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Upper Walton Farm, the site proposed for the industrial solar development
A Shropshire county councillor's formal request for a proper public meeting on a proposed 130-acre solar farm at Walton and Onibury has been refused by the developer, who has instead the community's only…
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Preventing extinction of ground nesting birds should be national priority, says survey
Twenty years ago, two young siblings did the seemingly impossible – they saved their family farm from developers. Now, with a new generation of custodians and a bolder vision, Fordhall Organic Farm hopes they could inspire many more. Olivia Midgley reports….

Dolly Parton, who has died aged 80, grew up working on her family’s farm in rural Tennessee before becoming one of the world’s biggest country music stars
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Solar technology has spent years chasing a difficult combination: higher efficiency without sacrificing durability. A new perovskite design could bring that challenge closer to resolution by changing not only the composition of a light-absorbing film, but also the behavior of the negatively charged ions inside its crystal lattice. In a study reported in Nature Synthesis, researchers engineered dynamically disordered cyanate anions into wide-bandgap perovskite materials and used them to build a more efficient, more stable top cell for perovskite–silicon tandem photovoltaics. The resulting tandem device achieved a power conversion efficiency of 34.79%, with an independently certified efficiency of 34.29%. It also retained 95% of its initial performance after 1,100 hours of continuous illumination, while extended outdoor-style testing continued for more than 1,300 hours. The work points to a chemical strategy for addressing one of the most persistent weaknesses in next-generation solar cells: the tendency for the materials that deliver high voltage to be especially vulnerable to energy loss and degradation.
Perovskites are a family of semiconductors whose crystal structures can be tuned by mixing different ions. Their strong absorption, adjustable bandgaps and ability to form thin films have made them leading candidates for tandem solar cells, in which two light-absorbing devices are stacked so they can harvest different portions of sunlight. Silicon is particularly effective at converting lower-energy visible and near-infrared light, while a wide-bandgap perovskite top cell can absorb higher-energy photons before they reach the silicon layer. In principle, this division of labor allows a tandem device to produce more electricity than either material could generate alone. In practice, wide-bandgap perovskite top cells often suffer from a voltage deficit: the voltage delivered by the operating solar cell falls significantly below the energy expected from the material’s optical bandgap. Non-radiative recombination, in which excited electrons and holes lose their energy as heat rather than light or electrical current, is a major cause.
The new approach focuses on the anionic sublattice, the network of negatively charged ions that helps define the perovskite crystal’s structure and electronic environment. Rather than treating these anions as passive components, the researchers designed perovskite derivatives containing cyanate anions with dynamic disorder. This means that the anions are not locked into a single perfectly static arrangement within the lattice. Their changing local configurations can influence how the material crystallizes and how charges move through it. The researchers used this behavior to alter crystallization kinetics—the rates and pathways by which a thin film transforms from a precursor mixture into an ordered semiconductor. According to the study, this dynamic anionic engineering directed the formation of a coherent bulk heterojunction, a continuous internal architecture in which related semiconductor regions are intimately connected rather than separated into poorly matched domains.
That structural control matters because the microscopic quality of a perovskite film determines how efficiently it handles photogenerated charge. During crystallization, imperfections can form at grain boundaries, where individual crystalline regions meet, and at interfaces between different materials. These sites can contain electronic defects known as trap states. Deep-level traps are especially damaging because they can capture electrons or holes and facilitate non-radiative recombination, shortening the time available for charges to reach the electrical contacts. A solar cell may therefore absorb sunlight efficiently while still losing much of the resulting energy before it becomes usable current. The cyanate-containing materials were designed to act at these vulnerable locations. The study reports that the anions provided chemical and electronic passivation at grain boundaries and interfaces, effectively neutralizing deep-level traps and suppressing the recombination pathways that create voltage losses.
The film morphology produced by the method was also important. The researchers observed large-grained material, meaning the perovskite contained relatively broad crystalline regions with fewer grain boundaries per unit area. Large grains do not automatically guarantee a high-performing solar cell, because defects can still occur within crystals or at contacts, but reducing the total density of boundaries can limit the number of locations where charge carriers become trapped. The reported coherent bulk heterojunction adds another layer of control by creating a connected internal structure that supports charge transport across the absorber. Together, the crystallization pathway, grain growth and interfacial passivation address different parts of the same problem: keeping photogenerated carriers mobile and preventing them from dissipating their energy before extraction.
The performance results show how those chemical and structural changes translated into working devices. A single-junction wide-bandgap perovskite solar cell made using the method reached a power conversion efficiency of 24.35%. Power conversion efficiency is the fraction of incident sunlight converted into electrical power, and in a wide-bandgap perovskite cell it reflects the balance among current generation, voltage, and the fill factor, which describes how effectively the device maintains useful power across its operating range. The more consequential result came when the perovskite was placed above a silicon cell in a monolithic tandem architecture. Because the two subcells are connected within a single integrated device, the top perovskite layer must transmit suitable light to the silicon beneath it while generating a high voltage of its own. The tandem reached 34.79% efficiency in the reported measurements, and a certified value of 34.29% provided an independently validated benchmark.
Tandem photovoltaics are attractive partly because they can surpass the practical efficiency ceiling of conventional single-junction silicon. A single semiconductor absorbs photons over a limited energy range: photons below its bandgap pass through or are weakly absorbed, while excess photon energy above the bandgap is lost as heat. Stacking materials with different bandgaps reduces both forms of loss. Yet this design also increases the number of interfaces and processing constraints. The top perovskite must be deposited without damaging the silicon device, remain optically and electrically compatible with the lower cell, and withstand illumination, heat and electrical stress over time. Wide-bandgap compositions have been particularly challenging because increasing the bandgap can intensify chemical instability and promote non-radiative losses. By engineering the anion chemistry rather than relying solely on broad compositional adjustments, the researchers sought to improve efficiency and stability through the same underlying material design.
Durability testing provided a second major result. Under the ISOS-L-1 protocol, which evaluates operational stability under continuous illumination, the tandem retained 95% of its initial performance after 1,100 hours. The study also reports more than 1,300 hours of extended real-world testing under the ISOS-O-2 protocol. Stability measurements are crucial for perovskite technology because impressive initial efficiencies have often been accompanied by rapid performance declines. Perovskite crystals and their interfaces can respond to light, temperature and electric fields, with ions moving through the lattice or chemical reactions developing at contacts. Such changes can create new defects, alter the distribution of elements and undermine the electrical properties of the device. The reported retention under both continuous illumination and longer-duration real-world conditions suggests that the cyanate-based design may suppress several degradation pathways, although the timescales remain short compared with the operational lifetimes expected of commercial solar modules.
The significance of the work is therefore broader than a single efficiency record. It demonstrates that the negative-ion framework of a perovskite can be deliberately designed to control processes occurring at multiple scales, from the motion and disorder of individual anions to the crystallization of the full absorber and the behavior of interfaces in a tandem device. The researchers describe this strategy as dynamic anionic sublattice engineering, emphasizing that anions can actively shape the formation and operation of the semiconductor. That concept could help materials scientists move beyond a trial-and-error search through combinations of elements. By selecting anions for their effects on crystallization, defect chemistry and electronic passivation, researchers may be able to design perovskites around specific performance requirements. In this case, the approach was aimed at the stability–performance trade-off, the tendency for improvements in efficiency to be offset by faster degradation.
The new results do not by themselves establish that perovskite–silicon tandems are ready for mass deployment. Commercialization will still depend on manufacturing uniform large-area films, protecting devices from moisture and heat, maintaining performance across millions of cells and demonstrating long-term reliability under diverse climates. Certified laboratory efficiency and controlled stability testing are essential milestones, but they are not substitutes for years of field operation. Even so, the study offers a compelling blueprint for tackling the materials problems that stand between laboratory devices and practical solar power. By using dynamically disordered cyanate anions to guide crystallization, passivate defects and support a coherent heterostructure, the researchers produced a tandem cell that combines unusually high efficiency with substantial short-term operational retention. If the chemistry can be translated to scalable manufacturing, engineering the anionic sublattice could become one of the most important tools for turning perovskite–silicon tandems from high-performance experiments into a durable source of low-carbon electricity.
Subject of Research: Dynamic anionic sublattice engineering in wide-bandgap perovskite–silicon tandem solar cells
Subject of Research: Chemistry
Article Title: Dynamic anionic sublattice engineering in perovskite heterostructures for perovskite–silicon tandem solar cells
Article References: Ma, Q., Wang, Y., Li, M., Yang, Y., Wang, Y., He, C., Zheng, J., Peng, Y., Xiao, D., Peng, J., Li, H., Liu, C., Li, Z., Fan, J., & Mai, Y. (2026). Dynamic anionic sublattice engineering in perovskite heterostructures for perovskite–silicon tandem solar cells. Nature Synthesis. https://doi.org/10.1038/s44160-026-01111-7
Image Credits: AI Generated
DOI: 10.1038/s44160-026-01111-7
Keywords: perovskite solar cells, silicon tandem photovoltaics, cyanate anions, anionic sublattice engineering, non-radiative recombination, defect passivation, solar cell stability, wide-bandgap perovskites
Cite Scienmag News
APA MLA Chicago
Florence R. (August 29, 2026). Engineering Anionic Sublattices in Perovskite Heterostructures Advances Tandem Solar Cells. Scienmag. https://scienmag.com/engineering-anionic-sublattices-in-perovskite-heterostructures-advances-tandem-solar-cells/
Florence R. “Engineering Anionic Sublattices in Perovskite Heterostructures Advances Tandem Solar Cells.” Scienmag, 29 August 2026, https://scienmag.com/engineering-anionic-sublattices-in-perovskite-heterostructures-advances-tandem-solar-cells/. Accessed 29 August 2026.
Florence R. “Engineering Anionic Sublattices in Perovskite Heterostructures Advances Tandem Solar Cells.” Scienmag. August 29, 2026. https://scienmag.com/engineering-anionic-sublattices-in-perovskite-heterostructures-advances-tandem-solar-cells/
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Tags: Advances in perovskite crystal lattice designAnionic sublattice modificationanionic sublattices engineeringChemical strategies for solar cell durabilitychemical strategies for solar stabilityCyanate anions in perovskitesdegradation resistance in solar cellsDynamic disorder in perovskite latticesdynamic ion disorder in semiconductorshigh-efficiency solar technologyHigh-performance perovskite semiconductorsLong-term stabilitynext-generation solar cell materialsperovskite silicon tandem solar cellsPerovskite solar cell engineeringPerovskite Solar Cellsperovskite-silicon tandem devicesstability of perovskite solar cellsstable perovskite materialsTandem photovoltaic device efficiencytandem photovoltaic efficiencyWide Bandgap PerovskitesWide-bandgap perovskite materials
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A Pennsylvania solar farm demonstrates how thousands of panels can impact micro-environments.
The world’s rising electricity demands are necessitating the acceleration of the global energy transition.
In turn, this requires vast stretches of land to accommodate the large-scale installations.
Biodiversity loss is a common concern, but these sites also interact with the environment on a small scale.
Will the latest research in Pennsylvania help developers understand the true micro-ecological impact?
Global climate regulations require preventing Earth’s temperature from rising above the threshold compared to 1990 levels.
This particular goal has become more complicated.
The digital age consumes substantial electricity to maintain operations.
In the U.S., AI and data centers are the main culprits.
Data centers consume roughly 200 terawatt-hours of the nation’s total power annually.
AI workloads are responsible for nearly 2% of America’s total electricity demand.
These demands are expected to grow continuously, placing unprecedented strain on regional power grids.
When electricity usage is too high, operators must execute emergency steps to balance the grid.
This can range from public alerts to mandatory power cuts.
Often, potential blackouts and cascading failures are prevented by switching on fossil fuel plants as backup.
But this is not the answer to keeping the nation’s lights on sustainably.
The rapid deployment of utility-scale renewable infrastructure is needed to close the energy gap without increasing emissions.
In the United States, between 50% and 66% of all new power generating capacity additions are attributed to solar energy.
It has been the number one newly installed capacity for a while.
However, more utility-scale projects are required to anchor America’s clean energy transition.
Thanks to solar’s high scalability and cost-effectiveness, this should not take too long.
Yet, the deployment of these crucial projects has been frequently delayed.
Extreme competition over land use and opposition from local communities are primary reasons.
Installing thousands of panels requires vast tracts of flat, unshaded land.
Standard projects often span hundreds of thousands of acres.
Those contesting these facilities argue that altering open land will threaten regional biodiversity and natural habitats.
Recently, agriculture and solar power began to reconcile.
However, environmentalists are still concerned about micro impacts.
Researchers from Susquehanna University decided to inspect this by conducting a study at a Pennsylvania solar farm.
Solar facilities can affect the surrounding microenvironment.
In Pennsylvania, a landmark field study was conducted at the university’s operating photovoltaic plant to understand these effects.
The facility consists of 12,000 panels, generating approximately 30% of the campus power.
This fenced-off industrial zone was viewed as an undisturbed microhabitat.
Student researchers, armed with collecting gear, walked between the rows to survey and count spiders.
The ground beneath the panels never experiences heavy tilling, intense foot traffic, or chemical spraying.
As a result, the solar site evolved into a protected safe space for the spiders.
The low disturbance and shade are ideal conditions for diverse arthropod communities to prosper.
The field study’s findings challenge the belief that clean energy installations become biological dead zones.
The research demonstrates how renewable power facilities can support conservation in the most unexpected ways.
The findings will prove to be highly beneficial as America’s solar capacity rapidly scales toward 2030.
Developers can now plan future utility-scale projects to serve dual purposes, benefiting the grid and nature.
The key is to gain an in-depth understanding of the environment and its local species before construction begins.
This way, thoughtful site layouts can be designed, ensuring America’s clean energy shift peacefully occurs in line with nature conservation.
Anke Maree is a writer with a clear and engaging editorial style. Her work focuses on making complex topics accessible, informative, and relevant for readers across different areas of interest.
Anke Maree is a writer with a clear and engaging editorial style. Her work focuses on making complex topics accessible, informative, and relevant for readers across different areas of interest.
Anke Maree is a writer with a clear and engaging editorial style. Her work focuses on making complex topics accessible, informative, and relevant for readers across different areas of interest.

