C&I solar

The authorities expect to add 300 MW of rooftop solar in the next four years thanks to net metering regulations and hope the nation’s extensive clothing and textile industry will be encouraged to adopt PV.

The nation’s thriving distributed generation market is flying, as was evident at last week’s Intersolar South America trade show. The sector seems unconcerned by mooted changes to net metering incentives in the new year and when even an environmental non-believer like President Bolsonaro is on side, it is difficult to be pessimistic.

Researchers have developed a high-resolution geospatial method of assessing the solar potential of all buildings in the EU and concluded rooftop PV could provide a quarter of the bloc’s electricity needs. The scientists say grid parity for rooftop solar has been reached outside eastern member states with cheap fossil fuel electricity.

ReNu Energy signed an agreement last week for the sale of its Australian solar assets to CleanPeak Energy, a commercial rooftop solar startup.

The procurements relate to self-consumption projects with a generation capacity of 100 kW-1 MW. The next tender will be launched in September and will allocate 25 MW of solar capacity. The tenders had been suspended because of low interest and disproportionately high final tariffs for surplus power injected into the grid.

The government has finally issued a net metering scheme for solar systems not exceeding 10 kW of generation capacity – the country’s first attempt to support small scale PV. New rules for larger, unlicensed projects have also been introduced, with the size limit for eligible systems raised to 5 MW.

With the annual cost of energy rising per bed across Australia’s aged care sector, C&I PV and energy-efficiency specialist Verdia says that a major energy transformation is taking place throughout the country.

Alsol Energías Renováveis is specializing in the installation of residential, commercial and industrial PV systems. Energisa has approximately six million clients across nine Brazilian states.

Today’s Solpod launch Down Under could be a potential game changer for commercial solar. Substantially funded by the Australian Renewable Energy Agency and supported by energy retailer ERM Power, the product will be trialed across 25 shopping centers and New South Wales government sites.

The system is said to have a maximum estimation error of less than 10% and to reduce the computational requirements for calculating the output of PV systems in complex environments. The approach is based on the correlation between a skyline profile and the annual irradiation received at a particular spot.