Markets

The recent 50 States of Solar report from NC Clean Energy Technology Center identifies three trends in state policy activities and the top five distributed solar actions in Q1 2025.

Optimus Energy has announced a virtual power plant for renewables trading on the Greek wholesale electricity and balancing market. Work is already underway, with Germany-based emsys VPP connecting over 3,500 solar and wind power plants in Greece to its software suite.

Over one million California homes that invested in rooftop solar may have their net metering contracts rescinded under the proposed bill AB 942.

The Africa Solar Industry Association (AFSIA) says utility-scale solar projects are under development in 45 of Africa’s 54 countries, with more projects pairing solar and storage and emerging from direct negotiations between private developers and host governments.

March 2025 was a record month for solar generation on Ireland’s electricity grid, according to provisional real-time data from the country’s transmission systems operator EirGrid. Solar accounted for 2.8% of the country’s total electricity generation during March.

Scientists in China have developed a novel PV-powered cooling and heating system that combines a water-cooled gas cooler and an air-cooled gas cooler. The system went through a series of simulations and showed it can potentially achieve a coefficient of performance of up to 7.34.

While President Donald Trump’s sweeping levies on foreign imports have captured global headlines, antidumping and countervailing duty (AD/CVD) investigations into Southeast Asian products, along with a potential expansion of the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA), could pose even greater risks for US solar and energy storage.

This week, Women in Solar Europe (WiSEu) gives voice to María del Puy Ayerra, Head of Business Development Iberia at Spain’s Zelestra. She encountered isolated experiences that reflected subtle gender bias – particularly the assumption that women in leadership must adopt a “tough” character to survive in a male-dominated environment. “These stereotypes can be limiting and disheartening, especially for women who lead with empathy, collaboration, and strength of vision,” she states.

ReNew has inaugurated a 1.3 GWp solar project in Rajasthan, India, using mostly in-house solar panels to supply power at INR 2.18 ($0.026)/kWh. The project spans 3,500 acres and is expected to generate 2,490 million units of electricity per year.

In a new weekly update for pv magazine, OPIS, a Dow Jones company, provides a quick look at the main price trends in the global PV industry.