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“I’d say it was about to pop like a very expensive balloon.”
Photo Credit: Reddit
One troubled homeowner shared pictures of his water heater that looks like it’s about to pop at any moment with the ominous title: “How dangerous was this hot water heater?”
Online commenters were alarmed by the photos shared. It appeared badly warped and rusted out.
For households already facing a replacement, that kind of situation can also open the door to lower future utility costs. Upgrading from an older electric-resistance model to a heat pump water heater can often reduce energy bills.
After turning off both the gas and water supply, the homeowner asked for advice in a post on Reddit, writing, “already shut off the gas and the water supply. How dangerous was this?” The attached images showed a severely deformed water heater that commenters said looked dangerously close to failing.
One commenter summed up the reaction bluntly: “Whoa. I’d say it was about to pop like a very expensive balloon.”
Another commenter raised a key safety concern: “Is there a pressure relief valve? Wondering if it’s capped.” Water heaters are built to hold hot, pressurized water, and relief valves are one of the main protections against dangerous pressure buildup.
A visibly bulging tank is not just a cosmetic problem. It can point to a serious internal failure that may lead to leaks, flooding, or worse.
Water heaters are usually tucked away out of sight, making it easy for problems to go unnoticed until they become severe. But warping, bulging, leaks near the base, rust around fittings, or unusual noises can all signal that a unit needs immediate attention.
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Solar panels can save you more than $50k over their 25-year lifespan, and EnergySage can help you save as much as $10k on installation. Which begs the question — isn’t that worth an email or two?
People in the thread also pointed to shutdown steps that depend on the type of unit: Electric heaters can be turned off at the breaker, while gas models should have the gas supply shut off. Because the original poster had already cut off the gas and water, those steps likely reduced the immediate danger.
A failing water heater can quickly become both a safety threat and a financial burden. Beyond the risk of a ruptured tank, even a unit that is still limping along can waste energy, raise monthly bills, and leave a household scrambling for an emergency replacement.
If a water heater looks swollen, warped, or otherwise misshapen, the safest move is to stop using it and contact a licensed plumber immediately. A professional can determine whether the issue is pressure-related, structural, or tied to a failed safety component.
For homeowners weighing replacement options, Cala makes smart heat pump water heaters that focus on both efficiency and control. Its customizable smart heat pump water heaters help homeowners decrease their energy bills by heating water exactly when it’s needed. Because they are designed around household demand rather than constantly maintaining excess hot water, they can reduce waste and make utility costs more predictable. 
Homeowners comparing long-term operating costs may want to look at how Cala pairs heat pump efficiency with a more tailored approach to hot water use.
One commenter put the situation into perspective: “Could very well turn into a perfect reenactment of the mythbusters water heater rocket episode.”
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While generators are one option, solar panels paired with batteries are another.
Photo Credit: iStock
For homeowners considering backup power, the price gap between an automatic standby generator and a portable setup may be far wider than many expect.
The question came from a North Carolina resident with a 1,500-square-foot home who wanted a rough idea of how much more a whole-home standby system might cost than a portable generator set up with the proper connections.
In a Reddit thread, the homeowner said they didn’t want to manage individual circuits during an outage. The post said the house is connected to natural gas, has an accessible crawlspace, a 2.5-ton air conditioner and a gas furnace. “I’m not really interested in finagling breakers/appliances/devices to try and get by with a 4kw generator or anything,” the poster wrote.
“Obviously I’ll need to get some quotes, but I was wondering what you all thought would be a rough estimate for the cost difference between a standby solution and a portable solution,” the homeowner added.
Luckily, commenters shared their thoughts, giving the homeowner a clearer picture of what the upgrade will cost. 
One commenter offered a straightforward rule of thumb: “Standby will be 3-4 times the cost of a portable.”
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The same commenter said that a properly sized portable system for whole-home use can still require substantial upgrades. “I just updated the inlet and generator breaker and purchased a larger generator with the intent of running the whole house and AC. The whole project cost $5000.”
A portable setup capable of powering an entire home and central air is not necessarily inexpensive, and a permanently installed standby system may cost far more.
The difference between the two options goes beyond convenience. Standby generators are permanently installed, usually connected to a fuel source such as natural gas, and designed to turn on automatically when grid power goes out. Portable generators, by contrast, require manual setup, though they can cost significantly less upfront.
Safety is another major consideration. As the commenter noted, “For the portable you will need a breaker interlock so that your main breaker is off when the generator is powering the house. That prevents your generator from delivering power outside your house.”
Although backup power can be a pricey upgrade, more and more homeowners are investing in backup solutions in the face of increasing power outages. 
While generators are one option, solar panels paired with batteries are another. When paired together, the tech not only provides backup power during emergencies, but also long-term savings on energy costs. 
When exploring options, it’s best to contact professionals to ensure you’re getting the best deal for your home and budget. 
A formal load calculation can show whether a home actually needs a large whole-house generator, would pair well with backup batteries, or whether a smaller system with more targeted coverage would meet most needs.
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Solar tiles are often marketed as a sleeker alternative to traditional rack-mounted panels.
Photo Credit: iStock
A neighbor’s new solar installation has become an aggravation for one homeowner, who says strong reflections from the system are spilling into several of their rooms.
The family says the roof-integrated setup looks good from the outside, but the light bouncing off it reaches their doors, kitchen window, and home office at certain times of day.
In a post on Reddit, the homeowner said the house next door added in-roof solar tiles. They said the installation takes up about half of the roof area facing their property and that it “looks amazing but unfortunately causes extreme glare into our property when the sun hits it at certain parts of the day.”
According to the post, the glare shifts position throughout the day rather than hitting a single area. The homeowner said it passes over “2 double glass sliding doors and a long kitchen window,” and that one of the rooms affected is the family’s office.
They said the only remedy they had found was window film, but that it was “apparently quite expensive.” Because of that, they asked whether there were any alternatives that could be addressed from the panel side.
Solar tiles and other low-profile rooftop systems are often marketed as a sleeker alternative to traditional rack-mounted panels.
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Although solar products are designed to absorb sunlight, factors such as roof angle, window placement, and time of day can still make reflected light a nuisance in certain home layouts.
Documenting exactly when and where the glare appears can help when speaking with a neighbor, installer, or local official about the problem.
It can also help to ask the solar installer for product specifications and any manufacturer guidance related to reflectivity. In some cases, the installer may be able to clarify whether approved adjustments or replacement components are available for the affected section.
If the only realistic fix is on the impacted home, getting multiple quotes for window film, shades, or exterior screening may still be worthwhile. While film can come with a high upfront price, it can also reduce heat gain and glare, potentially lowering cooling costs over time and improving comfort in sun-exposed rooms.
Get TCD’s free newsletters for easy tips, smart advice, and a chance to earn $5,000 toward home upgrades. To see more stories like this one, change your Google preferences here.
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In November 2025, a Turkish-Italian architecture studio called MASK Architects unveiled a striking two-wheeler: the Solaris, a motorcycle whose retractable circular solar “wings” unfurl like a mechanical flower whenever the bike is parked. Within days, headlines declared it the world’s first self-charging solar motorcycle, a machine that, in the founders’ words, would free riders “from fuel, grids, plugs, and the economics of energy itself.”
It was a beautiful pitch. It was also a concept.
If you searched for a “solar motorcycle” today, you’d land on a strange mix: a flashy concept bike that won’t reach production for years, a handful of real production motorcycles and scooters that actually do carry solar panels but rarely top 40 mph, and a 70 mph electric motorcycle called the Solar E-Clipse whose name contains the word “solar” but whose battery is plugged into a wall outlet, not the sun. Confusion reigns, and the math behind why truly self-charging solar motorcycles remain rare tells you more about the limits of photovoltaic surface area than any concept render ever could.
This guide breaks down what a solar motorcycle actually is, what you can realistically buy in 2026, and why the dream of unlimited solar range on two wheels still runs into stubborn physics.
Table of Contents
The Solaris first surfaced in late November 2025 via a coordinated reveal across design media. The bike is the work of MASK Architects (sometimes styled MARS Architects), an international design studio led by Öznur Pınar Cer and Danilo Petta, whose “Invent and Integrate” approach treats speculative design as a way to seed real engineering projects.
Three features define the Solaris:
The visual language is equally deliberate: a stretched front end, a muscular forward-leaning stance, and flowing bodywork inspired by the anatomy of a leaping leopard. MASK Architects describes the Solaris as a “self-sustaining organism” rather than a vehicle.
What MASK has not disclosed is just as telling. There are no published figures for top speed, 0-60 mph time, battery capacity in kWh, motor output in kW, range per charge, range per day of solar charging, weight in kilograms, or projected price. The company describes performance only as “high-torque electric motor.” As of this writing, the Solaris remains a one-off concept, with no announced production partner, manufacturing timeline, or pre-order pathway. Whether the design ever reaches a dealership floor depends on whether MASK finds an OEM willing to industrialize a fundamentally unusual vehicle architecture.
The Solaris concept leans on a powerful narrative: a vehicle that harvests enough energy from the sun to extend its range indefinitely. The math is more sobering than the marketing suggests.
A typical motorcycle silhouette offers, generously, two square meters of usable surface area once you account for bodywork, fairings, and a top surface that sees direct sun. A modern production photovoltaic panel converts around 22% of incident sunlight into electricity under ideal lab conditions, closer to 18-20% in real-world riding. Average peak solar irradiance in sun-belt regions is roughly 1,000 watts per square meter at noon, dropping to an effective daily average closer to 200-250 W/m2 when you integrate morning, midday, afternoon, and weather variation.
That gives you a realistic solar harvest of roughly 0.36 to 0.5 kWh per square meter per day in good conditions, or about 0.7 to 1 kWh per day for a two-square-meter motorcycle, before efficiency losses. A typical electric motorcycle consumes between 0.1 and 0.2 kWh per mile depending on speed and weight. The numbers line up to perhaps 5-10 miles of solar range per day in genuinely sunny climates, before you even factor in shade from the rider, parked angle, dust on the panels, or the energy the bike uses to power its own management systems.
The Aptera three-wheeled solar EV, a vehicle purpose-built around maximizing solar surface area, confirms this ceiling in real engineering. Aptera’s published specifications, available on the official Aptera site, claim 700 watts of integrated solar capacity delivering up to 40 miles of free solar range per day in sunny California summers.
Independent analysis published by Green Car Reports pegs the more conservative real-world figure at 20-30 miles per day in summer, falling to around 10 miles per day in average conditions. That is from a vehicle whose every aerodynamic curve is a solar panel.
For a conventional motorcycle silhouette, even an aggressive one like the Solaris with its deployed circular wings, you are looking at the low end of that range. Solar is genuinely useful as a range extender, especially for commuters who park outdoors or riders in remote regions where charging infrastructure is sparse. It is not, in present physics, a replacement for plugging in.
One of the strangest side effects of the solar motorcycle conversation is how often it leads searchers to the wrong product. If you typed “solar motorcycle” into Google, the top result is the Solar E-Clipse, a real, street-legal electric motorcycle built by a UK company called Solar Scooters. The E-Clipse is electric. It is not solar.
The bike’s 72V 45Ah lithium-ion battery charges only from a wall outlet or a separately purchased portable solar generator. There are no photovoltaic cells anywhere on the bodywork, despite the sun-themed styling cues on its fairings. Multiple reviewers, including the German e-mobility publication Steckerbiker, have noted that “Solar” in this context is purely the manufacturer’s brand name, not a technology claim.
The confusion matters because the Solar E-Clipse’s popularity, both as a search result and as a real street-legal product, has crowded out awareness of genuine solar-powered two-wheelers that do exist today. The rest of this article focuses on those.
Outside the concept-render world, a handful of small manufacturers are already selling or pre-selling two-wheelers that harvest sunlight through onboard panels. They are not as sleek as the Solaris and most do not break 40 mph, but they exist, they ship, and they prove the underlying physics works at a small scale.
Chinese manufacturer Jiangsu YongLE New Energy Electric Vehicle Co. has put the CG into production, a utility-style electric motorcycle built on a Honda CG125-style chassis with a 250W solar panel and a small wind turbine mounted on a roof cage above the rider. The CG uses a 1,500W electric motor and a 30Ah lithium-iron-phosphate battery, reaching a top speed of around 37 mph (59 km/h). On a full charge it covers 50-75 miles (80-120 km), and on solar and wind input alone it manages roughly 31 miles (50 km), according to a detailed New Atlas breakdown.
The roof-and-turbine arrangement looks ungainly, more like a small delivery tuk-tuk than a sport bike, but the design is deliberate: it captures energy both while parked in the sun and while moving through the wind. The CG also supports plug-in charging from a standard 110-220V outlet, with a 6-8 hour full-charge time. Disc brakes front and rear, a 3-speed transmission, and a claimed curb weight of 293 lb (133 kg) round out the package. Pricing has not been publicly disclosed by the company, and the bike is currently sold only in China.
San Francisco-based Otherlab has taken a different approach with the Lightfoot, a two-seat electric cargo scooter that integrates two 120W solar panels directly into its clamshell bodywork. There are no folding panels to remember, no external accessories, and no setup routine. You park it in the sun, and it charges.
Otherlab claims the Lightfoot’s panels can add up to 18 miles of range per day in good sunlight, roughly three miles per hour of strong exposure. The base 1.1 kWh battery delivers up to 37 miles of plug-in range, with an 80% recharge achievable in 90 minutes from a standard wall outlet. A 750W brushless hub motor drives each rear wheel, the top speed is just under 20 mph, and the 45.2-liter lockable cargo bay can haul up to 33 lbs. The Lightfoot weighs about 136 lb (62 kg) and retails for $4,995.
Caveats matter here. The Lightfoot was announced in November 2024 with first deliveries promised for January 2025. As of mid-2026 the company is still operating in reservation and pre-order mode, with no verifiable independent owner reviews. Italian e-mobility outlet Futuro Prossimo published a lengthy investigation in August 2026 documenting how the same specs have been recycled in press coverage for nearly two years without a single owner delivery confirmed. The product is real and the technology works in demonstrations, but buyers should treat the timeline as soft until production deliveries begin.
The most recent entrant, and arguably the most ambitious of the production-bound designs, is the Phosgo Go5 Ultra, a US-spec electric bike with four solar panels integrated into the wheel discs themselves. According to the product launch coverage and a detailed review on Notebookcheck, the Go5 Ultra pairs a Bafang M430 750W mid-drive motor with a 720 Wh LG battery and 200W of integrated wheel solar capacity, with back-contact cells rated above 26% efficiency.
Phosgo claims the solar system can add up to 17 miles of range per day, extend total range to roughly 120 miles, and let a typical commuter go up to a month between plug-in charges. The US version tops out at 28 mph; the EU version is software-limited to 25 km/h to comply with EPAC regulations. Pre-orders opened at $2,199 via Indiegogo in July 2026, well below the $5,999 MSRP.
The novelty of putting solar cells in the wheels is that they charge both when parked and while riding, a meaningful upgrade over bodywork panels that only work in direct sunlight at standstill. Whether the wheel-integrated design holds up to potholes, curb strikes, and rain in real-world use is the open question, and one only production deliveries and time will answer.
San Diego-based Spy Motorcycles grabbed headlines in 2022 with claims of a 125-mile-range, 75 mph electric motorcycle with integrated solar panels, billed as “the world’s first.” The brand’s website went dark within two years, no social media updates followed, and the company appears to have dissolved without delivering production units. WebBikeWorld profiled the project in late 2024 as a cautionary case for would-be solar motorcycle buyers: bold claims, prototype photos, and pre-order pages are not the same as delivered vehicles.
The price range for solar-equipped two-wheelers in 2026 spans an order of magnitude, depending on whether the bike has actual solar hardware or just solar in the name.
The honest takeaway: a genuine solar-powered two-wheeler with verifiable delivery in 2026 is real but rare. The YongLE Risheng CG ships in China and is the closest thing to a production solar motorcycle today. The Otherlab Lightfoot and Phosgo Go5 Ultra both have functional prototypes and pre-order pipelines, but neither has documented owner deliveries at scale yet. Aptera sits in a class of its own, with three wheels, autocycle licensing, and a 2026 production target. For riders who want to plug in real solar input today without waiting for deliveries, the established route remains portable: any plug-in electric motorcycle can pair with a folding solar panel and a portable power station from brands like Jackery, Bluetti, or EcoFlow for off-grid charging.
For most riders considering a “solar motorcycle” in 2026, the practical decision sits between a true solar machine with modest performance, a three-wheeled solar EV, and a plug-in electric bike they can buy today.
The trade-offs are stark. The YongLE CG gives real solar input and full motorcycle-class performance, but its 37 mph top speed and 31-mile solar range make it a commuter, not a highway bike. The Otherlab Lightfoot is the most practical urban runabout but tops out under 20 mph and is technically a scooter, not a motorcycle. Aptera offers real solar autonomy with car-class performance, but it is heavy, three-wheeled, and only available as a 2026 reservation. The Solar E-Clipse delivers genuine motorcycle speed and price-to-performance, but it is not solar-powered at all. There is no single winner because the four vehicles serve fundamentally different use cases; the right choice depends on whether the rider needs solar range, highway speed, or both.
It depends on what you are riding and where. The YongLE Risheng CG is classified as an electric moped or low-speed electric motorcycle in China and is legal on roads and bike lanes under local moped regulations. In most US states, a sub-40 mph electric motorcycle typically requires a motorcycle license or endorsement, registration, and standard equipment (lights, mirrors, horn, and turn signals).
The Otherlab Lightfoot is designed to comply with US Class 2 e-bike regulations in most states, has a top speed under 20 mph, and can typically be ridden in bike lanes without a motorcycle license. Riders should still check their state’s specific e-bike classification rules, which vary for throttle-equipped versus pedal-assist models.
The Phosgo Go5 Ultra US version, at 28 mph and 750W, sits at the upper edge of federal Class 2 e-bike limits. Several US states impose stricter rules, and Phosgo has not published state-by-state compliance documentation. Buyers should verify legality in their jurisdiction before placing a pre-order.
Aptera occupies a different legal niche. Most US states classify three-wheeled vehicles with specific weight and speed thresholds as autocycles rather than motorcycles, which means riders do not need a motorcycle endorsement to drive one. Intelligent Living previously covered Aptera’s never-needs-charging solar EV in detail when production plans first emerged. A few states still require a motorcycle license for any three-wheeler. If you are considering an Aptera reservation, check your state’s autocycle laws before placing the deposit.
Yes, but with caveats. The YongLE Risheng CG is the only production two-wheeled motorcycle currently shipping with onboard solar hardware (250W roof panel plus a wind turbine), and it is sold only in China. The Otherlab Lightfoot and Phosgo Go5 Ultra both integrate solar panels into their bodywork and wheels, but neither has documented owner deliveries at scale. The MASK Architects Solaris is the most ambitious solar motorcycle concept, with retractable circular photovoltaic wings, but it remains a design study with no production partner.
Genuine solar-powered two-wheelers range from $2,199 for a pre-order Phosgo Go5 Ultra e-bike to $4,995 for an Otherlab Lightfoot cargo scooter to “unannounced” for the YongLE Risheng CG. The Aptera three-wheeled solar EV starts at $33,200 for a Launch Edition reservation, with production targeted for late 2026. The Solar E-Clipse 2.0, often the top search result for “solar motorcycle,” is the cheapest at $5,995, but it is not actually solar-powered; “Solar” is the manufacturer’s brand name.
The Solar E-Clipse is fully street-legal in most US states and EU countries when registered as an electric motorcycle, but it is not solar-powered. The brand is called Solar Scooters UK, and “Solar” is a name, not a technology. The astronomical event (a solar eclipse) and the motorcycle brand are unrelated. If you actually want a motorcycle that charges from the sun, the YongLE Risheng CG is the closest production option, sold in China with a 250W onboard solar panel.
Among motorcycles that come up when searching “solar,” the Solar E-Clipse 2.0 Race Edition is one of the most affordable at 70 mph ($6,799, 16 kW peak motor), though it is not actually solar-powered. Among genuine production electric motorcycles, the Zero SR/F (~120 mph, ~20,000), Energica Experia (~112 mph, ~29,000), and Can-Am Pulse (87 mph, ~8,999) all clear 70 mph. For genuine solar-equipped bikes, no current production model exceeds 40 mph.
Technically yes, practically limited. The YongLE Risheng CG can run on solar and wind input alone for roughly 31 miles per day in good conditions, but only at low speed and only with the roof-mounted turbine and panel both contributing. The MASK Architects Solaris concept is designed around full solar autonomy but has no disclosed daily range and is not yet a production vehicle. The physics of photovoltaic surface area on a two-wheeler’s silhouette caps real-world solar input at roughly 5-10 miles of range per day in good conditions for a typical motorcycle, with smaller vehicles like the Phosgo Go5 Ultra e-bike claiming up to 17 miles per day from wheel-integrated panels.
Solar panels themselves degrade slowly, typically 0.5-1% efficiency loss per year, meaning a quality panel still produces 80-90% of its original output after 20-25 years. The electric motorcycle components (battery, motor, and controller) follow standard EV longevity: batteries last 8-15 years depending on chemistry and care, while motors and controllers can run for decades with minimal maintenance. The YongLE Risheng CG’s lithium-iron-phosphate battery chemistry is particularly long-lived, often rated for 2,000+ charge cycles. The Phosgo Go5 Ultra uses LG 21700 cells with similar durability expectations.
The solar motorcycle market in 2026 is a story of three very different futures coexisting at once. MASK Architects’ Solaris shows what a fully self-charging two-wheeler could look like once battery and panel technology catch up with the designers’ ambitions. The YongLE Risheng CG, Otherlab Lightfoot, and Phosgo Go5 Ultra show what is actually shipping, or about to ship, today: real solar input, modest performance, and pricing that ranges from accessible to aspirational. Aptera shows what an extra wheel and a much larger surface area can do when the entire vehicle shape is rebuilt around solar capture. All three point in the same direction: a near future where sunlight is a meaningful contributor to how we move on two wheels, even if it is not yet the only contributor.
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Longer, brighter summer days typically mean much stronger solar output.
Photo Credit: iStock
After months of waiting for a rooftop solar-and-battery system to go live, one British homeowner got an unexpected twist: the launch happened on the same day as a solar eclipse.
Instead of sounding annoyed, the homeowner treated the coincidence lightly.
In a post on Reddit, the original poster called it “a bit of a joke” and said they “can’t wait to see the impact on the panels!”
“After months of waiting, my solar and battery system goes live today… Only to be the same day as an eclipse!” the homeowner wrote. 
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The coincidence sparked conversations in the comments about how often solar panel owners check their solar apps to see how much power their panels are generating. 
Home solar panels are among the best investments for reducing long-term energy costs, so it’s easy to see why checking in on power generation can become a regular habit. 
If you’re curious about how much you can save on energy costs with panels, consider using EnergySage’s free tools to get solar installation estimates and compare quotes.
In the U.K. and many other places, longer, brighter summer days typically mean much stronger solar output, while shorter winter days can make production appear modest by comparison. That does not necessarily mean a system is underperforming; rather, it reflects the natural rhythm of rooftop solar.
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Solar panels can reduce reliance on expensive grid electricity, while a battery can store excess daytime energy for use later in the evening.
Over time, that can translate into lower power bills, less exposure to volatile energy prices, and a smaller pollution footprint from household energy use.
For homeowners considering the upgrade, EnergySage offers free tools to gather competitive bids from local installers without sharing any of your contact information unless you choose to move forward with one.
EnergySage’s free services can also make comparison shopping feel much less overwhelming. With EnergySage’s help, the average person can save up to $10,000 on solar purchases and installations. 
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Plus, EnergySage’s solar map shows the average cost of a home solar panel system on a state-by-state level, as well as details on solar panel incentives for each state; together, these resources can help readers get the best price for rooftop solar panels and access available incentives.
Adding battery storage to a solar setup is one of the best ways to protect your home during outages, save money on energy, and go off grid. 
Batteries can store daytime solar power for use after sunset or during grid disruptions, making a solar system much more useful beyond peak sunshine hours. You can also explore EnergySage for information about home battery storage options, including competitive installation estimates.
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“An accident can occur with a leachate truck and the leachate spills on the highway or spills into a stream.”
Photo Credit: iStock
Schuylkill County officials formally stepped up their opposition to a landfill plan they say could leave nearby communities facing risks for years to come, according to The Republican-Herald.
Letters made public at the commissioners’ Aug. 19 meeting show the county asked the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection to reject two pending requests: a permit modification for the Blythe Recycling and Demolition Site Landfill and a permit renewal for Natural Soil Products.
A central issue in the BRADS dispute is leachate, a polluted liquid created when water passes through waste and picks up contaminants.
Commissioners Larry Padora, Barron L. “Boots” Hetherington, and Gary J. Hess are asking DEP to deny BRADS’ request for a major permit change.
That change would make truck hauling the primary method for handling that liquid rather than sending it through the pipeline connected to the Schuylkill Valley Sewer Authority.
In the county’s view, that change would expose St. Clair and nearby areas to avoidable danger. 
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The commissioners’ letter also described a troubling record at the landfill, including odor issues, failed sump valves, litter blown off-site, and an unreported fire.
Commissioners also used the meeting to challenge Natural Soil Products. 
In a five-page letter to DEP Program Manager Roger Bellas, they asked that NSP’s municipal waste processing permit renewal be denied and included a petition signed by nearly 60 nearby residential property owners.
County officials said NSP accumulated 87 DEP violations between 2007 and 2025. 
They also raised concerns about building expansions they say occurred without permits from 2015 through 2021.
The dispute centers on odors, truck traffic, contamination fears, and whether the companies involved are following rules enacted to protect public health.
County officials say BRADS was first approved with a system that sent leachate by pipeline to the sewer authority. The commissioners argue the turn toward trucking is due to cost disputes, not to an engineering failure.
They say that putting more leachate on the road increases the risk of spills reaching highways or waterways, with potential impacts on drivers, nearby residents, and local ecosystems.
Officials also alleged that NSP’s operation may have moved beyond its original approval. 
County records, as summarized by The Republican-Herald, showed a 1992 zoning permit for a “leaf and yard waste composting facility only,” while the site now also handles municipal sewage sludge composting.
The board separately objected to NSP’s request to extend compost drying times from 30 days to as many as 75 days, warning that longer holding periods could worsen odor and pest problems.
By submitting their objections in writing, the county has created a formal record urging the DEP to reject both the BRADS permit modification and the NSP renewal.
The petition opposing NSP’s request demonstrated that nearby property owners are documenting concerns about odors and nuisances.
For BRADS, commissioners cited repeated violations and argued that safer disposal infrastructure is already in place. For NSP, they cited zoning concerns, building changes, and years of violations.
The next move rests with the DEP, which will decide whether either company receives approval to move forward under the requested terms.
“The safest and most convenient method of leachate disposal is to convey the leachate to SVSA, in accordance with permit requirements,” the letter said. 
“An accident can occur with a leachate truck and the leachate spills on the highway or spills into a stream. These are potential risks that can easily be avoided with the direct disposal of leachate to SVSA.”
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OSHKOSH (NBC 26) — A proposed solar project from Alliant Energy would stretch across Winnebago County, and it’s already drawing pushback from local farmers concerned about rising land costs.
The project would include at least 142,000 solar panels across 1,500 acres, with a capacity of 130 megawatts. Alliant Energy expects to lease the land in 30-year intervals.
Local farmer Aaron Radloff said the lease rates Alliant Energy can offer landowners will have a ripple effect on those who do not participate.
“Because of the rates that they are able to offer, that also artificially increases the land rent for the rest of us locals in this area,” Radloff said, “It’ll directly raise rents and land prices for me and all the other farmers in this area.”
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Alliant Energy Renewable Development Manager Justin Foss said the project offers financial benefits for participating landowners.
“We’ve heard from some landowners that it’s going to help them make sure they’ve got money to pay for their kids’ college. We’ve heard from some landowners that it’s what’s helping them keep that farm and the land continuing in their family so that future generations can use it once the solar is done,” Foss said.
A project study boundary map outlines the overall area under consideration. Not all land within the boundary will be used for solar panels — it represents the outer limits of where panels could be placed.
Winnebago County Executive Gordon Hintz said the county has limited authority.
“There’s no direct role for the county in a project of this scale, but clearly anything that’s in the county we have an interest in. But the regulation and oversight and approval would be at the state level with the Public Service Commission,” Hintz said.
More information about how the Public Service Commission reviews construction projects is available at psc.wi.gov.
Additional details about the solar project are available on the Alliant Energy website.
Pending regulatory approval, the project is expected to be operational by 2029. Alliant Energy will hold public listening sessions on September 22 and October 27 at Dauntless Soul Brew Company in Omro.
This story was reported on-air by a journalist and has been converted to this platform with the assistance of AI. Our editorial team verifies all reporting on all platforms for fairness and accuracy.
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The solar panels meant to harness the desert's sun are inadvertently nurturing one of its rarest plants, raising questions about whether industrial sprawl might sometimes create unexpected refuges.
By Science Blog Editorial Team · Edited by Brendan Brown
Published August 30, 2026 · How we edit
Before the Gemini Solar Project was built, botanists combed its 20 square kilometers of Mojave Desert northeast of Las Vegas and found exactly 12 individuals of a plant called the threecorner milkvetch. Twelve. The species, a small, sprawling member of the pea family named for its odd three-sided seed pods, is rare enough to be under consideration for the U.S. Endangered Species Act, and it lives in loose desert sands of precisely the sunny, gently sloping kind that solar developers covet. The expectation, when 1.8 million panels went up on its habitat, was not a happy one.
The follow-up surveys found the plant had not merely survived the solar farm. It had moved in and prospered. By 2024, two years after construction, ecologists counted 93 threecorner milkvetch plants inside the fence, nearly eight times the pre-construction dozen, and the individuals growing among the panels were outperforming their wild cousins on every measure that matters to a plant.
The comparison was clean because the researchers designed it that way. A team led by Tiffany Pereira of Nevada’s Desert Research Institute tagged and tracked milkvetch plants inside the array and at an undisturbed population on federal land nearby, same rains, same sands, same Mojave sun, and followed them through the growing season, publishing the results in Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution.
The plants inside Gemini grew wider and taller. They began fruiting nearly three weeks earlier. And by season’s end the gap had become a chasm: the solar-farm plants produced roughly eight times more flowers and ten times more fruit than the plants outside, while survival rates between the two groups were statistically the same. For an annual plant whose entire evolutionary strategy is to erupt after rain, reproduce frantically and die, a tenfold difference in fruit is not a detail; it is the species’ future, banked in the seed.
The mechanism is desert arithmetic. A Mojave annual lives and dies by how long the moisture from a rain event stays within reach of its roots, and on open ground the answer is: not long. Full sun and wind strip water from bare sand within days, and the plants outside the fence grew accordingly, small, quick and conservative.
Inside the array, the panel rows changed the water budget without changing the rain. Shade cast across the ground for part of each day slowed evaporation, wind speeds between the rows dropped, and the soil held its moisture deep into spring, letting tagged plants keep stretching, flowering and setting pods for weeks after the open desert had dried down. The panels also redistribute what falls on them, their driplines concentrating runoff at the row edges. The result was a landscape that received Mojave rain but spent it like somewhere gentler.
The plant’s own preferences, mapped across thousands of microsites, tell the story with precision: 94 percent of the milkvetch at Gemini grew in the sunny interspaces between panel rows, enjoying the improved moisture without sacrificing the light a desert annual craves, while almost none, a single plant, grew in the permanent darkness directly beneath a panel. The sweet spot was not shade; it was the neighborhood of shade.
The milkvetch had help, and the help is the transferable lesson. Gemini was built under requirements to minimize disturbance in milkvetch habitat, and its developers departed from the industry’s default of blading and grading, the practice of scraping a site to bare, level dirt that destroys the desert’s seed bank along with everything else. Across much of the project, vegetation was left in place or crushed rather than removed, panels were raised over intact soil, and the buried seeds of the 12 original plants, plus decades of their ancestors’ seed rain, survived construction to germinate into the improved microclimate. The study is one of the first to measure what that gentler approach, which its advocates call ecovoltaics, actually buys, and the answer at Gemini was a rare plant population multiplying inside an operating power station.
The researchers are careful about the boundaries of the finding. One species, one site, two years; other desert plants want different light budgets, and a wetter or drier run of years could shift the balance. Panel geometry matters enough that the paper reads partly as design guidance, higher panels and wider rows as habitat parameters. But the core observation stands, and it lands on the same physics that solar developers bank on. The Mojave sun is relentless; that is why 1.8 million panels are there. The unplanned discovery is that intercepting a slice of that sun does for the ground what it does for the grid, capturing something the desert otherwise wastes. The panels harvest the light, the soil keeps the rain, and a plant with twelve survivors took one look at the arrangement and produced a decade of seeds in a season.
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As summers grow hotter, we’ll need new solutions for agriculture and the people who keep this industry going. Now, a study finds that the practice of coupling solar panels with farmland, known as agrivoltaics, isn’t only cooling for crops, but for people, too—decreasing heat by several degrees for both.
Many agrivoltaics studies have investigated the pros and cons of these hybrid landscapes in specific, real-world field scenarios. This study took a different approach, using a computer model to simulate the unique microclimates that develop beneath solar panels.
“We wanted to build a model so people can test these physics and new design ideas before spending money on hardware,” say Erfan Hosseini, PhD candidate at Princeton University, and Elie Bou-Zeid, researcher in civil and environemtal engineering at the university, and both authors on the new study. The model simulated the movement of air, heat and moisture between panels, soil, and plants, and then looked at the effects on those crops, panels—and the people tending to them. 
In this case, using data from tomato farms and simulating the effect of a typical New Jersey summer’s day, the model compared open-field tomatoes with crops grown under solar panel shading, and found something extraordinary. Tomato leaves would be at least 1.84 °C cooler under a patchwork of solar panels, it found, but up to 7.56 °C cooler during the heat of the day, compared to unshaded plants. 
This cooling effect would also reduce water loss from the leaves by 22.4% per day, and by 42.6% daily from both crops and soil. In turn, the air-cooling effects of this evapotranspiration would chill the solar panels themselves by 5.6 °C, reducing heat-related efficiency losses by 15%.
 
