Fortum

In other news, Belgian company Tree Energy Solutions (TES) is accelerating plans to develop the German port of Wilhelmshaven into a “world-scale” hub for importing green gas, and German engineering company MAN Energy Solutions will invest up to €500 million in its hydrogen-focused subsidiary H-TEC Systems.

Companies from a dozen EU member states will commit the public funds in a bid to come up with novel battery chemistries and production methods as well as recycling and circular economy innovation.

Swedish company Exeger says the dye-sensitized ‘light-harvesting material’ it will produce at its facility will generate enough power to prevent the need to recharge portable electronic devices, lengthening battery lifespan perhaps indefinitely.

While the nation’s recent Union budget announced steps to create an electric vehicle market, the solar sector still has issues that have not been addressed.

Three projects with generation capacities of 5.6-6 MW were pre qualified for a 5.6 MW capacity procurement and Finnish utility Fortum secured the only PV project selected. The capex figure offered by solar developers was lower than that for 71 MW of wind power allocated and lower than for previous PV projects.

The Finnish utility has switched on a 5 MW/6.2 MWh lithium-ion battery storage system at a hydropower plant in Sweden.

A reduction in solar park charges was not enough to attract developers in the same numbers that flocked to a separate, 500 MW exercise two months earlier. The Raghanesda Solar Park continues to be a headache after a previous procurement was cancelled because the tariffs were deemed too costly.

Finnish clean-energy company Fortum has achieved a lithium-ion battery material recycling rate of over 80% — against what it says is a current rate of 50% — with a low-carbon hydrometallurgical recycling process.

Record-setting Acme Solar has secured a third of the latest procurement exercise in the state with a lowest bid of INR2.48/kWh. The tender was oversubscribed by more than 100% as offers came in for 1,620 MW of capacity.

Hevel Solar and Fortum won the 148.5 MW worth of solar PV projects awarded in the auction. The Finnish utility, however, proposed a project CAPEX, which was almost half that of the Russian company’s.