Home – Business – A golf course worth “200 billion” ended up covered in solar panels to generate energy, but the clock is ticking toward 2030, and that could turn a brilliant fix into a problem that’s nearly impossible to undo
A golf course built to help anchor South Korea’s giant Solaseado tourism city may be heading toward a very different second life. Cosmos Links CC, an 18-hole public golf course in South Jeolla Province, opened in March 2024 with a striking runway-style layout, but financial trouble pushed it into public auction after only months of operation.
The site was once valued at about 206 billion won, roughly $137 million, but it was later acquired for 65 billion won, or about $43 million. BS Group has not confirmed a final plan, yet reports say renewable energy, including solar power, is being reviewed for the land.
That turns one failed leisure project into a bigger question for South Korea. What should happen when expensive, open land no longer works as a golf business?
Solaseado was designed as a huge tourism and leisure corporate city across Yeongam and Haenam in South Jeolla Province. Jeonnam’s official investment page lists the project area at about 13 square miles, with planned facilities including an F1 racing venue, hotels, resorts, a theme park, a marina, and golf courses.
Cosmos Links CC was meant to fit that vision. Its unusual straight-line course used four connected fairway strips, each about 6,070 feet long and 328 feet wide, with a combined course distance of 4.2 miles. From above, it looked less like a traditional golf escape and more like a piece of infrastructure.
But the numbers told a harder story. The course opened in March 2024, closed operations on August 31 of the same year, and went through repeated auction attempts before BS Group’s affiliate moved to buy the land and buildings.
TheBell reported that the site covers about 841 acres, a size that makes it valuable even if the golf business itself failed.
Solar developers tend to like the same things golf courses already have. They need broad, open land, limited shade, road access, and terrain that has already been shaped and maintained. In practical terms, fairways can look a lot like ready-made platforms for panels.
That does not mean every closed golf course should become a solar farm. Local residents may worry about views, land values, wildlife, and whether a green landscape is being replaced by a more industrial one. Still, leaving hundreds of acres idle is not exactly beautiful, either.
This is where the economics start to bite. Golf can be expensive for younger players, from clubs and clothes to green fees and travel. If business golf also fades, courses lose one of their most reliable customer bases, and the land beneath them suddenly becomes the real asset.
South Korea does not have to imagine what this might look like. Japan has been turning underused or abandoned golf-course land into solar facilities for years, offering a preview of what could happen at sites like Cosmos Links.
Kyocera announced in 2015 that its joint venture would build a 23-megawatt solar plant on an abandoned golf course in Kyoto Prefecture. The company estimated the plant would generate 26,312 megawatt-hours a year, enough electricity for about 8,100 typical local households.
A later Kyocera project went even bigger. In 2018, the company completed a 29.2-megawatt solar plant in Yonago City on about 296 acres of land originally planned for a golf course and other uses. With 108,504 solar modules, Kyocera estimated annual output at 36,080 megawatt-hours, enough for around 12,000 households.
ORIX also moved into this space. In 2014, the company announced a 51-megawatt solar project on the former TOSHIN Lake Wood Golf Club site in Mie Prefecture, using about 204,120 panels across roughly 295 acres.
The projected output was about 59.8 million kilowatt-hours a year, equivalent to the annual electricity use of around 16,620 households.
It is tempting to see solar panels as a clean rescue plan for failed golf properties. The reality is more complicated. A solar project still needs permits, financing, grid connections, engineering work, and sometimes storage systems to manage power when the sun is not shining.
There are also unresolved business questions. TheBell reported that BS Group’s internal direction for the Cosmos Links site had not been finalized, and that renewable-energy development was still under review. In other words, this is not yet a confirmed solar farm.
That nuance matters. A golf course can fail quickly, but a solar complex cannot simply appear overnight. Developers have to prove that the numbers work, that local opposition can be managed, and that the grid can actually use the power being generated.
Solaseado itself is no longer just a leisure story. Jeonnam’s official project page lists a power-generation district and an RE100-focused industrial zone among the plans for the wider development area. That puts energy, technology, and business infrastructure closer to the center of the project than a simple resort-city label would suggest.
TheBell also reported that BS Group is looking at Solaseado as part of a broader clean-energy and advanced-industry strategy, with solar, wind, and data-center development all part of the larger conversation. That makes the Cosmos Links site more than a stranded golf asset. It could become a test case for how South Korea reuses leisure land in an era of energy transition.
For the most part, the shift is easy to understand. A golf course needs paying players. A solar plant needs sunlight, panels, and a buyer for the electricity. When one model stops working, the other can start to look very practical.
Cosmos Links CC was designed to draw golfers, tourists, and attention to a mega-development. Instead, it may end up drawing energy planners, solar investors, and local officials trying to avoid another white elephant.
That may sound like a comedown, but it also reflects a broader change. Around the world, land once set aside for recreation, retail, or real estate speculation is being reconsidered through the lens of climate, electricity demand, and long-term maintenance costs.
For now, the safest reading is simple. Cosmos Links is not yet a confirmed solar farm, but the economics are pulling the conversation in that direction. If the project moves ahead, a golf course that struggled to find players could end up producing power instead.
The official press release was published on Kyocera.
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SHANGHAI, June 3, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Daqo New Energy Corp. (
DQ) ("Daqo New Energy," the "Company" or "we"), a leading manufacturer of high-purity polysilicon for the global solar PV industry, today announced that its subsidiary, Daqo Energy Technology (Shanghai) Co., Ltd. ("Daqo Shanghai"), has signed an investment agreement with the Management Committee of the Kunshan Economic and Technological Development Zone to establish a new manufacturing base. This manufacturing base will focus on the research, development, manufacturing, and sale of next-generation energy solutions and related equipment for artificial intelligence data centers (AIDCs), including energy storage systems, solid-state transformers, solid-state circuit breakers, and solid-state batteries. The project will be built in two phases, with a Phase 1 investment of approximately RMB 2.1 billion. Phase 2 will commence at a later date, subject to the project fulfilling relevant industrial policy and investment requirements. The total project investment is preliminarily expected to be approximately RMB 6 billion. As this project is still in the preparatory stage, the impact of this investment on the Company's future performance cannot be determined at this time.
Mr. Xiang Xu, CEO of Daqo New Energy, commented, "We are excited to launch this strategic expansion into next-generation energy solutions for AIDCs. The rapid growth of AIDCs is creating substantial demand for sophisticated energy solutions. By leveraging our deep expertise and proven technical capabilities of our affiliates, specifically in transformer and circuit breaker technologies, we are well positioned to address this tremendous growth opportunity and deliver vertically integrated energy solutions. This investment agreement represents a cornerstone of our broader strategy to diversify our product portfolio, cultivate new growth engines, and capitalize on the massive market opportunities presented by the global energy transition."
About Daqo New Energy Corp.
Daqo New Energy Corp. (DQ) ("Daqo" or the "Company") is a leading manufacturer of high-purity polysilicon for the global solar PV industry. Founded in 2007, the Company manufactures and sells high-purity polysilicon to photovoltaic product manufacturers, who further process the polysilicon into ingots, wafers, cells and modules for solar power solutions. The Company has a total polysilicon nameplate capacity of 305,000 metric tons and is one of the world's lowest cost producers of high-purity polysilicon.
For more information, please visit http://www.dqsolar.com.
Safe Harbor Statement
This announcement contains forward-looking statements. These statements are made under the "safe harbor" provisions of the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements can be identified by terminology such as "will," "expects," "anticipates," "future," "intends," "plans," "believes," "estimates," "might," "guidance" and similar statements. The Company may also make written or oral forward-looking statements in its reports filed or furnished to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, in its annual reports to shareholders, in press releases and other written materials and in oral statements made by its officers, directors or employees to third parties. Statements that are not historical facts, including statements about the Company's beliefs and expectations, are forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements involve inherent risks and uncertainties, all of which are difficult or impossible to predict accurately and many of which are beyond the Company's control. A number of factors could cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in any forward-looking statement, including but not limited to the following: the demand for photovoltaic products and the development of photovoltaic technologies; global supply and demand for polysilicon and AIDC energy storage and smart energy systems; alternative technologies in cell manufacturing; the Company's ability to significantly expand its polysilicon production capacity and output; the Company's ability to establish and expand its production capacity and output for AIDC energy storage and smart energy systems; the reduction in or elimination of government subsidies and economic incentives for solar energy applications; and the Company's ability to lower its production costs. Further information regarding these and other risks is included in the reports or documents that the Company has filed with, or furnished to, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. All information provided in this press release is as of the date hereof, and the Company undertakes no duty to update such information or any forward-looking statement, except as required under applicable law.
SOURCE Daqo New Energy Corp.
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Hendrickson installs solar farm to power Illinois commercial bumper factory Trucks, Parts, Service
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LONGi Green Energy Technology has secured the top position in Wood Mackenzie’s 2026 Global Solar PV Module Manufacturer Ranking, based on 2025 operational data, while also earning the highest Grade A rating in the consultancy’s Supplier Qualification Program.
Wood Mackenzie, a leading global energy research and advisory firm, evaluated 48 manufacturers across 10 countries using a framework that covers capacity utilisation, technology maturity, financial strength, supply chain resilience, ESG performance, reliability standards and research and development investment. The assessment is widely used by investors, developers and financial institutions as a benchmark for procurement and financing decisions.
The Grade A rating is the highest level in Wood Mackenzie’s supplier qualification system and indicates that a manufacturer meets stringent benchmarks associated with best practice across the global solar supply chain. According to the methodology, companies achieving this rating are considered low risk and highly reliable long term partners for utility scale projects and institutional investors.
Related news: Powered by LONGi HPBC 2.0 cell technology, redefining a new era of photovoltaic value – the HiMO X10
Wood Mackenzie noted that Chinese manufacturers continue to dominate the global solar supply chain, with nine of the top ten ranked companies headquartered in China. Yana Hryshko, Head of Solar Supply Chain Research at Wood Mackenzie, said Chinese firms remain global leaders in manufacturing scale, technology advancement and operational efficiency.
LONGi’s top ranking reflects its sustained investment in research and development and large scale manufacturing capability. The company reported major advances in back contact technology, including its independently developed HIBC solar cell, which achieved a certified conversion efficiency of 28.13% for crystalline silicon cells according to Germany’s Institute for Solar Energy Research Hamelin. In addition, LONGi’s EcoLife series, based on HIBC technology, reached a mass production module efficiency of 25% in the April 2026 TaiyangNews commercial module efficiency rankings.
The company has also expanded its product portfolio around BC technology to address multiple deployment scenarios. These include modules designed for anti dust, anti glare, lightweight applications and fire resistant environments, as well as specialised solutions for harsh conditions such as sandy terrain, barren land, offshore installations and hail prone regions.
Hi MO 9 Ice Shield module
In parallel, LONGi has been advancing high durability utility scale products. The Hi MO 9 Ice Shield module has been named a finalist for The smarter E AWARD 2026 in the photovoltaic category. The module is designed for extreme weather environments and has been tested against hailstones up to 55 mm in diameter at high impact speeds when installed at a 30 degree inclination.
The company reports that this hail resistance level covers around 97% of recorded hail events based on meteorological and asset risk data. The module features a dual glass structure with reinforced framing and supports mechanical loads of up to 5,400 Pa.
Built on HPBC 2.0 back contact technology, the Hi MO 9 Ice Shield delivers output power of up to 670 W with efficiency reaching 24.8%. It also features a 30 year power warranty, with first year degradation below 1% and annual degradation of 0.35% from year two onwards.
LONGi stated that the product is already commercially available and expands its Hi MO 9 portfolio, reinforcing its strategy of combining high efficiency with enhanced resilience for utility scale solar projects.
Author: Bryan Groenendaal
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India installed 15.3 GW of new solar PV capacity in Q1 2026, its strongest quarter on record, says Mercom India Research
Utility-scale projects accounted for more than 82% of new additions, led by Gujarat and Rajasthan, while distributed solar also expanded under PM-KUSUM
Tendering and auction activity during the quarter declined sharply as developers remained cautious over ALMM compliance, rising land costs, and transmission constraints
India got off to a good start in 2026, installing 15.3 GW of new solar PV capacity in the first quarter of the calendar year. Installations in its ‘strongest quarter ever’ rose by more than 143% year-on-year (YoY) from 6.3 GW in Q1 2025, according to Mercom India Research.
This expanded the country’s cumulative installed solar PV capacity to exceed 152 GW as of March 31, 2026, with solar accounting for 28% of India’s total installed power capacity.
Mercom previously pegged India’s Q1 2025 solar PV installations at 6.7 GW, representing a 25% YoY drop (see India Installed 6.7 GW New Solar Capacity In Q1 2025). On a quarterly basis, Q1 2026 installations rose nearly 49% from 10.3 GW installed in Q4 2025, adds Mercom.
At 12.6 GW, large-scale solar increased by 55% quarter-on-quarter (QoQ) and 147% YoY to account for over 82% of the installations, with open access projects contributing 21% of the large-scale projects. Gujarat and Rajasthan were the leading states in this category, followed by Maharashtra.
Distributed generation also accelerated, especially under the Pradhan Mantri Kisan Urja Suraksha evam Utthaan Mahabhiyan (PM-KUSUM).
Analysts attribute the record growth to the rush to meet policy deadlines, especially the Approved List of Models and Manufacturers (ALMM) List-II for solar cells, along with a reduction in Inter-State Transmission System (ISTS) charge-waiver benefits, and improved transmission in some states.