 
Despite the shaded tomatoes receiving 47% less direct sunlight, their photosynthesis declined by 31%—a figure that was lower than the researchers expected. This suggested, as other studies also have, that the benefits of a cooler microclimate offset the productivity losses of less sun. 
Most uniquely, the model revealed that the overall cooling influence had a benefit for people. Farm laborers would experience this as a 4.46 °C decline in average temperatures. In the simulated scenario, installing solar panels on tomato farms brought down perceived temperatures from 39 °C to around 35 °C. 
That’s a significant reduction in a warming world. “Outdoor workers bear the brunt of this heat, and their drop in productivity has wider socio-economic repercussions,” say Hosseini and Bou-Zeid. “Our results show that shading dominates and results in improved thermal comfort, improving workers’ health, wellbeing, and productivity.”
Solar panels are emerging as a key climate solution for energy, crops, and people. But before we roll them out across farmland at large scales, we’ll need to weigh up their pros and cons. “Agrivoltaics design is not one-size-fits-all,” the two researchers say. “That’s exactly why a tool like this is needed. It lets you find out before you build your first prototype.”
“We’d welcome working with growers and developers who want to try it on real sites.”
Bou-Zeid et. al. “Food, Energy, and Health Implications of Agrivoltaic Farms.” Journal of Advances in Modelling Earth Systems. 2026.
Image: Werner Slocum / NLR
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PM Surya Ghar: India’s Solar Revolution  PIB
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By: Chema Bonilla Díaz
Published: Aug 29, at 3:00pm ET
Solar developers in the Midwest usually lose their fights at the township level. Neighbors show up, trustees pass a resolution, and the project dies long before anyone pours concrete. Ten miles southwest of Lima, Ohio, that is what finished Birch Solar 1, a 300-megawatt farm planned for 1,410 acres of cropland. The Ohio Power Siting Board denied it on October 20, 2022, the first time the board had ever rejected a utility-scale solar application.
Lima watched that from up the road. On August 12, 2026, the city energized 2 megawatts of solar panels floating on four acres of Twin Lake Reservoir, which is where its 35,000 residents get their drinking water. No county resolution, no siting case, no hearing.
The array powers the water treatment plant next door, a building that runs pumps and filters around the clock and pushes about 14 million gallons a day. That plant burns more electricity than anything else the city owns.
Lima is better known for other industry. The Cenovus refinery on the north side of town processes around 183,000 barrels a day, and the Joint Systems Manufacturing Center, government-owned and run by General Dynamics Land Systems, is the only plant in the United States that builds M1 Abrams tanks.
More than 3,100 bifacial panels sit on Ciel & Terre Hydrelio floats, tied to anchors on the reservoir bed and its banks. Power runs ashore to eight Yaskawa Solectria XGI inverters. Rain does not bother any of it, and Ohio had plenty of rain the week the array came online. The mooring lines let the whole thing ride up and down with the water level.
Other towns will copy the land math. A 2-megawatt ground-mounted system needs at least 10 acres once you allow for row spacing and service access, and the floating version covers 4 acres of surface. D3Energy, the Florida developer behind it, has now built all three of Ohio’s floating arrays, with contractor ARP Solar doing the construction on each one.
“By building on water the city already owns, Lima is generating 2 MW of clean power while preserving nearly 10 acres,” D3Energy managing director Stetson Tchividjian told Solar Power World.
Lima put in roughly $2 million of its own money on a project the developer prices at $5 million. A $2.4 million Department of Energy grant covered the largest share, money that then-U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown helped secure. Close to $900,000 more came through the Inflation Reduction Act’s direct pay provision, which lets a city with no federal tax bill collect the investment tax credit as cash.
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Mayor Sharetta Smith has said the project would not have been possible without that provision. Running the water plant costs Lima about $1 million a year.
Utilities director Michael Caprella puts first-year savings around $200,000 and lifetime savings near $10 million across an expected 15 to 20 years, he told The Lima News. Twenty years at $200,000 comes to $4 million. Closing the gap to $10 million assumes Ohio electricity keeps getting more expensive. That is a forecast.
Any town trying this now faces a harder clock. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act, signed July 4, 2025, ends the Section 48E investment credit for solar placed in service after December 31, 2027, unless construction began before July 5, 2026. That construction deadline passed six weeks before Lima flipped the switch. Direct pay itself survived the law, but it only pays out whatever the underlying credit is worth, so a municipal project starting today has until the end of 2027 to be generating.
Ohio Senate Bill 52 took effect on October 11, 2021. County commissioners can designate any unincorporated part of a county as a restricted area where large wind and solar are prohibited outright, and the siting board cannot accept an application there. Roughly a third of Ohio’s 88 counties have adopted some restriction. Richland County voters upheld bans across 11 of that county’s 18 townships on May 5, 2026, with just under 53% of the vote.
Lima’s array never went near any of it. Ohio law defines a “large solar facility” as 50 megawatts or more, and the restricted-area power reaches only unincorporated county land. A 2-megawatt array inside city limits on city-owned water sits outside both tests. That is the whole trick, and it is a boring one.
Two megawatts does not replace 300.
Lightsource bp said Birch Solar would have supplied roughly 55,000 homes. Lima’s array covers about 250 homes’ worth of annual electricity, according to WLIO, and offsets around 1,076 US tons of carbon dioxide a year, or 976 metric tons. Lima proved something smaller and more useful. A mid-sized American city can put real generation on infrastructure it already owns and skip four years of hearings to do it.
NREL has been making the land-sparing case since 2018, when its researchers estimated that floating panels on more than 24,000 man-made American water bodies could supply about 10% of national electricity generation and spare roughly 5.2 million acres of ground. That same work listed reduced evaporation and reduced algae growth as side benefits, and Lima cites both. We went through NREL’s federal reservoir numbers in more detail when Britain opened its own consultation on covering lakes with panels.
Field data is thinner than the modeling. A team led by Alexander Cagle at UC Davis sampled four American floating solar ponds twice a day across all four seasons and published the results in Frontiers in Water in October 2025. Differences in chlorophyll-a, phycocyanin, dissolved oxygen, pH and temperature between shaded water and open water were mostly minimal. One site with 4.8% coverage showed chlorophyll-a down as much as 80% under the panels in spring. A eutrophic site with 22% coverage sometimes ran higher under the panels than out in the open. The authors asked for longer monitoring before anyone banks on the water-quality benefits.
A separate 2025 study of a shallow drinking water reservoir reported benthic cyanobacteria appearing beneath a floating array, which is the one organism a water utility does not want more of. Lima’s four acres are a small share of Twin Lake, so whatever shading effect exists there will be smaller still. The array started generating on August 12, 2026. Anything measurable at Twin Lake will take seasons.
Del-Co Water finished Ohio’s first floating array in spring 2024, 1.5 megawatts and about 2,600 panels on a pond at its Olentangy Water Treatment Plant in Delaware, offsetting close to half that plant’s electricity. Monroeville, a village in Huron County, has 6 megawatts going in on its own drinking water reservoir, due online before the end of 2026 and rated at more than 7,500 megawatt-hours a year. That one will pass Lima as the largest floating array in the state.
Ownership separates the three. Gardner Capital owns the Del-Co and Monroeville systems, and the utility and the village buy the power back under long-term agreements. Lima owns its array outright, which is exactly the outcome the direct pay credit was written to make possible.
Cohoes, New York, a city of about 17,000, went further on a smaller pond, with 5,880 panels and 3.2 megawatts covering most of its 10-acre drinking water reservoir, paid for with $3 million in federal money, state incentives and $750,000 from National Grid.
The American pattern here is small, municipal and attached to a water plant. Most of the country’s floating solar sits on closed-loop water like this, as we found when a California winery floated 1,000 panels over its irrigation pond, and when Arkansas researchers put 96 panels on a rice irrigation reservoir.
David Berger, mayor of Lima for 32 years, took the floating solar idea to Power a Clean Future Ohio in 2019 and retired in 2021 without seeing a single float go in the water. City council authorized the project in 2023, crews drove the first anchors in October 2025, and the array started producing on August 12, 2026, feeding a plant that serves close to 27,000 water accounts.
Agree or laugh out loud?
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InfoLink’s first half 2026 global photovoltaic module shipment ranking shows an unprecedented contraction among the largest suppliers. The 10 biggest names saw combined deliveries fall 31% compared with the same period last year, while a like for like view of the eight firms present in both 1H25 and 1H26 still points to a 30% drop. In total, the companies included in the ranking moved approximately 181.39 GW, with volumes so close at the lower end that four suppliers tied for eighth place, making 11 names in the published list.

LONGi and JinkoSolar finished level at the top. Trina Solar took third by a narrow margin, with JA Solar just behind in fourth. These four leaders accounted for around 59% of all ranked shipments, creating a clear gap over the rest. Yet the chase is tightening, as the shipment gap between the leading group and the next tier narrowed by about 4 to 5 percentage points from a year earlier. All four leaders include output from their United States module plants in their totals, with LONGi counting Illuminate USA, JinkoSolar counting Jinko Solar (U.S.) Industries, Trina Solar counting T1 Energy, and JA Solar counting American Panel Solutions in Corning.
The third tier comprised Tongwei, Astronergy and Yingli Solar in fifth to seventh. In the fourth tier, DMEGC Solar, AIKO, TCL Solar and GCL tied for eighth as their volumes differed by less than 5%, intensifying competition for position. For this ranking, TCL Solar’s data combine several brands, including HuanSheng, TCL Solar, TCL Photovoltaic Technology, SunPower, Maxeon and DAS Solar.
Three companies stand out in the movement of the list. Canadian Solar, a long time fixture, dropped out of the top 10 for the first time. That does not signal lost competitiveness. The company has been one of the few Chinese PV manufacturers to stay profitable over the past three years, sharpened its focus on the United States market, and recently started production at its US cell plant, a move that aligns with a pivot toward higher value markets.
AIKO entered the module shipment ranking for the first time. Though historically a specialist cell maker, it secured a leading position by leaning into its BC technology and an all BC module strategy, illustrating how a focused cell supplier can transform into a tier one module player.
TCL Solar now represents the combined entity of TCL Solar and DAS Solar, two brands that previously sat inside the top 10. As the industry enters a plateau phase, the established wafer specialist filled its long standing gap in cell capacity through the acquisition of DAS Solar’s brand and production assets. The merged scale and market reach have lifted TCL Solar to become the third largest BC module supplier globally, with integration expected to wrap up this year.
Policy and demand dynamics reshaped where modules went in 1H26. An export tax rebate change and a sharp drop in domestic demand in China pushed the top 11 suppliers to redirect volumes overseas. China accounted for about 39.9% of total shipments, while other markets made up 60.1%, an increase of roughly 18 percentage points from 1H25.
By technology, TOPCon remained the workhorse. Shipments of TOPCon modules made up about 83% of volumes among the top 11. BC modules also posted growth. Beyond AIKO, LONGi, JA Solar, TCL Solar and GCL all recorded BC shipments, taking total BC volumes to nearly 30 GW in the first half, or 16% of the top 11 total. HJT does not feature strongly in this list because major HJT manufacturers were not in the top 10, so the data mainly reflects technology choices by the leading module suppliers rather than the full global HJT share.
The sector is in a structural adjustment. Imbalances between supply and demand, overcapacity and elevated inventories have slowed capacity rationalisation, while end market demand faces downward pressure. These conditions are pushing companies across the chain to accelerate technology upgrades and reinforce core advantages.
Into 2026, expectations around China’s mandatory national standard on minimum energy efficiency values for crystalline silicon modules and inverters have grown, highlighting the product premium and competitive edge of high efficiency modules. With most regional markets now broadly covered, the next phase will likely reward firms that use differentiated products to reach niche segments, align more closely with customer needs and build long term stickiness, moving beyond homogenised products and price led competition.
Suppliers that balance scale with profit, shift competition from price to value and turn short term shipment gains into durable moats are best placed to outperform in the next upcycle. The industry is expected to move from unchecked capacity expansion to a phase of high quality development focused on energy efficiency and value creation.
Author: Bryan Groenendaal






