Leading monocrystalline wafer producer and ‘Silicon Module Super League’ (SMSL) member LONGi Green Energy Technology increased revenue by 35.26% in the first nine months of 2018, yet third quarter revenue and profits were significantly lower than the previous quarter, due to ASP declines across wafers and modules.
Global floating solar installations had reached 1.1GW as of September this year, a huge rise from just 10MW at the end of 2014, according to the first report on floating PV from the World Bank and Solar Energy Research Institute of Singapore (SERIS).
International renewable energy provider GCL New Energy, a subsidiary clean energy conglomerate GCL Group has recently received the first tranche of tariff back payments in China totalling RMB 990 million (US$142.5 million).
The distributed renewable energy (DRE) sector, necessary in a world with millions of people without power, is being held back by a chronic shortage of skilled workers. Indeed, Sub-Saharan Africa (excluding South Africa) has just 16,000 people working in renewable energy in a region with 600 million un-electrified people, according to the founders of a new campaign aiming to fill this skills gap.
Karnataka Renewable Energy Development Limited (KREDL) has awarded 150MW (3x50MW) of solar projects to Giriraj Renewables at a tariff of INR2.92/kWh (US$0.04), and awarded 100MW (5x20MW) to Asian Fab Tec with a tariff of INR2.89/kWh (US$0.039).
Silicon Module Super League (SMSL) member JinkoSolar will supply 255MW of its HC Cheetah series solar modules to Decmil Australia for the Sunraysia Solar Farm project in New South Wales developed by Australian-Chinese firm Maoneng Group.
South Korea’s government is planning for nearly 3GW of solar PV alongside smaller capacities of wind and batteries on reclaimed land in Saemangeum, an area of land created by a huge Seawall project completed in 2010.
Two community energy groups in California have partnered to buy the energy output of a 150MW solar farm with 180MWh of battery energy storage from Recurrent Energy, the US-based utility-scale solar project developer subsidiary of Canadian Solar.
An extra AU$100 million (US$70.76 million) of funding could be put into a rebate scheme for households buying energy storage systems in South Australia, after a peer-to-peer lending group stepped in.
US-headquartered high-efficiency PV module producer SunPower Corp is expecting to sell further assets and increase its loans in 2019 to avert bankruptcy due to looming liquidity issues as the company expects to remain loss making next year, while current net losses in the first nine months of 2018 have reached US$745.3 million.