Mercom India’s Managing Director, Priya Sanjay, said that while the market is operating under the assumption that the ALMM List-II deadline may not be extended, project developers and module manufacturers may push for some relief, such as a short extension on a project-by-project basis.
Tender activity continues to struggle, with the country awarding about 3 GW during Q1, down 68% YoY but up from the previous quarter. Auctions of about 4 GW of solar projects were down by 47% QoQ and 64% YoY.
Sanjay explains that developers are cautious about bidding, given uncertainty about which ALMM compliance conditions will apply as projects move forward. Additionally, land prices are increasing as farmers become more aware of solar development amid a lack of contiguous land parcels.
Mercom Capital Group CEO Raj Prabhu believes transmission bottlenecks could play spoiler in what he considers likely to be a record year for solar installations.
“While project execution and commissioning activity remains strong, transmission readiness and evacuation infrastructure are struggling to keep pace with the rapid growth in renewable capacity,” added Prabhu. “As renewable penetration increases, curtailed. Grid flexibility and storage integration are becoming critical to sustaining future growth.”
The complete report titled Q1 2026 India Solar Market Update Report can be purchased from Mercom’s website.
Earlier in an exclusive interview with TaiyangNews, National Solar Energy Federation of India (NSEFI) CEO Subrahmanyam Pulipaka forecast India to become the world’s second-largest solar PV market in FY2026 with installations approaching 50 GW AC (see NSEFI Exclusive: India Will Be World’s 2nd-Largest Solar Market In 2026).
TaiyangNews 2024
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Solar gained momentum in regions once seen as peripheral, from Central Europe to Africa, while BRICS nations crossed a major milestone by generating more than half of global solar power. Rapid advances in battery technology and a decline in prices brought around-the-clock solar into credible, near-commercial reality, opening the door to fossil-free baseload power in sunny regions.
The rise of “electrotech” – solar, wind, batteries and electrified transport, heating and industry – became the dominant engine of global energy growth, led by China’s emergence as the world’s first electrostate. As AI and data centre demand grew, clean power and strong grids became the new competitive edge for modern economies.
Solar and wind are now expanding fast enough to meet all new electricity demand, a milestone reached in the first three quarters of 2025. Ember’s analysis published in November shows that these technologies are no longer just catching up; they are outpacing demand growth itself. Together, solar and wind supplied 17.6% of global electricity in the first three quarters of 2025, up from 15.2% over the same period last year, pushing the total share of low-carbon sources to 43%.
For the first time across a sustained period, renewables, including solar, wind, hydro and smaller sources such as geothermal, generated more electricity than coal. At the heart of this shift is solar, whose growth was more than three times larger than any other source of electricity so far in 2025, confirming its role as the dominant force reshaping the global power system. Another analysis showed that the world is set to add 793 GW of renewable capacity in 2025, up 11% from the 717 GW added in 2024. At this pace, only a modest increase in annual additions is needed for the world to stay on track to triple global renewables by 2030.
In 2025, solar strengthened in markets that had long trailed behind the global leaders, as solar showed its potential to leapfrog fossil generation in emerging markets. Several countries outside the traditional frontrunners like China and Europe, are now recording sharper growth thanks to falling costs, easing supply bottlenecks and clearer policy signals.
In August 2025, Ember reported that there’s clear evidence of solar now accelerating across Africa. Imports of Chinese solar panels rose 60% in the 12 months to June 2025, with South Africa still the largest buyer but 20 other countries also posting record orders. Total imports reached 15 GW of capacity, up from 9.4 GW the year before. Some markets saw dramatic jumps. Algeria’s imports rose 33-fold, Zambia eightfold, Botswana sevenfold and Sudan sixfold, while Liberia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Benin, Angola and Ethiopia all more than tripled their imports.
Central Europe, a region once behind on solar generation, is now expanding faster than many traditional European Union (EU) leaders. Summer 2025 underscored this momentum. In June, Hungary generated more than 40% of its electricity from solar, while Poland and Czechia also recorded their highest monthly solar output to date.
By 2024, the ten BRICS countries accounted for more than half of global solar generation – 51%, up from just 15% a decade earlier. This rapid rise signals a major shift in the centre of gravity of the global energy transition.
2025 showed that wind and solar are now reaching scale in major economies around the world, fundamentally reshaping the energy system. In August, wind and solar generated over a third of Brazil’s electricity for the first month on record. In the EU, solar became the single largest source of power in June 2025. In Spain, expanding wind and solar has slashed the pricing power of fossil generators by 75% since 2019. The UK crossed a major threshold in September 2025 as wind and solar delivered more than half its electricity for the first time. California reached its own milestone too, with solar now standing as the state’s largest source of power. India is moving in the same direction. Ember’s October 2025 analysis showed that the country does not need to build coal capacity beyond what is already planned under its National Electricity Plan (NEP) 2032, provided it meets targets for solar, wind and storage.
The common thread is clear: as clean power reaches higher shares, it begins to set the price, weaken the influence of expensive fossil fuel-based generation and reduce imports. What once looked like just growth is now transforming market dynamics, affordability and energy security all at once.
Electrotech, a set of efficient, scalable electricity-based technologies like solar, wind, batteries, EVs and heat pumps, is now the main driver of global energy growth. Solar capacity has doubled roughly every three years for 30 years, battery storage has nearly doubled annually since 2020 and EV sales have surged fifteenfold to 17.5 million since 2017. China, the world’s first “electrostate,” leads this transformation. It accounts for half of global solar panel installations, 60% of EV sales and two-thirds of global growth in electricity demand since 2019. In H1-2025, China’s fossil demand in electricity generation was down by 2%. Emerging markets from Viet Nam to Mexico and South Africa to India are leapfrogging older fossil systems, surpassing the United States in solar’s share of electricity. Mastery of the electric tech stack like batteries, motors and power electronics is now critical for industrial growth, jobs and strategic autonomy.
Steep declines in battery costs and rapid storage deployment are turning solar into a reliable power source for almost 24 hours a day, every day of the year. Ember’s June 2025 analysis shows that in high-insolation regions, solar paired with batteries can already deliver round-the-clock electricity at around US $104/MWh, undercutting new coal and nuclear, making “solar as baseload” both technically credible and increasingly cost-competitive. Mexico illustrates the potential benefits of such a shift: falling battery prices could unlock gigawatts of new solar and cut reliance on imported fossil fuels, with Ember estimating annual savings of about $1.6 billion USD from avoided gas imports.
India’s heavy industry story highlights another frontier of opportunity: large industrial consumers can now meet up to 80% of their annual electricity needs with clean power by combining solar, wind and storage in a cost-effective procurement mix. In many regions of India, the cost of such hybrid, round-the-clock clean power is already competitive with, and often cheaper than, coal-based supply.
Batteries are also emerging as a multi-tool for the power sector. Beyond storing excess RE, they provide fast frequency response, black start capabilities and other essential grid services that strengthen system reliability.
As storage costs continue to drop, solar-plus-batteries is emerging as the most scalable pathway to clean, reliable, fossil fuel-free electricity.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) and data centre growth became one of the most discussed energy issues of 2025. Those able to meet rising electricity demand will be positioned at the forefront of the technology revolution – and solar and wind are proving they are up to the job. Ember’s ASEAN analysis showed that data centres could account for 2–30% of national electricity demand by 2030, excluding Viet Nam. In Malaysia, for example, emissions could increase sevenfold if this growth is met with fossil-heavy grids, while up to 30% of this demand could instead be supplied by solar and wind. In Europe, the bottleneck is infrastructure: grid congestion in hubs such as Frankfurt, London and Dublin has created 7–10-year connection queues, pushing new AI investment toward regions with cleaner, more available capacity. The message is clear: the AI race is now an electricity and grid race. Countries that scale renewables and accelerate grid upgrades will be the ones that capture the next wave of digital economic growth.
As 2025 comes to an end, the direction of travel is unmistakable: clean power is scaling, markets are shifting and the electricity system is becoming the centre of economic strategy – from AI growth to energy security. In 2026, the challenge will be turning this momentum into system-level transformation. Countries that expand storage, fix grid bottlenecks, set higher ambition and empower markets to integrate renewables will shape the next phase of global leadership.
For the bigger 2025 trends and the full global picture, watch out for our Global Electricity Review in April 2026, the first comprehensive overview of electricity changes across more than 200 countries.
Dave Jones, Hannah Broadbent, Ardhi Arsala Rahmani, Lauren Orso, Kostantsa Rangelova, Duttatreya Das, Lam Pham and Sam Butler-Sloss
Battery storage plant in the United States.
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India eyes 33 GW wafer-ingot capacity by FY30; ₹80,000 crore solar manufacturing push gathers pace: CareEdge Ratings Fortune India
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Against this backdrop, RETC, part of the VDE Group, released its 2026 PV Module Index (PVMI) Report, providing independent, comparative data on photovoltaic (PV) modules across reliability, performance, and quality metrics. The findings reflect a broader industry transition from focusing primarily on deployment scale to understanding how solar assets will perform reliably over 25- to 35-year asset lifecycles and how performance deviations may affect long-term project economics and asset value.
Within RETC’s customer portfolio, 19 manufacturers earned recognition in the 2026 PV Module Index across multiple testing disciplines and award categories. Thirteen manufacturers achieved Overall Highest Achiever status, while additional manufacturers received recognition through High Achievement in Performance and individual Test Category High Achievement distinctions, reflecting the rigorous qualification standards applied throughout the programme.
“Certifications require products to meet a minimum baseline standard; however, they do not necessarily address how assets will perform throughout their projected lifetime in the field, specifically in recent years, under increasingly extreme conditions” said Cherif Kedir, CEO of RETC. “In 2026, solar is now both critical infrastructure and a commoditized product, which makes quality differentiation paramount for long-term reliability, consistency, and performance. Stakeholders require more confidence that the products being deployed today will continue performing reliably over decades, especially as new manufacturing scales rapidly and new materials and supply chains hastily enter the market.”
Based on testing conducted between Q2 of 2025 and Q1 of 2026, the 2026 PVMI evaluates PV modules using RETC’s extended real-world testing protocols designed to identify potential long-term reliability and performance risks that may not appear in standard certification testing. The report highlights several emerging trends shaping solar procurement, manufacturing, and risk evaluation decisions across the industry.
“What we are seeing is an industry moving from a deployment story to a performance and risk management story” added Mr Kedir. “The PVMI gives developers, financiers, and asset owners a clearer view of which modules perform under extended stress conditions designed to reflect the realities they will face in the field.”
The 2026 Photovoltaic Module Index Report highlights several reliability and performance trends emerging from RETC’s extended laboratory testing, including:
More than 10 percent of photovoltaic module test samples returned failing “red-flag” results in the 2,000-hour damp heat test category
For the second consecutive year, approximately 8.3 percent photovoltaic module test samples exhibited unacceptable levels of ultraviolet-induced degradation
RETC observed year-over-year increases in red-flag results across damp heat, potential-induced degradation, static and dynamic mechanical load, and thermal cycling test categories
These laboratory-observed wearout mechanisms and failure modes provide additional context for negative field-performance trends observed by the technical due diligence community
The report also examines how rapid solar deployment, evolving manufacturing practices, and changing global supply chains are reshaping expectations around solar reliability and bankability. In addition to RETC’s technical analysis, the 2026 PVMI features contributions from leading industry voices, including Finlay Colville of Terawatt PV Research and Kelly Pickerel of Solar Power World, who explore emerging trends influencing solar manufacturing, performance, and project risk.
For additional information:
RETC
India's clean energy journey has the potential to generate more than 44 lakh jobs by 2030, with rooftop solar emerging as the single largest employment driver, accounting for around 43% of the projected workforce, a recent study finds.
The findings come at a time when the government is accelerating renewable energy deployment through various schemes aimed at expanding solar adoption across households and agriculture.
Rooftop solar leads workforce expansion
According to the CEEW and NRDC study titled Driving Energy Transition: Workforce, Skills, and Gender in India’s Renewable Energy Sector, rooftop solar has already emerged as the largest contributor to clean energy job creation. Of the 6.5 lakh clean energy workers added between FY23 and FY26, rooftop solar accounted for 62% of the total workforce addition.
PM-KUSUM followed with a 16.3% share, while biomass power contributed 12.6% and ground-mounted solar projects accounted for around 6%.
Why rooftop solar?
The report attributed rooftop solar's strong employment potential to its decentralised nature.
Unlike utility-scale renewable projects, which are developed at a single location, rooftop systems require installation across individual homes, commercial establishments and institutional buildings.
This creates demand for workers at every stage—from customer acquisition and site assessment to installation, grid integration and maintenance.
The study estimates rooftop solar generates nearly 45 full-time equivalent (FTE) job-years per megawatt (MW), compared with just one FTE job-year per MW for ground-mounted solar projects and around 0.6 FTE job-year per MW for wind power installations.
Business development emerges as top hiring segment
When CNBC-TV18 asked about the roles that will see the highest demand in rooftop solar, Akanksha Tyagi, Programme Lead at CEEW, said, "Among the different phases of deploying a rooftop solar plant, the business development phase has the highest employment potential. This phase accounts for about 38% of the total full-time equivalent jobs in rooftop solar."
She added that this phase requires significant customer acquisition efforts and navigating subsidies under the PM Surya Ghar Yojana and various state schemes, leading to high employment intensity.
Explaining other segments, Tyagi said that construction and commissioning follow business development, accounting for about 31% of the total jobs created through the deployment of a rooftop solar plant.
Demand rising for technical and customer-facing skills
As the sector expands, employers are increasingly looking for workers with specialised technical capabilities.