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Solar subsidy in UP: Your end-to-end guide  Tata Power
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LANSING — Michigan has given the go-ahead for a nearly $100 million solar farm in southern Ingham County, the first project to move forward under a 2023 state renewable energy law that shifted approval for such projects from local governments to the Michigan Public Service Commission.
The MPSC agreed to let Chicago-based Ranger Power construct its 90-megawatt Acceleration Solar Project on 870 acres spanning Leslie, Vevay and Onondaga townships in southwest Ingham County. It also OK’d a settlement agreement between the developer, local governments and the state agency, MPSC officials said in its Thursday, Aug. 27, release.
The project will be developed mainly east of College Road and south of Barnes Road in Vevay Township, and also includes parcels in Vevay and Onondaga townships.
The settlement agreement between MPSC, Ranger Power and the three townships establishes requirements for project construction, noise control, vegetative screening, lighting limitations, prompt complaint resolution, financial assurance for decommissioning, limitations on tree clearing, and more.
The agreement also sets limitations on the project’s footprint, which will include 618 fenced acres, and lays out rules for decommissioning including removal of underground infrastructure and restoration of the land for future agriculture use.
It also includes additional funding for township legal expenses, drain maintenance, and local fire personnel and first-responder training. The company agreed to execute a collective bargaining agreement with one or more labor organizations for the project construction and maintenance work to be performed.
“The MPSC and the townships will monitor construction and operation of the project to ensure compliance, with required reports submitted to the Commission and townships,” the commission said in its release. “That includes annual reports on energy production, complaints, maintenance, and financial assurance through the life of the project.”
Ryan Wardin, spokesman for Ranger Power, said construction should begin in the first quarter of 2027 and operations should begin in mid-2028.
Gov. Gretchen Whitmer said in a statement that Michigan is leading the way on the future of clean energy.
“This project will bring tens of millions in investment and more than a hundred good-paying jobs to Michigan communities,” she said. “It’s the very first project sited under the historic clean energy bill package I signed in 2023, which is helping us improve the grid, lower electricity bills, and build, baby, build more solar panels and wind turbines across Michigan.
“Let’s work together to grow our economy, protect our air, land, and water, secure our energy independence, and build a bright future for Michigan.”
Supervisors John Lazet of Vevay Township and Phil Hutchison of Onondaga Township could not be reached for comment.
Dallas Henney, Leslie Township’s supervisor, has been critical of the solar project and said earlier this year the legislation “pretty much took it out of our hands.” So he and the the other supervisors did what they could, Henney told the State Journal on Friday, Aug. 28, to get the best deal for their constituents.
“The process was tedious, which most government processes are,” he said. “Obviously, it was going to happen. It is what it is.”
Ranger Power’s release included a statement from Lazet.
“Following the filing of an application with the MPSC, the Township is grateful that Ranger Power was willing to sit down and listen to the quality of life concerns we had,” Lazet said. “We found Ranger Power to be thorough, detailed, competent, and open to township input. The result being an agreement that we feel is in the best interest of both the township and the Project.”
Ranger officials said Acceleration Solar is expected to bring up to $136 million in investment to thecounty and create approximately 150 jobs during construction. There will be a handful of long-term, full-time operations and maintenance positions.
The company said the project will generate substantial tax revenue, with an estimated $8 million going to Ingham County, $5.1 million to the Ingham Intermediate School District, $4.6 million to local schools, and $7.3 million in combined revenue for township millages.
“Today’s decision demonstrates what can be accomplished when communities, project developers, and state leaders work together toward a shared goal,” said Paul Harris, Ranger Power’s co-founder and president. “We are grateful to the community members and leaders of Vevay, Leslie, and Onondaga townships for their thoughtful engagement throughout this process. Acceleration Solar will deliver significant investment and employment opportunities while supporting Michigan’s long-term energy goals to provide the cheapest power available.”
Ranger Power promised in the release to maintain close coordination with the three townships, Ingham County, residents and state officials as Acceleration Solar progresses. This continued engagement is to include regular construction updates, pre-construction coordination and resident input on preferred visual screening.
DESRI, Ranger Power’s New York City-based partner on projects across the upper Midwest, will assume project responsibility at the start of construction and continue community engagement throughout Acceleration Solar’s buildout and operations.
Ranger Power’s Acceleration Solar application was the first filed with the MPSC after legislators approved Public Act 233. The MSPC’s website shows the agency has granted a certificate for Acceleration Solar and it continues to review six complete applications.
Walker Road Solar Farm LLC has voluntarily withdrawn its application to use about 1,600 acres for a solar farm in Bingham Township, near St. Johns.
MPSC records show Walker Road Solar Farm LLC voluntarily withdrew its application.
In January, local residents crowded the Bingham Township hall to protest and raise concerns about the project that a company official said would produce 150 megawatts of clean energy, which is enough to power about 28,000 homes.
The township board did not have a vote in the matter.
Contact editor Susan Vela at svela@lsj.com or 248-873-7044. Follow her on Twitter @susanvela.

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According to the latest IndexBox report on the global Concrete Foundation Piers for Solar market, the market enters 2026 with broader demand fundamentals, more disciplined procurement behavior, and a more regionally diversified supply architecture.
The world concrete foundation piers for solar market is entering a phase of sustained structural expansion, underpinned by the rapid deployment of utility-scale ground-mounted photovoltaic systems. Between 2026 and 2035, global solar capacity additions are projected to increase by 40-55%, directly translating into higher demand for foundation solutions that provide stable, durable support for solar panel arrays. Precast concrete piers have captured an estimated 25-35% share of the ground-mount foundation segment, particularly in regions with challenging soil conditions and frost-depth requirements, such as North America and Northern Europe.
The market is characterized by regional fragmentation due to the heavy weight and high transport costs of concrete components, with economically feasible shipping radii typically limited to 150-250 kilometers from production plants. This dynamic reinforces the importance of local manufacturing and just-in-time production workflows, which are being enabled by digital design-to-fabrication technologies that compress lead times by 10-20%.
Sustainability mandates in Europe and North America are increasingly driving specification of low-carbon concrete formulations, with blended cements and supplementary cementitious materials expected to account for 20-30% of pier volume by 2030 in those jurisdictions. The market also faces persistent challenges, including cement and steel reinforcement input cost volatility, with regional cement prices fluctuating by 15-30% over the 2023-2026 period, and supply chain bottlenecks in specialized prestressing strand and high-strength reinforcing bar grades.
Despite these constraints, the outlook remains positive, with the market index projected to reach 176 by 2035, reflecting a compound annual growth rate of 5.8% from 2025.
The baseline scenario for the concrete foundation piers for solar market points to steady growth through 2035, driven by the accelerating global transition to renewable energy and the increasing scale of solar farm projects. The market is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 5.8% from 2025 to 2035, with the market index reaching 176 by 2035 (2025=100). This growth is supported by the rising adoption of precast concrete piers over alternative foundation systems, particularly in regions with high soil variability, frost heave, and seismic considerations.
The shift toward integrated foundation-and-structure packages offered by EPC contractors is streamlining procurement and reducing the number of discrete supply transactions by approximately 15-20% for large-scale solar parks exceeding 50 MW. Sustainability mandates are reshaping material specifications, with low-carbon concrete formulations gaining traction in Europe and North America, while digital design-to-fabrication workflows are enabling just-in-time production and reducing on-site storage requirements. However, the market faces restraints including input cost volatility, transport logistics constraints, and supply chain bottlenecks for premium reinforcement materials.
Regional fragmentation persists, with local manufacturers dominating within their shipping radius, but this also creates opportunities for strategic localization and partnerships. Overall, the market is positioned for robust expansion, with demand increasingly concentrated in Asia-Pacific, North America, and Europe, while Latin America and the Middle East & Africa present emerging opportunities as solar capacity scales up.
Utility-scale solar farms represent the largest end-use segment for concrete foundation piers, accounting for 55% of market demand. These projects, typically exceeding 50 MW, require robust foundation systems capable of supporting heavy solar arrays across vast land areas. The demand is driven by the global push for renewable energy capacity, with solar PV additions projected to increase 40-55% between 2026 and 2035. Precast concrete piers are favored in regions with high soil variability, frost depth, or seismic activity, where they provide superior stability compared to driven steel piles. The trend toward integrated foundation-and-structure packages is streamlining procurement, reducing transaction counts by 15-20% for large projects.
Through 2035, demand will be supported by the expansion of solar farms in emerging markets, particularly in Asia-Pacific and Latin America, as well as repowering and retrofitting of existing plants. Key demand-side indicators include the number of new ground-mount project announcements, land acquisition trends, and government auction volumes. Major companies in this segment include EPC contractors and foundation specialists who deliver turnkey solutions. Current trend: Dominant and growing, with increasing adoption of precast piers for large ground-mounted arrays.
Major trends: Shift toward integrated foundation-and-mounting packages, Increasing use of low-carbon concrete to meet sustainability mandates, Adoption of digital design-to-fabrication workflows for faster delivery, and Growth in repowering and retrofitting of aging solar farms.
Representative participants: Oldcastle Infrastructure, Tindall Corporation, CEMEX, LafargeHolcim, AECOM, and Black & Veatch.
Commercial and industrial ground-mount solar systems, typically ranging from 1 MW to 50 MW, account for 20% of concrete foundation pier demand. These projects are often developed by corporations seeking to offset energy costs and meet sustainability targets. The demand for concrete piers in this segment is driven by the need for reliable, low-maintenance foundations that can support solar arrays on varied terrain, including brownfield sites and areas with poor soil conditions. Precast concrete piers offer advantages in terms of installation speed and reduced on-site labor, which is critical for projects with tight schedules.
Through 2035, growth will be supported by corporate power purchase agreements (PPAs) and government incentives for distributed generation. The trend toward standardized pier dimensions and connectors is facilitating OEM integration and reducing engineering costs. Demand-side indicators include corporate renewable energy commitments, PPA volumes, and the number of mid-scale ground-mount installations. Major players include foundation suppliers and EPC firms specializing in C&I solar. Current trend: Steady growth driven by corporate renewable energy procurement and distributed generation.
Major trends: Standardization of pier dimensions and connectors for faster installation, Growth in corporate PPAs and on-site generation, Use of precast piers for challenging soil conditions, and Integration with battery storage and hybrid systems.
Representative participants: Solar Foundations LLC, Foundation Technologies Inc, Concrete Foundations Ltd, Helical Pier Systems, and Bekaert.
Residential ground-mount solar arrays, typically under 1 MW, represent 10% of concrete foundation pier demand. These installations are common in rural and suburban areas where rooftop space is limited or orientation is suboptimal. The demand for concrete piers in this segment is driven by the need for durable, cost-effective foundations that can be installed quickly with minimal site disturbance. Precast concrete piers are increasingly preferred over cast-in-place solutions due to their ease of installation and consistent quality. Through 2035, growth will be supported by the expansion of community solar programs and the increasing affordability of residential solar systems.
The trend toward prefabricated foundation kits is making installation more accessible to smaller contractors. Demand-side indicators include residential solar installation rates, community solar project pipelines, and consumer preferences for ground-mount systems. Major companies in this segment include foundation kit manufacturers and local precast concrete producers. Current trend: Moderate growth, with increasing adoption of precast piers for residential solar installations.
Major trends: Prefabricated foundation kits for DIY and small contractor installation, Growth of community solar programs, Increasing use of precast piers in areas with frost heave, and Integration with smart mounting systems.
Representative participants: Solar Foundations LLC, Concrete Foundations Ltd, Helical Pier Systems, and Foundation Technologies Inc.
Solar canopy and carport structures account for 10% of concrete foundation pier demand, with rapid growth expected through 2035. These structures provide dual benefits of renewable energy generation and shade for parking areas, making them attractive for commercial properties, airports, and municipal facilities. The demand for concrete piers in this segment is driven by the need for robust foundations that can support elevated structures while withstanding wind loads and seismic forces. Precast concrete piers are often used in combination with steel columns to provide a stable base. Through 2035, growth will be supported by the increasing adoption of solar canopies in urban areas and the integration of EV charging stations.
The trend toward aesthetically pleasing and modular canopy designs is driving innovation in pier configurations. Demand-side indicators include commercial construction activity, EV charging infrastructure investments, and municipal sustainability initiatives. Major companies include foundation suppliers and canopy system integrators. Current trend: Rapid growth as solar canopies gain popularity in commercial and municipal applications.
Major trends: Integration of EV charging with solar canopies, Modular and aesthetically designed canopy systems, Use of precast piers for wind and seismic resistance, and Growth in municipal and airport solar projects.
Representative participants: Oldcastle Infrastructure, Tindall Corporation, Solar Foundations LLC, and Foundation Technologies Inc.
Repowering and replacement projects represent 5% of concrete foundation pier demand, but this segment is expected to grow significantly as early solar farms reach the end of their design life. Many solar installations built in the 2000s and early 2010s are now facing foundation degradation, corrosion, or inadequate load capacity for newer, heavier panels. The demand for concrete piers in this segment is driven by the need to replace or reinforce existing foundations to extend the operational life of solar assets. Precast concrete piers offer a reliable solution for retrofitting, as they can be installed with minimal disruption to existing arrays.
Through 2035, the aging of the global solar fleet will drive steady growth in this segment, particularly in mature markets like Europe and North America. The trend toward performance upgrades and the adoption of bifacial panels is increasing the load requirements on foundations, further boosting demand. Demand-side indicators include the age distribution of installed solar capacity, maintenance and repair spending, and repowering project announcements. Major companies include foundation repair specialists and precast concrete manufacturers. Current trend: Emerging segment driven by aging solar farm foundations and performance upgrades.
Major trends: Aging solar fleet driving foundation replacement demand, Retrofitting with precast piers for increased load capacity, Use of corrosion-resistant reinforcement in replacement piers, and Growth in performance upgrade projects.
Representative participants: Concrete Foundations Ltd, Foundation Technologies Inc, Helical Pier Systems, and Prestressed Concrete Products.
Interactive table based on the Store Companies dataset for this report.
Asia-Pacific leads the market with 40% share, driven by massive solar capacity additions in China, India, and Southeast Asia. Rapid industrialization and government renewable targets support demand. Local manufacturing and lower labor costs enhance competitiveness, but supply chain bottlenecks for premium reinforcement materials pose challenges. Direction: Dominant and fastest-growing.
North America holds 25% share, with strong demand from utility-scale solar projects in the US and Canada. Precast concrete piers are preferred in regions with frost depth and soil variability. Sustainability mandates and low-carbon concrete specifications are gaining traction, while transport logistics limit supplier competition. Direction: Steady growth.
Europe accounts for 20% share, with demand driven by renewable energy targets and repowering of aging solar farms. Northern Europe shows high adoption of precast piers due to frost requirements. Low-carbon concrete mandates are reshaping material specifications, while regional fragmentation persists due to transport constraints. Direction: Moderate growth.
Latin America holds 10% share, with growth supported by solar expansion in Brazil, Chile, and Mexico. Favorable solar resources and declining costs drive utility-scale projects. Local production is developing, but import dependence for specialized reinforcement materials remains a challenge. Direction: Emerging growth.
Middle East & Africa accounts for 5% share, with growing interest in solar projects in the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and South Africa. Harsh environmental conditions require durable foundations, favoring precast concrete. Market development is at an early stage, with opportunities for localization and technology transfer. Direction: Emerging growth.
In the baseline scenario, IndexBox estimates a 5.8% compound annual growth rate for the global concrete foundation piers for solar market over 2026-2035, bringing the market index to roughly 176 by 2035 (2025=100).
Note: indexed curves are used to compare medium-term scenario trajectories when full absolute volumes are not publicly disclosed.
For full methodological details and benchmark tables, see the latest IndexBox Concrete Foundation Piers for Solar market report.
This report provides an in-depth analysis of the Concrete Foundation Piers for Solar market in the world, covering market size, growth trajectory, demand structure, supply capability, trade flows, pricing, competitive landscape, and forecast to 2035.
The study is designed for manufacturers, distributors, importers, exporters, investors, procurement teams, advisors, and strategy teams that need a consistent, data-driven view of market dynamics and a transparent analytical definition of the product scope.
This report covers the market for concrete foundation piers specifically designed for solar energy installations, including ground-mounted photovoltaic systems and solar farm infrastructure. The analysis encompasses the structural support elements that anchor solar panel arrays to the ground, focusing on precast concrete piers and related foundation solutions.
The report combines the standard market-statistics backbone with strategic chapters that are useful for commercial planning, sourcing decisions, market entry, competitor monitoring, and portfolio prioritization.
The market is segmented into decision-relevant buckets so that demand drivers, pricing logic, supply constraints, and competitive positions can be compared across the same analytical frame.
The classification coverage includes concrete foundation piers for solar energy systems segmented by product type (components and modules, integrated systems, consumables and replacement parts), by application (industrial automation and instrumentation, electronics and optical systems, semiconductor and precision manufacturing, OEM integration and maintenance), and by value chain (upstream inputs and critical components, manufacturing assembly and quality control, distribution integration and channel partners, after-sales service replacement and lifecycle support).
Coverage includes global totals, major demand markets, production and sourcing hubs, leading exporters and importers, and country profiles for the top national markets.
The report combines official statistics, trade records, company disclosures, product-level evidence, and analyst validation. Data are standardized, reconciled, and cross-checked to keep market sizing, trade flows, pricing, and forecasts comparable across countries and time periods.
All indicators are mapped to a consistent product definition and reviewed against the segmentation framework used in the Table of Contents.
Report Scope and Analytical Framing
Concise View of Market Direction
Market Size, Growth and Scenario Framing
Commercial and Technical Scope
How the Market Splits Into Decision-Relevant Buckets
Where Demand Comes From and How It Behaves
Supply Footprint, Trade and Value Capture
Trade Flows and External Dependence
Price Formation and Revenue Logic
Who Wins and Why
Where Growth and Supply Concentrate
Commercial Entry and Scaling Priorities
Where the Best Expansion Logic Sits
Leading Players and Strategic Archetypes
Detailed View of the Most Important National Markets
How the Report Was Built
Leading supplier for utility-scale solar projects
Specializes in solar ground mount systems
European market leader in solar foundation solutions
Innovative pier-to-rack connection systems
Custom pier designs for challenging soil conditions
Serves both residential and commercial solar
Specializes in foundation integrity for solar
Focus on cold climate solar installations
Integrated foundation and racking solutions
Regional supplier for ground-mount solar
Niche provider for high-load applications
National distributor with solar division
Custom engineering for uneven terrain
Patented leveling pier technology
Major supplier in Australian solar market
Focus on European utility-scale projects
Specializes in low-impact solar foundations
Integrated solar mounting manufacturer
Known for modular foundation components
Focus on residential and commercial solar
Innovative waterproof pier solutions
Major racking manufacturer with pier options
Global solar mounting provider
Leading tracker manufacturer with foundation integration
Top tracker supplier with foundation expertise
Major racking and foundation provider
Specializes in challenging terrain solar
Full-service foundation contractor for solar
European steel and foundation supplier
Major racking manufacturer with pier products
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China has deployed a 100-kilowatt floating solar platform made from engineered bamboo off the coast of Yantai in Shandong province.
The platform, called Jilin-2, is designed to test whether bamboo can replace the steel and plastic normally used in offshore floating solar projects.
It uses composite bamboo tubes and pipes instead of the steel or high-density polyethylene (HDPE) used in most floating solar platforms.
Jilin-2 will supply electricity to a demonstration project that produces ammonia, hydrogen, and methanol.
Developers will also monitor the platform to see how the bamboo structure holds up at sea. They will check its performance in corrosion, high humidity, salt spray and ultraviolet radiation, as well as its resistance to long-term fatigue.
Jilin-2 was jointly developed by the CIMC Offshore Engineering Research Institute, China Forestry Group Corporation and Beijing Forestry University. It follows an earlier 10-kW bamboo floating solar prototype, Jilin-1, which was launched in 2023.
Yantai CIMC Raffles Ocean Technology Group announced the new platform in June. The company said using bamboo-based materials could lower the environmental impact of offshore structures compared with conventional steel and HDPE designs.
Bamboo platform
Jilin-2 uses bamboo-wound pipes for its main support structure. It also uses “Sea Bamboo Pipe”, a fibre-reinforced wood-bamboo composite developed by Beijing Forestry University.
The pipes are designed to provide both buoyancy and support for the platform. The bamboo and wood fibres were modified to help them withstand marine conditions, according to Beijing Forestry University professor Qi Chusheng,
Qi told China Green Times, an official forestry trade newspaper, that the materials were designed to withstand corrosion, high humidity, salt spray and ultraviolet radiation.
The platform will be monitored over time to check its durability, adaptability and resistance to fatigue.
The results will help understand if similar wood-bamboo materials can be used in offshore power plants, marine energy islands and marine ranches.
Marine ranches are areas of the sea where marine life is cultivated and ecosystems are restored. China has been developing them to support food security through sustainable seafood production.
10-kW prototype to megawatt scale
Jilin-2 has ten times the capacity of the Jilin-1 prototype, which had a capacity of 10 kW.
The developers plan to build a megawatt-level bamboo-based project. They also want to promote the use of bamboo-based materials in marine applications.
China has been expanding offshore solar projects along its coastline as it works toward its goals of reaching peak carbon emissions by 2030 and carbon neutrality by 2060.
In December, a 1-gigawatt offshore solar farm was brought online off Dongying in Shandong. State-owned developer CHN Energy described it as the world’s largest offshore solar farm.
Most floating solar systems use steel or plastic structures along with buoyant floats. Jilin-2 uses engineered bamboo and wood composites instead.
The 100-kW platform will show how well the bamboo structure performs during long-term use at sea.
China’s growing use of bamboo
The project is part of China’s effort to find more uses for bamboo and cut the use of some plastic products.
China introduced an action plan in 2023 to replace plastic with bamboo. The initiative was also included in the country’s latest forest and grassland conservation plan released in July.
Bamboo is a fast-growing woody grass found naturally across Asia, Africa, and Central and South America. It is used as a building material because it is lightweight, flexible, durable and strong.
Reference: interestingengineering, scmp
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Energies Media
Floating solar works remarkably well — until the water stops cooperating. On calm reservoirs and sheltered lakes, conventional systems perform reliably. But push them into choppy inland waters or nearshore environments, and they struggle to survive the load.
That boundary has quietly constrained the industry for years. Now a Norwegian company says it has crossed it — with a system independently verified to handle waves that would overwhelm anything currently on the market.
Floating photovoltaic power has gone from novelty to near-mainstream in roughly a decade. Installations have multiplied across Asia, Europe, and the Americas, turning reservoirs, quarry ponds, and irrigation lakes into productive energy surfaces. The growth has been genuinely impressive.
It comes with a quiet asterisk, though. Conventional floating solar systems are engineered for calm, sheltered water — reservoirs and irrigation ponds that offer predictable, gentle conditions, exactly what rigid pontoon-based platforms need to stay intact and generate power reliably over a multi-decade lifespan.
Move beyond those protected environments, and the physics become unforgiving. Choppy inland lakes, open reservoirs exposed to prevailing winds, and nearshore coastal zones subject floating arrays to hydrodynamic loads they simply aren’t built to absorb. Most of the world’s wave-prone water surfaces have stayed off-limits as a result.
That geographic constraint has quietly capped the industry’s potential — particularly in land-scarce regions where water surfaces represent one of the few remaining deployment options. Industry observers have increasingly identified exposed waters as the critical next frontier: the unlock that could take floating solar from a useful niche to a large-scale contributor to the energy transition.
Fred. Olsen 1848, a Norwegian company, developed Brizo specifically to operate where conventional floating solar can’t. The system’s core design insight is straightforward but consequential: instead of building a rigid structure that resists wave energy, Brizo moves with it.
The technology uses a flexible rope-mesh and tensioning system that lets the entire array articulate as waves pass beneath it — bending and recovering rather than bracing and cracking. Think of the difference between a wooden raft and a fishing net dropped over a swell. The net survives because it conforms; the raft survives only if the water stays flat.
That design philosophy translates into a verified operational envelope of significant wave heights up to 3.5 meters — roughly 11 feet, well beyond what conventional floating solar systems are rated to handle. It opens up a meaningfully different category of deployment sites: nearshore marine locations and wave-prone inland water bodies, both representing large, largely untapped surface areas the floating solar industry hasn’t been able to access until now.
Verification from DNV — one of the world’s leading independent technical assurance organizations — isn’t a marketing label. It’s a structured, methodology-driven review conducted against DNV-RP-0584, the recognized recommended practice for floating solar systems.
DNV’s assessment of Brizo covered design methodologies, hydrodynamic load assessment based on physical model testing, structural behavior, and testing procedures. That scope matters. The review examined not just whether the system looks sound on paper, but how it actually performs under simulated wave conditions — a distinction that’s everything to project developers, investors, and lenders.
The floating solar industry has a term for what this kind of verification unlocks: bankability. A technology carrying independent third-party validation is one that financiers can underwrite with greater confidence, because a credible external party has assessed the technical risk. As Fred. Olsen 1848 noted, the successful review “supports the BRIZO bankability and commercial deployment at scale” — reducing perceived technology risk and building the stakeholder confidence needed to move projects from demonstration into real commercial implementation.
The case for wave-resilient floating solar isn’t purely technical — it’s also geographic and economic. Many regions face simultaneous pressure from land scarcity, competing land use, and strained grid infrastructure. Water surfaces, where available, offer a way to add renewable generation capacity without displacing agriculture, housing, or ecosystems.
DNV’s Senior Vice President Prajeev Rasiah framed the stakes directly: floating solar is “entering a new phase of maturity, where the industry must move beyond sheltered waters to unlock meaningful scale.” Technologies capable of operating in exposed environments, he noted, could significantly expand the addressable market for floating photovoltaics globally. Countries with limited flat land but long coastlines or large open lakes stand to benefit most — for those geographies, a verified wave-resilient system isn’t a nice-to-have. It’s potentially the difference between floating solar being viable or irrelevant.
The DNV verification positions Brizo for its next concrete step: pilot project announcements. The bankability case is established, the technical foundation independently reviewed. What follows is translating a verified design into operating hardware on actual water.
Commercial deployment at scale is the stated milestone beyond that. Each pilot project that performs as designed adds real-world evidence to the technical case DNV has already reviewed — compounding confidence among developers and investors considering subsequent commitments. Brizo also arrives amid broader maturation across the floating solar sector, where specialized designs for cold climates, vertical configurations, and wave-exposed environments signal an industry diversifying past one-size-fits-all solutions toward purpose-built systems for specific conditions.
Watch for project developer and investor commitments as the first real-world Brizo deployments take shape. Those announcements will be the signal that a verified design has cleared its final hurdle — moving from a promising engineering solution into a proven piece of the global clean energy mix.
Carlos is an engineer with strong expertise in technical and industrial topics. He previously worked at international companies such as Siemens and is multilingual.
Carlos is an engineer with strong expertise in technical and industrial topics. He previously worked at international companies such as Siemens and is multilingual.
Carlos is an engineer with strong expertise in technical and industrial topics. He previously worked at international companies such as Siemens and is multilingual.

