News

Belgian research institute Imec has announced the achievement of 27.1% efficiency on a perovskite/silicon tandem cell, providing further evidence of the technology’s potential to provide a low cost efficiency boost to existing PV technology.

Local production of its Power Skid central inverter platform delivers a host of benefits when meeting surging demand claims SMA. Local jobs add icing to the cake, says SMA’s Bernhard Voll in an interview in advance of a webinar on the new product.

The Tasmanian government is undertaking a review of the FiT support scheme, which it says will lower the cost of electricity for Tasmanian households and small businesses. With one of the state’s largest commercial solar PV projects commissioned yesterday, the government is edging towards its objective of making Tasmania’s electricity 100% renewable by 2022.

The 15 MW Sunshine Coast Solar Farm at Valdora, Queensland, has far exceeded savings expectations in its first year of operation while offsetting 100% of the local council’s energy usage across all facilities and operations.

Italian renewable monitoring platform provider Elemize is looking to bring its battery controller unit Bamboo to the Australian market. Targeting aggregation uses such as in Virtual Power Plants (VPP), Elemize is aiming at Australia being the first market it expands into after its native Italy.

The Beryl Solar Farm, under development in New South Wales, has been purchased by PV asset fund New Energy Solar. 87 MW Beryl is the second Australian First Solar project to be purchased by New, with its 15-year PPA in place attractive to the asset owner.

Chinese module maker Risen Energy has begun major earthworks and site preparation before mounting system installation at the 121.5 MW Yarranlea project in Queensland. While Risen has not tapped local financing for the project, indeed any outside finance at all, the company has highlighted its local contractor workforce, in a statement today.

Greenko Energies will set up India’s largest Integrated Renewable Energy Project (IREP) in Andhra Pradesh at an investment of INR 150 billion (US$2.2 billion). Recently approved by the Andhra Pradesh government, the project will comprise 1,000 MW of solar energy, 550 MW of wind energy and 1,200 MW of standalone pumped storage capacities. It is expected to provide employment to 15,000 people during construction and 3,000 people after construction.

Installer Natural Solar is equipping 12 homes in Sydney with rooftop PV and sonnen batteries, and will utilize blockchain technology to facilitate P2P trading of electricity between households. The mini virtual power plant (VPP) project will allow the homes to reduce their electricity demand from the grid by 90%.

Following a strong year for clean energy spending, 2017 saw a 7% decline in renewable power investment – to around $298 billion – while the share of fossil fuels in energy supply funding rose for the first time since 2014, according to the International Energy Agency in a report published today.