According to Tyagi, key technical skills in demand include:
On the non-technical side, Tyagi said employers are seeking candidates with strong business communication skills, regulatory knowledge and client relationship management capabilities. Prior experience in the renewable energy sector is increasingly becoming a preferred qualification.
Women remain underrepresented in the clean energy workforce
Despite rapid growth in employment opportunities, the report highlights persistent gender gaps across the sector. Women currently account for only 11% of the workforce in solar and wind deployment and manufacturing segments.
According to the study, women's participation is highest in rooftop solar at 15%, followed by solar module manufacturing at 13%.
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Atul Mathur is a Senior Assistant Editor at The Times of India with over 27 years of experience in journalism. Based in Delhi, he has spent much of his career reporting on governance, public policy and politics, churning out researched, data-driven stories that impact daily lives. Atul is known for investigative depth and strong human-interest narratives as he strives to bring clarity and context to complex issues. He currently tracks the energy sector, writing on power, renewable energy, coal and mines.
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JARRESTTSVILLE, Md. — As neighbors in Abingdon held a community meeting, people in Jarrettsville are voicing concerns over a proposed solar farm.
On Wednesday, neighbors gathered to discuss the plans for a property off Rocks Road.
It calls for nearly nine thousand solar panels on 72 acres. It’s the second proposed solar farm in Jarrettsville.
While residents got a chance to speak out and ask questions, there may not be much they can do.
Last year, state lawmakers passed the Renewable Energy Certainty Act, bypassing local zoning for such projects.
It allows solar farms to go in on up to five percent of all of the agricultural land in any given county before local zoning would be considered.
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Recharge Power, a Taiwanese battery energy storage system (BESS) developer and integrator, has partnered with Australian renewable energy developer Energy Decarb to establish a joint venture targeting the Australian solar PV and battery storage market.
The joint venture brings together Recharge Power’s proprietary energy management system (EMS) software and system integration capabilities spanning project engineering, construction, and long-term operations and maintenance, with Energy Decarb’s local project development proficiency, electricity market knowledge and trading capabilities.
The two companies have already assembled an active project pipeline totalling 128MW/292MWh in Australia, expected to be delivered progressively over the next two years. Specific details on these battery storage projects have not been disclosed.
Energy Decarb leverages the resources and project financing depth of anchor investor St Baker Capital. The group is backed by Trevor St Baker AO, founder of ERM Power, which was formerly Australia’s fourth-largest electricity retailer before Shell Energy Australia acquired it.
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The joint venture will offer integrated solar and BESS engineering, procurement and construction services alongside energy service company offerings, targeting commercial and industrial customers seeking to reduce electricity costs.
Recharge Power CEO Spencer Feng said the company intends to replicate the commercial model it has applied in its home market and in Japan.
“We intend to replicate the proven success we achieved in Taiwan and Japan, gaining swift local traction and then scaling rapidly,” Feng said.
Recharge Power has surpassed 1GWh in cumulative deployment capacity in Taiwan. It claims to hold a series of domestic firsts, including Taiwan’s first automatic frequency control project, Taiwan’s first solar-plus-storage project and Taiwan Power Company’s first self-owned substation BESS project.
Australia recently became the world’s third-largest utility-scale battery storage market, with 4.3GW of large-scale battery storage reaching financial close in 2025, according to the Clean Energy Council’s Clean Energy Australia Report 2026, placing it behind only the United States and China in terms of annual deployment volume.
Battery storage set prices in 32% of NEM trading intervals during Q1 2026, overtaking hydro as the most frequent price-setting technology, a structural shift that has made market participation an increasingly material revenue stream for storage operators.
Queensland, where much of Australia’s recent storage buildout has concentrated, shows what that market participation can look like at scale.
The state became the first in the NEM to discharge over 100GWh from battery storage in a single month in April 2026, with intraday price spreads collapsing as the installed battery fleet ramped up, and the average two-hour spread falling below AU$110/MWh (US$78/MWh) across all NEM states except South Australia.
The same dynamics that compress arbitrage spreads over time also reward operators with sophisticated EMS software and trading capability, precisely the combination the joint venture is aiming to deliver.
State-level procurement programmes are also opening new entry points for mid-scale storage developers.
Yesterday, Energy-Storage.news reported that Queensland’s AU$200 million North West Energy Fund has opened a formal call for proposals targeting generation and storage projects in the North West Minerals Province, a programme structured to attract private capital into a region currently reliant on islanded diesel and gas generation.
Projects of this scale in the joint venture’s existing 128MW/292MWh pipeline would be well matched to the fund’s commercial and construction-ready criteria.
Interested in Australia? Read Energy-Storage.news’ Energy Storage Summit Australia coverage and related content.
Science and Technology
Greece has started using structures linked to the highway operated by Olympia Odos also as an energy source, with a solar program of 10 MWp installed in side areas, toll covers, and operational roofs.
The initiative brings together 19 photovoltaic parks distributed along the concession and was presented by the company as the largest project of its kind ever developed on a Greek highway, with production aimed at the electrical demand of road operation.
According to Olympia Odos, the energy generated meets systems linked to the functioning of the road, such as lighting, variable message panels, control equipment, and tunnel ventilation, without installing solar modules directly on the pavement.
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The expression “solar highway” is usually associated with tracks covered with photovoltaic panels prepared to receive cars, trucks, rain, dirt, and wear caused by heavy traffic.
In the Greek experience, however, the generation occurs in conventional solar energy structures, positioned within the operational range of the concession and in locations that already belong to the road system.
With this configuration, the modules are not subjected to the weight of vehicles nor to the daily abrasion of tires, factors that, in photovoltaic pavements, increase the requirements for resistance and maintenance.
By using existing side lands, roofs, and covers, Olympia Odos incorporates electricity generation into the functioning road without altering the function of the driving lanes or replacing the asphalt.
The photovoltaic network was distributed across the regions of Achaia, Corinth, and Western Attica, following sections of the highway operated by the concessionaire, according to information released by Olympia Odos itself.
The panels occupy areas near the road layout, toll station covers, and roofs of operational centers, bringing generation closer to the consumption points of the concession.
This proximity between production and use makes the application directly linked to road operation, as electricity was presented as a source for the transportation infrastructure itself.
In practice, the highway ceases to act solely as a consumer of electricity and begins to integrate renewable generation used in essential services for safety, control, and vehicle circulation.
The difference compared to solar pavements is in the installation location, as the panels are not exposed to direct contact with tires, heavy loads, braking, oil, debris, and interventions on traffic lanes.
In proposals that use modules on the track bed, the panels need to be protected by resistant and transparent materials, as well as maintain adherence, visibility, road safety, and efficiency in solar capture.
In the model adopted by Olympia Odos, the panels remain off the driving lanes, in arrangements similar to traditional solar parks, while the coordinated use of road spaces is the main difference.
By being off the track, the equipment does not receive the same mechanical load from traffic, and any technical interventions can be planned without replacing modules installed directly on the pavement.
The toll covers are part of the program because they are already constructed surfaces, with solar exposure and the presence of electrical infrastructure within the concessionaire’s operational routine.
With the installation of panels at these points, the company utilizes existing areas of the road system and expands generation without relying exclusively on land separate from the concession.
The roofs of operational centers also follow this logic, as they cover buildings related to control, service, monitoring, communication, technical support, and traffic management along the highway.
Added to the lateral terrains, these surfaces increase the installed capacity without requiring changes to the road layout, keeping the solar generation connected to the assets that already support the operation.
The program was inaugurated in July 2025, in Kiato, with the presence of the Greek Minister of Infrastructure and Transport, Christos Dimas, and representatives from Olympia Odos and companies linked to the concession.
According to the official release, the investment exceeds 10 million euros and was developed in less than two years within the framework of the concession contract signed between Olympia Odos and the Greek State.
The shareholder structure mentioned by the concessionaire involves VINCI Highways and the companies Avax, Aktor, and TERNA, linked to the development, financing, and operation of the highway associated with Olympia Odos.
The company reported that the implementation through the concession model allowed for the mobilization of private investment in public infrastructure, focusing on reducing external energy consumption in the operation of the highway.
The implementation of the 19 photovoltaic parks is part of the concessionaire’s declared plan to reduce its carbon footprint and advance towards the goal of zeroing direct emissions by 2030.
The company also relates the program to other efficiency and electrification measures, such as expanded use of LED lighting and the expansion of fast chargers for electric vehicles along the operated network.
These actions cover both the internal consumption of the concession and the infrastructure offered to users, although the solar program’s energy has been primarily presented as a resource for the operational needs of the highway.
In the debate about solar roads, the Greek case presents a different configuration from the drivable photovoltaic tracks, by concentrating the modules in lateral structures, roofs, covers, and technical areas of the concession itself.
The capacity of 10 MWp places the project on a larger scale than isolated solar installations in small support buildings, without requiring the replacement of conventional pavement with special panels.
The proposal relies on a common feature of major highways: the existence of technical areas, parking lots, roofs, tunnels, control centers, and side lands that consume or can receive electricity generation.
When these spaces are integrated into a single energy plan, the road combines transportation and local energy production, maintaining its primary function of moving people and goods.
In the case of Olympia Odos, solar production was structured to meet a permanent demand, consisting of lighting, ventilation, dynamic signage, operational control, and other systems that keep the highway operational.
The experience maintains challenges of network connection, operation, and maintenance, but records an alternative for solar generation on highways based on the use of underutilized areas, without placing modules under trucks and cars.
In Brazil, where the granted network includes toll plazas, operational bases, control centers, technical areas, parking lots, walkways, tunnels, and side lanes, the Greek experience can serve as a reference to evaluate the energy use of existing structures in concessions.
Without replacing asphalt with panels, this model shifts solar generation to spaces linked to the road operation itself, which opens a discussion about energy efficiency, electricity costs, maintenance, and the use of areas already integrated into the highways.
If tolls, operational roofs, and side lands can help a road produce the energy it consumes, would this type of solution make sense on Brazilian highways?
A journalist who graduated in 2017 and has been active in the field since 2015, with six years of experience in print magazines, stints at free-to-air TV channels, and over 12,000 online publications. A specialist in politics, employment, economics, courses, and other topics, he is also the editor of the CPG portal. Professional registration: 0087134/SP. If you have any questions, wish to report an error, or suggest a story idea related to the topics covered on the website, please contact via email: alisson.hficher@outlook.com. We do not accept résumés!
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Thornova Solar announced it will integrate steel frames from Nextpower into its solar panel manufacturing plans for the U.S. market.
Nextpower’s universal steel module frame is designed for broad compatibility with tracker and fixed-tilt mounting systems. Compared with conventional frame designs, the steel frame reduces module deflection, lowers the risk of glass breakage and improves resistance to uplift tear-out. These benefits are particularly relevant in storm-prone regions, including areas with high-wind areas such as the U.S. Midwest and Southeast.
“This integration of Nextpower steel frames allows us to deliver high-performance modules tailored to the evolving U.S. market,” said Andrea Bodenhagen, global marketing director at Thornova Solar. “By incorporating U.S.-made steel frames, we strengthen supply chain resilience while helping our customers maximize domestic content and improve project economics.”
Under the agreement, Thornova Solar will deploy Nextpower’s steel frames across selected module series for utility-scale and C&I applications, aligned with the ramp-up of its U.S. manufacturing capacity.
“Steel frames address some of the most important mechanical challenges facing today’s solar projects, from module deflection and glass breakage risk to uplift forces in demanding environments,” said Jenya Meydbray, vice president and general manager at Nextpower. “By incorporating Nextpower’s U.S.-manufactured frame technology, Thornova can offer modules designed to meet the structural demands of solar projects across the United States.”
Kelly Pickerel has more than 15 years of experience reporting on the U.S. solar industry and is currently editor in chief of Solar Power World. Email Kelly.
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By: Luis Reyes
Published: Jun 3, at 4:30pm ET
Solar power has always had a real estate problem. Every panel has to sit somewhere, and the cheapest, sunniest places to put one (open fields, hillsides, the occasional stretch of desert) are usually the places people would rather not bury under glass and aluminum. So the smart play lately has been to stop hunting for new land and start using surfaces that are already spoken for. We’ve bolted panels onto rooftops, floated them on reservoirs, and even tried laying them straight into a road in France.
A Swiss startup called Sun-Ways just found one more of those surfaces, and it’s a strange one. The company has laid 48 solar panels in the gap between the two rails of an active train track, low enough that the trains roll right over the top of them. The pilot runs along a 100-meter (about 330-foot) section of Line 221 near the village of Buttes, in the canton of Neuchâtel, and it has been live since April 24, 2025. It is small on purpose, and it is being watched by rail operators on several continents, including in the United States, which happens to own more train track than any country on Earth.
The panels don’t touch the steel rails. They rest on the sleepers, the crossbeams that hold the track in place, filling the flat strip in the middle that normally does nothing but collect gravel. Each module is about a meter wide and rated at 380 watts, and there are 48 of them, for a total of roughly 18 kilowatts. Over a year that comes out to about 16,000 kilowatt-hours, which Switzerland’s public broadcaster, SWI swissinfo.ch, puts at the yearly draw of four to six households. Nobody is powering a city with this.
The clever part isn’t the wattage, it’s the installation. Sun-Ways worked with the Swiss track-maintenance firm Scheuchzer to build a machine that rolls along the line and drops the prefabricated panels into place. The company describes it as laying them “like carpet.” That same machine can pull them back up, and swissinfo reports it can lay or remove close to 1,000 square meters of panels in a few hours. Removability is the whole pitch. Track needs grinding, snow clearing, and the occasional full replacement, so panels glued permanently between the rails would be a maintenance disaster. Panels you can peel up in an afternoon are a different proposition.