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By: Luis Reyes
Published: Aug 29, at 1:30pm ET
Clouds cost solar farms money, and the industry treats that the way it treats sunset. The forecast says overcast, the plant makes a fraction of its clear-sky output, and the financing model already assumed it would.
Meteoric Technologies showed up on August 21 with a different plan. The company wants to send fleets of autonomous drones up into the cloud deck above a solar farm, mechanically change the water droplets that make that deck reflective, and hand some of the lost sunlight back to the panels underneath.
No silver iodide. No chemicals at all.
Two Cambridge-trained engineers run it out of San Francisco, Y Combinator took it into the Summer 2026 batch, and the entire company is those two people. The pitch is enormous and the published evidence fits in a paragraph, so let’s go through both.
In its Y Combinator launch post, the company says low and mid-level overcast cuts incoming sunlight by 73 to 82 percent while it sits overhead, citing a 1980 paper in the journal Solar Energy. CEO Mete Karslioglu says the drones win part of that back. Meteoric’s own cloud-loss model puts the recovery at 10 to 30 percent of annual generation across major US grid regions, which the company values at $5,000 to $28,000 per megawatt.
A prototype dissipated an artificial cloud by 13 percent in cloud-chamber tests. That is the whole traction section.
TechSpot reported that the company has not published the chamber size or the measurement method, and Meteoric has not described how the drones alter the droplets in the first place. No aircraft has flown over an operating solar plant. Meteoric itself calls the 10 to 30 percent range a modeled estimate rather than a demonstrated result, which is the honest way to label it, and it is still the number in every headline the launch produced.
Cost is the one piece of the pitch resting on somebody else’s arithmetic. Meteoric puts electric drone flight at $30 to $60 an hour against the $2,000-plus an hour it cites for crewed cloud-seeding aircraft, and crewed seeding really is that expensive, because you are paying for a turbine engine, a pilot, and an insurance policy that covers flying a human being into weather on purpose. Drones remove all three line items. That part of the argument holds up before anybody measures a single droplet.
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Karslioglu’s research at the Cambridge Centre for Climate Repair, funded by ARIA, the UK’s Advanced Research and Invention Agency, was on making clouds more reflective using seawater spray nozzles. That work is marine cloud brightening, a solar geoengineering technique built to bounce sunlight back into space and cool the planet down.
He is now selling the same physics pointed the other way, at a smaller scale, to power plants.
Co-founder and CTO Eric Nilsson came out of microfluidic chips that control water and droplet-removal hardware for LiDAR lenses. Between the two of them, that is a decade of hands-on work on the exact question of how to make a water droplet do what you want.
Which cuts both ways. Droplet control in a lab is the credential that makes the mechanism plausible, and it is also the credential that makes the leap obvious, because a nozzle on a bench and a stratus deck over 2,000 acres of west Texas are not the same object.
That 73 to 82 percent figure is real, and it is old. It measures how much sunlight a site gives up when a low overcast deck moves over it, which is a settled piece of solar engineering. It says nothing about how much of that loss anybody can claw back, and clawing it back is the entire business.
The World Meteorological Organization’s standing statement on weather modification gets close to Meteoric’s approach in one place. Fog, the WMO says, can in principle be dispersed by enough heating or mechanical mixing, though those methods are usually impractical and expensive. Mechanical dispersal of a cloud is a recognized idea. It has just never been the cheap one.
Fog is a cloud sitting on the ground. It stays put. A stratus deck at 5,000 feet moves with the wind, regenerates from the moisture underneath it, and covers hundreds of square miles at a time, so a drone fleet that opens a hole in it has to keep opening that hole for as long as the sun is up. The WMO also notes that dispersing supercooled fog with glaciogenic material is well established, while warm cloud stays the hard case. Meteoric’s target is exactly the warm case.
Meteoric wants to work between 3,300 and 16,400 feet above ground, and FAA Part 107 caps small drones at 400 feet. Flying beyond visual line of sight still takes a visual observer or a case-by-case waiver, six years into the data-gathering meant to replace that system.
The FAA proposed Part 108, the rule that would set common BVLOS standards, on August 5, 2025. The agency reopened the comment period in January 2026, then missed its own June 2026 deadline for a final rule, and the Department of Transportation said this month that the delay is deliberate.
On August 27 the DOT announced a Phase 2 expansion of the FAA’s BEYOND program, adding up to eight new lead participants specifically to test larger drones flying above 400 feet.
Rainmaker Technology is the closest thing to a precedent, and it is not an encouraging one. The El Segundo company flies a 50-pound quadcopter with a 15,000-foot ceiling, carrying silver iodide into supercooled clouds over the mountain west. It petitioned the FAA in July 2025 for relief from the hazardous-materials rule, and DroneXL reported on August 24 that no grant or denial had appeared in the public record 13 months later. The Air Line Pilots Association filed against that petition on safety grounds.
Meteoric carries nothing, which deletes the hazmat fight. The airspace fight is untouched.
Tennessee banned weather modification in 2024. Florida followed with SB 56, effective July 1, 2025, which turns unauthorized weather modification into a third-degree felony carrying up to five years in prison and a fine of up to $100,000. The Florida statute reaches acts intended to affect the temperature, the weather, or the intensity of sunlight.
Meteoric’s product description is a system intended to affect the intensity of sunlight reaching the ground.
No party has alleged that Meteoric is in violation of any law, and the company has not said it plans to fly in Florida. Its launch post asks to hear from solar operators in Texas, the northern US, the UK and northern Europe, and from hail-suppression programs in North Dakota, Texas and Alberta.
Montana went a third way with SB 473, banning geoengineering while explicitly carving out cloud seeding, which is the kind of drafting distinction that decides whether a company like this has a market in a given state.
Solar developers are entertaining ideas like this because the alternative is the interconnection queue. Berkeley Lab’s Queued Up 2026 report counted 773 gigawatts of solar sitting in US interconnection queues at the end of 2025, down 19 percent year over year, with the median wait from interconnection request to commercial operation running past five years for projects finished in 2025.
Squeezing more out of a plant that already exists skips that line entirely, which is the same logic behind the perovskite front glass three manufacturers just signed 13 gigawatts of.
Karslioglu wrote in the launch post that the company’s “ultimate goal is to reduce the intensity of severe storms and hurricanes.” Meteoric targets its first storm operation for late 2028, one year after the first large-scale cloud-clearing flight.
The WMO’s answer to that is one sentence long: no generally accepted evidence suggests that tropical cyclones can be modified at all. The organization goes further on the general case, saying weather systems carry so much energy that eliminating severe weather is impossible, and that technologies claiming large-scale or dramatic effects should be treated with suspicion.
That is a UN agency writing about the category, not about Meteoric, and the company has not claimed to have solved it. It has claimed it intends to try.
Between those two positions sits the thing solar operators actually have to price, which is weather they cannot control. Two Minnesota arrays swapped gravel for prairie and watched native bee populations climb twentyfold in five years.
Texas farms now tilt their panels to 77 degrees when hail crosses a 30-mile line, and insurers price the ones that duck differently from the ones that don’t. German scientists spent this spring hauling LiDAR into the UAE to test whether a big enough solar farm can brew its own rain clouds. Meteoric is the first outfit proposing to go the other direction and take the cloud away.
Meteoric has put a date on the only test that settles any of this. The company says its first large-scale cloud-clearing flight happens in 2027, at a solar farm it has not named, with a drone it has not shown. Until somebody outside the company measures what comes out of a real overcast deck, the number on the record is 13 percent, in a chamber, posted August 21, 2026.
Did we nail it or blow it?
Luis Reyes · Aug 10, 2026
Luis Reyes · Aug 13, 2026
Luis Reyes · Aug 2, 2026
Olivia Richman · Aug 8, 2026
Luis Reyes · Aug 16, 2026
Luis Reyes · Aug 10, 2026
Luis Reyes · Aug 29, 2026
Luis Reyes · Aug 29, 2026
Chema Bonilla Díaz · Aug 29, 2026
Luis Reyes · Aug 29, 2026
Chema Bonilla Díaz · Aug 29, 2026
Autonotion is the English-language automotive editorial by Autonocion.com — car news, reviews, and industry analysis for American readers.
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“Climate change is not one condition among many; it’s the backdrop condition to them all,” said Angela Lipanovich, a clean energy attorney with Estriatus Law, at a recent event. It has stayed with me.
Climate change may be global in scale, but on California’s Central Coast, we experience its consequences close to home, in our coastline, our weather, our power grid and the rising costs of keeping our homes and businesses running.
History reminds us that meaningful change often begins through local leadership, innovative partnerships and people willing to work together toward a common purpose.
As Santa Cruz County staff work to take practical steps through the county’s Climate Action and Adaptation Plan, progress is being made toward reducing climate impacts.
The county has established ambitious goals that include reducing greenhouse gas emissions, increasing clean electricity, encouraging electric transportation, expanding energy efficiency and developing local microgrids that can provide greater resilience during emergencies and power outages. These strategies are interconnected. Every rooftop solar installation, battery storage system and locally generated kilowatt helps strengthen our ability to adapt to an increasingly uncertain climate.
But successful climate action requires more than government planning. It requires community participation and, increasingly, community ownership.
That is why the launch of SolarWAVE Action comes at such an important moment.
SolarWAVE Action is a new Santa Cruz-based nonprofit dedicated to helping Californians take a more active role in shaping our clean energy future. Its mission is simple but powerful: to empower homeowners, businesses, schools, farms and multifamily property owners to participate in clean energy ownership while advocating for policies that make renewable energy more accessible and affordable. The timing couldn’t be better.
Last year, Lipanovich and her SolarWAVE co-founder, Jenny Folkesson, a data scientist, proved what can happen when different kinds of experts come together around a common problem. Working with Scudder Solar, the Santa Cruz Area Chamber of Commerce and Assemblymember Gail Pellerin, they built the data-driven case for Assembly Bill 1104. The legislation removes unnecessary regulatory barriers for private businesses and organizations installing solar projects. By cutting red tape, the law opens the door for more local investment in renewable energy.
While legislative changes often sound technical, their impact is anything but.
When a local school, nonprofit, farm, apartment complex, homeowner or business installs solar, it does more than generate clean electricity. It lowers long-term operating costs, improves energy resilience, reduces greenhouse gas emissions and keeps more dollars circulating within the local economy instead of leaving the community through rising utility bills. Those savings can be reinvested into employees, services, housing, education and local economic growth.
Energy spending is inevitable. The question is who owns the infrastructure that produces our energy and where the benefits of that investment go. Local ownership creates local resilience.
Communities become stronger when they have greater control over their own energy future. Rather than relying solely on large, centralized systems, distributed renewable energy allows smaller entities to become active participants in building a cleaner, more reliable electric grid. That sense of ownership matters.
For decades, environmental conversations have often focused on what individuals should give up. Drive less. Use less. Consume less. Those actions remain important. But the clean-energy transition offers a different story: not simply asking people to consume less, but giving them a chance to own more, produce more, save more and have more control over the energy systems they depend on.
For those of us who care deeply about our coastline, climate action is about reducing emissions and preserving the natural resources that define our quality of life and support our local economy. It is about ensuring that the communities that make up the Central Coast are prepared for the changes ahead.
That is why organizations like SolarWAVE Action are so important. They bridge the gap between policy and people, helping communities understand new opportunities, advocating for smart legislation and creating pathways for more Californians to participate in the clean energy transition. Santa Cruz County has long been a place where environmental innovation takes root, and SolarWAVE Action represents the next chapter in that tradition.
SolarWAVE Action’s launch party set for Sept. 17 will bring together people interested in the future of clean energy. It will be an opportunity to consider the larger question: What role do we want to play in building the energy future of the places we call home? Climate action becomes more powerful when communities don’t just consume energy, but when they own part of the solution. Visit their website at solarwaveaction.org for more details.
The decisions we make about energy today will shape the health of our coastline tomorrow. When we invest in cleaner, locally owned energy, we are also investing in the communities and marine environment that define life on the Central Coast. Because protecting our climate begins with strengthening our communities, and there is no better place to start than in our ocean backyard.
Tracey Weiss is the executive director of the O’Neill Sea Odyssey. She is working to support the residents of Santa Cruz County with the information that allows them to connect, impact and understand the ocean ecosystem and the regional environment we call home. She can be reached at osoexecdirector@oneillseaodyssey.org.
Copyright 2026 Santa Cruz Sentinel. All rights reserved. The use of any content on this website for the purpose of training artificial intelligence systems, algorithms, machine learning models, text and data mining, or similar use is strictly prohibited without explicit written consent.

