Solar Now

Before this week began, First Solar (FSLR +0.90%) stock had declined about 1.3% since the start of 2026. This week, however, shares of the solar stock are heading sharply in the other direction. With an analyst providing a bullish outlook for First Solar stock, investors have found sufficient cause to click the buy button.
According to data provided by S&P Global Market Intelligence, shares of First Solar are up 17.7% from the end of trading last Friday through the close of yesterday's market session.
Image source: Getty Images.
Upgrading First Solar stock to buy from hold on Wednesday, GLJ Research analyst Gordon Johnson raised his price target 52% to $315 from $207.82. According to Thefly.com, the company has reduced its risk through the launch of its Series 6 CuRe Copper Replacement program at its Ohio manufacturing campus.
Based on First Solar's shares closing at $269.95 on Tuesday, Johnson's price target implies upside of 16.7%.
Instead of placing too much emphasis on one analyst's price target, potential solar stock investors would be better served to evaluate the company's financials. With the company growing both revenue and free cash flow over the past couple of years, First Solar is in sound financial health. And while the current lack of enthusiasm in Washington D.C. may be a headwind for First Solar in the near-term, this certainly isn't a factor that suggests the sun has set on the company's potential growth in the long term.
Scott Levine has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends First Solar. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
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After turning a cold shoulder to this solar stock for much of 2026, the market is warming back up to it.

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Connecticut passes solar energy bill  Environment America
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Solar panels are now installed at Byron City Hall, marking a major step toward sustainability.
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Electrica Signs €36M Solar and Storage Project in Bihor  The Romania Journal
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2026-05-30
Imagine strolling through a park where the sculptures not only captivate your eyes but also power your neighborhood with renewable energy. This is the vision of Santa Fe-based artist Michael Jantzen. His Public Eco-Art Proposals challenge the traditional role of monuments by incorporating solar and wind energy, turning them into functional art pieces.
Unlike standard utility structures hidden from view, Jantzen’s designs emphasize their energy-generating components. Solar panels and wind turbines are not just utilitarian but are integral to the aesthetic, portrayed as intriguing sculptural elements. This blend creates a landscape where form and function are inseparable.
Visualize walking under a pavilion whose innovative solar canopy quietly channels electricity back into urban circuits. Picture angular solar sculptures in a park, their tops rotating to track the sun. These aren’t passive installations; they’re covert energy stations offering an intersection of art and sustainability.
His designs cater to diverse environments. There are concepts for parks, open fields, coastal areas, and urban courtyards, each playing host to a unique energy structure. You might discover a chevron-shaped sculpture in a university courtyard or another piece seamlessly pairing cylindrical battery storage with solar panel artistry.
Jantzen’s proposals invite cities to rethink their public art investments. Imagine commissioning not only for aesthetic value but also for environmental contributions. These pieces stand to make clean technology accessible and stir dialogue among the millions who’d otherwise bypass energy discussions.
His vision extends beyond singular projects, aiming to populate cities with these eco-art structures worldwide. It’s about transforming community perceptions of energy consumption, making the transition to sustainability visible and worth caring about. Jantzen’s work suggests a future where clean energy structures can be landmarks—a fusion of the essential and the beautiful.
Source: yankodesign.com

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By Dan Thesman on Friday, May 29th, 2026 in Columbia Basin News Columbia Basin Top Stories

WALLA WALLA — Walla Walla Public Schools has been awarded a $601,756 state grant to install a new solar array system to help power its electric school bus fleet.
The funding, provided through the Washington State Department of Commerce Clean Energy Grant program, is partially funded by the state’s Climate Commitment Act.
The project features a solar photovoltaic array on the bus roof shelters at the Southeast Washington Transportation Cooperative. It is expected to generate about 134,627 kilowatt-hours of electricity annually, connecting directly to existing charging stations.
Fiscal Services Director Janette Jeffris said the system will cut utility costs to operate the district’s 18 electric buses by one-third, reducing operational expenses and preserving more funding for classroom learning.
Photo courtesy Walla Walla Public Schools
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A country once almost entirely dependent on hydropower is rapidly emerging as one of Southeast Europe’s most ambitious renewable energy markets
For decades, Albania’s energy story was largely written by its rivers. Hydropower supplied the overwhelming majority of the country’s electricity, making the energy system both remarkably green and highly vulnerable to changing weather conditions.
Today, a new chapter is unfolding.
Fresh data from Albania’s Institute of Statistics (INSTAT) show that photovoltaic power generation reached 254 GWh during the first quarter of 2026, a 44% increase compared with the same period last year. The figures highlight not only the rapid growth of solar energy but also a broader transformation that is beginning to reshape the country’s economic and energy landscape.
Just a few years ago, solar power played only a marginal role in Albania’s electricity mix. Since then, the sector has expanded at an extraordinary pace. The number of photovoltaic plants has risen from just 10 in 2020 to 53 in 2025, while installed capacity has surged from 21 MW to 631 MW.
More than €2 billion has been invested in renewable energy projects, helping create one of the fastest-growing solar markets in the Adria region.
The shift is significant for a country that has historically depended almost entirely on hydropower. While dams remain the backbone of Albania’s energy system, solar is increasingly providing diversification, reducing exposure to drought-related risks and strengthening long-term energy security

Industry observers see the development as part of a wider trend across Southeast Europe, where governments and investors are accelerating renewable energy projects in response to growing electricity demand, energy security concerns and EU climate objectives.
Albania is also preparing for the next stage of market development. Beginning on 1 January 2027, the country will replace its net metering framework with a net billing model, aligning its regulations more closely with European energy market standards. The new system is expected to encourage more efficient energy consumption, improve transparency and provide greater predictability for investors.
If current trends continue, the implications could extend far beyond the solar sector itself.
Industry projections suggest solar energy could cover around a quarter of Albania’s current electricity consumption by 2030. Combined with planned wind projects, renewable sources could eventually supply close to half of national electricity demand.
Such a shift would represent one of the most significant energy transitions currently underway in the region.
A decade ago, Albania’s renewable energy ambitions were largely associated with rivers and hydropower plants. Today, solar panels are becoming an increasingly visible part of the landscape — and potentially one of the defining economic stories of the decade.
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A major breakthrough in the field of solar energy and radiation monitoring technology has been made by the students and researchers of Chandigarh University have developed an affordable smart pyranometer system aimed at making solar radiation monitoring more accessible and cost-effective across sectors such as solar energy, precision agriculture, greenhouse automation, meteorology, astronomy, space science and environmental monitoring.
Titled ‘Dual-Photodiode Pyranometer System for Efficient Solar Measurement’, the innovation has been developed by Assistant Professor Kanishka Rawat (mentor) and students Bhuwan Dawar and Mariya Antu from the Department of Physics, Chandigarh University as a cheaper, more economical and efficient alternative to expensive conventional pyranometers that are currently used at solar testing stations, research centers or in renewable energy projects. This innovation has also secured publication of a patent marking a significant step towards expanding access to advanced solar measurement technology.
A pyranometer is a scientific instrument used to measure solar radiation, with applications ranging from solar energy generation and panel performance monitoring to precision agriculture, greenhouse climate control, weather forecasting and environmental studies, where real-time sunlight data supports efficient energy management, irrigation planning, crop monitoring and climate monitoring.