Keeping them clean is handled by a cylindrical brush that can be fitted to the back of a train and sweep the surface as it passes. The system also carries sensors to flag faults, and glare is one of the specific things the pilot is studying, since the last thing any rail authority wants is a panel dazzling a driver at speed.
The idea came to Sun-Ways founder Joseph Scuderi back in 2020, while he was stuck waiting for a train near Lausanne and staring at the empty space running down the middle of the track. At the unveiling last April, with rain falling on his brand-new solar plant, Scuderi kept it modest: “We installed solar panels as we would on the roof of a house.”
The Buttes plant cost about CHF 585,000, or roughly $705,000, covering the research, prototypes, and construction, per swissinfo. For 16,000 kWh a year, that is a terrible deal, and everyone involved knows it. A pilot exists to answer questions, not to pay for itself.
The real argument lives at the scale of an entire network. Sun-Ways figures that Switzerland’s roughly 5,320 kilometers (about 3,300 miles) of rail, once you subtract the tunnels and the shadier stretches, could generate around a billion kilowatt-hours of solar power a year. That works out to roughly 2% of the country’s electricity, or the consumption of 300,000 homes. The company goes further and reckons half the rail lines on the planet could carry panels between the rails, though that one is Sun-Ways talking up its own technology rather than an independent finding. Rooftops are still the easy win for solar, whether it’s a warehouse roof or the plug-in panels a homeowner can hang off a balcony. The hard part is finding flat, empty, sun-facing space nobody is using, and a rail corridor is full of it.
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Switzerland’s Federal Office of Transport did not wave this through. Sun-Ways was turned down the first time it applied, in 2023, and only got the green light after independent engineers ran safety assessments on the prototypes. Even then, the regulator picked this exact line for a reason: trains through Buttes top out at 70 km/h (about 43 mph), which is slow as rail goes. And where Sun-Ways originally wanted a six-month trial, the FOT insisted on at least three years, so the panels would be watched through every season and the track underneath could be checked for wear. That is why the test is scheduled to run all the way to April 2028.
The skeptics aren’t only regulators. Martin Heinrich, a researcher at Germany’s Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems, likes the basic idea of putting panels on built-up land instead of out in nature, but he isn’t sold on the removable design. His view, given to swissinfo, is that a solar module should ideally go down once and stay untouched for 20 or 30 years, because every time you lift one you add cost and a chance of damaging it. The International Union of Railways has flagged a separate worry about fire risk along the lines, as Yale Environment 360 noted, which Sun-Ways answers by pointing to the built-in sensors meant to catch a panel before it misbehaves. None of these are dealbreakers yet. They are exactly the things three years of running trains over the panels is supposed to settle.
Switzerland is the test bed, but the interest is global, and Sun-Ways has been collecting partners. In February 2026 it signed a collaboration agreement with SNCF, the French national rail operator, which under the deal gets access to the Buttes performance data and is studying whether removable solar could work on parts of the French network, as pv magazine reported. The company is also working on projects in South Korea, Spain, and Romania, and swissinfo says it has held exploratory talks with potential partners in China and the United States. Japan’s transport ministry is watching as well.
That last one is the interesting part for American readers. The U.S. runs the largest freight rail network on the planet, almost 140,000 route miles of track, according to the Federal Railroad Administration, reaching every state but Hawaii. Most of it is privately owned, most of it cuts through open country, and the strip between the rails spends the overwhelming majority of its life doing nothing but facing the sky. Nobody here is laying panels yet, and “exploratory talks” is a long way from a signed contract. But if the math ever pencils out, the country with the most rail in the world also happens to have the most of this very specific kind of empty space.
Buttes is tiny, and that’s easy to lose track of. Eighteen kilowatts is a rounding error on a national grid, the panels cost far more than the electricity they make, and the experts who like the concept still argue about whether lifting modules on and off for track work will ever pay off. None of that is what a three-year pilot is for. The point isn’t the 100 meters in Buttes. It’s the 140,000 miles of American track, the 3,300 miles of Swiss track, and all the rail everywhere else that currently grows nothing but weeds down the middle. If a train can roll over a solar panel without the driver noticing it’s there, that empty stripe stops being wasted space. And that’s a far bigger number than 18 kilowatts.
Agree or laugh out loud?
Luis Reyes · May 15, 2026
Olivia Richman · May 11, 2026
Luis Reyes · Jun 1, 2026
Olivia Richman · May 18, 2026
Olivia Richman · May 16, 2026
Olivia Richman · May 10, 2026
Luis Reyes · Jun 3, 2026
Luis Reyes · Jun 3, 2026
Luis Reyes · Jun 3, 2026
Luis Reyes · Jun 3, 2026
Olivia Richman · Jun 3, 2026
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Wind and solar farms keep the lights on as long as the weather cooperates. When calm skies and still air settle in for days, though, the result is a wind and solar shortfall that hits both sources at once.
A new study ran that scenario through China’s future power system, hour by hour, and found that these quiet shortfalls can last for weeks at a time.
When people worry about weather knocking out power, they tend to picture hurricanes or ice storms. The threat in this study is far less dramatic – days of thick cloud cover paired with wind so weak the turbines barely spin.
Researchers call these stretches high-impact weather events. The name is a little misleading because the events are not violent.
A long spell of low wind or gray sky might not even qualify as a storm, yet when conditions like these sit over a region for days, wind and solar output both sag at the same time. The grid feels it as a slow squeeze rather than a sudden hit.
That overlap lies at the heart of the problem. A cloudy stretch usually comes with calm air, so the two main clean sources tend to fade together instead of covering for each other.
Xiaofan Yang, a researcher at Beijing Normal University, led an effort to measure how deep that combined shortfall could get across China by 2040.
The team built a detailed model of China’s future grid, then fed it weather data sliced into hour-by-hour pieces across small patches of land roughly 3 miles (5 kilometers) wide. Most earlier work leaned on long-term averages, which smooth over the short stretches that actually strain a grid.
That choice turned out to be the whole point. Hourly data revealed shortfalls that daily averages had been quietly hiding.
Generation deficits came out 10–15% larger once the researchers zoomed in on the hour-to-hour swings, especially in the parched northwest.
The team paired this weather picture with maps of where electricity demand will sit. They ran the model under a range of futures – from aggressive emissions cuts to a high-emissions path where little changes.
The goal was not a single prediction but a sense of how the system bends under stress – and where it cracks first.
Under the high-emissions path, these quiet weather events could choke wind and solar generation for as long as 24 days in a single year – not spread across a decade, but annually.
During the worst stretches, wind output in some inland provinces fell by roughly 40% in the model. Solar dropped by more than a fifth across the northern-central grids.
China’s southwest and northwest – its richest territories for renewables – took the hardest and longest hits. These are the very regions the country is counting on most.
Separate research has found that low-wind spells are already lengthening in northern China and other mid-latitude regions as the planet warms.
Yang and his colleagues point to a real warning shot from 2022. A drought in southwestern China’s Sichuan Basin paired heat and dry air with stubborn cloud cover, knocking local renewable output down by more than a third for weeks.
The model treats that episode not as a fluke but as a preview.
One result cuts against the gloom. Running the same model under deep emissions cuts produced noticeably milder shortfalls – fewer quiet weather events, shorter ones, and a steadier flow of power overall.
The gap between the two futures is large. Annual generation losses from these events came to about 85 terawatt-hours – roughly the amount of electricity Spain uses in a year – under the high-emissions path. Under the low-emissions path, losses fell to roughly 63 terawatt-hours.
In plain terms, the choices made about carbon now shape how reliable a clean grid will be later. The weather problem and the emissions problem are the same problem.
Mitigation does not erase the risk, though. Even in the cleaner future, stubborn trouble spots in the northwest and central grids kept seeing long dry stretches for power.
Some regional shortfalls actually crept up by a few days. Geography is not easy to outrun.
Inner Mongolia and the northwest hold enormous wind and solar resources. They also sit far from the crowded coastal cities that consume most of the power.
The study’s central fix is to close that gap – move electricity across long distances to wherever the weather is still cooperating.
Resource-rich inland zones act as export hubs in the model, pushing electricity east and south when local supply runs short.
Built out and coordinated well, that web of long-distance lines could shift around 605 gigawatts between regions – enough to take the edge off the worst local shortfalls.
Other research points the same direction, finding that a mix of flexibility measures is what keeps a heavily renewable grid steady.
Long lines only help if the weather is patchy, though. When a dim, windless stretch blankets a wide enough area, there is no sunny neighbor to borrow from, and the whole strategy loses its footing. The fix works right up until everyone needs it at once.
The real contribution of this study lies in its resolution. The field already knew that climate change would shift wind and solar patterns.
What no one had pinned down for China, at this fine a scale, was how the timing and spread of these quiet weather spells line up against electricity demand. Daily averages had been undercounting the danger all along.
By zooming into hourly data across a grid three miles wide, the study captures shortfalls that broader models consistently miss.
For grid planners banking on renewables, that granularity could mean the difference between a system that bends and one that breaks.
The study is published in the journal Nature Communications.
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Europe Solar Panel Market Predicted to Hit US$ 102.0 Billion by 2033, Expanding at a Robust CAGR of 8% from EIN News
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Queensland Investment Corporation (QIC) has opened a formal call for proposals under the state government’s AU$200 million (US$143 million) North West Energy Fund in Australia.
The state-owned organisation is inviting energy developers, generators, electricity distributors, industrial customers, and local governments to bid for investment in generation and storage projects across the North West Minerals Province (NWMP).
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The fund will consider proposals ranging from new energy generation projects and gas and battery storage systems to broader support for the North West Power System.
Alongside advancing localised energy solutions, work will be undertaken to define the operational and infrastructure requirements to coordinate and de-risk future investments in the region, informing planning for the CopperString Western Link between Hughenden and Mount Isa.
The call for proposals follows a market sounding process in which QIC engaged with more than 20 organisations, including developers, suppliers, and local governments in and around Mount Isa, Cloncurry, Julia Creek and Richmond.
QIC has published investment guidelines for potential partners, setting out two key criteria: proposals must either deliver benefits from or reach commercial operations by 2030, and must demonstrate an improved cost of delivered power in the NWMP and surrounding regions.
QIC head of global infrastructure Ross Israel said the market sounding had provided key insights, enabling QIC to fast-track opportunities to connect private capital with priority projects.
“Supporting near-term investable projects that deliver reliable, affordable and sustainable energy will help unlock economic development opportunities in the North West,” Israel said.
“A critical piece of this work will be undertaking the work required to define the end-state system to optimise the opportunity set in the region.”
The North West Energy Fund was established in response to cost blowouts that reshaped Queensland’s CopperString transmission project.
The 1,100km high-voltage transmission line from Townsville to Mount Isa, which is intended to connect the NWMP to the National Electricity Market (NEM) for the first time, saw its total cost estimate rise from AU$1.8 billion when first proposed to more than AU$13.6 billion under the former Labour government.
The Crisafulli government scaled back the project, reverting the Eastern Link capacity from 500kV to the original 330kV, and announced the AU$200 million North West Energy Fund to support bespoke local solutions at Mount Isa, Cloncurry, Julia Creek and Richmond while the Western Link remains under assessment.
The Eastern Link from Townsville to Hughenden is targeted for completion by 2032, with early works progressing on the AU$225 million Flinders Substation.
The Western Link, which would extend the transmission connection from Hughenden to Mount Isa, has no confirmed construction commitment, leaving the North West Energy Fund as the primary near-term mechanism for improving energy reliability west of Hughenden before any grid interconnection.
To read the full article, please visit Energy-Storage.news.
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KINGSTON, N.Y. — Two state senators representing parts of Ulster County are on opposite sides of a state bill that allows for incentives to spur the building of floating solar panels on waterways.
The bill has earned the support of state Sen. Michelle Hinchey, D-Saugerties, who voted in favor of it this week, and opposition from Sen. Peter Oberacker, R-Schenevus, who voted against it.
According to the bill’s language, it “directs state energy research and development authority to establish a floating solar incentive and education program to provide information and resources including technical assistance, access to industry standards, and financing available through the authority or other public or private sector sources, to municipalities, developers, builders, design professionals, and potential owners for the construction of floating solar.”
In order for the bill to be enacted, it will need approval by the Democratically controlled Assembly and the signature of Gov. Kathy Hochul, also a Democrat.
The bill also adds a new section to the Public Authorities Law to “establish a Floating Solar Incentive and Education Program, defining ‘floating solar’ as solar photovoltaic systems mounted on floating structures on bodies of water.”
“The program will provide information, technical assistance, access to industry standards, and financing resources to municipalities, developers, and other stakeholders,” the legislation stated
Oberacker, who represents the 51st Senate District and is running for the 19th Congressional District seat, said in a social media video posting that floating solar stations should not be on waterways.
He said farmlands have been targeted for solar projects and “now, they want to put them on our waterways. And just in time for beach season.”
“You’re no longer safe from Albany’s radical politicians, even in the water,” Oberacker said. “Guys, they just passed a bill today (Tuesday), which would create a new incentive program for floating solar projects on lakes, ponds, reservoirs, and canals across New York State. Seriously?”
“Farms are for food. Our waterways sustain us,” Obertacker said. “Neither should become the next target for Albany’s latest energy experiment.”
Hinchey, who represents the 41st Senate District, said in a statement that efforts to fund solar projects have worked elsewhere.
