Women in Solar+ Europe highlights this week the insights shared by industry leaders during the panel “Impact Leadership in Solar & Storage: securing the energy transition through people, purpose and systems thinking,” organised by the leadership ecosystem Solar+ Leaders at Solar & Storage Live London. Bringing together voices from across the value chain, the discussion explored how leadership is evolving in response to growing system complexity, skills gaps, and the need for greater alignment across the industry.

In a new weekly update for pv magazine, Solcast, a DNV company, reports that April 2026 brought mixed solar irradiance conditions across South America, with above-average GHI along Colombia’s Pacific and Caribbean coasts and parts of southern Argentina, while eastern and northern temperate regions — including Buenos Aires to Bolivia — saw reduced irradiance due to persistent cloud cover and wetter-than-average conditions.

Escalating Middle East tensions and global energy supply risks are accelerating Europe’s shift toward solar and storage, particularly in commercial, industrial, and utility-scale segments where energy security, resilience, and price stability are becoming central investment drivers. At the same time, expanding manufacturing capacity in China and India is redirecting surplus solar and storage supply toward Europe, creating a highly competitive and increasingly selective market where long-term success depends on quality, reliability, ESG alignment, and strategic market positioning.

The upcoming Solar Manufacturing USA 2026 conference in Austin will focus on real U.S. solar manufacturing progress, shifting attention from capacity announcements to actual production, costs, yields, and technology choices across the full value chain. It will also examine how policy changes and tariffs are driving domestic expansion in ingots, wafers, cells, and modules, while highlighting competing technologies like back contact, heterojunction and TOPCon.

Over a 30-year asset life, corrosion can evolve into a structural, electrical, and fire safety issue. Corrosion drives up operations and maintenance (O&M) costs, reduces resilience to extreme events, and in some cases, can force premature decommissioning or complete structural replacement Intertek CEA’s Nicholas Hudson and Ankil Sanghvi advise on best practices.

Salt River Project and NextEra Energy Resources have signed a power purchase agreement for 3,000 MW of solar and 1,000 MW of battery storage to be built in Arizona through 2027.

The African Development Bank (AfDB) has launched a hydrogen funding call for African projects, while the European Commission has registered 265 supply opportunities under its Hydrogen Mechanism.

Longi says its 2025 revenue and losses declined year on year, while Trina Solar reports deeper full-year losses and margin pressure across its core module business.

Taihan Cable & Solution says it has secured a contract to supply and install 154 kV submarine cables linking island‑based PV arrays and floating solar sites to the South Korean grid, in its first fully integrated project with its marine installation subsidiary.

The government of Myanmar has opened two 40 MW solar power plants in Mandalay region, adding approximately 202 million kWh of annual generation capacity as the country faces ongoing grid constraints and power rationing.

M Energy d.o.o. has signed a grid-connection agreement with Montenegro’s transmission operator for a 385 MW solar project, which would be the largest in a country with around 30 MW of installed PV capacity.

Qatari researchers found that bifacial 2P horizontal single-axis tracking PV systems in desert conditions produced up to 13.5% more electricity than fixed-tilt systems over long-term field testing in Qatar. The study also showed strong seasonal and technology-dependent performance, with tracker advantages varying with irradiance and weather conditions.

California is asserting state authority to revive the $700 million Soda Mountain project, marking a new era where Sacramento can reclaim authority from local counties to force stalled utility-scale solar and storage across the finish line.

The Italian authorities have dentified seven Trentino-based photovoltaic companies, controlled by an unspecified German operator, accused of allegedly evading over €60 million in taxes and improperly obtaining €33 million in incentives from the state energy agency GSE.

Researchers in Canada designed an air-source heat pump integrated with an air-based solar collector and radiant floor heating for cold climates, showing that the proposed system configuratuon could improve the coefficient of performance from 2–4 to 2–6 and reduce significantly annual energy consumption.

Researchers at the University of Queensland have developed a scalable, lead-free perovskite solar cell manufacturing process that achieves record indoor-light efficiency while avoiding toxic materials and enabling flexible consumer electronics applications.

Researchers in Austria found that unusually high photovoltaic efficiency in lead-halide perovskites can be explained by internal electric fields generated at strain-induced domain walls, which separate charge carriers and enable long-range transport. Their experiments indicated that these effects arise from mesoscopic structural inhomogeneities rather than a uniform crystal structure, providing a general mechanism for charge separation in these materials.

Spanish researchers found that combining agrivoltaics with regulated deficit irrigation (RDI) can cut tomato irrigation water use by about 50%, while improving land-use efficiency through simultaneous crop and solar energy production.

While the exact specifications of the new product, such as dimensions and weight, haven’t been disclosed, available imagery suggests potential transportation challenges.

The announcement of the company’s latest module power electronics project came alongside Q1 2026 earnings that showed a 20.6% decrease in year-over-year revenue numbers amid a steep decline in domestic demand.

The divestment, already partially secured via escrow, reflects regulatory pressure from U.S. FEOC policy changes. Boviet Solar also continues negotiations to sell a separate U.S. cell project.

Rosi has raised more than €20 million in a Series B funding round to scale its photovoltaic module recycling business and build a new 10,000-tonne-per-year facility in Teruel, Spain. The company uses pyrolysis-based technology to recover high-purity materials including silver, silicon, copper, aluminium and glass from end-of-life solar modules.

A UNSW-led research team proposed two low-power ride-through strategies for standalone PV–electrolyzer systems to maintain stability during sudden solar power fluctuations without using battery storage.

Indian scientists developed a cadmium-free CIS thin-film solar cell using indium oxide as an electron transport layer, achieving a simulated efficiency of 29.79% with SCAPS-1D modeling. Through sensitivity analysis, they showed that low defect density, optimized absorber thickness, and effective thermal management are critical for minimizing recombination losses and enabling high-performance, scalable devices.

A Vietnamese research team has developed a low-cost passive cooling system for PV modules based on hydrogel-coated paper that combines water flow and interfacial evaporation to reduce operating temperatures. Outdoor tests showed temperature reductions of up to 14 C and efficiency gains of up to 16.8%, with stable operation achieved using both freshwater and natural seawater.

The system features AI-driven energy management, 10,000-cycle battery life, and scalable expansion up to 126 kWh.

The first operational round of the EU Hydrogen Facility matched 265 supply-side opportunities with 45 demand projects, with 87% of offers receiving at least one expression of interest and half attracting multiple buyers.

The March 2026 Energy Sector Construction and Investment Projects Report, released by the Chilean Ministry of Energy, records 38 storage systems under construction, for 4,597 MW and 18,780 MWh.

In a week marked by the largest sodium-ion battery order to date, widely seen as a watershed moment for the technology’s commercialization at scale, one of Europe’s emerging players, Spain’s Bihar Batteries, is strengthening the outlook for European-made sodium-ion batteries.

Some of the consequences of the blackout include a 589% increase in installed BESS capacity in Spain between April 2025 and April 2026, the introduction of renewable participation in voltage control, a greater role for gas in the generation mix, and continued progress on interconnections.