Dr Kanishka Rawat, mentor of the project and Assistant Professor at Department of Physics at Chandigarh University said, “Through this project, we are trying to address one of the biggest challenges associated with conventional pyranometers affordability. Advanced solar radiation monitoring systems used in research and industrial applications can cost several lakhs of rupees depending upon their usage across different sectors, making them inaccessible for educational laboratories, farmers and research projects. We have developed a prototype of dual photodiodes AI integrated pyranometer that seeks to overcome this limitation by integrating affordable electronic components with intelligent sensing capabilities while maintaining reliable solar irradiance measurement. This equipment is highly economical alternative to the expensive pyranometers that can potentially be built at an estimated cost of around Rs 5,000 to Rs 7,000 thereby significantly reducing the financial barrier associated with solar radiation monitoring technology.”
According to the patent details published by the Indian Patent Office, the device integrates dual photodiodes paired with an operational amplifier to sense and amplify light intensity. The processed signals are handled through an Arduino-based microcontroller and accurate value is displayed in real time on a LCD module. One of the key highlights of the innovation is its anomaly detection capability which helps identify errors caused by partial shading or improper sensor positioning thereby improving measurement reliability.
Dr Rawat added, “The dual photodiode used in the device is one of the major USPs of the innovation as it improves the accuracy and consistency of solar irradiance measurements while keeping the system economical. Unlike conventional bulky pyranometers that are often expensive to deploy on a large scale, the device designed by Chandigarh University students is cost-effective and energy-efficient alternative that could potentially be used in educational laboratories for research purposes, agricultural systems, small solar installations and local environmental monitoring stations.”
© Chandigarh UniversityBhuwan Dawar: One of the research students who developed this smart pyranometer system
In the solar energy sector, the patented system can play an important role in ensuring accurate solar power measurement and performance monitoring. Solar panel efficiency depends directly on the amount of sunlight reaching the panels, and pyranometers help operators determine whether lower power generation is due to weather conditions or technical faults in the system. Such monitoring is essential for detecting issues like dirty panels, inverter failures, wiring defects or shading problems. The affordable nature of the Chandigarh University innovation could make solar radiation monitoring more accessible to smaller renewable energy projects that may not be able to invest in high-end commercial equipment.
The device also carries significant potential for precision agriculture and smart greenhouse systems where sunlight directly influences crop growth, photosynthesis, evaporation rates and irrigation requirements. Real-time solar radiation monitoring can help automated farming systems adjust irrigation schedules, greenhouse heating and supplemental LED lighting based on actual sunlight conditions rather than assumptions or weather forecasts. Such intelligent monitoring can improve water efficiency, energy management and crop productivity.
Solar radiation data is widely used by researchers and meteorologists for weather analysis, climate studies, cloud movement to better understand environmental changes, temperature variations and the effects of pollution on sunlight penetration.
Source: Chandigarh University
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Every day, after traveling 93 million miles in a little over eight minutes, sunlight reaches Illinois. Most of that energy falls unnoticed – and underutilized – on our rooftops, parking lots and soybean fields.
But a proposal debated in Springfield this year envisioned a future in which some of that energy could be captured by a solar panel mounted on an apartment balcony, converted into electricity and used to help a person power their life more efficiently.
On its surface, Senate Bill 3104 was a relatively straightforward energy bill – one built on the idea that solar technology is becoming smaller, affordable and accessible enough to move beyond the sprawling solar farms and commercial rooftops.
The proposal gained some initial traction during the spring session. SB 3104 cleared the Senate Energy and Public Utilities Committee on March 12 but remained awaiting further amendments before receiving consideration by the full Senate, illustrating both the interest in the technology and the unresolved questions lawmakers sought to address before moving forward.
While sunlight travels fast, the transition of solar technology into our everyday lives has proven to be considerably slower, raising questions about safety, regulation and how modern emerging innovations fit into a power grid system designed decades ago.
Supporters of the idea, known as plug-in solar or balcony solar, could allow renters to participate alongside homeowners in clean energy generation. Critics say the technology raises important questions about safety, utility oversight and how emerging energy technologies themselves plug into the grid.
The speculation this session stretches far beyond the technicals of solar-panels.
Behind the bill is a broader effort championed by Vote Solar, a national nonprofit advocacy organization, whose work emphasizes the unspoken notion that the sun and its light are resources people can use to power their lives – no matter if what they call home is an apartment or a house.
Using light as a tool has indeed cast shadows on the implications of new technologies and our ability to legislate them fairly as fast as they are being invented.
According to legislative insiders, the accelerating pace of technological advancement itself – and its predictable cycles of disruption, innovation and eventual regulation – are perhaps the best reason for why lawmakers are struggling to keep pace, although some say legislative breakthroughs might occur when the legislature reconvenes next January, with the benefit of additional stakeholder negotiations, evolving safety standards and lessons learned from other states already experimenting with plug-in-solar technology.
Senate Bill 3104, sponsored by Sen. Rachel Ventura, D-Joliet, would have established a legal framework for plug-in solar systems in Illinois.
“For most people, electricity is something that simply arrives when they flip a switch,” said Dr. Mohammad Shahidehpour, a distinguished professor at the Illinois Institute of Technology and director of the university’s Robert W. Galvin Center for Electricity Innovation. But emerging technologies are beginning to change that relationship.
Traditionally, electricity has flowed in one direction – from centralized power plants through transmission and distribution networks to homes and businesses. Increasingly, however, consumers are becoming what Shahidehpour calls “prosumers,” people who both consume and produce electricity.
The concept is already familiar to many homeowners with rooftop solar systems. Plug-in solar seeks to extend similar opportunities to people who have traditionally been excluded from the benefits of having that relationship with the sun. Illinois has 1.6 million rental households.
“Plug-in solar removes some of the biggest barriers to participating in the clean energy transition by making it easier for more families to access solar and lower their energy bills,” said Kavi Chintam, Vote Solar’s Illinois campaign manager.
Unlike traditional rooftop solar systems, plug-in solar units are designed to connect through an existing electrical outlet and generate a modest amount of electricity for household use. Advocates say this simple system can help reduce energy costs.
“Unlike traditional rooftop systems, it doesn’t require homeownership or a suitable roof, which makes it a practical option for renters and working families,” Chintam said.
The issue of access has become a central argument for the bill’s allies. According to Vote Solar, roughly three out of four U.S. households cannot access traditional rooftop solar because they rent, live in multifamily housing, have shaded roofs or face other barriers to installation.
Ventura said that reality actually helped inspire the legislature when debating the measure.
“It was a way to offset your energy uses, especially with everything we had to consider with data centers and AI and increase of energy,” she said acknowledging state power-grid concerns.
The bill also sought to prevent homeowner associations or landlords from imposing unreasonable restrictions on certain small systems that might be affected.
Yet as negotiations progressed, lawmakers encountered technical questions that proved more complicated than merely plugging in a solar panel.
“What we learned is that there’s a lot more complexity to that,” Ventura said.
Much of that complexity apparently involved electrical safety. Lawmakers, utilities and industry stakeholders raised issues such as how they work during power outages, how specialized plugs should be designed and how emerging national safety standards should be incorporated into state law.
But for Ventura, the challenges surrounding plug-in solar were not unique. They were part of a broader pattern that has come to define modern policymaking.
“I think that we are in the tech age,” Ventura said. “I think that government is behind the 8-ball on this. We’re trying quickly to get caught up.”
During the current legislative session, lawmakers have grappled with artificial intelligence, data centers, broadband infrastructure, digital privacy and the growing energy demands of a rapidly changing economy. The challenge, Ventura said, is that innovation rarely pauses long enough for government to fully understand it.
“As soon as I learned something about AI, the next day something else had changed,” she said.
Ventura described the current political moment as something of a “Twilight Zone,” saying debates over technology, affordability and regulation have at times created unexpected areas of agreement among lawmakers who do not typically share common ground.
Ventura remains optimistic about the issue.
“This isn’t the end,” she said. “This is just the beginning.”
For Shahidehpour, the plug-in solar debate illustrates a broader transformation already underway within the energy sector.
At the Illinois Institute of Technology, Shahidehpour helps operate one of the nation’s leading microgrid programs. It enables portions of the campus to generate and manage their own electricity during outages. While plug-in solar systems are far smaller in scale, Shahidehpour sees them as part of the same long-term trend toward distributed energy generation.He said he also believes solar technologies are poised for a breakout.
“If you live in an apartment or if you have a balcony, you can basically buy this plug-in device,” he said. “You can generate electricity and offset your expenses.”
Shahidehpour cautioned that today’s systems are unlikely to generate enough electricity to significantly power a home or, in the future, to send meaningful amounts of power back to the grid. Instead, they are more likely to reduce a portion of a household’s energy consumption in the short term.
Shahidehpour believes the larger implications deserve continued attention by lawmakers, but champions the efforts already made to position Illinois alongside other solar states.
“The future is going to be very different for the utilities,” Shahidehpour said.
Asked about emerging concepts such as the tokenization of electricity, Shahidehpour said the idea should not be dismissed outright.
“I think it’s going to have a real world application,” he said. “You can find different ways to exchange energy and in order to do that, you may find a way to exchange money as well.”
While he cautioned that such systems remain largely theoretical today, Shahidehpour suggested future technologies could allow individuals to trade energy in ways that are difficult to imagine under the traditional utility model.
“You can generate electricity and give it to your neighbor instead of giving the money,” he said. “Or you can give somebody else energy instead of paying them.”
Whether those possibilities emerge in five years or fifty or not at all remains uncertain. But to many, the questions raised by plug-in solar are part of a broader conversation about how electricity generation, delivery and ownership may be evolving in Illinois and across the world.
Germany has emerged as a global leader in balcony solar adoption, with hundreds of thousands of systems installed by apartment residents and renters over the last decade. German lawmakers have also expanded legal protections for residents seeking to install the systems, providing a glimpse of how the technology could develop as costs decline and regulations mature in the United States.
“We’re hopeful lawmakers will revisit a thoughtful path forward for plug-in solar next session,” Chintam said.
Ventura and Shahidehpour share that view.
“What we have now, the rules and laws that Springfield is working with, are the ones that were generated for technology over a hundred years ago, when Edison was around,” Shahidehpour said. “We haven’t changed our rules since then.”

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Missouri regulators set deadline in Audrain County solar farm case  ABC17NEWS
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India has blocked China’s first WTO panel request challenging solar PLI incentives and import duties on technology products.
May 29, 2026. By EI News Network
India has blocked China’s first request at the World Trade Organization (WTO) to form a dispute settlement panel over New Delhi’s solar manufacturing incentives under the Production Linked Incentive (PLI) scheme and higher import duties on select technology products.
The dispute dates back to December 2025, when China challenged India’s solar PLI scheme, arguing that local value addition requirements attached to incentives unfairly favour domestic manufacturers and violate WTO trade rules.
China also objected to India’s import duties and additional cess imposed on products such as smartphones, semiconductors, integrated circuits, wafers and display manufacturing equipment, claiming the tariffs exceed India’s commitments under WTO agreements.
After consultations between the two countries failed to resolve the issue, China requested the WTO’s Dispute Settlement Body (DSB) to establish a panel to adjudicate the matter. However, India exercised its right to block the first request during the latest DSB meeting.
Under WTO rules, China can renew its request in the next DSB meeting, where the panel is likely to be constituted automatically unless there is a consensus against it.
India defended its measures, stating that the solar PLI scheme complies with WTO norms and is aimed at strengthening domestic renewable energy manufacturing capacity.
Indian representatives also pointed to China’s dominance in the global solar supply chain, noting that the country controls nearly 80 percent of the worldwide solar module value chain. India argued that efforts by countries to build local manufacturing ecosystems should not be discouraged through trade disputes.
The dispute highlights broader global tensions around clean energy manufacturing, semiconductor supply chains and strategic efforts by nations to reduce import dependence.

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Encapsulant Selection is a Strategic Reliability Decision: Avinash Hiranandani

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Spanish independent power producer (IPP) Zelestra has completed the sale of its Latin America platform to Colombian multi-energy holding company Promigas for approximately US$1.1 billion. 
The transaction, announced in December 2025, includes around 3.5GW of renewable energy assets and pipeline projects across Chile, Peru and Colombia. The portfolio comprises projects in operation, under construction and under development. Zelestra said it will now prioritise growth in the US, Germany, Italy and Spain.   
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The portfolio includes 1.4GW of contracted solar PV and BESS capacity, with 1GW either operational or under construction, including the 220MW/1GWh Aurora solar-plus-storage project in northern Chile. 
The remaining 2.1GW consists of 19 projects in advanced development across Chile, Peru and Colombia. 
“With the sale complete, we have taken a major step in our strategic transformation into a customer-centric, multi-technology leader focused on Europe and the US, where we see the greatest opportunity to help our clients achieve their energy goals, especially in the data centre segment where we see exponential growth in the coming years and where we continue to have a leadership position,” said Leo Moreno, Zelestra’s CEO. 
Despite the divestment, the company’s engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) division will continue to operate in Peru and Chile. The unit remains involved in the construction of the Babilonia solar PV project in Arequipa, Peru, for which the company secured a US$176 million green financing package from Natixis Corporate & Investment Banking and BBVA Peru in March 2026.