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Greenfield Recorder
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NORTHFIELD — After hearing from experts in water resource management who called for updated data, the Planning Board decided to continue its public hearing on a solar array being proposed for Pine Meadow Road to Tuesday, Sept. 1.
The proposal by BlueWave Solar calls for a 4,316-panel solar array within a fenced-in area, and while the company currently does not have a farming contract executed, the proposal calls for a local partner to produce vegetables within the array. BlueWave Solar had previously gained approval in 2021 to construct a three-array, 26,000-panel, 10.9-megawatt project on the same road.
To address the board’s concerns with the solar panels exacerbating flooding, the members reached out to three experts in the field of water resource management, including Scott Horsley, who has 30 years of experience in the field and founded Horsley Consulting, Tufts University professor Jim Limbrunner who specializes in hydrology and water resources systems and hydrologist and lecturer Stephen Garabedian.
Horsley told the board that he and the other scientists used two different models to project the array’s impact on the flow of rainwater. Limbrunner used the first model, which the Federal Emergency Management Agency uses to determine that the array would increase the flow of water in the floodplain by a “minor raise” of 0.05 feet per-second during a 100-year flood event.
“That’s pretty slow,” Horsley said. “Jim (Limbrunner) did not find significant effects from the structures that are being placed in terms of how it might deflect floodwaters or raise floodwaters.”
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Tad Heuer, legal counsel for the applicant, BlueWave Solar, confirmed with Limbrunner that his analysis did not determine a “floodplain-related basis” for the Planing Board to prohibit the project.
Horsley and Garabedian used HydroCAD, the second method for stormwater modeling that Horsley mentioned and the standard model for the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection (MassDEP)’s stormwater standards, according to Horsley. Under MassDEP’s Stormwater Management Standards, “Stormwater management systems shall be designed so that post-development peak discharge rates do not exceed pre-development peak discharge rates,” meaning stormwater management systems must not increase the flow of rainwater.
To predict whether the solar array will increase flow, scientists use “curve numbers” that take into consideration the land cover on the ground. The higher the curve number, recorded as a percentage, the higher the water flow. For example, according to Horsley, the curve number for a forest that catches water through the plants that cover the land, is typically around 50%, while parking lots have a 97% curve number.
For Garabedian, the “crux of [his] critique” was that the data BlueWave provided followed a curve number for a meadow, 58%, instead of pasture, grassland or range, which has a curve number range of 61% to 79%. For his own calculations, Garabedian used the 79% curve number. According to the hydrologist, while BlueWave determined that rainwater flow would decrease by 10% in one area of the site and 27% in another area of the site after the array was built, Garbedian’s analysis found that the development of the array would increase flow by 15% in one area and 66% in another area.
“Given that we don’t know how they’re going to farm this, what is going to be done as far as the soil’s concerned, how they’re going to manage it, it is my professional opinion that the most conservative number for this given land cover should be applied,” Garabedian said. “That is the bottom line here, I feel that they are not using a conservative approach, if they do, they will see that there is the potential for the design as it is now to not meet standard 2.”
Instead, Garabedian said the field analysis BlueWave Solar provided reflects the “best-case scenario.”
Garabedian said the worst-case scenarios can occur. As an example, he mentioned the $1.14 million settlement solar company Dynamic Energy Solutions LLC paid after the office of Gov. Maura Healey, who was the attorney general at the time, alleged that the company disregarded “fundamental pollution control requirements” for construction sites under federal and state law when it constructed an 18.5-acre solar array on a steep hillside above the West Branch Mill River in Williamsburg, according to the former AG’s office.
“These failures can and do occur,” Garabedian said. “These are not hypothetical.”
According to Tad Huer, the attorney for for BlueWave Solar, and BlueWave Solar Project Director Mike Zhe, the updated plans for the project as of September 2024 propose row crops and hay under the arrays, leading Huer and Garabedian to disagree over whether the characterization of the array as a meadow and corresponding curve numbers mischaracterize the project’s effect on rainwater flow.
During their discussion, it arose that BlueWave has not provided a revised stormwater report to reflect the row crops.
Field engineer Richard Ricci agreed to create a post-development analysis incorporating the latest plans for the site of the array, the experts’ comments and the “sensitivity analysis” Horsley recommended. The Planning Board hopes to review the new numbers at the next hearing and further discuss the three experts’ responses.
During public comment, John Buxton, an abutter of the array, listed rainfall data from past flooding in Northfield, including six inches of rainfall during the 2023 flooding and six inches of rainfall over only two days during Tropical Storm Irene, according to Buxton. During the 2023 flooding, Buxton said he was ready to evacuate his home, with his family’s “few personal items that [they] cared about most” packed.
“There’s at least the opportunity for a reasonable denial (of a solar array proposal) where necessary to protect public health, safety and welfare,” Buxton said.
He emphasized the words “to protect.”
“You don’t have to prove it’s a threat, just use your best judgment to protect the public,” Buxton told the Planning Board. “Am I part of the public? Is my family part of the public?”
The next hearing for the proposed solar array will take place on Tuesday, Sept. 1 at 6 p.m. in the Town Hall and over Zoom.

Aalianna Marietta is the South County reporter. She is a graduate of UMass Amherst and was a journalism intern at the Recorder while in school. She can be reached at amarietta@recorder.com or 413-930-4081. More by Aalianna Marietta
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Topic: Residential solar photovoltaics in Europe  Statista
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Is the world still transitioning to green energy in the era of Donald Trump and in the midst of, yet again, geopolitical unpleasantness in the oil-rich Middle East?
While climate activists bewail the Trump administration’s embrace of fossil fuels and its corresponding disdain for solar panels and wind turbines, a new report released by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Center for Energy and Environmental Research says greener days may yet be in our future.
The report, “Glass Half-Full: Building a Decarbonized U.S. Power Sector,” sees a green light at the end of Trump’s dark tunnel of dismantling Biden-era climate policies. Focusing exclusively on electricity generation over the next decade, the report uses a mathematical model to compare how much “clean power” will survive the Trump administration’s phase-out of wind and solar subsidies and its scuttling of other green-energy initiatives with what would have been produced under Biden-era climate policies.
According to the model, the energy transition is alive and well, with about three-quarters of the “clean electricity capacity” that would have come online under the Biden-era Inflation Reduction Act and power plant regulations surviving the Trump onslaught. Yes, onshore wind power will take a hit, and other decarbonization initiatives will be delayed.
But the headwinds that the vaunted transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy is encountering show no sign of letting up. A recent report from the BlueGreen Alliance, a partnership between labor and environmental organizations, found that the 2025 One Big Beautiful Bill Act and other Trump energy initiatives have already delayed or canceled 223 wind and solar projects representing at least $82 billion in capital investment and 111,000 green-energy jobs. While a few coastal wind facilities survive, since March, developers have canceled five leases for offshore wind projects in coastal California, New York, Maine, Louisiana and North Carolina valued at more than $3.9 billion. In accordance with agreements developers negotiated with the Trump administration, most of that money will be redirected to oil and gas projects, geothermal development and upgrading the power grid.
Furthermore, “deep decarbonization” has been aggressively pursued in Europe, with disastrous results. “From 2015-2025, the first decade of the Paris Agreement on climate change, global energy consumption rose by more than 14%, with sharply contrasting dynamics,” notes Samuel Furfari, professor of energy geopolitics at the Université Libre de Bruxelles. “Europe’s decrease in energy use is no triumph of ecological heroics but rather the outcome of the assault of the EU Green Deal on competitiveness and its predictable deindustrialization and economic decline.”
Citing a recent Energy Institute report showing fossil fuels make up 86% of global primary energy consumption, with wind and solar accounting for just 3%, Furfari, writing in The Center Square, throws cold water on the idea of an energy transition. “The dominance of fossil fuels in the world energy system persists even as wind and solar, expensive and intermittent, expand. The world is undergoing an energy addition, not a transition, as new technologies supplement the growing capacity of legacy sources.”
Japan, the world’s fourth-largest economy and once a champion of decarbonization, has responded to the recent Middle East energy bottlenecks by reducing its liquefied natural gas (LNG) imports from that troubled region (while increasing LNG imports from the U.S.), ramping up coal-fired generation and restarting nuclear power plants. Wind and solar power, along with battery storage, are being pushed aside.
In addition to failing to meet the soaring global demand for affordable and reliable energy, what is billed as “clean energy” — in the MIT report and elsewhere — isn’t really clean. Wind turbines and solar panels may not produce carbon emissions, but they do create waste — lots of it. Disposal of giant wind turbines in landfills is often the only way to deal with equipment that is no longer serviceable.
“Blades are frequently buried in fragments in several landfills throughout the Great Plains, transforming sites in Wyoming, Iowa, and South Dakota into wind turbine graveyards. By 2050, the cumulative decommissioning material from wind turbines could reach 133 million tons,” noted Ariel Cohen in Forbes.
Out-of-service solar panels, laden with lead, cadmium and other heavy metals, pose their own environmental problems. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, by 2030, the nation could have as much as 1 million tons of solar panel waste on its hands.
These not-so-clean, weather-dependent energy sources will never be more than bit players in today’s fast-moving, technology-driven industrial revolution.
Bonner Russell Cohen is a senior policy analyst with the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT). (Copyright Daily Caller Foundation 2026)
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Semiconductors in solar photovoltaic (PV) power systems sales will rise through 2036, driven by PV cells at 50.0% of the product segment in 2026. The market is projected to reach USD 385.3 billion in 2026 and USD 2446.20 billion by 2036. The market will create an incremental opportunity of USD 2060.87 billion.
May 07, 2026
Sudip Saha
250 Pages
Cite this Report
Semiconductors in Solar Photovoltaic (PV) Power Systems Market
https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/semiconductors-solar-photovoltaic-power-systems-market
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The semiconductors in solar PV power systems market covers power semiconductor devices including PV cells, inverters, power optimizers, charge controllers, and related electronic components used in solar energy generation, conversion, and grid integration across residential, commercial, and utility scale installations.
Market scope encompasses all commercially traded products and services categorized by product, application, component, end use. Revenue coverage spans from 2026 to 2036 across North America, Latin America, Europe, East Asia, South Asia and Pacific, and Middle East and Africa.
The scope does not include solar panel mounting structures, energy storage batteries, or general purpose electrical distribution equipment. Wind energy power electronics and non solar semiconductor applications are also excluded.
Semiconductors in Solar Photovoltaic (PV) Power Systems Market Research Methodology
The semiconductors in solar photovoltaic (pv) power systems market continues to expand as end use demand grows, technology evolves, and institutional procurement patterns shift toward more advanced configurations. PV Cells holds 50% of the product segment in 2026, reflecting concentrated demand in high volume application categories. Photovoltaic Cells represents the second largest segment, supported by consistent institutional requirements and volume consumption.
Regional growth variation reflects differences in infrastructure maturity, regulatory frameworks, and institutional spending. USA (20.5%) leads growth, followed by South Korea (20.3%), with established markets driven by technology upgrade cycles and regulatory compliance.
The competitive landscape is shaped by product breadth, operational scale, and distribution reach. Infineon Technologies AG maintains a leading position, with mid tier participants competing on application specialization, regional access, and customer relationship depth. Entry barriers include regulatory compliance, production scale, and established supply chain relationships.
Procurement patterns vary by buyer category and geography. Institutional buyers in established markets prioritize product quality, regulatory compliance, and long term supply reliability. Buyers in emerging markets are increasingly adopting specifications aligned with international standards, creating demand for products and services that meet both local requirements and global quality benchmarks. Distribution channel evolution, including digital procurement platforms and direct supply models, is reshaping the competitive dynamics of the market and creating opportunities for participants with efficient logistics and customer service capabilities.
The semiconductors in solar photovoltaic (pv) power systems market is segmented by product, application, component, end use. Each segment reflects distinct demand drivers, buyer profiles, and competitive dynamics.
PV Cells holds 50% of the product segment in 2026, reflecting established demand across primary end use categories. Procurement is concentrated among institutional and commercial buyers, with adoption patterns varying by geography, budget availability, and regulatory requirements. Insulated Gate Bipolar Transistors represents a secondary category serving specialized application requirements, with growing adoption in both established and emerging markets. The product mix within this segment is expected to evolve as performance specifications tighten and buyer preferences shift toward higher quality configurations.
Photovoltaic Cells accounts for 70% of the application segment in 2026, driven by consistent institutional requirements and volume consumption. High-Speed Roads represents a growing secondary application area with expanding demand across multiple geographies. Adoption patterns reflect end use requirements, regulatory influences, and buyer procurement cycles. Growth within this segment is expected to be supported by expanding institutional budgets, increasing quality awareness, and the progressive adoption of specifications that align with international performance standards across both developed and developing markets.
The semiconductors in solar photovoltaic (pv) power systems market evolves as demand drivers, regulatory requirements, and competitive dynamics shape adoption patterns across segments and geographies.
End use demand is shaped by expanding institutional requirements, infrastructure investment, and technology adoption across key application categories. USA and South Korea lead growth due to domestic market scale and expanding procurement activity.
Equipment costs, specification complexity, and regulatory compliance create adoption barriers in resource constrained settings. Growth is concentrated in segments where performance requirements and budget availability align, with premium applications leading adoption.
Technology improvements in product performance, efficiency, and compliance are expanding the addressable market. Regulatory frameworks supporting quality standards and environmental requirements are creating structured demand pathways.
Distribution channel evolution is reshaping competitive dynamics as digital procurement platforms, direct supply models, and regional distribution partnerships expand buyer access. Companies with efficient logistics, localized service capabilities, and flexible supply arrangements are positioned to capture share in both established and emerging market segments.
The global semiconductors in solar photovoltaic (pv) power systems market is expected to grow at a rate of 20.3% per year from 2026 to 2036. The study covers more than 30 countries, and the main markets are listed below.
USA is expected to grow at 20.5% through 2036, supported by expanding domestic demand, regulatory requirements, and infrastructure investment across key end use applications.
South Korea is expected to grow at 20.3% through 2036, supported by expanding domestic demand, regulatory requirements, and infrastructure investment across key end use applications.
Japan is expected to grow at 20.3% through 2036, supported by expanding domestic demand, regulatory requirements, and infrastructure investment across key end use applications.
European Union is expected to grow at 20.2% through 2036, supported by expanding domestic demand, regulatory requirements, and infrastructure investment across key end use applications.
UK is expected to grow at 20.1% through 2036, supported by expanding domestic demand, regulatory requirements, and infrastructure investment across key end use applications.
Infineon Technologies AG holds competitive leadership through operational scale, product portfolio breadth, and established procurement relationships across key geographies. ON Semiconductor Corporation competes on product specialization and regional access.
Mid tier participants including STMicroelectronics N.V., Texas Instruments Incorporated, Vishay Intertechnology, Inc. maintain positioning through focused portfolios and application expertise.
Market entry barriers include regulatory requirements, production scale economics, established distribution relationships, and application specific performance standards.
Key global companies leading the semiconductors in solar photovoltaic (pv) power systems market include:
Competitive Benchmarking: Semiconductors in Solar Photovoltaic (PV) Power Systems Market
Source: Future Market Insights competitive analysis, 2026.
This bibliography is provided for reader reference. The full Future Market Insights report contains the complete reference list with publication dates, URLs, and supporting data for all cited works.
In 2026, the global semiconductors in solar photovoltaic (pv) power systems market is expected to be worth USD 385.33 billion.
By 2036, the semiconductors in solar photovoltaic (pv) power systems market is expected to be worth USD 2446.20 billion.
Between 2026 and 2036, demand is expected to grow at a CAGR of 20.3%.
PV Cells is expected to hold 50% of the product segment in 2026, driven by global solar capacity expansion, declining PV system costs, and increasing power electronics content per installation driven by inverter efficiency and grid integration requirements.
USA is expected to grow at 20.5% through 2036, supported by domestic demand, infrastructure investment, and expanding end use adoption.
South Korea is expected to grow at 20.3% through 2036, reflecting regulatory support and institutional procurement growth.
The semiconductors in solar PV power systems market covers power semiconductor devices including PV cells, inverters, power optimizers, charge controllers, and related electronic components used in solar energy generation, conversion, and grid integration across residential, commercial, and utility scale installations.
Forecasting models use a hybrid bottom up and top down approach, starting with verified transaction data and validating against production statistics and manufacturer disclosures.
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BLOOMINGTON (25News Now) – A new partnership for the City of Bloomington aims to help residents save money on their utility bills.
The Community Solar Campaign brokered by The Stone River Group is a collaboration between the city and PowerMarket, bringing community solar to more people across Central Illinois.
“The Community Solar Program, it’s a statewide program that is specific in the Ameren territory. There are developers that have installed large solar installations that allow residential and small commercial customers to take advantage of these solar credits that are produced,” said Justin Cheger, vice president of operations for The Stone River Group.
“And the way that the program is set up, when you sign up for the program, your account gets enrolled and becomes part of that project,” Cheger said.
What is Community Solar?
According to Ameren Illinois, it is an easy way for people to help expand solar energy without having to install solar panels on their homes or businesses. All while helping consumers save money by working with community solar developers, ensuring that a portion of renewable energy is deducted from their monthly utility bill.
“Because of that enrollment, you can benefit from a 10% credit on your bill. So, the developer will apply those solar credits that they have generated to your bill. And when all of the line items on the bill come out, you’ll save 10% off of your delivery and your supply,” explained Cheger.
However, the 10% isn’t a set rate; a person can qualify for a higher percentage if they are a low-income household or individual. At that point, it could go up to 20%.
As for the cost of the program, according to city officials, it is free, and you can cancel your subscription at any time for free as well.
If you have more questions regarding the program or its enrollment process, call 1(800)253-4333 or email support@powermarket.io.
You can also visit the PowerMarket enrollment website, where you will find a tab to learn more about community solar and another section where you can contact them.
Get 25NewsStreaming on your smart TV — it’s free and easy. Watch live newscasts, recent newscasts, top news stories, updated forecasts, local sports highlights, and exclusive content. Search “WEEK 25 News” to install.
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Canadian Solar battery shipments rose 73% while solar module shipments fell 60%  Stock Titan
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Pekat Well Poised For Main Market Transfer As Solar Farm, LSS6 Adds Weight  BusinessToday Malaysia
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© 2025 THE COOL DOWN COMPANY. All Rights Reserved. Do not sell or share my personal information. Reach us at hello@thecooldown.com.
“We just now need adoption and time to catch up.”
Photo Credit: TikTok
A solar-powered future can look deceptively simple online: add panels, batteries, and a little optimism.
One TikTok creator argued that the slowdown has less to do with panel production than with where those systems have to sit and the networks they have to plug into, especially on older roofs and grids built for a very different kind of electricity system.
According to a TikTok video by Yachi (@yoiqino), the supply of raw materials is no longer the main thing holding solar back. “What might surprise you is what used to be our number one problem is actually already solved,” they said, adding, “The resources to make solar panels are abundant, with supply chain restrictions being the only choke point.”
the issue with solar power (and solarpunk)
From there, the video shifts to the physical demands of putting panels on homes. “This might surprise you, but a 3 by 5 foot solar panel weighs about 50 pounds,” Yachi said, making the case that many older houses would need upgrades before taking on that rooftop load.
The video then turns to how power moves once those systems are installed. Rather than being set up to absorb electricity from large numbers of homes with solar, many grids were designed to send power outward from a smaller number of centralized plants.
One commenter pushed back, writing, “So we can’t move forward because of 50lbs added to a house… let’s be real that’s not the main issue.”
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The video taps into a broader tension in clean energy conversations, especially around the “solarpunk” future the creator references. That aesthetic can make the transition seem like a matter of willpower or manufacturing alone, when the physical realities of housing and infrastructure are far messier.
Rooftop solar does not begin and end with the panel itself. A home needs a roof that can safely support the system, and utilities need local wires, transformers, and interconnection processes that can handle more distributed generation.
In Yachi’s framing, storage is not the missing piece of the puzzle. The bigger lag, they suggest, is in the systems around those batteries and panels.
Some commenters saw the slowdown as structural in an even broader sense. One wrote, “The power dynamics of capitalism does not allow solar punk to happen. We need a different system.”
Whether the blame falls on economics, permitting, utility planning, or aging homes, the discussion reflects a broader frustration with how slowly energy transitions progress.
The first practical step is figuring out whether solar is a good fit for the building. A roof inspection can help determine structural readiness, the remaining life of the roof, and whether reinforcements or replacement may be needed before panels are installed.
At a broader level, utilities and local governments can help by upgrading distribution systems and preparing for more two-way energy flows. If more households are going to produce electricity, the grid has to be able to receive and manage it safely.
Storage can also play a supporting role. Batteries can help households or facilities hold onto daytime solar power for later use, making decentralized systems more useful even when sunlight is not constant.
In Yachi’s view, the central challenge is no longer simply producing enough panels. “We just now need adoption and time to catch up.”
Get TCD’s free newsletters for easy tips, smart advice, and a chance to earn $5,000 toward home upgrades. To see more stories like this one, change your Google preferences here.
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Top South Now

