PV plant

Metrel, a Slovenian measurement equipment supplier, says its new electrical installation safety tester can assess systems with a maximum voltage of up to 1,500 V and a maximum short circuit current of 40 A.

Three Gorges has revealed plans for a 16.5 GW renewable energy project in China’s Taklamakan Desert, which includes 8.5 GW of solar power, 4 GW of wind, 3.96 GW from six ultra-supercritical coal-fired units, and 5 GWh of electrochemical energy storage.

PV data consultancy Wiki-Solar says the world’s top solar developers have added nearly 50 GW of new solar capacity since early 2023, raising their cumulative capacity to 146.7 GW – more than one-fifth of the global total.

Estonian renewable energy company Sunly is building three solar parks in Latvia with a cumulative capacity of 225 MW. The projects are being developed as hybrid parks, combining solar with wind and battery energy storage.

Emirates Water and Electricity Co. (EWEC) will review proposals from Engie, a consortium of EDF Renewables and Korean Western Power (Kowepo), and a consortium of Jinko Power and Jera for its fourth large-scale solar park in Abu Dhabi. EWEC plans to award a contract in the second quarter of 2025.

France installed around 3.32 GW of new PV systems in the first nine months of 2024.

With hailstorms in Australia and the United States severely damaging solar arrays – including “golf-ball sized” hail at the 350 MW Fighting Jays project in Texas in March 2024 – insurers are raising premiums and reducing or canceling hail coverage. Everoze Partner Simon Mason discusses the challenges the industry faces in minimising its hail risk exposure.

Researchers have analyzed how wind speed and direction affect the cooling of a rooftop PV plant with 10,806 panels. They say that winds from behind were less effective due to the roof slope and the minimal gap between the panels and the roof, but wind from other directions could contribute to a cooling effect of up to 7 C.

Developed by Spanish scientists, the proposed model is intended to reduce yield losses caused by the fact that north-south aligned single-axis trackers are often deployed on uneven east-west slopes.

Researchers in India have proposed a new set of techniques to mitigate total harmonic distortions during islanding events, which occur in distributed generation systems when there are disruptions in the power grid. Compared to conventional approaches, it reportedly achieves faster detection times by leveraging real-time data analytics and dynamically adjusting to changing grid conditions.