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Saturday, May 30, 2026
One of the world’s busiest large scale solar contractors says it has taken a financial hit from problems with the PV modules, or panels, on one of its Australian projects.
Sterling and Wilson Renewable Energy, which at one stage claimed to be the busiest in the country after entering the market in 2018, revealed the financial hit in a recent earnings presentation to analysts to discuss its latest quarterly results.
The company said the panel problems, and the wait for replacements, at the unidentified Australian solar project where it has the O&M (operations and maintenance) contract led to a loss of generation at the site, and the payment of penalties.
“In this particular quarter, one of the Australian projects basically … so the panel, which normally doesn’t fail, right? Normally such equipments are never supposed to fail,” global CEO C.J. Thakur told analysts in response to a question about the company’s declining margins.
“I mean rarely it will fail. But somehow these top panels, I mean, I don’t know, because of what reasons, but then is still under the due diligence, but then these panels failed,” Thakur said, according to a transcript of the conversation posted on the company’s website.
“Although we took a lot of actions to airfreight the panels to ensure that the down time becomes less and all … but despite all the actions, there were unavailability for few days, right, for a few days. So, the generation loss during that day because of unavailability of one of the panels has really caused the penalty to be incurred.”
Sterling and Wilson says the issue had a marked effect on its margins in its latest quarter, which fell to around 18 per cent, down from its normal levels of 20 per cent to 24 per cent.
The project was not identified, but the company’s Australian portfolio – according to its own website – include the Western Downs, Wolobee, Miles and Wellington solar projects, as well as the Port Augusta hybrid project in South Australia.
Its work is now focused on its domestic market, underpinned by a 5-year agreement with Adani Green, and in Africa. Its presentation says that in the latest quarter, 65 per cent of its work inflow came from India, and 35 per cent from Africa.
In previous years, Sterling and Wilson Renewables has reported crunched margins in its Australian business, complaining about high labour costs, “phenomenally high” sub-contract prices, and the impacts of bad weather on its construction sites.
The utility solar business has been a difficult one for many contractors in Australia, with many suffering from damages claims arising from soaring costs. It was blamed on the collapse of major contractor RJ Tomlinson, while a number of smaller local and international contractors withdrew from the sector.
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Giles Parkinson is founder and editor-in-chief of Renew Economy, and founder and editor of its EV-focused sister site The Driven. He is the co-host of the weekly Energy Insiders Podcast. Giles has been a journalist for more than 40 years and is a former deputy editor of the Australian Financial Review. You can find him on LinkedIn and on Twitter.
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Germany-headquartered renewable energy developer RWE has received the go ahead from the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) and transmission network service provider (TNSP) Transgrid to operate the 50 MW / 400 MWh Limondale—Australia’s first 8-hour—battery energy storage system (BESS).
Utilising 144 Tesla Megapack registered to charge at 100 MW and discharge at 50 MW, the project is located in the designated New South Wales (NSW) South-West Renewable Energy Zone (REZ) adjacent to the 314 MW RWE Limondale solar farm.
The solar farm sits on 770 hectares, utilises 872,000 solar panels and generates equivalent electricity to power 105,000 homes per year.
Located in the NSW Murray region, 23 kilometres south of Balranald, close to the Victorian border and 854 kilometres southwest of Sydney, the Limondale BESS was built in collaboration with US-headquartered energy company Tesla, Melbourne-headquartered electrical engineering company Beon Energy Solutions, and both Sydney-based energy services provider Lumea, and Transgrid.
The Limondale BESS connects to the grid via Limondale Solar Farm’s existing 33 kV substation, reducing need for new infrastructure.
RWE Renewables Europe and Australia Chief Executive Officer Sopna Sury said the project transforms battery storage in Australia.
“[It marks] a significant milestone in the development of long-duration energy storage and enhancing the reliability and resilience of the national energy system,” Sury said.
“Limondale BESS helps strengthen grid stability, supports a secure energy supply and enables more efficient use of renewable energy.”
Limondale BESS was sized at eight hours in response to the NSW government’s Electricity Infrastructure Roadmap (EIR) and was the first to receive a Long Duration Storage (LDS) Long-Term Energy Service Agreement (LTESA) as part of the first tender undertaken by ASL (an AEMO subsidiary).
RWE develops, builds and operates battery storage systems in the US, Europe and Australia, and currently operates BESS with a total capacity of 1.7 GW, with a further approximately 2.5 GW under construction.
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Homeowners association president Larry Veray poses for a photo at his Waiau Gardens Kai B townhomes in Pearl City, O’ahu, Hawaii, Wednesday, May 27, 2026.
Cars are parked in front of Waiau Gardens Kai townhomes in Pearl City, Hawaii, Wednesday, May 27, 2026.

Homeowners association president Larry Veray poses for a photo at his Waiau Gardens Kai B townhomes in Pearl City, O’ahu, Hawaii, Wednesday, May 27, 2026.
Cars are parked in front of Waiau Gardens Kai townhomes in Pearl City, Hawaii, Wednesday, May 27, 2026.
Larry Veray had a plan to bring cheaper, cleaner energy to his townhome complex in Pearl City at no cost to residents.
As president of the Waiau Gardens Kai B homeowners’ association, Veray prides himself on keeping association fees low while building reserve funds, and he wasn’t about to ask homeowners to bear the cost of outfitting the complex with solar panels and battery storage units.
Instead, Veray found a way to save the planet and cut electricity costs for homeowners without asking them to pay more.
But Waiau Gardens Kai’s seemingly perfect deal came crashing down on May 8, the last day of the legislative session. Lawmakers put a $40 million cap on the state’s solar energy tax credit program, which normally awards about $100 million annually. Making matters worse, the cap is retroactive to 2026, meaning projects that got underway with the promise of a tax credit to make things pencil out face uncertainty.
“What the state did was basically shoot the project in the head,” Veray says.
The solar energy industry is now rallying to save large commercial and industrial projects like the one proposed for Waiau Gardens Kai and hundreds of others like it. The industry’s trade group has called for a special session so lawmakers can fix at least the part of the bill that makes it retroactive to 2026.
Cuts to the solar tax credits fly in the face of Hawaiʻi state law, which requires all of the electricity sold in the state to be produced with renewable resources by 2045. Gov. Josh Green has promised to do something, but administration officials say it’s too early to say exactly what.
Rocky Mould, executive director of the Hawaiʻi State Energy Association, said he’s encouraged by Green’s promise to help. But he said investors need answers soon.
“We need a clear assurance to the market that the tax credits will be there for projects that already started this year,” he said. “We’re in an emergency, and we need help.”
Officially called the Renewable Energy Technologies Income Tax Credit, the solar tax credit lets taxpayers subtract 35% of the cost of a solar system from their income tax bills. It includes large solar systems for commercial and industrial facilities, like shopping centers and warehouses that produce the electricity, but not the so-called utility-scale solar farms that produce electricity and sell it to Hawaiian Electric Co.
Credits for rooftop residential properties are capped at $5,000 per property.
While the credit is just one of nine the Legislature established to encourage certain industries or economic activities, the solar credit is by far the largest. The state has awarded $1.36 billion in credits since 2006, according to the Hawaiʻi Department of Taxation, including more than $100 million in 2023, according to the department’s most recent data. That compares to $43.5 million in credits to support film and television production.
So when lawmakers were looking for ways to avoid raising income taxes this past session, they capped the solar tax credit at $40 million per year through 2030, after which it will be eliminated entirely.
The move came as a shock to the solar industry, Mould said, particularly the provision that makes the $40 million credit cap retroactive to 2026. That means projects recently completed or placed under contract almost certainly won’t get what they were expecting.
The eight largest solar companies alone had lined up 265 commercial projects in 2026, Mould said, and had locked in $436 million in private capital. Now projects are simply pulling out, and solar industry proponents worry many will follow.
“That’s just a sample,” Mould said. “We’re not even talking about the residential market.”
In the case of Waiau Gardens Kai, Veray turned to Ted Peck, a former director of the Hawaiʻi State Energy Office, to craft a deal: A private investor agreed to pay for a large solar system, which Peck’s Holu Hou Energy LLC would install, and lease it to Waiau Gardens Kai for 25 years. Residents who signed up — Veray says 88 out of 114 residents joined — would lock in a 20% discount on their electric bills for the life of the lease.
Following the legislative action, Veray says, the investor has pulled out.
As chief executive of the Hawaiʻi Primary Care Association, Emily Chung manages 14 federally qualified health centers providing essential healthcare to more than 160,000 Hawaiʻi residents annually on Oʻahu and all the neighbor islands.
The association in 2026 had plans to install solar with battery systems to power five health centers, including Waimānalo Health Center and Wahiawā Health on Oʻahu. Working with Collective Energy Co. LLC, the association had plans to roll out the initiative to all of its centers over time, Chung says. But the Legislature’s budget bill put that in jeopardy.
“It’s going to be really difficult for us,” she said. “We’re trying to adjust to the new reality if there’s no special session to fix it.”
While the solar industry was hardly the only loser this past session, the tax credit change not only strikes a targeted blow to the state’s renewables mandate but runs against the intent of another of the governor’s policies.
In 2025, Green issued an executive order establishing a state policy “to maximize distributed solar energy paired with battery storage, with the goal of dispatchable solar generation on every rooftop and parking area on land constrained Oʻahu by 2045.” That included facilitating installation of at least 50,000 solar-plus-battery storage installations by 2045.
With all of that now at risk, Green’s administration is looking for answers.
“We’re definitely working on it,” said Mark Glick, director of the Hawaiʻi State Energy Office. But, he added, “It’s too early to share details.”
This story was originally published by Honolulu Civil Beat and distributed through a partnership with The Associated Press.
For copyright information, check with the distributor of this item, Honolulu Civil Beat.

Area police reports indicated:
Police have disclosed the name of the suspect in Wednesday’s shooting in Copperas Cove. Davarious Jashawn Lee, 18, has been charged with aggravated assault causing serious bodily injury, a first-degree felony.
A lockdown at Chaparral High School on Wednesday afternoon was triggered by nearby police activity that ended with the arrest of a man who allegedly flashed a handgun and threatened a group of juveniles, authorities said.
Two suspects have been arrested in connection with the fatal shooting of Sedell Barrios, 19, of Harker Heights in March.
Police responded to a report of shots fired just after 8 a.m. Wednesday which sparked a lockdown at four Copperas Cove ISD campuses.
Area police reports indicated:
FORT HOOD — An Army doctor accused of extensive sexual misconduct appeared at a preliminary hearing Tuesday outlining the evidence against him.
The Killeen mayor and other city leaders issued a statement of support for the community following the shooting death of an area high school student at Fort Hood’s Belton Lake Outdoor Recreation Area during Memorial Day weekend.
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The trial marks a significant step in testing MarineSolar’s proprietary energy-saving PV technologies – the company’s NanoDeck system is designed to deliver robust, retrofittable renewable power for ships both at sea and in port, reducing reliance on fossil fuels – under some of the most challenging real-world marine conditions.