“Floating solar has been working in red states like Florida and Ohio – and in countries around the world – because it helps communities conserve water, produce clean energy and reduce development pressure in other areas, and are built in limited capacities,” Hinchey said. “If my colleagues on the other side of the aisle would like to help us protect clean water, the environment, and affordability for ratepayers, I encourage them to call on the Trump administration to stop paying foreign fossil fuel companies to extract our resources and reinstate the offshore wind projects here in New York.”
Hinchey added that “Republicans continue to push the narrative that they care about our natural resources, and yet they would have us frack for gas and extract oil at the expense of our waterways, our environment, and our climate — all while driving up utility costs for New Yorkers.”
“The state has protected the top prime soils in farmland from solar development, and I carry bills that I’ve prioritized for years to extend those protections and direct ORES and NYSERDA to build on parking lots, warehouses, and brownfields for clean energy development. I encourage my colleagues, like Senator Oberacker, to cosponsor them if they actually support that direction,” Hinchey said.
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PETALING JAYA: Pekat Group Bhd
’s indirect wholly owned unit Pekat Solar Sdn Bhd has revised upwards the value of its engineering, procurement and construction contract for a large-scale solar project in Kulai, Johor to around RM186.54mil from RM85.68mil previously.
In a filing with Bursa Malaysia yesterday, Pekat Group said the revision follows supplemental agreements signed with the main contractor on May 29, 2026.
The agreements expanded the capacity of the large-scale solar photovoltaic (PV) energy generating facility to 135 megawatt AC (MWac) from 63 MWac under the contract announced on Oct 2, 2025, said the solar PV supplier.
Its profit after tax and minority interests rose 3.1% to RM12.43mil in the first quarter ended March 31, 2026, from RM12.06mil a year earlier, supported by higher revenue contribution across the group’s core business segments. — Agencies
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ColoradoBiz Staff //June 3, 2026//
Photo courtesy of US Solar.
US Solar energizes six community solar projects in Aurora
Photo courtesy of US Solar.
ColoradoBiz Staff //June 3, 2026//
US Solar and state and local officials marked the completion and energization of six community solar projects in Aurora on June 3, with the projects expected to provide energy savings to thousands of Colorado households.
The Lowry Community Solar Projects, developed by US Solar, are located within the buffer area surrounding the Lowry Landfill Superfund site. The six solar gardens have a combined capacity of 40 megawatts DC, or 30 megawatts AC, and are expected to generate enough electricity to power more than 8,000 homes annually.
Approximately 5,000 income-qualified Colorado households will receive donated community solar subscriptions through the projects. According to US Solar, participating households are expected to save about $750 per year on electricity costs.
“The Lowry Community Solar Projects make it easier and more affordable for Coloradans to access solar energy production,” Gov. Jared Polis said. “Community solar — one of the least expensive energy sources — is helping Coloradans save money on energy bills and build out clean energy resources that protect clean air and provide capacity as our economy and energy needs grow.”
Community solar programs allow residents and businesses to receive credits on their electric bills from a shared solar project without installing solar panels on their own properties.
US Solar President Reed Richerson said the projects are designed to deliver savings to households while expanding renewable energy resources.
“For thousands of households, saving hundreds of dollars a year on electricity can make a real difference when it comes to covering groceries, rent and other essentials,” Richerson said.
US Solar partnered with Energy Outreach Colorado to connect eligible households with community solar subscriptions. The nonprofit assists Coloradans with energy affordability programs and resources.
In addition to subscriber savings, US Solar announced a $500,000 donation to Bridge House, a nonprofit that operates the Ready to Work program for adults experiencing homelessness. The funding will support the organization’s services and help establish a clean energy workforce development program.
According to US Solar, the six projects include 68,472 solar modules across 216 acres. The sites have also been seeded with native pollinator habitat to support bees, butterflies and birds.
US Solar said the projects are expected to generate about $150,000 in local tax revenue annually. The company also plans additional community solar and energy storage projects in Colorado.
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A Texas global energy company’s plans to build nearly 30 acres of solar panels in Mayfield on the mountainside above Business Route 6 are unrelated to the data center industry, Mayor Al Chelik said.
Plans by Solar Star Mayfield 1 LLC — a limited liability company operating under Houston-based TotalEnergies — for a 28-acre solar farm have stirred fears among residents about whether they would fuel power-hungry data centers. The company’s representatives will testify before borough council during a public hearing June 10 at 6 p.m. in the Mayfield Borough Municipal Building, 739 Penn Ave., according to public notices published May 27 and May 29 in The Times-Tribune. The solar farm would be in the 600 block of Business Route 6 on the west side of the road.
While public hearings often culminate with a decision to approve or deny a project, Chelik said next week’s hearing is intended to be informative. Mayfield principally permits solar farms in the heavy commercial area surrounding the Business Route 6 corridor, which means they do not need special approvals like conditional use designations often used to regulate data centers.
Property owners have the right to use their property how they feel as long as it complies with the law, and Solar Star Mayfield has met the borough’s requirements, Chelik said, pointing to their standards on noise, glare and decommissioning.
“You may live on one side of town and say … ‘We’d rather see trees,’ but that’s not their decision,” Chelik said. “They have no right to be telling somebody how to use their property if they’re using it legally.”
Council will vote during the meeting next week to consider the borough planning commission’s recommendation on Solar Star Mayfield’s land development application, Council President Diana Campbell said in a text. The planning commission will meet Wednesday to review the plans in order to make its recommendation.
Solar Star Mayfield, 1201 Louisiana St., Suite 1800, Houston, Texas, filed its zoning permit application for “installation of ground-mounted photovoltaic solar panel arrays and associated accessories including access roads, security fencing, and concrete pads for electrical inverter equipment” with an accompanying site plan signed March 9. The Houston address corresponds with TotalEnergies, which describes itself online as a global integrated energy company that produces and markets energies in the oil and biofuels, natural gas, biogas, low-carbon hydrogen, renewables and electricity markets.
The project, which uses the address 603 Scranton Carbondale Highway, will not require any public water or sanitary sewer service, with employees anticipated to make two to three site trips per month for maintenance, according to the plans and application. The site plan depicts a vertical stretch of solar panels extending along much of the property’s northeast border, with additional panels throughout the center of the site.
Solar Star Mayfield would be leasing the land from Mayfield Realty Group LLC, according to the public notices. Mayfield Realty Group, 513 Grandview St., Clarks Summit, acquired the land seven years ago for $600,000, according to a property transaction recorded March 1, 2019. The realty group and Solar Star then signed a memorandum to lease the property Dec. 20, 2021, according to a copy of the document filed with the county June 15, 2022.
Chelik said the developer first contacted the borough in 2024 expressing interest in building a solar farm. Mayfield immediately reached out to the Lackawanna County Regional Planning Commission for sample ordinances as they assembled their own, he said.
“You just can’t put an ordinance up that makes it so restrictive that you can’t put anything there,” Chelik said.
Municipalities in Pennsylvania must allow for every type of lawful land use somewhere within their borders, from landfills to data centers. Failing to provide for every use exposes a local government to legal challenges over exclusionary zoning.
Mayfield Borough Council adopted standards regulating the construction, operation and decommissioning of large-scale solar electric energy facilities in August 2024, later amending those standards in October 2024 to reduce the minimum setback requirements from 150 feet to 50 feet. The borough reduced the setback requirements out of concern it could be challenged in court and ruled overly restrictive, Chelik said. The heavy commercial zoning district only requires 10-foot setbacks property lines, so solar farms still need an additional 40 feet, he said.The borough’s land-use legislation designated large-scale solar electric facilities as principal permitted uses in its heavy commercial zoning district, which encompasses the Business Route 6 corridor and Plank Road north of Chestnut Street.
While principal permitted uses do not require public hearings, Mayfield’s ordinance mandates that, if the borough determines a solar farm zoning application is complete, it will have 60 days to schedule a public hearing before council where the applicant will present the project and answer questions, according to the ordinance. The public will also have the opportunity to ask questions and comment. Following the hearing, council will have 45 days to issue a written decision approving or denying the application.
With commentary circulating on social media about the proposal, Chelik emphasized it is not related to data centers. There are no data centers proposed in Mayfield, he said.
“If you don’t get the data centers, if you’re successful, then this energy is going into the grid, and it’s cheaper to produce than what PPL is producing right now, so there should be a savings,” he said. “Secondly, if the data centers go in, you’re going to need a hell of a lot more energy than we have right now, so a solar farm would help mitigate some of the increases that people are going to feel.”
Copyright 2026 Scranton Times-Tribune. 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.
NEW DELHI: Solar power development has advanced at an unprecedented pace in Gujarat and Tamil Nadu; however, waste management has not kept up. A significant volume of waste generated in these states is being transported to the Delhi-NCR region, which is already burdened with multiple types of waste affecting air and water quality.
A joint report by the Chintan Environmental Research and Action Group and the World Resources Institute reveals that informal waste aggregators are dumping solar waste, including end-of-life solar panels, photovoltaic cells, lithium-ion batteries, and other hazardous electronic waste, into Delhi-NCR. This region is already burdened with excessive waste, contaminating groundwater, other water resources, and air quality.
In informal discussions with several waste aggregators in two sates, validated by non-profits, researchers, start-ups, and formal recyclers in Gujarat and Tamil Nadu, the report indicated that there is no reliable quantitative data or traceability mechanism available to determine the proportion of this material that is ultimately processed through informal recycling operations in Delhi-NCR and other northern regions of India.
In Tamil Nadu, the modus operandi involves formal recyclers passing on non-profitable scraps, such as aluminum frames and photovoltaic cells, along with other hazardous materials to Delhi-NCR. There is around Delhi-NCR has around 5,000 e-waste processing units that employ more than 50,000 people.
Due to a lack of formal recycling capacity and technical knowledge, much of the solar waste ends up in landfills in Delhi-NCR.
The report, “More Watts Less Waste,” states that informal recyclers rely on rudimentary dismantling and scrap-recovery techniques. While aluminium frames and external copper wiring or junction boxes are manually removed and sold as scrap, the remaining components of the modules, such as glass, polymer encapsulant, silicon cells, and embedded metals, largely go unrecovered. Often, the panels are crushed or broken, resulting in a mix of glass, polymer, and silicon fragments, which is disposed of as general waste or sent to landfills.
The study highlights a critical gap in India’s clean energy transition. While the country is rapidly expanding its renewable energy and electric mobility sectors, systems for managing solar panel and lithium-ion battery waste remain underdeveloped.
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The report warns that this creates new environmental and public health concerns for Delhi, which is already dealing with legacy waste. Improper handling of solar panels can release hazardous substances into the environment, exposing workers and nearby communities to health risks.
As of now, India has generated an estimated 146 kilotonnes of solar PV waste by the end of 2024. By 2047, cumulative solar waste could reach 11,221 kilotonnes, according to the report.
The study also raises concerns about the next wave of clean energy waste: lithium-ion batteries. Batteries from consumer electronics are already being processed through informal dismantling channels, while India’s rapidly expanding electric vehicle market is expected to generate large volumes of end-of-life batteries in the coming years. These batteries contain valuable materials but also present risks of fire, explosion, and chemical exposure if handled improperly.
The report calls for specific Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) targets for photovoltaic systems, dedicated recycling infrastructure, financial mechanisms to manage orphan waste, and greater integration of informal workers into formal collection systems. It also urges policymakers to begin planning now for the forthcoming wave of end-of-life electric vehicle batteries.
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The following transcript was generated using automated transcription software for the accessibility and convenience of our audience. While we strive for accuracy, the automated process may introduce errors, omissions, or misinterpretations. This transcript is intended as a helpful companion to the original audio and should not be considered a verbatim record. For the most accurate representation, please refer to the audio recording.
Michael Dunne: Sometimes smaller is better than bigger, and simpler is better than complicated. Right now, that just might be the case for solar power. Yes, large rooftop solar installations can deliver a good deal of electricity, and more and more these arrays are delivering enough juice to power a home and feed electricity back to the grid. But they’re expensive, and they’re a complicated system. Today on the show, you’ll hear about a simpler and cheaper solution to generate some power from the sun. It’s called balcony solar, and it’s already very popular in Europe and parts of Asia. Now, it’s not perfect. It generates a modest amount of electricity, and there are some safety concerns. But you’ll hear from a nonprofit that wants to expand it and an Oregon legislator who’s trying to update regulations to make it work in our state. Cora Stryker is the co-founder of Bright Saver. Cora, thanks so much for coming on and talking to us.
Cora Stryker: Thanks so much for having me.
Dunne: Let’s start off with this. Tell our listeners what Bright Saver is.
Stryker: We are a nonprofit. We started a year and a half ago with this vision of bringing to the United States what we’re seeing in Germany. In Germany, you can go to IKEA, buy a balcony solar unit, bring it home, plug it in, and you’re producing clean energy and reducing your electricity bills immediately. We don’t have that here, almost at all. We’re just starting to see an uptick, and so we started with this mission of getting affordable solar energy into everyone’s hands, including renters. We are removing the barriers that make that difficult right now, and I’m happy to say we’re well on our way.
Dunne: Talk about balcony solar. Is it really that easy? I mean, you just hang it up from a balcony or other type of platform and plug it in. How does it work in Germany, and are there regulatory or electrical impediments to balcony solar here in the states?
Stryker: In Germany it’s quite easy. It’s been around for about 10 years. There are 4 million of them in use right now, no major safety incidents, and the technology has really evolved with the demand. I was actually on a call very early this morning with a fellow in Pakistan who was talking about how they have their own DIY solar movement. It’s different there because they have a different electrical system. Germany also has a different electrical system. What we’re going for is something as easy as it is in Germany, where you just buy it at IKEA or even a grocery store. It’s so ubiquitous, it’s everywhere. You pay a few hundred dollars, bring it home and plug it in. It’s really that easy. And by the way, it’s called balcony solar because of these images of German apartment buildings where every single balcony has one. But you don’t have to put it on a balcony. A lot of people put them in their backyards. It’s really anywhere you can get clear access to the sun.
