photovoltaic

A U.S. research team has found the most efficient locations for agrivoltaics include western America, southern Africa and the Middle East. The researchers found crop land, grasslands and wetlands were the best environments for PV projects linked to agriculture. Conditions suitable for crops are ideal for improving solar module efficiency.

The Rural Areas Electricity Company wants to build hybrid plants in 11 non-interconnected areas of the sultanate. The projects will have a total of 48 MW of solar power generation capacity and 70 MW of diesel and the storage component will have total installed power of 28 MW and a storage capacity of 14 MWh.

This new development has brought the country’s cumulative installed solar capacity to more than 9.5 GW. Around 91.5% of the newly installed capacity is represented by PV systems below 1 MW in size.

The 10 MW facility is located in Tozeur, in southern Tunisia. The project was also financed by the German development bank KFW under Tunisia’s solar program Plan Solaire Tunisien (PST).

For the second half of the year the German inverter producer expects a significant increase in revenues and earnings, mainly due to high order intake. It also confirmed its forecast for the full fiscal year, despite declining sales and earnings in the first six months of 2019.

The Portuguese government has published the final results and a list of all projects selected in the procurement exercise. French IPP Akuo is the developer behind the record bid of €0.0147/kWh, which was for one of three projects it won in the auction. The second- and third-lowest winning bids were €0.01637/kWh and €0.0171/kWh, while the highest was €0.03116/kWh. Overall, the authorities allocated 1.15 GW of solar in the oversubscribed auction, down from initial plans for around 1.4 GW.

The Swiss battery maker Leclanché will build a 35.6 MW / 44.2 MWh solar-plus-storage power plant, which will provide with clean power state-owned St.Kitts electric utility Skelec over a 20-year period. The new facility will be able to cover around a fourth of the archipelago’s total electricity demand.

Pestech, a Malaysia-based electrical power technology company, has entered into a partnership with Chinese inverter maker Sungrow to jointly develop new floating solar solutions.

The research firm says the value of the global inverter market will continue to decline until 2024, even though shipments will likely increase. China’s recent policy changes have increased pressure on prices, which will contribute to greater consolidation in the sector.

Earlier this week, the French government published a list of winning projects for the sixth round of its tender for large-scale solar. There were a few changes from the preceding round, with French companies such as Urbasolar, Engie and Total consolidating their positions. However, even though a higher number of projects were submitted, prices increased slightly in the end. In a short conversation with pv magazine, Xavier Daval — a representative of SER, the French renewable energy association — explained the reasons for this.