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Conventional n–i–p architecture remains a robust platform for scalable perovskite photovoltaics^1,2, yet its steady-state efficiency has stagnated at about 26% (ref. ³), lagging behind their p–i–n counterparts⁴. This performance gap arises from persistent non-radiative recombination at textured electron transport layer (ETL)/perovskite interfaces, yet the underlying physical origin remains unknown. Here we show that these losses originate from the synergistic combination of band misalignment and electron accumulation at the buried interface. To address this dual challenge, we develop a continuously graded n⁺/n-doped SnO₂ ETL through a ligand-competitive binding strategy, which enables spatially defined doping that creates a built-in electric field. This graded architecture simultaneously minimizes band offset and accelerates electron extraction, thereby effectively suppressing the cross-interface recombination. The resulting n–i–p perovskite solar cells (PSCs) achieve a certified steady-state power conversion efficiency (PCE) of 27.17% (27.50% in reverse scan), the highest for n–i–p PSCs reported so far. The scalability of this strategy is further demonstrated by achieving a PCE of 25.79% for a 1 cm² device and 23.33% for a perovskite module with a 16.02 cm² aperture area. This work establishes a generalized example for energy-band engineering in metal-oxide transport layers, overcoming a fundamental efficiency bottleneck in conventional perovskite photovoltaics.
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We thank the staff of beamlines BL17B1, BL14B1, BL03HB, BL13SSW, BL13U and BL02U2 at SSRF for providing the beam time. This work was partly supported by Analysis Platform of New Matter Structure at Nankai University. This work was supported by the HE Research Fellowships from the HE Science Foundation.
This work is financially supported by the National Science Fund for Distinguished Young Scholars (grant no. T2225024), the Fundamental and Interdisciplinary Disciplines Breakthrough Plan of the Ministry of Education of China (JYB2025XDXM410), the Foundation for Innovative Research Groups of the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant no. 22121005), the National Science Foundation (grant nos. 62261160389, 22475107, 224B2906, 22509015 and 525B2187) and the China National Postdoctoral Program for Innovative Talents (BX20250103). We extend our appreciation to the Deputyship for Research and Innovation, Ministry of Education in Saudi Arabia, for funding this research work (project no. IFKSU-DSR-NS-2026-1).
These authors contributed equally: Di Wang, Saisai Li, Zijin Ding
State Key Laboratory of Advanced Chemical Power Sources, Frontiers Science Center for New Organic Matter, Key Laboratory of Advanced Energy Materials Chemistry (Ministry of Education), Academy for Advanced Interdisciplinary Studies, College of Chemistry, Nankai University, Tianjin, People’s Republic of China
Di Wang  (王迪), Saisai Li  (李赛赛), Zijin Ding  (丁紫津), Xingyu Chen  (陈星宇), Qiao Zheng  (郑樵), Keyu Wei  (韦科妤), Yuanzhi Jiang  (姜源植), Jun Chen  (陈军) & Mingjian Yuan  (袁明鉴)
School of Interdisciplinary Science, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing, People’s Republic of China
Jian Xu  (徐健)
Department of Physics, College of Science, Princess Nourah Bint Abdulrahman University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
Thamraa Alshahrani
Nano-Science Center and Department of Chemistry, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark
Siyu Liu  (刘思宇)
College of Physics Science and Technology, Hebei University, Baoding, People’s Republic of China
Tingwei He  (何庭伟)
Ultrafast Electron Microscopy Laboratory, The MOE Key Laboratory of Weak-Light Nonlinear Photonics, College of Physics, Nankai University, Tianjin, People’s Republic of China
Xinxin Yue  (岳鑫欣) & Xuewen Fu  (付学文)
Department of Physics and Astronomy, College of Science, King Saud University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
Saif M. H. Qaid
PHI Analytical Laboratory, ULVAC-PHI Instruments, Nanjing, People’s Republic of China
Lin Feng  (冯林), Ou Yang  (杨欧) & Huanxin Ju  (鞠焕鑫)
Haihe Laboratory of Sustainable Chemical Transformations, Tianjin, People’s Republic of China
Yuanzhi Jiang  (姜源植), Jun Chen  (陈军) & Mingjian Yuan  (袁明鉴)
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M.Y. conceived the idea. M.Y. and J.C. supervised the project. D.W. and Z.D. fabricated the devices. J.X. did the DFT and AIMD calculations. X.C. did the ³¹P-NMR test. S. Liu., K.W., X.F., Y.J. and X.Y. did the TR measurement and analysis. H.J., L.F., O.Y., T.H., D.W. and S. Li were responsible for IPES, HAXPES and TOF-SIMS characterization. D.W., Q.Z., T.H., T.A., S.M.H.Q. and S. Li carried out the electrical and optical characterization. M.Y. and D.W. co-wrote the paper. All the authors contributed to the discussion and commented on the paper.
Correspondence to Jian Xu  (徐健), Yuanzhi Jiang  (姜源植) or Mingjian Yuan  (袁明鉴).
The authors have filed a provisional patent for this work to the China National Intellectual Property Administration (CNIPA).
Nature thanks Thad Druffel, Deying Luo and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work. Peer reviewer reports are available.
Publisher’s note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
The certified steady-state PCEs (>25%) and the corresponding V_oc loss reported to date for PSCs in both n–i–p and p-i-n configurations^{44,45,46,47,48,49,50,51,52,53,54}.
J–V curves for n–i–p devices based on control-SnO₂ ETL (a) and continuously graded-doped SnO₂ ETL (b). J–V curves of PSCs based on continuously graded-doped SnO₂ ETL for a 1 cm² device (c) and a 5 × 5 cm² solar module (d), respectively.
a, Cross-sectional HAADF-STEM images of conformal SnO₂ ETLs with varying thicknesses as a function of deposition time. b, TEM image of SnO₂ NPs (3–5 nm) in solution (i), and cross-sectional TEM images of the corresponding SnO₂ film, showing a uniform assembly of nanoparticles with diameters of 3–5 nm (ii, iii).
a, Schematic diagram of electrostatic assembly of SnO₂ NPs capped with bidentate ligands. b, Molecular structures of the introduced bidentate ligands (left) and their corresponding configurations under acidic conditions (pH = 1.5–3) (right). SEM images (c), zeta potential (d) and CV measurements (e) for SnO₂ capped with ET, TA, TGA, TE ligands.
Supplementary Notes 1–12, including Supplementary Figs. 1–54, Supplementary Tables 1–7 and additional references.
Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.
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Wang, D., Li, S., Ding, Z. et al. Continuously graded-doped SnO₂ for efficient n–i–p perovskite solar cells. Nature (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-026-10587-4
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Received: 23 October 2025
Accepted: 23 April 2026
Published: 30 April 2026
Version of record: 27 May 2026
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-026-10587-4
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This power bank costs $29.99 and features a 10,000 milliampere-hours(mAh) battery and multiple outputs, including a 20-watt USB-C fast-charging port for devices that support it. Its solar panel delivers a maximum current of 1.15 watts under perfect conditions. Keep in mind that this is very slow, and charging it this way should be used as a backup that extends the power bank’s runtime. Otherwise, ensure it’s fully charged before heading on the trip.
The Blavor Solar Power Bank is also water-resistant and dust-proof. Its rugged design makes it resistant to shock as well, making it a great tool to bring outdoors. It also has a flashlight that makes it ideal for navigating a campsite at night and a compass carabiner that can help with navigation and map orientation in case you decide to go exploring and don’t want to get lost.
If you’re going to be keeping your gadgets (e.g., portable fan and electric mosquito repeller) or lights on at night using a power bank, then you need a way to charge it during the day if its self-charging is insufficient, as might happen with the Blavor Solar Power Bank. The BigBlue Solar Panel Charger is an ultra-light, foldable solar panel that weighs 0.84 pounds. It’s slightly smaller than an iPad Mini, meaning it can fit in large pockets and backpacks without weighing you down. When unfolded, it delivers a maximum current of 25 watts. This is considered fast charging, but its smart power delivery ensures it doesn’t overload devices that can’t handle that much juice.
Provided the area you’re camping in gets enough sunlight, this can help extend your camping trip if devices running low on charge is an issue. Standard solar panels usually have grid lines — those metal lines in front of standard solar panels. These help convert solar energy into electricity, but they also introduce gaps on the surface of the panel and can block sunlight (shading), reducing their efficiency. This solar panel has a gridless design, with BigBlue claiming that it’s 25.4% more efficient than the standard design.
Available for $69.99 on Amazon, the BigBlue Solar Panel Charger has no built-in battery, but it has a USB-A and USB-C charging port (this is for fast charging). On top of overcurrent protection, it has overcharge protection. It also has an IP68 rating, meaning it’s waterproof and dustproof, making it a good gadget for the outdoors.
People go camping in all sorts of weather conditions, including when it’s cold outside. In some regions, mornings can be chilly, but the air gets hotter later in the day. The cold can make your fingers stiff, rendering tasks that require dexterity, such as pitching a tent, cooking, and lighting a fire, harder to do. When rubbing your hands together or using gloves doesn’t provide enough warmth, the Occopa Magnetic Hand Warmers can help.
This pair of hand warmers costs $19.99. There’s a 2,500-mAh battery in each hand warmer, allowing it to provide up to eight hours of continuous heating when used together — 16 hours if you use one at a time. The hand warmers are magnetic, so you can snap them together to make one bigger hand-warming unit for double-sided heating. The Occopa Magnetic Hand Warmers have a UL (Underwriters Laboratories) certification, meaning they’ve undergone rigorous testing for thermal safety.
They have three heating modes, with temperatures that reach up to 126°F. This makes them a good option for those who like camping even in the winter, rather than when it just gets a little cold outside. They have an ultra-thin design that makes them ideal minimalist gadgets to carry in your pocket or pop them in a glove to remove the stiffness in your fingers.
Bringing your own water is essential on a camping trip since there might not be any working taps or clean water nearby for hydration. If you bring five-gallon water bottles on the trip, those can be a chore to lift if you want a quick drink of water. That’s where a mini water pump like the Cozycharm Water Jug Pump for 5 Gallon Bottle can come in handy. You attach a small pipe to the pump, which then goes inside the bottle. Afterward, you attach the unit to the top of the bottle. You just press the button on top, and it will dispense water with a strong, steady flow.
The water pump can fill a 16-ounce cup in nine seconds. It runs on a 1,200-mAh battery that can be recharged through a USB port, with Cozycharm claiming that it can run for weeks on a single charge (about six five-gallon water bottles). It can also fit on two- and three-gallon water bottles. You can get the Cozycharm Water Jug Pump for Amazon for $9.99.
If you’re bringing along a lot of inflatable gear, blowing it up manually with your mouth can be tedious and lead to overexertion. Sometimes it can take hours, but the Etenwolf Air 3 Air Pump can save you the hassle of doing all that manual setup. It’s a miniature air pump that costs $29.99 and can inflate various types of camping gear, including sleeping pads, air mattresses, air pillows, inflatable pools, and pool floats. When it’s time to go back home, it can also help with deflating them.
According to Etenwolf, the Air 3 can inflate up to 16 sleeping pads on a single charge with its 2,600-mAh battery. However, with 0.65 pounds per square inch (PSI), this is a low-pressure pump and cannot inflate something like a car tire or sports ball. It’s great for convenience, but you shouldn’t count on it in an emergency. It does come with five nozzles, though, allowing you to blow up a wide range of large, low-pressure inflatables.
This gadget also has a built-in flashlight that can be used to light up the inside of the tent and even the camping area. It can shine as bright as 600 lumens for up to three hours on one charge. It’s also quite tiny (comparable to the size of an egg), making it easy to carry around. The Air 3 supports USB-C fast charging.
When compiling this list, we opted for the more tech-oriented solutions over analog old-school devices because we’re angling to bring modern conveniences to the outdoors. We also wanted to find options that would be practical without putting a dent in your wallet, so we considered gadgets below $75 as good choices. We also focused on smaller items — most of these fit in your hand, and all easily fit in a hiking backpack. You’ll probably find bulkier counterparts to these choices that cost more, but, as you can see, you don’t need to spend hundreds of dollars to find gadgets that can make your camping trip more comfortable. We also wanted to make sure that affordable didn’t mean cheaply made, so we picked options on Amazon that have an average rating of four stars or more out of five from thousands of user reviews.

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A first-of-its-kind solar farm came online in Northern Virginia Thursday to provide relief for Virginia electricity customers.
The renewable energy project was built on the massive Lorton landfill, land that wasn’t being used since trash was buried there 30 years ago.
Stream NBC4 newscasts for free right here, right now.
Over the next 30 years, the solar farm will save Fairfax County an estimated $12 million in energy costs.
“This one project will produce about 5% of all the electricity that is used in county government operations in the county,” Fairfax County Office of Environmental Energy Coordination Director John Morrill said.
Rows of solar cells collect energy that is delivered to Dominion Energy. Dominion will credit the county for the energy collected, allowing Fairfax to invest in public services rather than paying bills.
U.S. Rep. James Walkinshaw, D-11^th District, says energy rates are up 11% nationwide over the past 16 months.
“One reason for that is, at the federal level, we’ve been disinvesting from the kind of cheap, clean, renewable energy that you see behind me,” he said. “And if we continue to do that nationally, we’re going to continue to see those rates rise. But projects like this in Fairfax County are going to pay dividends for decades to come.”
Northern Virginia news, events and updates
Fairfax County recently brought solar projects online on top of schools with several more to come.
The projects are big because the end goal is huge, County Supervisor Dan Storck said.
“We did it in conjunction with the schools as part of our joint environmental task force to have all of our county facilities net zero energy by 2040,” he said. “2040, that’s just a few years away, and this facility here is a key part of that.”