Dunne: It sounds like it’s tailor-made for renters or apartment buildings, places that may not have access to rooftop solar. Is that right?
Stryker: Exactly. It’s incredibly empowering for renters. I was chatting with a woman who lives in New York City a couple of weeks ago, and she said to me: I compost, I ride my bike to work, I really care about climate, I’m doing everything I possibly can, but I live in an apartment and I can’t get solar. There’s a huge pent-up desire among those of us who care about climate, but also among those who are really struggling to pay energy bills. That’s a huge group of Americans who simply have no tools in the toolbox. This is an option for reducing your electricity bills and greenhouse gas emissions at the same time, even if you don’t own your home.
Dunne: Can you give us an idea of what a basic kit can power? Maybe analogous to an air conditioning unit or something like that?
Stryker: It powers essentially one smallish appliance. It depends on the wattage. The very smallest systems are under 400 watts. Those systems will power your refrigerator or maybe a small window air conditioner. We do have systems all the way up to 1,200 watts, and those systems can power quite a bit more because you’re sending electricity into an outlet and into your home wiring. Anything you’re running at that moment, your TV, your router, your refrigerator, your air conditioner, all of that will draw on that energy first. The best data we have is from Germany, and there it’s about a 15 to 25% offset of energy costs. We expect that to be a little higher in the United States because we’re at a different latitude. But it really depends on the size of your system, whether it’s oriented properly, whether it’s obstructed and how large your apartment or house is. The bottom line is that it takes a meaningful chunk out of your electricity bills, though it will never cover the whole thing.
Dunne: Here in the states, are there regulatory hurdles that need to be cleared, or is it mostly that our electrical system is different and there are code issues?
Stryker: Two things. There’s a regulatory gray area, which has created a gray market. What I mean by that is there are no rules explicitly on the books for these little systems. The only rules on the books are intended for rooftop or even utility-scale solar farms, which are much larger, five to 100 times as large as these little units. That’s a regulatory hurdle involving interconnection rules. For these little systems, you shouldn’t have to have an interconnection agreement with your utility. That’s critically important, because if you have rooftop solar, you’ll almost always be sending some electricity back to the grid, and you should be paid for that. That’s where utility agreements come in. With these little systems, you’re almost never sending electricity back to the grid. They’re small. If you have a refrigerator, most of us do, you’re probably going to consume all the electricity you generate. So we do need to reform rules on the books that are truly outdated regulatory artifacts. The other piece is the certification of the systems themselves. We can’t just order a system from Munich and plug it into our outlets because they run on a different electrical system. There it’s 230 volts, here it’s 120. So we need adaptations to the technology itself. Those adaptations have already happened. We already have systems optimized for our house wiring and our electrical system, but we’re in a very immature market. There are only a few reputable manufacturers with systems here, and many more disreputable ones. That’s what I mean when I say the regulatory gray area has created a gray market. You can go on Amazon right now and buy one of these systems that is not certified for safety on our electrical system. That’s what the bill addresses. It does two things. The bill in Utah has passed. There was one in Oregon, which didn’t make it, though we do expect another one to be introduced next year. All these pieces of legislation do two things: They update the interconnection requirements for these little systems so you don’t have to jump through all the hoops required for a rooftop system, and they set safety standards. That is incredibly important. We need to make sure that when people do this, they do it safely.
Dunne: On a spectrum from simply plugging something into an outlet all the way up to needing an advanced electrician’s degree, how easy is it for a general consumer to hook up one of these systems and start generating solar electricity?
Stryker: It’s quite easy in this country today. You can buy one on Amazon, bring it home and plug it in. Now, we don’t think that’s terribly safe. Those tend to be uncertified systems. We’re at the beginning of this movement, and a year from now we’ll be talking about a totally different class of systems. Right now, it is very easy to plug in very low-wattage systems, and it is safe to do so. Systems under 360 watts have been evaluated as safe to plug into any outlet in the United States. Systems larger than that could pose safety hazards if installed by someone without an advanced degree.
Dunne: I’m wondering about portability. You talked about how this is great for renters, and renters tend to move from place to place. Is this a solution that’s portable? Can you just take it with you when you move?
Stryker: That’s where we’re headed. In Utah, the first place where this legislation passed, it’s called a Portable Solar Generation Device. It has different names in different bills: plug-in solar, balcony solar. The idea is that, just as in Germany and other countries like Lithuania and Spain, you’re a renter, you buy one, you own your own clean energy generation even if you don’t own your home, you move, you unplug it and you bring it to your next residence. We’re not there yet. The technology isn’t there yet. But we expect to be there within months to a couple of years, certainly not a decade. We think about two years, probably.
Dunne: Cora, my last question is just to give us a general update on solar. I keep hearing that it’s come down in price and that it’s become significantly more efficient than earlier generations. And I’m also hearing that it’s really growing as an alternative to carbon-based energy generation. Just give us an overall picture of where solar is right now.
Stryker: Solar is astonishingly cheap. I talked to a fellow from Pakistan today, and he was describing how in Pakistan there’s this DIY solar movement. You have farmers in rural areas who buy solar panels and hire an electrician. Electricians are much cheaper in Pakistan than they are here. They set up these little DIY solar systems, and it has nothing to do with climate consciousness. It is only about saving money. That’s true universally, and it makes sense. A photovoltaic module, if it’s cheap enough, is going to be a cheaper source of energy from free sunlight than what you get when someone goes across the world to dig up oil or fracks in this country. The price has come down at astonishing levels, even faster than people like me thought it would, and it just keeps going down. Battery storage, by the way, also keeps going down. That’s really what gives a lot of us hope when it comes to climate. Scientists are doing their jobs. They are building technology that is more efficient and cheaper, and they’re making it accessible to all of us, but only if our laws allow people to use it the way other countries do.
Dunne: She’s Cora Stryker, co-founder of Bright Saver. Cora, really appreciate this. Thanks so much for coming on and talking.
Stryker: It’s great to talk. Thanks so much.
Dunne: Now let’s hear from a Corvallis legislator who wants to pave the way for more balcony solar in our state. State Rep. Sarah Finger McDonald is a Democrat who represents Corvallis. Welcome back to the program.
Sarah Finger McDonald: Great, thanks for having me.
Dunne: As I understand it, you were one of the chief sponsors of House Bill 4080. Tell our listeners what that bill would do.
Finger McDonald: It would set up the regulatory structure to allow for plug-in or balcony solar. These are small solar arrays that can be hung off a balcony, mounted on a fence or placed in a yard to deliver power into your home through an electrical outlet. Just like their name, they plug into the wall to send those electrons into the system.
Dunne: How does that differ from rooftop solar? It sounds simpler.
Finger McDonald: It is simpler, because you can just plug it in. It’s a small enough system that it’s not likely to be sending a lot of power back into the grid. I have rooftop solar at my house, and on sunny days in the summer I send power back to the grid. With the plug-in solar on the small systems, it’s not likely that there will be much, if any, electricity going back out to the grid. What the bill would have done is remove the requirement to have an interconnection agreement with your utility. You would still need to notify your utility that you have the system, but there wouldn’t be an agreement covering power credits and all those other things that are part of the time and expense of putting in a rooftop solar system.
Dunne: It sounds like Europe and China have seen balcony solar become extremely popular. Do you believe it could work here in Oregon?
Finger McDonald: I do. I actually looked up the number this morning. Germany has 1.1 million of these systems that they know about. They didn’t actually start requiring people to report having them until after they’d already been in use for a while, so they know the actual number is higher. Of course, they have a different electrical system than we do. But I think here it’s an opportunity for renters and people who don’t have access to a roof. Even if you own your condo or apartment but don’t have a roof, it would be a way to generate a small amount of green energy. It’s also an opportunity to build resilience. In addition to plugging into the wall, these units can include a battery so you can bank some energy for later. It’s about enough power to run a window air conditioner, so it takes away some of the energy expense of cooling your home in our changing climate and relieves some of the pressure on the grid as more and more people are installing air conditioners.
Dunne: Other states have passed similar legislation. Is that correct?
Finger McDonald: Yes. Utah was first, and Maine and Virginia have also passed bills.
Dunne: The bill didn’t pass in the last session. Is it dead, or is there a second life for it?
Finger McDonald: There’s a lot of interest, judging by the emails I get. Oregonians who are being excluded from generating green energy are very interested in participating, and we absolutely feel like we can deal with the safety concerns that came up in the first session. I think we just didn’t have time in a short session to fully explain this new technology. If you look at something like portable generators, which we have electrical code for, this is a similar situation, allowing power to flow into your house from an appliance. I’m actually very confident we’ll be able to overcome the concerns as people learn more about the technology. We plan to bring it back, and I think we have a lot of support.
Dunne: Those safety concerns were a real issue. As I understand it, some who represent electrical contractors and electricians raised objections. What was their concern?
Finger McDonald: Their concern was largely, I think, because these are new and we haven’t written the electrical code specific to these units. At the time we were trying to pass the bill last session, the Underwriters Laboratories certification, the safety certification for these units, was still in process. Every individual piece of the units has UL certification, but the whole system did not yet. I think as that certification is now happening and as other states adopt this technology, some of those concerns will be less worrisome.
Dunne: State Rep. Sarah Finger McDonald, a Democrat who represents Corvallis. Always appreciate talking to you. Thanks so much for coming on and explaining this.
Finger McDonald: Thanks. I’m excited about this.
Dunne: That’s the show for today. All episodes of Oregon on the Record are available as a podcast at KLCC.org. Tomorrow on the show, you’ll hear about a new map in our community that shows where pesticides are used in large quantities and how close they are to your home. I’m Michael Dunne, host of Oregon on the Record. Thanks for listening.
A solar farm on the way to Cumberland County after officials approved an energy siting agreement with Silicon Ranch and Copeland LLC.
Cumberland County Mayor Allen Foster said the agreement covers 1,600 acres of private property where the solar facility will be constructed. Foster said the the solar farm was coming to the county regardless, but the siting agreement allowed the company to voluntarily put protections in writing that would not have existed.
“I’ll be honest, I’m not the biggest fan of solar energy either,” Foster said. “I think it’s government subsidies in the large part that makes it a financially viable transaction, and I’m not a huge fan of that. But I’m assuming people have those similar things. You know, people talk about losing farmland. I hate that too, but in the end, a private owner can sell their private property to who they want to.
Foster said the agreement also holds the company responsible for any damages caused to local roads during the process. Silicon Ranch said the new solar energy farm will help stabilize the energy grid in the Upper Cumberland, without causing too much distraction in the area. Foster also said the company agreed to fix up the roads once they completed the project.
“It was the right thing to do for the people of Cumberland County,” Foster said. “It was things that would protect the citizens to the greatest extent possible.”
The project is located on private land, and Foster said the owners have the right to use their property as they choose. Foster said the siting agreement adds requirements for setbacks and vegetative buffers to screen the facility from the view of surrounding neighbors.
“Without that agreement, they were still coming, but there were no guarantees that the public would be protected,” Foster said. “It covers damages to roads, decommissioning of the area, access to first responders, all kinds of things that are important to the people of Cumberland County.”
The developer plans to utilize an innovative land-use method that allows livestock to remain on the property. Foster said the solar panels are positioned high enough to allow animals, such as sheep, to graze underneath the equipment.
“The panels are up high enough and they come in and graze, and you can have a farm there with animals right with the solar panels,” Foster said.
While the project will contribute energy to the power grid, Foster said he believes other technologies may be better suited for long-term regional needs. Foster said there is a significant demand for power in the Upper Cumberland area that must be addressed.
“My personal opinion is the small nuclear is going to be the solution that we’re going to need for energy long-term, but in the meantime, I suppose every little bit helps,” Foster said. “I know we’re in a definite need in the Upper Cumberland area for power.”
Foster said he understands the concerns citizens have about solar farms in rural areas, and agrees with most of them. Foster said the solar farms are still less invasive than facilities like AI data centers. While construction may cause a disturbance, Foster said once they are up, the panels will quietly absorb the sun’s rays and provide power.
“I think from what I’ve heard in other areas, once it’s up, people don’t really notice it, especially if you’ve got the protections from the vegetative buffer around it,” Foster said. “In a lot of ways it’s better than other industries in that it’s not going to be making a lot of noise or anything like that.”
Construction on the solar farm is expected to begin soon. Foster said the company estimated the building process will take around 18 months to complete.
“They didn’t even have to approach us about doing a siting agreement, but they chose to do that,” Foster said. “And it does give the people of Cumberland County the most protections that we can get out of it. So it was overall it was something that was necessary and needed.”
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India has extended countervailing duties on solar glass imports from Malaysia for another five years, retaining levies of 9.71 percent to 10.14 percent to protect the domestic solar manufacturing industry from subsidised imports.
June 03, 2026. By Mrinmoy Dey
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Applause broke out during a Fayette Township Planning Commission meeting in Hillsdale County Monday night after the board voted 4-0 to deny Ranger Power’s proposed 140-megawatt solar farm.
The company faced similar opposition two weeks prior. Following a canceled Wexford Joint Planning Commission meeting, more than 90 people surrounded Ranger Power’s director of development, Drew Vielbig, and Wexford planning officials, questioning the impact the company’s proposed 1,400-acre solar farm there would have on the environment and property values.
