PV plant

Mali is set to host one of the world’s largest off grid solar+storage projects, as a 30 MW solar plant will soon be coupled with a 17MW/15MWh storage facility to power the Fekola gold mine. Finland’s Wärtsilä will supply the battery.

French renewables company Voltalia has secured a 25-year power purchase agreement from Crédit Mutuel Alliance Fédérale for a 10 MW solar plant and Germany’s Enerparc has signed a long term deal with Norwegian energy company Statkraft for a solar park planned in Bavaria.

The solar project, southeast of Seville, will power Amazon Web Services data centers and logistics locations, and is expected to start generating next year. The company has launched its Climate Pledge with the aim of complying with the Paris Agreement 10 years early by neutralizing carbon emissions by 2040, and of operating with 80% renewable energy by 2024 and 100% renewable energy by 2030.

State-owned Elektrani na Severna Makedonija will begin construction on a 10 MW solar plant at its redundant coal plant in Oslomej after signing the engineering, procurement and construction deal with a Turkish contractor. The utility is planning to tender a 10 MW extension of the plant and two more 50 MW solar facilities.

Solar electricity production increased by almost 9.2% in the January-September period, but installations barely changed from the first nine months of the preceding year.

EOn has calculated the number of PV modules that could theoretically be installed on the Imperial space station from the popular film series. It concluded that even a small version of the station would be able to provide enough solar power to supply 2.5 billion households on Earth.

The Taiwanese PV manufacturer said the project will be the largest solar installation on the island. Construction is scheduled to being near the city of Tainan in the second half of 2020.

A group of scientists is proposing a new metric – the value of efficiency – to calculate the maximum allowable cost to increase a cell’s efficiency and improve the levelized cost of electricity (LCOE). The researchers expect that more regional diversification may be seen at the global level in the years to come, with the proposed metric offering higher values in North America, Central and Northern Europe, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand.

Newly installed PV capacity hit 3.33 GW in the first 10 months of this year. Feed-in tariffs will drop in December by another 1% and the 52 GW subsidy cap looms, but for the first time, FITs for all project types are now below the €0.10/kWh mark.

Solar is included among the competing sources but with a maximum quota of only 10%. Around 13,500 GWh will be allocated across five rounds under the new scheme, which is still subject to EU state aid approval. Community-led projects will be allowed to participate from the second round, with a bonus of €2/MWh.