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Japan’s Agency for Natural Resources and Energy (ANRE) will add rooftop solar reporting items to the Energy Conservation Act framework from fiscal 2027, requiring large-scale energy users to disclose roof area eligible for solar installation after exclusions, alongside area already equipped.
The new reporting items apply to designated energy users – companies, local governments, schools, hospitals, and other entities consuming more than 1,500 kiloliters of crude oil equivalent per year – who are already obligated to submit medium- and long-term energy plans and annual energy reports under the Energy Conservation Act.
Two changes take effect on a staggered schedule. From fiscal 2026, medium- and long-term plans must include qualitative statements on rooftop solar installation. From fiscal 2027, annual energy reports must include roof area eligible for installation after applying exclusion conditions, and the area already equipped. Roofs where installation is legally prohibited, where the operator lacks installation rights, or where the space is already in use – for example as evacuation areas – are excluded from the reported figures.
ANRE cited growing opposition to large-scale ground-mounted solar over environmental, safety, and landscape concerns as one factor behind the focus on rooftops, which require no new land and carry lower community impact. Japan’s Seventh Strategic Energy Plan, approved by the cabinet in February 2025, positions renewable energy as a major power source on the path to carbon neutrality by 2050.
The agency also noted that perovskite solar cells could open rooftop deployment to buildings where conventional silicon panels are too heavy. Film-type perovskite cells are thin, light, and flexible, the agency said, making them a candidate for roofs with strict load-bearing limits.
Existing support mechanisms including Japan’s feed-in tariff and feed-in premium schemes, as well as government energy efficiency audit programs, are available to businesses considering installation, said ANRE.
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A report from the American Clean Power Association (ACP) examines the breadth and impact of the clean energy manufacturing sector in the United States.
The report, called America Builds Power: The State of Clean Energy Manufacturing in 2026, covers 825 currently-active manufacturing facilities in all 50 states. The researchers identified 50,000 direct workers at the facilities, who make average salaries 35% greater than the national average. 
In addition to direct employment, the report states 50,000 jobs have been created to support upstream activities related to clean energy manufacturing activity, alongside nearly 107,000 jobs generated based on household spending by the original workers (induced jobs). 
Added together, the ACP says the total effective employment impact of clean energy manufacturing is 215,700 jobs, with 106,100 accounted for by solar manufacturing, 53,100 from energy storage manufacturing and 56,500 from wind.
In addition to employment related to operation and economic activity from the manufacturing facilities, the report outlines the impact of facility construction. The ACP finds that construction of new or expanded clean energy manufacturing facilities in 2025 supported 207,000 jobs and led to over $20 billion in increased GDP.
The top states by total GDP from clean energy component manufacturing include Texas, where much of the newest solar module capacity has been built, Michigan and Illinois, in which LFP battery cell manufacturing is king, Ohio, home of First Solar’s largest thin-film production facilities, and Georgia, where Qcells operates a vertically-integrated ingot-to-module manufacturing hub.
Looking toward the future
By 2030, the ACP expects the number of jobs due to solar manufacturing to grow by more than 63,000, with annual solar module production capability ramping from 63 GW at the end of 2025 to over 85 GW by the end of the decade, with solar cell production capacity rising to about half that of modules.
The numbers for future energy storage manufacturing-related jobs are even higher, expected to grow by over 91,000 as battery module manufacturing capacity doubles from 75 to more than 150 GWh, and domestic LFP cell capacity jumps to over 130 GWh by 2030. Similarly huge increases are expected in the domestic production of anode and cathode materials and lithium processing.
Increases in the production capacity of and employment related to wind energy manufacturing are projected to increase by small amounts, with an estimated 2,400 new jobs expected through 2030. The relatively small predicted increases are due to current domestic production capacity already exceeding demand, with only slow growth expected in that demand.
Upcoming events
The topics covered in the ACP report echo those that will be explored in two upcoming events from pv magazine USA. 
The first of these events is Solar Manufacturing USA 2026, a live conference co-organized with Finaly Colville of Terawatt PV Research, to be held at the AT&T Hotel and Conference Center in Austin, Texas on September 22 and 23, 2026. 
Representatives from companies throughout the domestic solar and energy storage supply chains will gather for networking events and sessions related to technology, facility construction, operations, procurement and materials sourcing. 
Current partners include T1 Energy, SEG Solar and Talon PV. Attendees are expected to include CTOs, heads of R&D, manufacturing and operations leaders, procurement teams, commercial and strategy executives, and specialists involved in supply-chain, quality and market-entry decisions.
The second event is pv magazine USA Week 2026, a virtual event held on October 20, 21 and 22. 
The theme for day one of the event is U.S. Solar Manufacturing: From Announcement to Implementation. The day’s program will feature a keynote address from a leader in the U.S. solar manufacturing space, and a panel discussion moderated by pv magazine USA senior editor Ryan Kennedy. Further details and registration will be available at the end of the summer. Partnerships are available for booking now at the event page on our global website.

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He writes on crime, traffic, health, administration , politics and off beat stories from Prayagraj. Have extensively covered Maha Kumbh, Ardh Kumbh and Magh Melas and state assembly as well as parliamentary polls from 2002 to 2025. My hobbies include reading, writing and meeting people with diverse interests.Read More

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Nature Photonics (2026) Cite this article
The efficiency–stability trade-off in perovskite solar cells continues to be challenged by issues such as ion migration and defects at grain boundaries and interfaces. Here we address this challenge by an in situ kinetic processing route using a bifunctional spacer, 2-(prop-2-en-1-ylsulfanyl)ethan-1-amine hydrochloride (PYA). Arresting annealing at a metastable stage enables PYA infiltration along widened grain boundaries and incompletely crystallized buried interfaces, whereas deep-ultraviolet activation crosslinks PYA to form a phase-pure 2D ‘nanomesh’ that encapsulates three-dimensional grains. This omnidirectional network enables defect passivation across the surface, bulk and interface; suppresses electrostrictive lattice distortion by over 80%; and reduces iodide migration ratio by more than 55%, linking mechanical reinforcement to operational resilience. Devices deliver a power conversion efficiency of 27.37% (certified, 27.01%) and retain over 90% performance after 2,110 h of 1-sun illumination, over 95% after 2,400 h at 85 °C in a N₂ atmosphere, and 97% after 500 thermal cycles between −40 °C and 85 °C. These results demonstrate a viable pathway towards inherently stable, high-efficiency perovskite photovoltaics.
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Download references
G.L. acknowledges support from the Research Grants Council of Hong Kong (GRF 15307922, 15310625, JRS N_PolyU567/24, C4005-22Y); RGC Senior Research Fellowship Scheme (SRFS2223-5S01); the Hong Kong Polytechnic University: Sir Sze-yuen Chung Endowed Professorship Fund (8-8480), RISE (1-CDC6); Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Joint Laboratory for Photonic-Thermal-Electrical Energy Materials and Devices (GDSTC number 2019B121205001). N.M. acknowledges support from IMPULZ project number IM-2023-82 of the Slovak Academy of Sciences, Slovak Research and Development Agency (APVV-21-0297), and Joint Research Projects V4-Korea number 2023/727/PVKSC. P.S. acknowledges support from the Slovak Research and Development Agency (APVV-24-0321) and ITMS project number 313021T081. L.P.S. acknowledges support from the PostdokGrant APD0021, and VEGA 2/0046/23. W.C. and Z.L. acknowledge support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant numbers 52473301 and W2412077); the Fundamental Research Support Program of Huazhong University of Science and Technology (2025BRB016), the State Key Laboratory of Alternate Electrical Power System with Renewable Energy Sources (LAPS25001), and the Innovation Project of Optics Valley Laboratory (OVL2025YZ004). M.L. acknowledges support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China, General Program Project (number 52472199), and the Outstanding Youth Fund of the Natural Science Foundation of Henan Province (number 242300421069). The authors thank Shenzhen HUASUAN Technology Co., Ltd for assistance on theoretical calculations.
These authors contributed equally: Daming Zheng, Tianyin Miao, Zuhong Zhang.
Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Research Institute for Smart Energy (RISE), Photonic Research Institute (PRI), the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong, China
Daming Zheng, Tao Zhu, Luyao Wang, Zhiyuan Xu, Patrick Fong, Jie Lv & Gang Li
Center for Advanced Materials and Applications (CEMEA), Slovak Academy of Sciences, Bratislava, Slovakia
Daming Zheng, Karol Vegso, Gunhee Kim, Peter Siffalovic & Nada Mrkyvkova
Wuhan National Laboratory for Optoelectronics (WNLO) and School of Optical and Electronic Information, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, China
Tianyin Miao, Zonghao Liu & Wei Chen
Optics Valley Laboratory, Hubei, China
Tianyin Miao, Zonghao Liu & Wei Chen
Key Lab for Special Functional Materials of Ministry of Education, National and Local Joint Engineering Research Center for High-Efficiency Display and Lighting Technology, School of Nanoscience and Materials Engineering, Collaborative Innovation Center of Nano Functional Materials and Applications, Henan University, Kaifeng, China
Zuhong Zhang & Meng Li
Institute of Physics, Slovak Academy of Sciences, Bratislava, Slovakia
Karol Vegso, Sami Ullah, Peter Siffalovic & Nada Mrkyvkova
Department of Chemistry, College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Xiamen University, Xiamen, China
Luyao Wang
Department of Physics, University of Balochistan, Quetta, Pakistan
Sami Ullah
Institute of Electrical Engineering, Slovak Academy of Sciences, Bratislava, Slovakia
Lenka Pribusova Slusna
Department of Mechanical Engineering, City University of Hong Kong, Kowloon Tong, Hong Kong, China
Dingqin Hu
Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin für Materialien und Energie GmbH, Berlin, Germany
Antonio Abate
Department of Chemistry, Bielefeld University, Bielefeld, Germany
Antonio Abate
Department of Chemical, Materials and Production Engineering, University of Naples Federico II. Naples, Naples, Italy
Antonio Abate
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D.Z. and G.L. conceived the idea. G.L., Z.L., M.L., A.A. and L.W. supervised the project. D.Z., T.M. and Z.Z. conceived, designed and conducted most of the experiments. T.Z. and P.F. conducted the in situ UV experiments. K.V., N.M., P.S. and G.K. conducted the in situ/ex situ GIWAXS, PL and X-ray diffraction measurements. D.Z. and L.W. designed and performed the density functional theory calculations. J.L. conducted the TAS measurements. D.Z., Z.Z., L.W., T.M. and W.C. fabricated the perovskite devices. D.H. and Z.X. helped analyse the TAS data. L.P.S. characterized the infrared spectra. A.A. and Z.Z. performed the stability tests. S.U. characterized the time-resolved PL data. G.L., D.Z. and L.W. wrote the manuscript. All authors discussed the results, revised the manuscript and approved the final version.
Correspondence to Luyao Wang, Zonghao Liu, Antonio Abate, Meng Li or Gang Li.
The authors declare no competing interests.
Nature Photonics thanks Yongfang Li and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.
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Zheng, D., Miao, T., Zhang, Z. et al. Omnidirectional ionic locking network for stable perovskite photovoltaics. Nat. Photon. (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41566-026-01918-y
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The Silicon Industry Branch of the China Nonferrous Metals Industry Association (CNMIA) reported on May 27 that polysilicon prices remained stable week on week. N-type recharging polysilicon traded at CNY 34,000–36,000/ton ($4,730–$5,010/ton), with an average of CNY 35,300/ton ($4,910/ton). N-type granular silicon also traded at CNY 34,000–36,000/ton, averaging CNY 34,300/ton ($4,770/ton). The association said market activity weakened compared with the previous two weeks, with only three to four producers concluding transactions and new orders declining. Market sentiment shifted from cautious optimism to a wait-and-see stance. On May 28, the association reported stable wafer prices across all major formats. Average transaction prices remained at CNY 0.93/piece ($0.13/piece) for N-type G10L wafers (182 mm × 183.75 mm, 130 μm), CNY 1.00/piece ($0.14/piece) for N-type G12R wafers (182 mm × 210 mm, 130 μm), and CNY 1.17/piece ($0.16/piece) for N-type G12 wafers (210 mm × 210 mm, 130 μm). According to the association, both upstream and downstream players largely remained on the sidelines. Suppliers have largely stopped cutting prices, while procurement demand remains weak as end-market installations have yet to recover.
China’s National Energy Administration (NEA) released electricity industry statistics for the first four months of 2026 on May 25. The data show newly installed solar capacity reached 9.52 GW in April, down 78.95% year on year. By the end of April, China’s total installed power generation capacity had reached 3.99 TW, up 14.2% year on year. Solar capacity totaled 1.25 TW, up 26.2%, while wind capacity reached 660.6 GW, an increase of 22.0%.
On May 27, the Hong Kong Stock Exchange disclosed that inverter manufacturer Aiswei Technology Co. Ltd. had filed for a main-board listing. China Securities Co. International and ICBC International are acting as joint sponsors. According to the prospectus, cumulative shipments exceeded 70 GW and 3.5 million units as of Dec. 31, 2025, with products deployed in more than 100 countries and regions.
JinkoSolar reported updated proceeds from the sale of its 100% stake in Xinjiang Shibang Solar. The company said it received CNY 126 million ($17.5 million), including a second installment of CNY 100 million and CNY 26 million in capital occupancy interest. JinkoSolar said the payment is expected to increase its 2026 pre-tax profit by around CNY 56 million ($7.8 million). The transaction began in 2023 with a total consideration of CNY 4.3 billion ($598 million), although part of the second-stage payment remains outstanding.
TrinaTracker’s robotics unit, Trina Robotics, has entered a strategic partnership with Portugal-based ESI Robotics. The company said it has evolved into a full PV value-service provider and highlighted its self-developed Buildex installation robot series, which it claims doubles installation efficiency while improving site adaptability. Trina described the agreement as a milestone in the global expansion of its PV automation business.

