start manufacturing activity in India, EV car sales are braced for a fall while still gaining market share and a new date has been set for the world’s biggest solar trade show.
Electric vehicles show more resilience than conventional cars during Covid-19 shock
EV sales are set to be 1.7 million off because of the economic fallout of the Covid-19 crisis, however analyst BloombergNEF predicts that will be less of a hit than the anticipated fall in sales of conventional cars, increasing the penetration of electric models into the overall market.
LCOE from large scale PV fell 4% to $50 per megawatt-hour in six months
Analysts at Bloomberg New Energy Finance say the lowest-cost projects financed in Australia, China, Chile and the UAE in the last six months hit a levelized cost of energy of just $23-29/MWh and the best solar and wind projects will produce electricity for less than $20/MWh by 2030.
Spain is Europe’s cheapest market for corporate solar PPAs
The country’s solar sector offers the lowest average prices for corporate power purchase agreements on the continent, according to BloombergNEF.
Scatec Solar reports limited Covid-19 impact thus far
While it has seen little fallout for its operating PV assets, the Norwegian solar developer says the coronavirus pandemic has started to affect construction, commissioning and testing of some of its new solar plants.
Sector coupling in Europe could see solar and wind demand double
Market intelligence firm BloombergNEF has published a report with power company Statkraft and clean energy distributor Eaton highlighting the importance of sector coupling for Europe’s decarbonization plans. Analysts examined the power markets of Germany and the U.K. and concluded effective sector coupling including the use of green hydrogen could lead to greenhouse gas emission reductions of 83% by 2050.
Global energy storage market to surge to 15 GW by 2024
As the sector continues to grow rapidly, delays in manufacturing scale-ups, difficulties sourcing raw materials and a separate path taken by the electric vehicle sector could all chuck ‘sand in the gears’, according to analyst Wood Mackenzie.
The weekend read: The land of the low tender
Some of the world’s most cost-competitive solar arrays have been built among the rolling dunes of the vast Arabian Desert. While some government policies appear to be targeted at breaking records, nobody expects the oil-rich Gulf region to bring about truly sharp changes in pricing for solar PV plants.