Those scenes highlight the dilemma renewable energy companies face in Michigan: State law allows them to bypass local governments and get state approval for projects, but still some have struggled to gain a foothold in Michigan amid local opposition.
Michigan has at least 64 large-scale solar projects and 42 wind turbine projects operational around the state, according to industry tracking firm the Clean Grid Alliance. Twenty-five of those projects have launched since 2023, when Michigan passed a law requiring utilities to get 100% of their power from clean sources by 2040.
But in many communities, renewable developers have struggled to get off the ground in the face of strong opposition from local boards and their constituents.
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In 2022, for example, Liberty Power submitted applications to Fremont and Speaker townships to develop 50 wind turbines that would utilize more than 26,000 acres across Sanilac County. The company told state regulators the townships “adopted ordinance amendments, established restrictive overlay districts and otherwise impeded progress toward local siting approvals.” In April, a planning commission in Midland County nixed a 1,200-acre DTE Energy solar project, the township supervisor saying the proposal is “tearing people apart.”
Currently, the Michigan Public Service Commission has 10 active cases for solar and wind projects across the state — three started by Ranger Power — that were either rejected at the local level or faced local opposition.
“Look at all your Pure Michigan ads. It talks about going Up North, enjoying the lakes and the country,” said Mathew Beattie, supervisor for Boon Township in Wexford County. “They’re not going to say, ‘Hey, come up and see our solar farm.’”
Veilbig, of Ranger Power, said his company prides itself on “taking a community-first approach toward project development.
“This allows us to design our projects in a way that takes the community’s feedback into account,” he wrote in an email to Bridge Michigan.
In 2023, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer signed an 11-bill package that, in addition to requiring Michigan utilities to use 100% clean energy by 2040, limited local governments’ ability to reject renewable energy proposals by giving the Michigan Public Service Commission authority to overturn local decisions.
Still, local governments may file to intervene in the state permitting process, and a requirement for bypassing local zoning is a detailed history of local outreach.
One way developers get involved with communities is through grants to community foundations. Ranger Power, for example, has invested more than $500,000 in school programs in the state, including:
However, that has not always swayed the community’s feelings toward development. The Hillsdale County Community Foundation used to receive more than $10,000 from Ranger Power but stopped accepting the funds because of ongoing local opposition.
“As our current charitable relationship with Power Rangers is no longer seen as community support, we have made the decision to take a step back,” foundation Trustee Mike Smith said during Fayette Township’s Planning Commission meeting on May 7.
Public Service Commission spokesperson Matt Helms said in an email to Bridge the commission believes the state is still on track to meet its clean energy goal.
Michigan had about 8,300 megawatts of renewable energy on the grid at the end of 2025, and the state will hit its goal of 17,800 megawatts by 2030. The state’s two largest utilities, Consumers Energy and DTE Energy, must soon file plans with the commission detailing how they’ll provide power to their customers over the next 20 years.
Locals aren’t the only ones pushing back. In May, Michigan House Republicans passed House Bills 5710 and 5711, which aim to roll back the state’s clean energy requirements. Leaders in the Democrat-controlled state Senate said the bills are dead on arrival in that chamber.
“I do not see this as green energy,” said state Sen. Michele Hoitenga, R-Manton, after the canceled meeting in Wexford County. “I do not see removing the green grass, green fields and green trees to put black plastic solar panels as green energy. I just don’t see it.”
Michigan State University bioenergy educator Charles Gould said there are two reasons projects aren’t always welcomed in some communities.
“The first one is, yes, people don’t realize that you can grow crops in solar projects, but the second one is that solar developers haven’t helped themselves,” he said. “They don’t lead with agriculture, they lead with megawatts. There has to be an education of the general public, but there also needs to be an education of solar developers.”
Many residents at township meetings cite concerns over the impact projects will have on the environment. Residents in Wexford County, for example, raised concerns that broken solar panels could leach chemicals into the ground.
Both Gould and Ranger Power dismissed that concern.
Gould said a more sustainable plan should be created to incorporate farming into solar farms.
“I think as a state, we’re looking at this all wrong,” he said. “We need a whole paradigm shift. Growing crops and grazing livestock under solar is not a new thing … Instead of focusing on megawatt production, let’s put the farmer first.”
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June 3, 2026
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With cybersecurity and energy security concerns increasingly shaping renewable energy policy worldwide, India faces a growing debate over its dependence on imported solar inverters, particularly those sourced from China.
According to the latest report by JMK Research & Analytics, more than 27.5 GW of inverter shipments were recorded in India during the first quarter of 2026 from 19 suppliers of both central and string inverters. In the central inverter segment, Chinese manufacturers accounted for a dominant share, with Sungrow, Sineng Electric, and Hopewind together contributing nearly 85.5% of total shipments. In the string inverter segment, Sungrow, Sineng Electric, and TBEA collectively held around 45.7% of the market.
While growing cybersecurity concerns have prompted the EU to consider restrictions on funding for PV projects using inverters supplied by high-risk vendors like China, experts say India may need a more calibrated approach—one that strengthens security oversight without disrupting solar deployment.
Cybersecurity risks to the national grid
Sonam Chandwani, Managing Partner at KS Legal & Associates, says the primary concern surrounding imported Chinese inverters extends beyond commercial dependence to cybersecurity and strategic vulnerability.
“Modern inverters are intelligent digital systems connected to the grid and capable of remote communication. This raises concerns regarding data access, grid security and excessive dependence on foreign controlled technology in critical infrastructure,” she said.
According to Santosh Jinugu, Partner, Deloitte India, the growing reliance on imported PV inverters in India’s solar farms poses a significant cybersecurity risk to the national grid. “These inverters are deeply connected to OT, IT and enterprise systems for monitoring and metering and are also linked to the grid through Load Dispatch Centres. This level of connectivity creates potential entry points for cyber threats,” Jinugu said.
Jinugu noted that there is a real risk that imported inverters may contain backdoors, such as embedded IoT components with radio or 4G/5G capabilities capable of communicating with external systems. Such modules can be extremely difficult to detect due to their size and packaging and could potentially be exploited to remotely disrupt power generation.
Teppo Hemiä, founder & CEO, Wirepas, said, “As energy systems become increasingly digital and interconnected, cybersecurity must be treated as a foundational requirement for grid resilience and operational continuity.”
“Potential vulnerabilities in connected energy infrastructure can arise from several areas, including insecure remote access mechanisms, weak authentication or credential management, unpatched firmware or software, unsecured communication interfaces, insufficient network segmentation, lack of visibility into connected devices and data flows and vulnerabilities introduced through third-party integrations across the supply chain,” he said, adding that in large-scale industrial and utility environments, cybersecurity must be addressed holistically across devices, connectivity, cloud systems and operational processes.
Existing regulations
India has progressively tightened quality and compliance requirements for solar inverters.
Megha Arora, Partner at CMS INDUSLAW, said inverter procurement for government-funded and subsidised solar projects in India is increasingly regulated through a combination of quality-control requirements, localisation preferences and cybersecurity mandates.
“Under the Solar Systems, Devices and Components Goods Order, 2025 issued by the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE), Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) certification is mandatory for all solar inverters supplied in India, including off-grid, grid-tied, and hybrid inverters. Manufacturers are required to comply with Indian Standards such as IS 16221 (Part 2):2015 and IS 16169:2019, with model-wise efficiency testing also mandated under applicable standards. Products manufactured at different facilities must undergo separate testing and mandatory marking requirements apply,” Arora said.
“In parallel, the Bureau of Energy Efficiency (BEE) introduced a Standards and Labeling Programme for grid-connected solar inverters.
“Further, in July 2025, the MNRE issued cybersecurity compliance requirements under the PM Surya Ghar: Muft Bijli Yojana mandating that inverter communication devices connect only to national servers managed by the government or designated agencies. The use of communication systems transmitting data to foreign servers has been discouraged on cybersecurity and energy-security grounds.”
While India has not introduced an ALMM-style domestic content mandate specifically for inverters, government procurement increasingly favours local manufacturing. “SECI tenders often require procurement from “Class-I local suppliers” under the Public Procurement (Preference to Make in India) Order, 2017, which generally requires at least 50% local content. In addition, bidders from countries sharing a land border with India remain subject to registration restrictions under Rule 144(xi) of the General Financial Rules,” says Arora.
Gaps remain
Government procurement frameworks already provide tools to impose technical standards, data localisation requirements, and trusted-vendor criteria without imposing an outright prohibition on Chinese-make inverters. Experts, however, highlight important gaps remain in the current regulatory framework.
According to Jinugu, while India’s current testing procedures under Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) and Compulsory Registration Scheme (CRS) evaluate safety, grid compatibility, and efficiency, these don’t adequately address cybersecurity risks.
“Although importers are required to submit Construction Data Forms and Critical Component Lists to disclose internal components, these mechanisms rely on self-reporting and can be circumvented if malicious components are intentionally omitted,” he said.
Jinugu proposed that the government should make sure that all OEMs and importers abide by IEC 62443-4-1, which focuses on secure product development lifecycle (the process), and IEC 62443-4-2 technical security requirements. He believes that strengthening these measures will be essential to safeguard India’s power infrastructure from evolving cyber threats.”
Is a European-style restriction feasible
Experts caution that India may not yet be in a position to adopt restrictions similar to those being considered in parts of Europe.
Chinese manufacturers dominate inverter shipments to India because of their technological maturity, large-scale manufacturing ecosystems, and competitive pricing.
Megha Arora highlights that India’s domestic inverter manufacturing ecosystem remains underdeveloped relative to the scale of the country’s rapidly growing solar market, particularly in advanced utility-scale inverter technology.
India’s cumulative installed solar capacity crossed approximately 150 GW by March 2026, with over 44 GW added during FY 2025–26 alone. This pace of deployment has created a substantial demand for solar inverters and related power-electronics equipment.
“Chinese manufacturers have dominated the Indian inverter market for several years due to their economies of scale, mature manufacturing ecosystems, and advanced power-electronics technology. This cost advantage is particularly important in India because utility-scale solar projects are awarded through highly competitive tariff-based bidding processes where reducing capital costs is critical,” said Arora. “The same commercial logic that enabled Chinese dominance in solar modules applies even more strongly in the inverter segment, where India’s domestic manufacturing capacity is considerably weaker.”
“Inverter manufacturing requires advanced electronics, semiconductor integration and strong research capability,” Sonam Chandwani added. “Chinese companies dominate because they have scale, pricing advantages, mature supply chains and proven technology. India has growing manufacturing potential but still depends heavily on imported components and technology.”
Chandwani said that domestic companies are improving, but replacing Chinese dominance immediately would be commercially difficult.
Phased approach favoured
Industry experts see the complete localization of inverter technology as a medium- to long-term objective rather than a near-term possibility. According to them, an immediate restriction on Chinese inverters could create supply-chain disruptions and increase project costs at a time when India is chasing ambitious renewable energy targets.
Chandwani argues that a phased regulatory framework would be more practical and legally sustainable than a sudden prohibition.
“India should avoid an abrupt blanket ban similar to the restrictions being considered in parts of Europe because the domestic ecosystem is not yet fully prepared to replace Chinese suppliers at scale,” she added. “However, India is justified in imposing stricter cybersecurity audits, trusted vendor requirements, phased localisation norms and restrictions for sensitive government projects.”
Rather than specific geopolitical measures or vendor restrictions, Hemiä believes the priority should be establishing strong cybersecurity and resilience requirements applicable across all critical infrastructure technologies and suppliers.
Building resilient, interoperable and secure infrastructure ecosystems is essential to supporting long-term operational continuity and energy security.
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India’s Ministry of Finance has extended the countervailing duty (CVD) on solar glass imports from Malaysia for another five years. The move follows a recommendation from the Directorate General of Trade Remedies (DGTR), which in its review found that removing the duty could lead to the continuation or recurrence of subsidized imports and material injury to the domestic manufacturers.
The duties apply to textured toughened (tempered) solar glass with a minimum of 90.5% light transmission, thickness not exceeding 4.2 mm (including tolerance of 0.2 mm), and at least one dimension greater than 1,500 mm.
Under the revised framework, imports from Malaysia-based Xinyi Solar (Malaysia) and SBH Kibing Solar Materials attract a countervailing duty of 9.71% of the CIF value. Imports from other Malaysian producers, and any country other than Malaysia will face a duty of 10.14%.
The CVD imposition has been welcomed by the domestic industry. “The imposition of the Countervailing Duty addresses the damage caused by dumped and subsidized imports. This measure will not only protect domestic manufacturers but also accelerate investments in expansion of local production, driving exponential growth across India’s solar glass industry,” said Borosil Renewables—a leading solar glass manufacturer in India.
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Researchers at the Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati (IIT-Guwahati) have developed a new perovskite semiconductor technology that could improve the performance and stability of both solar cells and next-generation memory devices. The innovation addresses some of the key challenges that have limited the commercial adoption of perovskite-based technologies.
The research team, led by Prof. Parameswar K Iyer from the Department of Chemistry and the Centre for Nanotechnology, developed a molecular interface-engineering approach using two specially designed donor-acceptor organic molecules.
These ultrathin layers, measuring just 10-15 nanometres, are inserted between the charge-transport layer and the perovskite layer to reduce defects and improve charge transport.
According to the researchers, the approach enables a smoother flow of electrical charges generated by sunlight, reducing energy losses due to surface defects and interfacial instability.
Using the new interface engineering technique, the team achieved a solar cell efficiency of 25.73%, allowing the device to convert nearly one-quarter of incoming sunlight into electricity.