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Free-On-Board (FOB) China TOPCon cell prices held steady amid stable week-on-week indications, as market participants continued to assess price direction ahead of the upcoming Shanghai International Photovoltaic Power Generation and Smart Energy Conference & Exhibition, commonly known as SNEC, in early June.
According to the OPIS Global Solar Markets Report released on May 26, FOB China TOPCon M10 cell prices maintained at $0.0482/W with price indications between $0.0460-0.0499/W.
Meanwhile, the newly launched FOB China 210R TOPCon cell assessment averaged $0.0484/W, with indications ranging from $0.0465-0.0505/W.
Trade sources said TOPCon cell prices are expected to remain under downward pressure, weighed by weak end-user demand and higher wafer production, which could pressure downstream cell and module prices.
Despite weaker silver prices over the past two weeks, some cell manufacturers said they continue to expect volatility in the precious metals market. This has led producers to hold offer prices steady as they monitor potential changes in raw material costs.
Silver prices have maintained around the same level over the past two weeks, but remain more than 25% higher over the past six months and around 125% higher year on year.
Some sources added that the market is also watching upstream price movements as potential weakness in polysilicon and wafer prices could help ease cell production costs.
Upstream EXW China Mono Premium polysilicon and FOB China n-type M10 wafer prices have fallen 36.1% and 22.8%, respectively, on a year-to-date basis.
In contrast, downstream cells and module prices have not come under the same degree of downward pressure seen in upstream markets. FOB China TOPCon M10 cell prices have fallen around 2.4% year-to-date, while FOB China mainstream TOPCon module prices remain around 24.5% higher over the same period.
In patent updates, the China National Intellectual Property Administration (CNIPA) has invalidated TetraSun’s Chinese invention patent CN201080027881.6 titled “High-efficiency solar cell structures and methods of manufacture”, according to a notice seen by OPIS. TetraSun is a subsidiary of First Solar.
The ruling is viewed by industry participants as a China-side countermeasure by Jinko Solar, following First Solar’s initiation of a Section 337 investigation in the U.S. into TOPCon solar cells, modules and related products against Jinko Solar and other manufacturers.
Industry sources said that while the CNIPA decision does not directly affect the validity of First Solar’s U.S. patent or the ongoing U.S. litigation, it could support Chinese manufacturers’ arguments around the prior art, technology ownership and patentability in related disputes.
A Chinese industry source added that the ruling offers good support for Chinese solar companies and the wider industry, though it remains unclear whether the China decision will have any influence on the U.S. patent investigation.
According to the China Nonferrous Metals Industry Association (CNMIA), weak end-user demand persists, making it difficult to reverse the oversupply situation in the near term. The association said wafer production output in May is expected to rise by 8-9% month-on-month. CNMIA added that end-user demand has shown no signs of improvement, while downstream buyers continue to push aggressively for lower prices, with current market transactions driven by low-priced inventory and rigid replenishment demand.
OPIS, a Dow Jones company, provides energy prices, news, data, and analysis on gasoline, diesel, jet fuel, LPG/NGL, coal, metals, and chemicals, as well as renewable fuels and environmental commodities. It acquired pricing data assets from Singapore Solar Exchange in 2022 and now publishes the OPIS APAC Solar Weekly Report.
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The platform has been named “Paiporta” in tribute to the victims of the DANA storm that severely affected the Valencian Community, and especially the Valencian municipality, which became one of the symbols of the tragedy.
The operation took place last Monday, May 18, at the facilities of the Vigo-based shipyard San Enrique. It involved a complex tandem lifting maneuver using the shipyard’s emblematic cranes, which enabled the platform to be safely launched into the water.
Over the coming weeks, commissioning and final preparation work on the platform will be completed before it is towed from Vigo to Valencia, where it will be installed at its final site to continue the operational validation of the technology in open sea conditions.
As Bernardino Couñago, Co-Founder and CEO of the company, explained: “This is a very important milestone in the roadmap of our technology. The launch of the ‘Paiporta’ platform places BlueNewables among the world leaders in the marine floating solar sector and demonstrates the industrial and technological capabilities that exist in Galicia and Spain to lead innovative energy solutions internationally.”
Couñago also expressed his gratitude: “We would especially like to thank all the workers and subcontractors at the shipyard for their effort and professionalism, which have made it possible to complete this project, as well as the BlueNewables team, which has been working intensively on the development of the project for more than two years.”
On behalf of San Enrique Shipyard, José Luis Torres, General Manager of Astillero San Enrique, stated: “The launch of the PV-bos represents a milestone of enormous significance both for Astillero San Enrique and for the maritime and energy industries as a whole. We are especially proud to have participated in the development and construction of a technological solution set to transform the use of solar energy in marine environments, making a decisive contribution to the advancement of renewable energies on a global scale.
“As a Spanish company with a long industrial and shipbuilding tradition, the successful completion of a project of this technical complexity and innovative nature demonstrates the capacity of our sector to lead cutting-edge developments and compete at the highest international level. The PV-bos is the result of the talent, experience, and commitment of an extraordinary team that has succeeded in turning a pioneering concept into a tangible reality.
“For Astillero San Enrique, this project also has fundamental strategic value. It strengthens our positioning in new markets linked to the energy transition, expands our capabilities in the construction of advanced offshore structures, and consolidates our commitment to innovation as a driver of growth. We are convinced that initiatives such as this will shape the future of the industry, and we are proud to be part of that change.”
The PV-bos technology developed by BlueNewables is designed to enable the deployment of floating solar plants in offshore environments and port areas, offering an innovative solution to accelerate the energy transition and complement the development of floating offshore wind, sustainable electric mobility, and other segments with which it can be easily hybridized.
The launch of “Paiporta” represents one of the most significant steps achieved to date by the company within its strategy for the industrialization and commercial validation of offshore renewable solutions.
For the execution of this project, BlueNewables has received and continues to receive institutional support from various organizations, including IDAE, through the RENMARINAS program, as well as close collaboration with SOERMAR and Astilleros San Enrique.
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As the world hurtles toward a low-carbon future, solar energy is rightly being celebrated as a beacon of sustainable progress. Among the most innovative developments in this sector is the rise of floating solar power plants—photovoltaic (PV) panels deployed over lakes, reservoirs, and even sheltered marine zones. Known as floating photovoltaic systems (FPVs), these solar arrays have captivated policymakers and investors alike with their promise: abundant clean electricity without sacrificing precious land.
In India’s ambitious journey toward achieving 500 GW of non-fossil fuel energy capacity by 2030, a quiet revolution is underway—not on land, but on water. Floating solar power plants are rapidly gaining traction as an alternative means to harness solar energy, utilising the surfaces of water bodies to deploy solar arrays in a space-efficient manner.
At first glance, floating solar seems like a win-win. It avoids the land acquisition issues that plague large solar parks, reduces water evaporation, and improves panel efficiency by using water bodies as natural coolants. Leading this movement are flagship projects like the Omkareshwar Floating Solar Park (600 MW) in Madhya Pradesh and the Ramagundam Floating Solar Project (100 MW) in Telangana.
But is the picture as green as it seems?
Beneath the sheen of innovation lies a less visible, but increasingly urgent, environmental debate. Floating solar power plants—while well-intentioned—may be jeopardising the very ecosystems they are installed to coexist with. If deployed without environmental foresight, these “green islands” could prove to be ecological minefields.
A Climate Solution That Could Emit More?
It sounds counterintuitive, but recent research from the journal Environmental Science & Technology (2024) found that floating solar systems deployed in smaller water bodies (less than 5 hectares) can increase emissions of methane and carbon dioxide by up to 26.8%.
When solar panels cover the surface of a lake or reservoir, they reduce sunlight and wind-driven mixing. This change in microclimate decreases dissolved oxygen levels, creating ideal conditions for methane-producing bacteria to thrive. Additionally, the submerged vegetation under the shaded water begins to decay anaerobically, releasing more methane—a greenhouse gas far more potent than carbon dioxide.
While the overall carbon footprint of floating solar systems (approximately 38–55 grams of CO₂ equivalent per kilowatt-hour) remains much lower than that of coal-based power (73–110 gCO₂eq/kWh), these localised emissions are real and must be carefully considered during site selection and project planning.
Thermal Stratification and Underwater Oxygen Crisis
Floating solar panels might reduce algal blooms and evaporation, but their shading effect can have unintended consequences on water quality. Surface water temperatures under FPVs can drop by 1.5–3°C, especially during summer months. This thermal stratification disrupts the natural vertical mixing of the water column, an essential process for nutrient circulation. In turn, this leads to oxygen depletion, a condition known as hypoxia. When oxygen levels fall below 4 mg/L, fish and aquatic invertebrates begin to suffer or die.
A study published in Nature’s Scientific Reports (2023) examined floating photovoltaic (FPV) systems on Lake Maiwald in Germany and found that the installation significantly reduced sunlight (irradiance) reaching the water surface—by approximately 73%—and lowered near-surface wind speed at the height of the solar modules by an average of 23%.
Singapore’s Tengeh Reservoir FPV project is often cited as a model for environmentally responsible floating solar. There, the government implemented real-time monitoring and installed aeration systems to maintain dissolved oxygen levels. Unfortunately, most Indian projects do not incorporate such advanced safeguards.
Biodiversity: The Invisible Cost
Freshwater ecosystems are complex webs of life where light, oxygen, and nutrients interact in a fragile balance. Introducing large FPV systems can tip this balance.
For instance, research has documented a 15–20% decline in fish growth rates in areas shaded by FPVs. The biomass of macrophytes—submerged aquatic plants essential for oxygen production and habitat—is known to fall by as much as 30% when coverage exceeds 70%. Even birds and raptors that hunt over open water are also affected, as are migratory fish whose routes may be blocked by large installations.
In marine environments, the stakes are even higher. Floating structures increase water turbulence, resuspend sediments, and raise turbidity levels, harming coral reefs and benthic organisms. Moreover, these installations can become breeding grounds for invasive species, which use the artificial habitat to outcompete native flora and fauna.
As floating solar moves into estuaries and lagoons—fragile zones with high ecological value—questions arise: Are we trading marine biodiversity for clean energy? And is that a price we are willing to pay?
Leaching, Plastics, and Noise
Another underreported risk of floating solar is chemical pollution. Some older solar panels, especially those containing cadmium telluride, can leach heavy metals if they crack or corrode. Many floats and anchoring materials are made from polymers that degrade over time, releasing microplastics and chemical additives into the water.
Installation and maintenance work also introduces underwater noise pollution, increasing ambient sound levels by up to 20 decibels—enough to disturb fish communication and breeding patterns.
Then there are livelihood and access concerns. Large floating solar projects often encroach upon traditional fishing areas, displace cultural practices, and restrict community access to water bodies, particularly in tribal and rural regions.
India’s Bold but Risky Bet
India is making commendable strides in renewable energy, and floating solar has significant potential—especially in a land-constrained, water-abundant country. The Omkareshwar project alone is expected to reduce carbon emissions by 1.2 million tonnes annually and conserve millions of litres of water through evaporation control.
However, many of these projects are located in tribal belts or ecologically sensitive zones. For instance, the Narmada reservoir, tapped for the Omkareshwar project, supports diverse aquatic life and provides livelihoods to fishing communities. If not implemented with caution, these projects could displace communities, degrade biodiversity, and cause long-term environmental harm.
Researchers emphasise the need for site-specific assessments and environmental impact evaluations as critical tools to guide the sustainable expansion of FPV technology.
Moreover, floating solar projects in India are not yet covered by a dedicated Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) framework. Unlike large hydro or thermal power plants, FPVs often escape the scrutiny of the EIA Notification, 2006. This regulatory vacuum needs urgent attention.
Filling the Research Gaps
Despite the growing number of FPV projects, long-term studies on their environmental impact are scarce, especially in tropical regions. We still lack:
* Reliable data on ecological and chemical impacts
* Guidelines for sustainable design and deployment
* Monitoring systems to track seasonal changes in water quality and biodiversity
There is also no protocol to assess the cumulative impact when multiple reservoirs in the same watershed are converted into FPV sites.
Without this information, we risk deploying floating solar in a data vacuum—flying blind in the face of complex environmental challenges.
What Can Be Done?
The good news is that many of the risks associated with floating solar are avoidable or manageable—if addressed early.
* Coverage Limits: Coverage should not exceed 70% of the water body’s surface area, and ideally should stay below 30% in biodiversity-rich or ecologically sensitive regions.
* Eco-Responsive Design: Newer FPV designs allow wind and sunlight to pass through, or rotate with the sun to avoid constant shading. These innovations reduce ecological disruption.
* Material Safety: All components must be tested for water safety, leach resistance, and long-term durability. Avoiding PVC-based floats and corrodible metals is critical.
* Real-Time Monitoring: Temperature, dissolved oxygen, turbidity, and nutrient levels should be continuously monitored using sensors. This data must be shared transparently with local authorities and communities.
* Public Participation: Fisherfolk, tribal leaders, and local communities must be involved in the project planning stage—not just informing afterwards. Their knowledge and rights are integral to long-term sustainability.
* Stronger Regulation: India urgently needs a national guideline for FPV environmental assessment. This should be part of the Central Electricity Authority’s regulatory toolkit and embedded into state-level renewable energy policies.
Exploring Alternatives: Canals and Highways
While floating solar offers unique advantages, India should also explore alternative deployment models that avoid ecological conflict altogether. One promising option is the installation of solar panels over existing canals and highways. Gujarat’s canal-top solar project, for example, not only generates clean energy but also prevents water loss through evaporation and makes efficient use of otherwise unused infrastructure.
Highways and roads can be similarly repurposed. Solar panels over roads do not disrupt aquatic life and can even provide shade that extends the lifespan of asphalt. These spaces are linear, already disturbed, and often closer to transmission infrastructure, reducing energy loss in transit.
Scaling up such land-neutral solar options would help reduce the pressure on sensitive water bodies while still contributing significantly to India’s renewable energy goals.
Let’s Not Repeat the Mistakes of the Past
Floating solar has the potential to become a key player in the fight against climate change. But as with any large-scale intervention, its success hinges on one thing: balance.
If we are serious about sustainability, we must ensure that floating solar power does not come at the cost of freshwater health, aquatic biodiversity, or rural livelihoods. Clean energy should not dirty our rivers, lakes, or coastal waters.
We cannot afford to repeat the mistakes of the past, where development outpaced ecological wisdom. Floating solar must float not just on water—but on principles of precaution, participation, and long-term ecological stewardship.
When deployed responsibly, FPVs can offer a sustainable energy solution that powers the planet while safeguarding natural ecosystems. However, if ecological concerns are overlooked, they risk becoming yet another example of greenwashing with gray consequences. Without careful consideration, we may realise too late that the true cost of clean energy has been borne by the very ecosystems we intended to protect.
Views expressed are personal. The writer is Head-Think Tank, Mobius Foundation, New Delhi