Stay updated with the latest local news and events.
© Top South Now | 2026
Solar panels capturing the sun’s energy have sprouted in the past couple of years, and a local solar expert says continued growth is essential for the region’s resilience.
High power prices have largely driven growth, but John-Paul (JP) Gardiner from Rowan Dron Electrical says there is also a need to reduce reliance on the national grid.
“There’s vulnerability in the network in New Zealand,” he says. “The spread of the population in this part of the country makes us more exposed to events and we need to be able to have more localised generation.”
So far this winter, JP says New Zealand has had eight days of record power demand. Polar blasts occur every winter, but he says population growth, more appliances and electric vehicles add up to an increasing amount of power required, stretching the national grid.
While the Government has made it easier to put panels on new builds without a consent, and banks are offering low-interest loans for solar, the percentage of houses with solar is still tiny, he says. Compared with Australia where 33 per cent of rooftops have solar, he says just three per cent of New Zealand homes have solar – and that maybe nudging four per cent now.
Those installing solar panels today are getting a far different product from what was available in the past, he says. The cost of solar panels has come down substantially while their power output has increased significantly. At the same time, electricity prices keep rising.
Once installed, solar panels without batteries can produce electricity for as little as six to 12 cents per kilowatt-hour (kWh). JP says that works out about 20 per cent of the average retail price of grid power.
Batteries add significant cost, but he says storing solar energy improves resilience in Nelson Tasman. In a major event such as an alpine fault earthquake, he says, the region could be cut off from the national grid for an extended period and local generation and storage would help maintain essential services and support recovery.
Having electricity generation distributed around the country also helps create a more resilient grid which, he says, in turn will help keep prices more stable.
“Affordable power is key to having a productive economy. In New Zealand, power is expensive and often a hindrance to business staying open.
“We are going to see more deindustrialisation. Eves Valley (sawmill) is an example of that happening. It’s about the economy being competitive on a global scale as well.”
Commercially, he is seeing solar farms being built as part of succession planning on farms – unlocking the value of the land and creating another revenue stream for landowners.
Solar energy is abundant, he says, so we might as well capture it.
“We have to do it because other areas don’t have the abundance of sunshine we do.”
In the future, photovoltaic windows will likely be capturing the sun and then buildings could be “our own power plants”.
Now that pine pollen is settling over the region, JP’s advice is to wash solar panels once the pollen season is over, or it will affect their efficiency.
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Delhi government plans to make roof-top solar panels cheaper. Here’s how  The Indian Express
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Klamath County Commissioner Derrick DeGroot held a town hall meeting Wednesday evening in Keno to discuss the Klamath Falls Energy Center, a proposed $500 million solar farm.
The facility would generate up to 400 megawatts of solar power paired with a battery system capable of storing approximately 1,600 megawatt hours of electricity.
“We’re not anti-solar, we just don’t want it here,” Klamath County resident Thomas Goy said.
Here are some of the other stories you can find in Saturday’s Herald and News:
• As visible flames and smoke plumes subside, Klamath County officials have begun assessing the damage from the Wrights Spring Fire.
The wildfire has burned 55,134 acres and, as of Friday morning, was 75% contained.
• A Klamath Falls-based start-up is on track to bring harmony to the AI landscape.
The technology company, Harmonee AI, has developed an on-premises artificial intelligence device designed primarily for governments, health care providers, educational institutions, tribal nations, financial institutions and other organizations tasked with handling sensitive or regulated information.
• Sports columnist Steve Matthies looks ahead to the Oregon Tech women’s basketball season. The Lady Owls will face 11 teams who made the NAIA Tournament last year, 10 of them on the road.
• The Lost River High football team and the Klamath Union girls cross country squad were ranked atop their respective divisions in the preseason Oregon School Activities Association coaches polls.
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Trump imposes additional 15% US tariff on solar cells and modules; no India carve-out in US order  Moneycontrol.com
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GENERATIONAL SHIFT. Sohan Lal Agarwal, MD of Websol, with granddaughter Sanjana Khaitan, who is the ED | Photo Credit: Debarshi
Octogenarian Sohan Lal Agarwal, Managing Director of solar cells and modules manufacturer Websol, looks at granddaughter Sanjana Khaitan with proud eyes. “She,” he says, pointing to her, “is the future.”
The 29-year-old ‘future’ is the Executive Director of the company — India’s oldest solar module manufacturer. Websol began its innings in 1990, when the word ‘solar’ was heard only in the context of space and astronomy. Back then, out of a youthful desire to do “something different”, Agarwal set up a 1 MW module plant to supply an Italian customer. Today, he is gradually handing over the reins to the ‘future’ (his son looks after other businesses).
One chat with Khaitan, and you will know that she is pretty much hands-on. And the hands are full.
Solar module fabrication unit at Websol’s plant in Falta SEZ, near Kolkata
Websol has charted its course for the future. Capacity expansion is visible at its plant in Falta SEZ, near Kolkata, with trucks continuously rolling in and out with material. Websol currently has two cell lines, 600 MW each. The second line is to be expanded to 750 MW, with a change in technology from mono-PERC to TOPCon, taking the total capacity to 1.35 GW by January 2027.
Coming up alongside is a 2.2 GW Line-III, which the company hopes will be production-ready in 2027. And going forward, Websol intends to invest ₹2,200 crore to make 5 GW of ingots and wafers. “No timeline has been decided yet,” says Khaitan.
In the grandfather-granddaughter combo, one sees a subtle division of labour. While the young woman manages operations, the direction is still provided by the elder.
For example, Agarwal decided that Websol would not proceed with the ₹3,538 crore investment in Naidupeta, Andhra Pradesh, as announced in January — though the company “intends to do something in AP”. Why? Because of the “changed political landscape” in West Bengal, the new BJP government, keen on industrialisation, is offering much for new factories. “We are constantly called for meetings,” Khaitan says. In fact, Agarwal had to postpone his appointment with this writer by a couple of hours because he had been called over by the government for yet another meeting. Agarwal says he is more comfortable in West Bengal; the company had only reluctantly planned to invest elsewhere.
The other directional shift by Agarwal is in module manufacturing (cells are made into modules). Websol has module manufacturing capacity of 550 MW but, rather than expanding it in line with cell capacity, Agarwal prefers a “partnership route”. Websol had earlier been in talks with Chennai-based Swelect Energy Systems for a partnership.
The partnership approach bucks the industry trend of integrated manufacture of cells and modules. Agarwal, however, sees more merit in centralised cell manufacture and decentralised module manufacture — after all, what is the point in ferrying bulky modules across the country, he asks.
Cruising down memory lane, Agarwal recalls the bad old days when banks wanted to auction off Websol to collect their dues. Agarwal had stepped aside, but when the banks could not sell Websol he asked for a year’s time to repay the loans.
Luckily for him, it was 2009-10, when the solar industry was in its infancy and nurtured for growth. It helped that Chinese company Renesola took Websol’s facilities on a contract to make modules for four years. Websol repaid its loans — and a new growth cycle started.
Ups and downs happen, the octogenarian philosophises, pointing out that when he started module manufacturing there was a glut in the semiconductor industry — silicon wafers floated around cheap until 2005-06, when the semicon industry began to grow.
Today, Websol appears to be on much firmer footing. In the first quarter of 2026-27, it recorded a turnover of ₹373 crore, an EBITDA margin of 34 per cent and net profit margin of 21 per cent (the high EBITDA and PAT are in line with the industry trend). With the solar industry booming and the company cruising towards its targeted 5.35 GW by 2028, the future appears to be assured.
Published on August 17, 2026
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Centralized-distributed collaborative voltage control for distribution networks considering photovoltaic uncertainties  Frontiers
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MANILA, Philippines — Small power consumers can now invest in and use solar power systems faster as the government scrapped preapproval requirements, accelerating the permitting process.
A new circular from the Department of Energy (DOE) directed all distribution utilities to remove “administrative barriers” in installing small-scale solar generation systems. These include preinstallation clearances, technical permits or inspection fees.
READ: PH has plenty of sun – so why isn’t solar booming yet?
The new rules cover all self-generating facilities (SGFs), microsolar systems (MSS) and zero-export energy systems (ZESS), including those used by households and medical facilities.
According to the agency, qualified users who want to tap SGFs or ZESS are no longer required to obtain a certificate of compliance (COC) from the Energy Regulatory Commission. The regulator, however, still has the power to set and enforce technical and commercial guidelines.
In addition, MSS users don’t need a building permit or a COC.
Meanwhile, the DOE prepared safety protocols, including requiring all MSS to have an automatic anti-islanding disconnection safety mechanism.
This is to ensure that the solar system will automatically be offline during power outages. The feature prevents the system from delivering power to the grid and accidentally shocking utility workers repairing the lines.
READ: Solar panel installers urged to register with DOE
The DOE is also in close coordination with the Bureau of Philippine Standards of the Department of Trade and Industry to ensure that only certified products will come to the market.
The department said pushing for this would help the country achieve its goal of expanding the share of renewable energy (RE) in the power generation mix to 35 percent by 2030.
“The DOE envisions maximizing the inclusion, utilization, and acceleration of RE even at the consumer level,” it said.
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“There is a need to issue a policy that supports the participation of small-scale end-users in the deployment of RE technologies by providing a streamlined regulatory approach that complements the existing net-metering framework and other consumer choice programs,” the DOE said. /atm
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SustaiNation
Thailand’s Energy Ministry plans to increase the quota for electricity purchased from household rooftop solar systems fivefold, from 100 megawatts to 500MW, as part of efforts to encourage more people to generate and sell clean power.
Energy Minister Akanat Promphan said the government aimed to transform households from ordinary consumers into electricity producers and consumers, commonly known as “prosumers”.
Speaking at the “New Horizon Chapter 2: Smart Grid” forum organised by Krungthep Turakij, Akanat said the government would revise the way clean-energy quotas were allocated.
Rather than reserving most capacity for large private-sector projects, the ministry plans to distribute part of the quota among households, allowing each home to install up to five kilowatts of solar capacity for its own use and to sell surplus electricity to the grid. The government also plans to simplify application procedures, which previously could take more than a year, by introducing a one-stop service available online and through branches of the electricity distribution authorities.
Under the proposed time limits, applications for rooftop solar systems intended solely for household consumption, without selling power to the grid, would have to be approved within seven days.
Households seeking to sell surplus electricity would have the entire application process completed within 30 days.
The ministry also plans to extend household solar power purchase agreements beyond their current 10-year term to make investment more attractive and commercially viable.
Akanat compared the current household contracts with those offered to solar farms, which can run for 25 years.
Revenue from electricity sales would be credited through household electricity bills.
Based on a purchase rate of 2.20 baht per kilowatt-hour, the ministry estimates that a five-kilowatt rooftop system could generate average income of about 1,400 to 1,500 baht a month.
The system could allow households to recoup installation costs within seven years, after which the rooftop panels could continue generating income while reducing living expenses, Akanat said.
The Nation Editorial Team
Old Australian courthouse finds new life as Nihon Univ. facility
Japan to dispatch SDF helicopters to wildfire-hit Indonesia
Reuse of soil from Fukushima decontamination begins in Sendai
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Westbridge to Sell 225 MWac Alberta Solar-Plus-Storage Project for Up to CAD 26.7 Million  SolarQuarter
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Rhode Island was awarded $49.33 million to expand rooftop, multifamily and community solar for low-income households before EPA terminated the Solar for All program in August 2025. A year later, the grant has not been restored and the litigation is unresolved.
The state's plan targeted low-income homeowners, renters and multifamily residents in 61 disadvantaged census tracts containing 97,892 households — people largely shut out of rooftop solar. Its cancellation halted a planned expansion of community solar and bill-reduction programs statewide.
Rhode Island spent the better part of two years designing a way to put solar panels on the roofs of people who could never afford them — low-income homeowners in aging houses that needed electrical work first, tenants in affordable housing developments, the tens of thousands of renters with no roof to call their own. The federal government had already obligated the money: $49,330,000, awarded to the state Office of Energy Resources on April 22, 2024. Then, on August 7, 2025, the Environmental Protection Agency terminated the program that funded it.
A year later, the money has not come back.
As of today, EPA still describes Solar for All as terminated, and no court has ordered Rhode Island's grant restored. What remains is litigation — three separate tracks of it, two still unresolved — and a state plan that never got out of the planning phase.
The program was one of three created by the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund under the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, a $7 billion national competition to build or expand residential solar programs for low-income and disadvantaged communities. EPA projected the investment would reach more than 900,000 households, generate more than $350 million in annual electric-bill savings, unlock more than four gigawatts of capacity and avoid 30 million metric tons of carbon-dioxide-equivalent emissions over the life of the projects. Those were agency estimates, never outcomes.
Rhode Island's share was branded EASE — Rhode Island Equitable Access to Solar Energy — and it was considerably more ambitious than bolting panels onto houses. The Office of Energy Resources' public plan laid out seven financial-assistance programs: direct-ownership incentives for low-income homeowners, grants for roof and electrical upgrades that older homes need before a system can be installed, battery-storage incentives, a milestone-based grant program for energy-efficient multifamily affordable housing, community remote net metering, and financing for community solar on preferred sites. The "adders" could be stacked and applied to total project costs, which was the entire point — the barrier for most of these households was never the panel alone.
The community-solar piece mattered most for people who will never own a roof. OER said Solar for All money would support a statutory expansion of the state's community remote-net-metering pilot from 30 megawatts to 70 megawatts, and could deliver meaningful benefits to more than 4,500 additional customers through low-commitment subscriptions.
The scale of the need is in the state's own numbers. OER identified 61 of Rhode Island's 244 census tracts as disadvantaged under the federal Climate and Economic Justice Screening Tool. Those tracts contain 97,892 households. Of those, 66,421 are renters.
How many would actually have been served depends on which state document is consulted. OER's page says the proposed programs could provide meaningful benefits to more than 8,500 households. Attorney General Peter Neronha's office, in an October 16, 2025 release announcing litigation, put the figure at approximately 5,225 low-income households, along with $48,477,353 in projected electric-bill reductions, 27.49 megawatts of energy and at least 100 green jobs. Both figures are projections attached to a proposal, not results. Neither office has reconciled them.
The legal fight turns on a single word in the statute. Section 60002 of Public Law 119-21, signed July 4, 2025, repealed Clean Air Act Section 134 and rescinded "the unobligated balances" made available under it. EPA read that as eliminating both its authority and its dedicated administrative funding, and its August 7 termination memorandum said the agency could no longer implement, oversee or monitor the grants. Administrator Lee Zeldin has called the program a "boondoggle."
Plaintiffs argue the money in question was not unobligated at all. EPA's own inspector general, in an audit published January 7, found that roughly $6.98 billion — 99.7% of Solar for All funding — had been obligated by July 2024, a full year before the law was signed. The Rhode Island-based plaintiffs contend Congress rescinded only what was left unspent on paper, and that EPA acted unlawfully in canceling grants already locked in, without weighing reliance interests or alternatives. Those are allegations, not findings.
What EPA did next is described in the record of the multistate case in Washington. The agency first blocked plaintiffs' access to their grant accounts, then reopened them with balances cut to 7% of the award amounts — money for allowable pretermination and closeout costs — deobligated the other 93%, and placed the accounts in liquidated status. That accounting was documented for the plaintiffs in that case.
Governor Dan McKee denounced the termination on August 12, 2025, describing a legally awarded $49.3 million grant meant to lower long-term energy costs, support solar jobs and broaden the state's energy portfolio, and vowing to pursue legal avenues. Neronha has since joined two suits — the multistate Administrative Procedure Act challenge in the Western District of Washington and a breach-of-contract case in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims filed October 15, 2025.
The most direct Rhode Island challenge came from the people the money was supposed to reach. On October 6, 2025, the Rhode Island AFL-CIO, the Rhode Island Center for Justice and Solar United Neighbors, among others, sued in the District of Rhode Island, represented in part by the Conservation Law Foundation. Both the AFL-CIO and the Center for Justice were listed by OER as coalition partners on the EASE plan itself — organizations that helped design the program then went to court over its cancellation.
The results so far are thin. In June, a Washington federal judge dismissed the states' case without prejudice for lack of jurisdiction — a procedural ruling, not a finding that EPA acted lawfully. The Court of Federal Claims case was still live at the most recent official update, with plaintiffs' motion for partial summary judgment filed May 7.
None of this ended low-income solar assistance in Rhode Island, and the state's attorney general is blunt that there is no government program handing out free panels. Rhode Island Commerce's Renewable Energy Fund still awards grants for small-scale solar, commercial projects and community renewables, covering up to 30% of installation costs. Net metering and Renewable Energy Growth still generate bill credits. The Department of Energy added Rhode Island in December 2024 to its Clean Energy Connector pilot, which is meant to make community-solar subscriptions easier to reach for households already enrolled in programs such as LIHEAP.
What none of those do is what EASE was built to do: pay for the new roof and the new panel and the upgraded electrical service on the same low-income house, in one stacked package, at a scale of tens of millions of dollars.
The state's coalition for that work included Rhode Island Housing, the Rhode Island Infrastructure Bank, the Department of Environmental Management, the Department of Labor and Training and the Department of Health and Human Services. The award was announced on Earth Day two years ago. Whether any of it is recoverable now rests with a court in Washington, D.C.
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Members of DARE’s Tenant and Homeowner Association (THA) rallied on Saturday to demand the redevelopment of Barbara Jordan II apartments for low and very-low income residents of Providence. They marched through the streets of the Barbara…

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Energies Media
Pathfinder Clean Energy just got the green light for Lassington Solar and Battery Energy Storage System—a 40MW solar and storage project near Gloucester, Gloucestershire. The approval came after a planning committee hearing at Tewkesbury Borough Council, where the scheme picked up strong local support, including from the farming family whose land will host it.
Tewkesbury Borough Council’s planning committee voted to approve the Lassington Solar and Battery Energy Storage System (BESS) project at a formal hearing. The scheme delivers 40 megawatts of solar generation combined with battery storage, sited on farmland close to Gloucester.
The developer is Pathfinder Clean Energy (PACE), a UK-based company focused on utility-scale renewables that moves solar and storage projects through the planning system and onto the national grid.
What made this hearing stand out was the volume of local backing. The farming family whose land will host the project spoke in support—which rarely happens at planning committees. Agricultural landowners typically show up to raise objections, not make the case for approval. Their testimony signaled that PACE developed this project with the community rather than simply on top of it.
Tewkesbury Borough Council has a declared Climate Emergency and a commitment to carbon neutrality by 2030, giving the council a concrete policy reason to look favorably on a locally sited clean energy project.
Lassington’s planned grid connection date falls before 2030. That timing matters more than it might seem—a project that actually connects before the deadline can contribute to hitting the target, not just get approved in principle while delivery drags on for years. Aligning the connection date with the council’s own timeline made the approval considerably easier to justify.
The project is also expected to deliver Biodiversity Net Gain for the surrounding area. Under current UK planning policy, new developments must leave the natural environment measurably better than they found it. A well-managed solar site—less pesticide use, longer grass, managed vegetation—can genuinely support that outcome.
There’s a financial dimension here too. Farming families across the region have faced mounting pressure from volatile weather and rising input costs, and an agri-solar arrangement offers a way to stabilize income without pulling land entirely out of food production.
One of PACE’s central arguments during the planning process was that Lassington won’t take productive farmland out of use. The site stays in active agricultural operation throughout the project’s lifetime—not fenced off, not mothballed.
In practice, that means sheep grazing among the solar panels while the wider farm continues its beef enterprise alongside the installation. Food production and clean energy generation share the same land at the same time.
The solar land lease gives the farming family a reliable, long-term income stream. PACE argues that financial stability lets the family reinvest in their farming operations and pursue diversification—options that are far harder to consider when income depends entirely on fluctuating commodity prices and unpredictable harvests.
PACE frames the overall model as one where clean energy and resilient farming reinforce each other. Solar income supports the farm. The farm, in turn, demonstrates that the land stays productive—which supports the planning case for the energy project.
UK farming has been under sustained financial pressure for years. Weather volatility linked to climate change—wetter winters, drier summers, more frequent extreme events—has disrupted growing seasons and pushed costs up across fuel, feed, and fertilizer. Many farming families are actively looking for ways to adapt.
Agri-solar has emerged as one response. Rather than treating energy generation and food production as an either/or choice, the model combines both on the same site. Proponents say it gives farmers income stability while contributing to national renewable energy targets.
The approach is still debated in the UK planning system. Critics raise concerns about the cumulative loss of agricultural land to solar, and about whether “continued agricultural use” claims actually hold up once panels go in the ground. Planners and policymakers are still working through how to weigh those competing considerations.
Lassington is one of several projects in PACE’s portfolio designed to show that solar and agriculture can genuinely coexist. Rob Denman, Managing Director at PACE, said the approval was “a strong result—not just for PACE, but for the farming family who worked with us throughout this process to show that solar and agriculture can thrive side by side.”
Tewkesbury Borough Council has granted planning permission to Pathfinder Clean Energy for the 40MW Lassington Solar and BESS project near Gloucester. The development combines solar generation and battery storage with continued sheep grazing and beef farming on the same site.
The project aligns with the council’s 2030 carbon neutrality target, with a grid connection planned before that deadline, and is expected to deliver Biodiversity Net Gain.
For the host farming family, the solar lease provides reliable income alongside their existing agricultural operations. For PACE, Lassington is a working example of its agri-solar model—one the company is looking to replicate across other sites in its development pipeline.
Kelly is an experienced writer with 15 years of experience exploring the big stories that shape our world, from tech breakthroughs and space exploration to climate, energy, and the fascinating quirks of science. She has a talent for turning complex ideas into sharp, memorable insights that stay with readers long after they’ve finished reading.
Kelly is an experienced writer with 15 years of experience exploring the big stories that shape our world, from tech breakthroughs and space exploration to climate, energy, and the fascinating quirks of science. She has a talent for turning complex ideas into sharp, memorable insights that stay with readers long after they’ve finished reading.
Kelly is an experienced writer with 15 years of experience exploring the big stories that shape our world, from tech breakthroughs and space exploration to climate, energy, and the fascinating quirks of science. She has a talent for turning complex ideas into sharp, memorable insights that stay with readers long after they’ve finished reading.