The researchers also reported improved durability, with the solar cells retaining around 90% of their initial performance under ambient storage conditions and approximately 75% under continuous heat and light stress.
The team has since progressed further and reported efficiencies exceeding 26%. Work on improving performance continues under real-world operating conditions and to scale up production.
The researchers also demonstrated that the same perovskite material can be used in memristor devices, a type of non-volatile memory technology being explored for artificial intelligence and neuromorphic computing applications. The devices showed stable low-power switching, multistate memory capability and reliable endurance.
The study further found that the technology could support applications such as neuromorphic computing, secure computing systems and true random number generation for cryptographic applications.
The IIT Guwahati team is currently working with industry partners to develop large-area and flexible versions of the technology for commercial deployment.
Researchers believe the technology could find applications beyond terrestrial energy systems. Its lightweight and flexible nature may make it suitable for powering satellites and space missions, while its stability characteristics could support operation in harsh environments. The technology could also contribute to flexible electronics that combine energy generation and data storage in a single device.
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Chinese PV module maker JinkoSolar launched its new Tiger Neo 5.0 module series at the SNEC 2026 trade show in Shanghai, China.
The company said the product represents an upgrade from its earlier 670 W Tiger Neo 3.0 module. It delivers up to 700 W of output at the same module size as the previous generation, with module efficiency of 25.91% and power density of more than 259 W/m².
The panel uses a high-purity homogeneous silicon substrate, broad-spectrum light-trapping structure, full-area passivation and gap-free cell-array encapsulation to improve conversion efficiency and module-level output.
The company is positioning the module for utility-scale ground-mounted projects, commercial and industrial bifacial applications and residential monofacial systems. In comparison to Tiger Neo 3.0, Tiger Neo 5.0 can reportedly increase power generation by 2.1% in utility-scale ground-mounted projects, 1.9% in commercial and industrial bifacial scenarios and 0.9% in residential monofacial applications.
The module has a bifaciality of over 85%, a temperature coefficient of -0.26%/C, first-year degradation of no more than 1% and annual linear degradation of 0.35%, according to the company.
JinkoSolar also said the module displayed stronger performance under partial shading in third-party testing, with lower power losses than comparable products under light and moderate shading conditions.
No further technical details about the new product were revealed.
Alongside the Tiger Neo 5.0, JinkoSolar introduced a scenario-based module portfolio covering six application categories. The portfolio includes its Dust-Resistant module, which uses a three-dimensional anti-dust design and nano-coated glass to reduce operation and maintenance costs, and its AIDC module designed for data centers, with the company claiming more than 3% higher lifecycle power generation and an 88.6% reduction in system risk costs.
The portfolio also featured the company’s Safety Guardian module designed for high-reliability applications, with resistance to 55 mm hail, dual Class A fire certification and high mechanical load capacity and its Anti-Glare module with a reflectance of 7% that targets transport hubs and other sites where light pollution is a concern.
The portfolio is rounded out by the LiteTitan module, which weighs 7 kg/m² for load-restricted rooftops, and the Mount Tai module, which features a strengthened frame for harsh environments such as deserts and wastelands.
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Home – Economy – China turned the sun into an industrial weapon, and the U.S. and Europe are now racing to escape the trap they helped create
The solar panel on a roof may feel like a local answer to the electric bill, but the industrial machine behind it is anything but local. China now accounts for around 85% of solar supply chain production capacity, according to the International Energy Agency, and its grip is even tighter in photovoltaic wafers, where its share reaches 95%.
That means the race to clean energy is no longer just about who installs the most panels. It is also about who controls the factories, the silicon, the wafers, the cells, the machinery and the logistics that make solar power possible in the first place. Quietly, Beijing has turned sunlight into industrial power.
A solar panel begins long before it reaches a rooftop, a farm or a desert power plant. First comes polysilicon, then ingots, wafers, photovoltaic cells and finally the finished modules that most people recognize.
The International Energy Agency (IEA) has warned for years that China’s share across the main stages of solar panel manufacturing exceeds 80%. That includes polysilicon, ingots, wafers, cells and modules, which are the key links in the chain.
Why does that matter? Because a country can assemble solar panels at home and still depend on China for the most important parts inside them.
China’s lead did not happen overnight. Since 2011, the country has invested more than $50 billion in new solar PV supply capacity, roughly ten times more than Europe over the same period, according to the IEA.
That spending built huge factories, trained workers, specialized suppliers and a manufacturing system where almost every step sits close to the next, which means fewer bottlenecks and lower costs.
It also means competitors face a much harder job than opening one new plant. They have to rebuild an entire ecosystem, from industrial chemistry to cheap electricity and from wafer cutting to high-volume exports.
China’s solar boom has helped make panels cheaper around the world. The IEA says Chinese industrial policy and innovation helped drive solar PV cost declines of more than 80%, making solar one of the most affordable sources of electricity in many places.
That is good news for families watching the electric bill and for cities trying to survive the dog days of summer. More affordable solar can mean cleaner air, lower emissions and faster projects.
But there is a catch: many countries want solar power to reduce dependence on oil, gas and coal, yet they now depend heavily on China for the equipment that makes the transition work.
Wafers may sound like a technical detail, but they are one of the clearest signs of China’s advantage. These ultrathin slices of silicon become the base for solar cells, so without them the rest of the production line can slow down fast.
The IEA’s latest analysis says China holds 95% of global PV wafer capacity–not just a strong market position. It is a chokepoint.
This is where the green transition starts to look like a supply security problem. If trade disputes, tariffs, export restrictions or shipping disruptions hit this link, solar projects far from China could still feel the shock.
Europe and the United States are not ignoring the problem. The European Union’s Net-Zero Industry Act sets a goal for EU net-zero manufacturing capacity to meet at least 40% of annual deployment needs by 2030.
In the United States, the Department of Energy has pointed to new solar module assembly projects and factory announcements linked to domestic clean energy manufacturing incentives. Still, building module plants is only one piece of the puzzle.
At the end of the day, what governments are trying to do is simple to say and difficult to execute. They want cheaper clean energy without putting too much of the supply chain in one country’s hands.
Solar power is often sold as a climate solution, and for the most part, it is. The IEA says solar panels usually need only four to eight months of operation to offset the emissions from manufacturing, compared with an average lifetime of about 25 to 30 years.
The politics around solar are changing, however. Panels, batteries, minerals and grids are becoming the new strategic assets of the 21st century, much like oil and gas shaped the last one.
The difference is that this dependence is harder to see. It is hidden inside wafers, cells, factory equipment and supply contracts rather than pipelines or tankers.
The world needs more solar power, not less. The challenge is making sure the clean energy transition is also secure, competitive and resilient.
China understood early that the winner would not only be the country installing panels. It would be the country manufacturing the parts everyone else needs.
For now, Beijing has the lead. Europe and the United States are trying to close the gap, but the road back to industrial independence is long, expensive and full of pressure.
The official report was published on the International Energy Agency website.
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Independent testing laboratory RETC has released its 2026 PV Module Quality Index report, a document that contains the results of the company’s module reliability and performance testing, as well as in-depth discussions of factors in the modern solar industry that have led to the outcomes evident in the test results.
Major findings include a persistent problem of ultraviolet light-induced degradation (UVID) in solar modules, an increase in failures during tests for reliability under damp heat and thermal cycling conditions, and a significant reduction in the number of manufacturers whose modules qualify for high achievement in hail durability testing.
Each test is conducted on multiple modules in the same model line. Each model is known as a “bill of materials,” or BOM. In total, 11% of the BOMs tested for damp heat exhibited a failure condition (greater than 5% power loss), compared to just 6% the year before, while 8% failed UVID testing.
While 5% of BOMs exhibited failures in the thermal cycling test sequence (up from 2% in 2025), 92% met the threshold for high achievement. This could indicate that a component chosen by a single manufacturer is to blame for the failure.
Only 25% of BOMs were recognized as high achievers in hail durability testing, down from 70% the year before. Because this testing is optional, RETC did not define a failure condition, but noted that while most PV module designs can meet baseline ballistic impact standards recent catastrophic losses due to hailstorms suggest that s more robust standard is necessary.
Recognizing high achievers
In total, RETC recognized 19 solar module manufacturers for high achievement in at least one test, and 13 manufacturers as Overall Highest Achievers, signifying they met standards in a certain number of tests for both reliability and performance.
Manufacturers recognized as Overall Highest Achievers in the 2026 report are Imperial Star Solar, JA Solar, JinkoSolar, Longi Solar, Qcells, Runergy, SolarSpace, Thornova Solar, Trina Solar, VSUN Solar, TW Solar, Waaree and Yingli Solar.
For 2026, RETC recognized 19 solar module manufacturers for high achievement in at least one test, and 13 manufacturers as Overall Highest Achievers, signifying they met standards in a certain number of tests for reliability and performance.
Manufacturers recognized as Overall Highest Achievers in the 2026 report are Imperial Star Solar, JA Solar, JinkoSolar, Longi Solar, Qcells, Runergy, SolarSpace, Thornova Solar, Trina Solar, VSUN Solar, TW Solar, Waaree and Yingli Solar.
How RETC tests modules
RETC gleans much of the data it uses to evaluate manufacturers through its Thresher Test, a series of eight test sequences, with six sequences dedicated to module reliability and two for performance testing.
Thresher test sequences in the reliability discipline include:
Thresher test sequences in the performance discipline include:
In addition to the Thresher test sequences, RETC evaluates solar modules based on their performance on its hail durability test (HDT), as well as tests it conducts to certify products for meeting California Energy Commission (CEC) standards.
In total, each of the disciplines has seven tests in which products can be recognized for high achievement.
Levels of achievement
RETC recognizes manufacturers for their products’ scores on the testing regimen at the following four levels: Overall Highest Achiever, Reliability High Achiever, Performance High Achiever and Test Category High Achiever.
Overall Highest Achiever status is awarded if the manufacturer’s products earn high achiever recognition in both of the disciplines, and have their test samples witnessed and bills of materials verified by an independent third party.
Reliability High Achievers are manufacturers whose products exceed standards on at least 3 of the 7 tests in the reliability discipline (glass-on-backsheet models must exceed standards on the BUDT test and 3 additional tests). All of the above-listed companies qualified for this recognition in this year’s report.
Performance High Achievers are manufacturers whose products exceed standards on at least 3 of the 7 tests in the performance discipline. As before, all of the above companies qualified. Alps Solar was also recognized.
Test Category High Achiever status is awarded to manufacturers whose products exceed the high achiever standards on any single test. For 2026, the list includes Adani Solar, Auxin Solar, Illuminate Solar, Mission Solar, and Silfab Solar.
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UK-registered independent power producer ContourGlobal has established a solid presence in Chile.
The company’s northern solar-storage portfolio is now fully operational.
Officials recently cut the ribbon on the Victor Jara plant in Iquique (231MW solar PV plus 1.3GWh storage), which has a 15-year nighttime-only power-purchase agreement with trader Copec EMOAC.
Victor Jara joins the Quillagua asset (221 MW solar PV and 1.2 GWh storage) in Antofagasta.
James Lee Stancampiano, the firm’s general manager for South America, told BNamericas that the central zone of Chile, private and regulated auctions and wind energy were blinking on its opportunity radar.
BNamericas: ContourGlobal recently officially launched its Víctor Jara plant, which comprises a solar park and a long-duration energy storage system with a 6.5-hour injection capacity. For ContourGlobal, is long-duration storage the way forward?
Stancampiano: This project configuration was based on the specific requirements of our offtaker. [Such a decision] depends on requirements.
So, basically, we will see in the future; it’s not something that we can decide on right now.
What this project proved was that this [duration configuration] is technically possible.
BNamericas: Can you provide us with a little color on your plans in Chile?
Stancampiano: We’re looking mostly at the center of the country and in the south for our upcoming investments. We’re seeing a lot of requirements for final big consumption. We are looking to diversify our presence because we’re mainly based in the north.
BNamericas: Could you tell us who future offtakers may be? Demand is a big theme in Chile at the moment.
Stancampiano: There are around 35TWh of new [power purchase agreements] PPAs [expected] in the coming years. These are mainly discos [distribution company contracts] and for sure mining companies.
There are a lot of mining companies looking for energy for their expansion. They have contracts that are going to expire in the coming years, and they want to continue to contract renewable energy.
So, there are a few interesting opportunities that we are looking at.
BNamericas: So, you’re potentially interested in the regulated PPAs?
Stancampiano: We will look at that. As I said, there are mining companies, traders, generators. We’re always open to explore opportunities with different kinds of offtakers. So not just disco.
BNamericas: What about the data center segment? And are we talking about short, medium or long-term opportunities here?
Stancampiano: For sure it’s on our radar, but so far, Chile is not competitive if we look at other countries such as the US or Brazil. We expect that in the upcoming years, maybe three, five years, we can see a big data center consumption. But it’s not for tomorrow. We’re always monitoring this.
BNamericas: Any final words?
Stancampiano: Chile is one of our most important countries where we would like to invest in. So specifically in this period, we see it as a very attractive market.
As ContourGlobal, we will continue to invest in solar plus BESS. And we’re evaluating some wind investments.
(The original version of this content was written in English)
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BNamericas chats to James Lee Stancampiano, general manager for South America at independent power producer ContourGlobal.
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Group aims to stabilize revenue by operating new facility in vast western region
The desert on the outskirts of Zhongwei, left, will be home to a new data center. (Source photos by Nikkei and Reuters)
SHANGHAI/TOKYO — The Jinko group, the world's largest solar panel maker, will enter the data center business, supplying power directly from its plants to meet the growing demand from the spread of artificial intelligence.
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