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Our recent CleanTechnica solar report has readers talking! It’s exciting to dig into their comments and to learn how they are sharing their background knowledge about the state and future of solar energy.
Because their comments are so extensive and have built into tens of thousands of words, this article captures and categorizes a lot of them for your ease of reading.
(They’ve also been slightly edited for clarity and grammar.)

Here goes. All are direct quotes; they’ve been compiled from readers as they explored common subtopics on Discus. If, after you’re done reading and yearn for more reader insights, let it be said that there are even more comments than there was room to address in this article. Curious? Read on.
Prediction models: The installation doubling every two years has been extremely reliable for solar for several decades. There are wobbles in a year or two, but the geometric average has been constant for about 30 years. It’s a solid model for fairly long-term predictions. Interestingly, the model doesn’t work for individual countries, only worldwide. One country will somehow kill demand and then it moves to another country.
Current state of solar: In this millennium the average global rise of solar power generation has been 37% annually. For the last 3 years (2023, 23, 25), global Solar PV installation rate has been increasing by over 30% CAGR. It jumped up from about 24% for the 6 years prior to that. The growth rate of globally installed Solar PV was extremely high to begin with, roughly 73% CAGR from 2007 to 2011, then it slowed to roughly 34% CAGR for 6 years, then slowed to roughly 24% CAGR for 5 years, and now it has jumped back up over 30% CAGR. We wer’e at 17% Wind + Solar PV on the grid for 2025. The majority of new energy installations in 2025 were renewable energy, and the majority planned for 2026 are Solar PV and Battery Storage. I expect it to be significantly higher than 30% in 2026.
Love that home solar! Best thing I did to my home since 2012 — randomly unplanned. I’m not a tree hugger, but simply it works for my needs. I haven’t had power bills since then, out of pocket costs were recovered by year 6, and all is free going forward except the $21 buck monthly wire-to-pole connection fee.
Trends: At the moment we are seeing two strong trends towards rapid increase in solar panel efficiency and from rooftop solar to giant solar farms. The biggest unknowns are whether green hydrogen and data centers will continue to grow like they do. The data centers will likely grow to 5% of global electricity demand by 2030%. IEA experts have been proven ridiculous again and again and then again. Their job is to ensure a stable supply of oil. And that’s all. And until very recently, they totally underestimated renewables.
Solar adoption implications: If things progress as they do now with the same share of rooftop solar, only 30% of all power consumption will be produced by solar in 2030. Worldwide, it will be 45% by 2030 if the trends towards larger solar farms and more efficient solar panels continue — and just 30% of all electricity if we use average efficiency and the current balance between rooftop and solar farms in the deployment onto 2030. That’s still a big share, unimaginable just 10 years ago. 😊
Causal factors that affect solar predictions: The USA war with Iran has increased Solar PV purchasing recently. Even that is not reliable and very hard to predict. We cannot reliably even predict Solar PV will continue to increase at linear rate (i.e. no acceleration) in the near future, since current global events could precipitate global war and a global recession/depression.
The China effect: We must not forget that 60% of all solar is actually China and no one else. Virtually all the growth is there, and coal consumption there continues to grow slightly even as its other largest consumer – steel mills – is cutting production. Without China, the rest of the world is at about 15%. This year has been predicted as the first year in Chinese history where the solar deployment won’t grow. There are some technical reasons and some political.
Battery storage options: Battery storage, LFP in particular, is becoming low enough in cost, $/kWh/cycle, to make Solar PV + overnight Battery storage the lowest cost and more reliable option in sunny places most people live. Sodium Ion, just emerging, is going to be even lower cost than LFP. This is not a one-size-fits-all problem or solution. Lithium Ion batteries only lose a few percent (2% or 3%) of their charge a month, so they are fully capable of storing electricity for much longer.
Why battery storage is the key: It’s a question of economics. Solar PV generated electricity can be used directly, without storage, to cover the primary peak in demand during the middle of the day. When you have enough installed to cover the middle of the day demand, you’re left with another peak in the evening, when people come home from work and turn on the AC/heat, the lights, the cook stove, the TV, etc. That second peak is about 4 hours long, so that is the most cost-effective time to start using additional Solar PV + Battery Storage. As a result, we’ve seen most Battery Storage, for homes and the grid, being installed to meet that 4 hour evening peak in demand.
Supplying the power that’s needed: My point is always there are large areas where Solar PV + Battery Storage can provide most of the power needed, most of the time, at lowest cost. It’s all about the cost of solar power generation. Currently 70% of utility scale solar panels come with single axis tracking and average 150% panel to inverter ratio. Intra solar farm losses to gather the power and to ready it for HVAC or HVDC transmission consumes 10% of the power exiting the inverters. The key reason for the design trend is to stabilize output diurnal and annual. Batteries can harness the power excess and transform it into to a more valuable resource. Also batteries can utilize the transmission better. A number of the solar giants are also battery manufacturers and or BESS manufacturers.
Why is the US falling behind other countries in solar adoption? Yes, it is major problem that USA is a laggard. In the past USA decided on fracking and removed all checks and balances to make that bet possible. In short nearly no regulation. As a consequence about 3.4 million abandoned wells exist in USA. “Drill baby drill” is the Trump motto.
Plugs for plug-in solar: Don’t put it on the roof unless the only choice. Make a semi-portable carport, patio, shed, ground mount, trailer, solar boat, … choose one, instead, that plugs in and eliminates most legal costs. Code ends at the plug, and these are just portable generators. Even renters can own them as can move with them.
Examples: Nexwafe factory in Texas is significant because Nexwafe is based upon Fraunhofer technology and Indian investment. They have announced 30% panels to be ready for shipment before 2030. California: It’s over 35% now, and will be over 40% next year.
Problems that continue to plague the solar industry: US solar is looking fair but plagued by high cost, gouging, especially on batteries for homes. There is no reason grid tie systems cost more than $2/wt and battery systems at $2.75/wt. For some reason solar companies refuse to innovate. For instance if they were not so overcharging, it wouldn’t cost them 30% to get customers. A big part of the blame is Musk/Tesla, forcing battery gouging making 500% profit, and everyone followed his lead to this day. Musk screwed EVs the same way, overcharging making the most expensive ones . That lead gave us the mostly low, bad choices. Luckily, both are finally ending.
Why buy the CleanTechnica report from which these comments arose? Buy the report? That sounds stingy, not the best way to reach a lot of people 😒 It’s only ten bucks… not today but maybe after my wife gets paid this week???
Reply from Carolyn: CleanTechnica pays its staff writers. To analyze survey data and to frame it into a report means lots of hours of research and writing time, for which I was compensated by Zachary and Scott. While we at CleanTechnica are proud of sharing information with readers, we must also pay our bills. So thanks to those of you who spent the relatively small amount to buy the original report. We appreciate your support — a lot!
Resources cited by our readers
“China solar demand down significantly in first two months.” SNEC PV and Exhibition. March 27, 2026.
“Global solar growth to slow in 2026 as China, US scale back – The energy mix.” Solar Now. April 20, 2026.
“Plugging America’s forgotten wells: National Academies study addresses decades long problem.”Sydney O’Shaughnessy. National Academies. July 28, 2025.
CleanTechnica’s Comment Policy
Carolyn Fortuna, PhD, is a writer, researcher, and educator with a lifelong dedication to ecojustice. Carolyn has won awards from the Anti-Defamation League, The International Literacy Association, and The Leavey Foundation. Carolyn owns a 2022 Tesla Model Y as well as a 2017 Chevy Bolt. Please follow Carolyn on Substack: https://carolynfortuna.substack.com/.
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Main Light by ttal is a self-sufficient lighting installation developed along the Main riverfront in Frankfurt, Germany, by Munich-based studio ttal in collaboration with Italian lighting manufacturer ewo. Presented as part of the World Design Capital 2026 initiative, the project explores how renewable energy infrastructure can become an integrated and visible component of public space through autonomous solar-powered lighting systems.
 
