Consultancy firm, the Becquerel Institute, recently switched on its European Solar PV Data Hub, an online tool aiming to provide clear information about the solar PV industry. The organization’s COO, Philippe Macé, told pv magazine that the platform aims to provide users a way to access solar PV market data ‘easily,’ its other purpose is to shrink the industry’s ‘information gap.’

Philippine government’s National Irrigation Administration revealed that two canal-top solar arrays for irrigation purposes were recently commissioned. It also said that 147 solar-powered irrigation projects in the country will be delivered by the end of the year, with 183 in the pipeline for 2024.

Malakoff and MMC Group have agreed to deploy 500 MW of solar in Malaysia, while Citicore has agreed to supply 7.5 MW of solar to utility Clark Electric Distribution Corp. in the Philippines.

The Yemeni government and the UN Development Programme (UNDP) are now accepting proposals from developers for four solar projects, ranging from street lighting to a 300 kW array.

PV module importers in the Netherlands saw the solar module recycling fee increase from €6.50 ($6.8) per ton to €40 per ton in July. In a chat with pv magazine, Jan-Willem Jehee, operations manager at Stichting Zonne-energie Recycling Nederland (ZRN), explains the money generated from the fee hike will be used to finance a guarantee fund that would ‘absorb shocks in the market should one occur.’

The Mauritian government’s Central Electricity Board (CEB) is inviting consultancy firms to pitch their bids on conducting a feasibility study into developing a 30 MW floating solar PV farm at Tamarind Falls Reservoir in the archipelago’s southwest.

Sri Lanka’s Ministry of Power and Energy is now welcoming expressions of interest for the development of ground-mounted or floating solar PV projects – ranging from 1 MW to 5 MW – at three substations in the country. Selected developers will secure a 20-year power purchase agreement.

The first tender under the European Union’s new €40 million ($41.8 million) multilateral solar scheme – targeting 5 MW to 100 MW projects based in Finland and providing energy to Luxembourg – has been ‘oversubscribed’ with bids ‘significantly exceeding target volumes’, the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Energy recently announced.

‘It is a project that stands as an example of energy transition,’ Duarte Bello, CEO of EDP Renewables’ Europe and Latin America operations told pv magazine. The new 200 MW solar PV plant is now generating energy on a former brown open-pit lignite site.

The global solar industry employed around 5 million people at the end of last year, according to recently published employment report by the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA). Despite this optimistic statistic, the female experience in the industry is “uneven” as women are mostly hired for administrative work (58%) and an even slimmer margin (13%) hold senior positions.