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Energies Media
At Fresno’s Northeast Surface Water Treatment Plant, the solar array looks wrong at first glance. There are no steel frames, no elevated rows tilting toward the sun — just panels lying flat on the ground, as if someone forgot to finish the installation.
Nothing is missing. That unconventional design is the point. Since coming online in late March 2026, the frameless, ground-level system has been delivering electricity to the city at a rate below what the local utility charges — and quietly outperforming the energy output anyone expected.
ForeFront Power achieved commercial operation of the first Erthos Earth Mount Solar system at Fresno’s Northeast Surface Water Treatment Plant in late March 2026. It’s more than a ribbon-cutting moment — it marks the debut of a fundamentally different approach to building solar infrastructure at scale.
The core idea is deceptively simple. Instead of erecting rows of steel-racked panels angled toward the sky, Erthos places solar modules directly on the ground. No structural steel, no racking, no elevated frames. The entire support system that conventional solar developers take for granted is just gone.
That elimination isn’t a shortcut — it’s the design. Erthos engineered a modular, repeatable system built specifically to strip out complexity and reduce the cost per watt of solar electricity. The Fresno installation is the first proof that the concept works at commercial scale.
The Northeast Surface Water Treatment Plant is one piece of a larger effort. ForeFront Power developed a 27 MW-DC portfolio across three City of Fresno Department of Public Utilities sites, pairing solar generation with smart battery storage. The Earth Mount system at the water treatment plant is the portfolio’s most unconventional component — and its most closely watched.
The decision to try something new wasn’t born from curiosity alone. It came from a cost crisis.
ForeFront Power first approached Erthos in 2023, when inflation and supply chain disruptions drove the price of labor and materials sharply higher. A traditional ground-mounted system at the Fresno site would have required steel racking, installation labor, and expensive civil upgrades to prepare the ground beneath it. Each added cost had a direct consequence for the city.
Under the 20-year Power Purchase Agreement, ForeFront Power owns the system and sells electricity back to Fresno at a fixed rate. A more expensive build meant a higher rate — potentially pushing the project above what the utility already charged, and eliminating the financial case for doing it at all.
“Erthos helped us avoid significant, expensive civil upgrades, as well as the cost of steel for racking and the labor to install that racking,” said Erinne Davis, senior project manager at ForeFront Power. “Realizing these savings on the installation is what enabled the project at this site to move forward.”
By switching to the Erthos system, ForeFront Power sidestepped those costs entirely. The city gets a fixed electricity rate below the utility’s. The project survives. That’s the financial logic the Earth Mount design makes possible.
Eliminating steel solves a cost problem. The Erthos architecture also solves a density problem — one that conventional solar design hasn’t fully cracked.
Traditional tilted-rack systems require row spacing to prevent panels from shading each other as the sun moves across the sky. That spacing consumes land without generating power. Erthos removes the tilt, removes the spacing requirement, and packs panels as tightly as the site allows. The result, according to the company, is the highest energy density of any solar architecture currently available — more capacity on the same footprint, which matters enormously when a developer is trying to make a project work on a constrained site.
The flat-mounted panels also adapt to terrain in ways tilted systems can’t. The Erthos design accommodates ground contours of up to 15% slope, meaning the array can follow a site’s natural topography without requiring extensive grading. At Fresno, that flexibility was part of what made the location viable in the first place.
Across the full three-site portfolio, the combined savings from lower construction costs and higher energy density are projected to deliver more than $122 million in ratepayer savings through 2045.
Putting panels on the ground introduces an obvious challenge: dust and debris accumulate faster, and conventional cleaning equipment isn’t designed for a flat, ground-level array.
Erthos anticipated this. Their solution is the ErthBot — an autonomous cleaning robot equipped with dry nylon brushes, custom-designed for Earth Mount Solar arrays. Each unit cleans more than 3.5 MW-DC of solar panels per deployment, which Erthos describes as the most cost-effective cleaning method for large-scale PV arrays in the industry. The ErthBot deploys nightly as needed, sweeps the array, then returns to its charging dock. No water, no crew, no interruption to generation.
Under the Energy Services Agreement between Erthos and ForeFront Power, Erthos handles all operations and maintenance of the ErthBot — built into the service structure, not added on as an afterthought.
The most important question about any first-of-its-kind system is whether it actually performs. Early data from Fresno suggests it does — and then some.
Since entering commercial operation, the system has averaged 101% of expected energy production and has already delivered 862 MWh of electricity to the City of Fresno. Beating your own projections from day one is a meaningful signal, especially for a technology that skeptics might expect to underperform.
Both ForeFront Power and Erthos say the early results strengthen their confidence in the system’s long-term outlook. The numbers matter beyond this single site. If Earth Mount Solar can consistently hit or exceed production targets, it reframes what’s possible for solar development on sites that conventional racking would make too expensive to build — and as construction costs stay elevated and suitable land grows harder to find, that’s a question the industry can’t afford to ignore.
Carlos is an engineer with strong expertise in technical and industrial topics. He previously worked at international companies such as Siemens and is multilingual.
Carlos is an engineer with strong expertise in technical and industrial topics. He previously worked at international companies such as Siemens and is multilingual.
Carlos is an engineer with strong expertise in technical and industrial topics. He previously worked at international companies such as Siemens and is multilingual.

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Energies Media
Solar panels on berms above brackish Taiwanese fishponds
The ponds sit almost at sea level, brackish and still, running flat toward the strait in every direction.
Steel frames rise off the earthen berms and hold the solar panels at a shallow tilt above the water.
Underneath, mullet are fattening in the shade.
Both things are supposed to be happening. There is a number that decides whether they actually are.
Two effects pull in the same direction here, which is rarer than it sounds.
A silicon panel gets worse as it heats up.
Bake one on a dark rooftop until it reaches 158 degrees and it will shed a noticeable slice of its rated output before noon, because the cell’s voltage falls as temperature climbs.
Sitting over water changes that. The cool humid air above a pond keeps the modules several degrees below what the same panels would run at on dry ground, and every one of those degrees comes back as kilowatt hours.
The shade works the other way for the fish.
Partial cover cuts evaporation, steadies the water temperature through the worst of the summer, and suppresses the algae blooms that strip oxygen out of the water column.
And because the berms between ponds are solid ground, the frames sit on ordinary footings rather than pontoons.
That keeps the build close to the cost of a normal field array, which matters more than any of the biology.
All of that is the easy argument. The hard part is that a pond covered in panels is worth a great deal to a developer and very little to a fish, and the incentive runs one way.
So the regulation puts a floor under it. The catch has to stay above 70 percent of what that operation averaged over the previous three years, measured by production value.
Inspectors visit to confirm the fish are genuinely being raised and genuinely being harvested, which is the part that gives the number teeth.
That single threshold is what turns the whole thing from a solar farm with a decorative pond into an actual double use, because it forces the coverage ratio to be engineered backward from a yield rather than forward from a revenue target.
The clearest example sits in the Qigu district of Tainan, on a flat coastal plain where the ponds had been losing productivity for years and some had been abandoned outright.
A Taipei developer took 142 acres of it, cut earthen berms into roughly two dozen ponds, and built over the berms and over six reservoir ponds used as water cleaning stages.
The array comes to nearly 43 megawatts. Eighteen of the ponds are stocked with mullet, prized for its roe, and with shrimp, while milkfish work the reservoir ponds.
In a full year the operation landed more than 220,000 pounds of seafood, along with 27,000 pieces of sun dried mullet roe. That is a commercial harvest, not a gesture.
The detail worth keeping is what was left alone. Nine percent of the site was set aside as habitat rather than built on, and black faced spoonbills, oriental storks and egrets have turned up on it.
Taiwan has 154 square miles of fishponds, and the panels do not cover them. That figure is the total pond area of the island, and the program has earmarked something over 80 square miles of it.
The national goal is 4.4 gigawatts of fishery power, set against an aquaculture sector producing roughly 920 million dollars of seafood a year.
A national fisheries institute has been testing what shading actually does. Under nets cutting about 40 percent of sunlight, milkfish, tilapia, black tiger shrimp, golden pomfret and grouper all held above 70 percent of unshaded controls, with some beating them.
Clams were the exception, because a filter feeder’s economics run on the sunlight the panels are there to take, which is the same balancing problem that agrivoltaic projects hit on dry land.
Land tenure is the friction nobody engineers away. The best ponds belong to families, and acceptance was never automatic.
Environmental groups have raised the cumulative question rather than the site question, which is fair. One well run farm proves very little about eighty square miles of them.
Whether the target closes the gap with the island’s semiconductor demand is also open, and that demand is not standing still.
What travels is the arithmetic, wherever flat water sits near a grid connection, which is why two floating rings are now powering a cod farm in a Norwegian fjord.
The threshold is the exportable part. A rule that says the fish must keep coming is what keeps the water from quietly becoming a foundation.
Hugo is an engineer with strong technical expertise. Multilingual from an early age, his writing combines technical clarity with a strong interest in science and energy.
Hugo is an engineer with strong technical expertise. Multilingual from an early age, his writing combines technical clarity with a strong interest in science and energy.
Hugo is an engineer with strong technical expertise. Multilingual from an early age, his writing combines technical clarity with a strong interest in science and energy.

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WORTHINGTON — The Nobles County Board of Commissioners received an update Wednesday on potential changes to county drainage systems tied to the proposed Summit Lake solar and battery storage project, including the process required before any drainage system reroutes or partial abandonments could be approved.
John Kolb, drainage counsel with Rinke Noonan, joined the board’s work session virtually to explain the statutory process and answer questions about the project.
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The Minnesota Public Utilities Commission (PUC) tentatively approved the Summit Lake solar permit application for the solar farm and battery storage site earlier this month, according to Drainage Coordinator Loretta Halbur.
Halbur told commissioners she had submitted comments to the PUC regarding the county’s authority over the public drainage system. Kolb said the PUC approval maintains the county’s role as drainage authority, separate from local zoning considerations.
The next step would be for the project proponents to petition the county for any proposed modifications to the public drainage system.
Kolb explained that there is a Minnesota Statute which allows a petitioner to request a modification of a drainage system for a public or private benefit. Such modifications can include rerouting or realigning portions of a system.
The petitioner would be responsible for the costs of the proceeding, including posting a bond. The county would establish a hearing date and appoint an engineer to review the proposal.
If a petitioner intends to seek partial abandonment of the drainage system, they must be an owner of a benefited property. The process of partial abandonment is similar to the modification process of the drainage system, with a hearing to determine whether the system serves a substantial purpose as part of the drainage system, and whether the partial abandonment would affect anyone negatively.
The engineer’s role would be to protect the drainage system and those landowners affected by it, Kolb said. Among the standards the board would have to consider is whether a proposed modification would impair the utility of the drainage system or deprive affected landowners of its benefits.
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Commissioners questioned whether the county should use the project’s engineer, ISG, to review the proposed drainage modifications. Kolb said the county could allow the project engineer to stand, but recommended the board consider appointing an independent engineer. Commissioner Justin Ahlers agreed, saying an independent engineer would also help address public perception.
Halbur was directed to begin looking into potential independent engineers. Kolb identified several engineering firms that could potentially perform the review. The independent review could examine such questions as whether proposed modifications would increase the county’s future maintenance costs.
Commissioner Bob Paplow raised the possibility that the project could add more footage to the drainage tile. Kolb said the amount of additional tile would not necessarily change the property’s drainage benefits, but said any additional maintenance or lifecycle costs should be evaluated.
“It shouldn’t make any difference because their benefits are based on their ability to access the system or the burden that they may place on the ditch system,” Kolb said.
The board could potentially place conditions on an approval to account for increased costs to the drainage system, Kolb said.
Commissioners also asked whether the county could establish a setback around a rerouted tile system to ensure there would be enough room for future inspection and maintenance. Kolb said it could require a recorded right-of-way wide enough to allow the county to inspect, maintain and replace the tile. The necessary width would depend on factors such as the depth and size of the tile and the equipment needed for maintenance, he said.
The board also discussed what would happen if the solar project were eventually decommissioned.
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Kolb said the rerouted portions of the drainage system would generally become the new configuration of the system unless a separate agreement required the system to be returned to its original alignment after decommissioning. He said he would not recommend unnecessarily complicating the process by establishing such an agreement unless it becomes necessary.
The land involved in the project also would not automatically be removed from the drainage system’s benefits list simply because it was used for a solar project. Kolb said removal from the benefits list is a separate process under state law.
Ahlers asked whether runoff from the solar project could introduce heavy metals or other contaminants into the drainage system.
Kolb said he was not aware of a specific basis for requiring the county to monitor for heavy metals. He noted that the project had undergone environmental review and said the PUC would likely have required stormwater pretreatment if that were identified as a concern.
He cautioned the board against making assumptions about potential contamination without evidence.
The board also emphasized the importance of keeping affected landowners involved in the process. The board discussed holding informational meetings before a petition is filed and again after a petition is submitted.
Kolb said the county has an obligation to provide notice and public hearings, but additional informational meetings could give landowners more opportunity to understand the process and raise questions. He also said the county has flexibility in establishing its timeline after a petition is filed, although required notice periods and other statutory procedures must be followed.
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The board discussed coordinating the timeline with the project developer while avoiding meetings during particularly busy periods such as planting and harvest.

Finance Director Amy Dykstra told commissioners the preliminary 2027 county budget is currently at an 11.67% levy, although that number could change as additional information becomes available.
Budget discussion included:
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Joint Solar highlights the need for quality, technology and long-term performance as India expands solar capacity and advances towards its 500 GW non fossil fuel target by 2030.
August 26, 2026. By EI News Network
India’s solar sector is entering a phase where the focus is shifting beyond rapid capacity additions towards the quality, reliability and long term performance of projects, according to Joint Solar.
The company said that these factors will become increasingly important as India works towards its target of 500 GW of installed non fossil fuel based electricity generation capacity by 2030 and solar assumes a larger role in the country’s power mix.
India has expanded solar capacity rapidly, with utility scale projects growing alongside rooftop and distributed installations. The expansion has increased demand for solar modules and related equipment while placing greater emphasis on manufacturing standards, installation quality and the ability of systems to maintain consistent generation over their operating life.
Vinod Sharma, Director, Joint Solar, said that the scale of India’s solar expansion has changed the priorities of the industry, with quality and reliability becoming as important as capacity addition.
“The conversation is no longer only about adding capacity. Quality, reliability and the ability of systems to perform consistently over the long term will become equally important as solar takes a larger role in the country’s power mix,” Sharma said.
Joint Solar said that domestic manufacturing would also play a key role in strengthening India’s solar supply chain. Increased availability of locally manufactured modules and components could provide developers with more sourcing options while supporting the development of the wider solar manufacturing ecosystem.
Long term project performance is also gaining importance among developers and consumers. Factors including module quality, degradation, resistance to weather conditions and maintenance can influence the output and operational reliability of solar installations over their expected operating life.
The company said that technological improvements could further support the next phase of solar deployment. Higher module efficiency, advances in manufacturing processes and improved monitoring systems can help projects generate more electricity from available land and maintain performance under varying operating conditions.
At the grid level, the increasing contribution of solar is creating additional requirements for power system management. Since solar generation varies with sunlight availability, the integration of larger renewable capacities will require stronger transmission infrastructure, improved forecasting, energy storage and grid management systems.
Sharma said that India had demonstrated its ability to deploy solar capacity at scale, but the next challenge would be ensuring that the installed capacity delivers dependable output while operating efficiently within the wider electricity system.
“This will require coordination across manufacturing, project development, technology and grid infrastructure,” he said.
The expansion is also creating opportunities across the solar value chain, with greater attention being given to system design, performance monitoring, maintenance and long term support alongside equipment supply.
India’s 500 GW non fossil fuel capacity target is a major milestone in its energy transition. Solar is expected to contribute significantly to the target, while transmission, storage, manufacturing and power system management will remain important to support the growing renewable energy base.
Joint Solar said that the effectiveness of India’s solar expansion would ultimately depend not only on the number of gigawatts added but also on the quality, reliability and consistency of the power generated by the installed capacity.

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Michigan’s Solar Boom Is Coming — Can Farmers Keep Farming Under The Panels?  MITechNews
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Middle East Weekly: Oman Plans Musandam RE Study, Kuwait Fund Backs 11 MW Solar, L&T Wins 6 GWh BESS Order, ACWA–KOWEPO Partner on RE, NHC–EDF Partner on Clean Energy, ACWA Signs 6 GWh BESS, Masdar Starts 35 MW BESS, Saudi Sig  SolarQuarter
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SECI Invites Cybersecurity Auditors To Strengthen Renewable Energy Sector Security  SolarQuarter
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If the words “home battery” make you picture a big, boxy piece of industrial hardware best left hidden, you’re in for a surprise. The Nex E6000 shatters that idea with an ultra-sleek, wall-mounted design — just 119.5 mm (about 4.7 inches) thick — and enough modern flair to earn a 2026 Red Dot Design Award. Far from an eyesore, it’s meant to blend right into your living space.
Measuring 842.5 x 500 x 119.5 mm (roughly 33.2 x 19.7 x 4.7 inches) and weighing 59 kg (around 130 lbs), it’s still no featherweight. You’ll want a load-bearing brick or concrete wall for mounting, and definitely a partner to help with the heavy lifting. While you could theoretically pull off a DIY installation, the manual recommends giving extra thought to wall strength, ventilation, and fire safety — in older homes especially, professional advice is strongly encouraged.
SAMDUO wants to democratize home energy storage with the Nex E6000’s promise of plug-and-play simplicity. While many batteries hook directly to solar panels, this one connects to your home’s AC circuit — just plug it into a standard wall outlet. That means it plays nicely with existing solar setups and you don’t need to rip out or modify your current installation. European homes — where space is often at a premium — can finally consider solar storage without battling for every square foot.
Of course, “without an electrician” isn’t quite the whole story. Physically hooking up the battery may be straightforward, but mounting a 59 kg object safely is another matter. So yes, it’s simple — unless you underestimate gravity. Once installed, though, things really start to shine.
With a storage capacity of 6,028 Wh (expandable up to 90 kWh with fifteen units) and stable, long-lasting LiFePO4 cells, the Nex E6000 is a robust choice for personal solar energy management. The battery can soak up your surplus solar power during the day and release it after sunset, covering your evening essentials — think lighting, your internet box, the fridge, laptop, and TV — for several hours.
Through the SAMDUO ecosystem, you can monitor your home’s energy flows in real time and easily configure when to charge and discharge:
This is where the smart software comes into its own, helping you automate for savings and flexibility. Its open API ensures smooth integration with energy meters, smart home platforms (like Home Assistant and Homey), and other automation tools — enthusiasts, consider yourselves invited.
With its approved simplified setup, the Nex E6000 delivers a network-linked output of up to 2,600 W. Important caveat: in grid-connected mode, you shouldn’t expect to run power-hungry appliances (oven, dryer, or your sauna ambitions) all at once. But for the essentials? You’re covered.
The Nex E6000 won’t transform your house into an off-grid fortress, but it can keep daily life running smoothly for several hours — no blackout-induced candle hunts required.
The price point (from 1,999 euros, or around £1,700 / $2,200 at the time of writing in France) strikes a balance between storage capacity, sleek looks, wall-friendly size, and the kind of plug-and-play intelligence that finally makes home storage accessible. Its main strength is making residential storage genuinely easy to implement, especially for existing solar homes.
In its current form, the Nex E6000 looks like a very promising solution for solar-equipped households, especially those looking to boost their self-consumption without overhauling their entire installation.

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