PV plant

The U.S. Department of Energy moved to de-obligate or revise billions in financing for clean energy projects while prioritizing natural gas and nuclear power.

In a new weekly update for pv magazine, Solcast, a DNV company, reveales that last year extreme Canadian wildfires drove aerosol levels around 30% above normal, sharply reducing solar irradiance across Canada and even impacting Europe, while the Congo Basin also saw worsening aerosol conditions. In contrast, China and South America experienced unusually low aerosol levels, supporting stronger solar irradiance due to cleaner air, reduced fires, and favorable climate and policy conditions.

In all ages, humankind decided to spend considerable amounts of the available productivity on special monumental projects. Managing climate change and rebalancing within the planetary boundaries is such an activity. The enormous energetic productivity of solar PV may evolve as the central pillar to create a sustainable civilization.

Spanish tracker manufacturer Solar Steel has introduced an upgraded 2P single-row tracker designed to simplify assembly, improve standardization, and support deployment on complex terrain, including agrivoltaic projects.

Chinese manufacturer Sungrow has introduced a new utility string inverter, a three-phase hybrid inverter for commercial and industrial (C&I) applications, and a liquid-cooled energy storage system.

Spain’s electricity grid has lost nearly 2.8 GW of available capacity in two months, lifting substation saturation to 85.7% and leaving more than 5,200 facilities without spare capacity, according to new analysis.

Scientists have conducted a six-sphere literature analysis of agrivoltaics, considering sustainability, soil–crop productivity, socioeconomic resilience, solar power generation, spatial efficiency, and species. They found that, under optimal terms, agrivoltaics may generate over $1 trillion in added global agricultural income.

The country reached a cumulative installed PV capacity of 43.5 GW at the end of December, according to new figures released by Italian grid operator Terna.

Researchers in Spain have tested the erosion resistance of common galvanized coatings using both free-falling sand and forced-air sand-impingement methods. The study found that continuously galvanized steel coatings showed the lowest erosion rates, outperforming HDG and Zn-Al-Mg coatings.

Iola Hughes, Head of Research at Benchmark Mineral Intelligence, tells ESS News that 2026 is set to be another strong year for BESS, with forecast additions exceeding 450 GWh and no material supply constraints in sight. Meanwhile, the initial impact of rising lithium prices is already visible at the cell level, but the full effect has yet to ripple through to system pricing.