The installation introduces a new generation of off-grid streetlights that generate renewable energy directly at the point of use through translucent organic photovoltaic (OPV) solar foils. Developed in response to increasing urban energy demands, light pollution, and the environmental impact of conventional public lighting systems, the project rethinks street infrastructure through the concept of ‘prosumers,’ systems that both consume and produce energy.
 
Unlike traditional urban lighting, which depends on underground electrical networks and extensive site intervention, Main Light operates through lightweight autonomous structures that require no wiring or permanent ground excavation. The modular system allows for flexible installation with reduced material use while supporting lighting solutions for both urban environments and underserved public spaces.

Main Light rises next to the Main river, transforming Frankfurt’s skyline | all images courtesy of ttal
 
 
 
The project also addresses the ecological effects of artificial illumination on humans, plants, and nocturnal ecosystems. Lighting systems are designed using full cut-off technology, intelligent demand-based controls, and a warm-spectrum light source intended to reduce ecological disturbance while maintaining visibility and orientation within public space.
 
During daytime conditions, the translucent solar surfaces function as visible energy-generating elements within the cityscape. Their colored panels cast changing shadows and filtered light patterns across the riverside, creating shaded gathering areas and reinforcing the installation’s presence as an urban spatial device rather than concealed infrastructure. At night, the structures emit controlled low-impact illumination that balances public accessibility with environmental sensitivity. Through this dual role as both energy generator and lighting system, Main Light positions renewable infrastructure as an active architectural and public element within the urban environment.
 
The first pilot installation by ttal’s designers Tobias Trübenbacher and Andreas Lang transforms a section of Frankfurt’s riverfront into a testing ground for autonomous public infrastructure that combines renewable energy production, lighting design, and spatial activation. The project was realized in collaboration with ewo GmbH for lighting and control technology, ASCA GmbH & Co. KG for organic photovoltaic systems, Schake GmbH for steel construction and reversible concrete foundations, and merz kley partner GmbH for structural engineering.

Main Light operates off-grid on reversible foundations that also function as urban furniture

Studio ttal refined the installation’s form and proportions through a series of physical scale models
Main Light is entirely self-sufficient, requiring no complex electrical infrastructure

translucent OPV solar sails create dynamic shifting patterns of light and shadow across the structure

shielding elements and warm, insect-friendly light spectrum reduce light pollution and ecological disturbance
daylight transforms the solar surfaces into colorful canopies

colored OPV panels turn renewable energy generation into a visible and playful public-space element

the design of the luminaires is configured to optimally align the OPV foils with the position of the sun

intelligent demand-based lighting control system by ewo activates illumination only when needed
 
project info:
 
name: Main Light
designer: ttal – Tobias Trübenbacher | @tobias.truebenbacher, Andreas Lang | @andreas_lang____
lighting and control technology: ewo GmbH
innovative OPV technology: ASCA GmbH & Co. KG
steel construction and reversible concrete foundations: Schake GmbH
static calculations: merz kley partner GmbH
location:  Frankfurt, Germany
 
 
designboom has received this project from our DIY submissions feature, where we welcome our readers to submit their own work for publication. see more project submissions from our readers here.
 
edited by: christina vergopoulou | designboom
happening now! by bridging past and present, AXOR introduces a new bathroom collection for quietly expressive yet enduring bathroom spaces.

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Waaree Energies has been recognised as a “Top Performer” in the 2026 PV Module Reliability Scorecard published by Kiwa PVEL, an independent solar PV module testing laboratory.
The recognition marks the fifth consecutive year that Waaree has achieved Top Performer status in Kiwa PVEL’s PV Module Reliability Scorecard, which evaluates the performance of solar modules submitted by manufacturers for testing.
The scorecard presents the results of Kiwa PVEL’s Product Qualification Program (PQP), a suite of extended reliability and performance tests conducted on PV modules to assess common failure mechanisms.
In the 2026 testing cycle, Waaree’s M10R and G12R glass-to-glass n-type TOPCon solar modules were recognised as Top Performers. The company said the bifacial modules are designed to deliver higher energy yield, lower degradation, and enhanced durability for utility-scale, commercial, and residential solar applications.
Waaree continues to expand its manufacturing footprint globally. As of early 2026, the company reported aggregate solar module manufacturing capacity of 25.75 GW, including 24.15 GW in India and 1.6 GW in the United States, along with 5.4 GW of solar cell manufacturing capacity.
The company is also expanding its clean energy portfolio across solar modules, solar cells, inverters, battery energy storage systems (BESS), green hydrogen solutions, EPC services, rooftop solar, and renewable energy infrastructure.
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The solar panel market is segmented by type and application. Technology and region are included in the study. Type coverage includes monocrystalline and polycrystalline panels. Thin film and concentrated PV are covered under other panel formats. Application coverage includes power plants and residential installations. Agriculture and off-grid demand are part of the study. Forecast for 2025 to 2035.
Historical Data Covered: 2015 to 2023 | Base Year: 2024 | Estimated Year: 2025 | Forecast Period: 2026 to 2035
Page last updated on: September 13, 2025
Reviewed By Nikhil Kaitwade
Pages: 250
The solar panel market was valued at USD 194.8 billion in 2025 and is forecast to be valued at USD 440.3 billion by 2035. The market is likely to expand at an 8.5% CAGR during the assessment period. Monocrystalline panels are anticipated to lead type demand with a 39.8% share in 2025. Power plants are projected to account for 29.4% of application share in 2025.

The solar panel market is experiencing rapid growth, driven by increasing investments in renewable energy infrastructure and the global shift toward sustainable power generation. Rising concerns over carbon emissions and energy security are compelling governments and private players to accelerate solar adoption through subsidies, tax incentives, and large-scale project deployments. Continuous advancements in solar technologies, including improvements in cell efficiency, panel durability, and system integration, are enhancing the cost-effectiveness of solar installations.
Expanding manufacturing capacity and economies of scale are lowering production costs, making solar energy more competitive with conventional energy sources. Growing demand for distributed generation in residential and commercial segments, coupled with the expansion of utility-scale solar farms, is reinforcing market expansion.
Furthermore, supportive international agreements on climate change and corporate commitments to clean energy adoption are strengthening long-term growth prospects As innovations in storage and grid integration mature, the solar panel market is expected to maintain strong momentum, with increasing emphasis on high-efficiency modules and sustainable production practices to meet global energy transition goals.
The solar panel market is segmented by type, application, technology, and geographic regions. By type, solar panel market is divided into Monocrystalline, Polycrystalline, Thin Film, and Concentrated PV. In terms of application, solar panel market is classified into Power Plants, Residential, Agriculture, Commercial, and Off-grid. Based on technology, solar panel market is segmented into Photovoltaic and Concentrating. Regionally, the solar panel industry is classified into North America, Latin America, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Balkan & Baltic Countries, Russia & Belarus, Central Asia, East Asia, South Asia & Pacific, and the Middle East & Africa.

The monocrystalline segment is projected to hold 39.8% of the solar panel market revenue share in 2025, positioning it as the leading type. Its dominance is being driven by higher energy conversion efficiency compared to other panel types, which enables greater power output from smaller installation areas. The superior efficiency of monocrystalline panels is particularly valuable in space-constrained environments such as urban rooftops, where maximizing output per unit area is essential.
Durability and longer lifespan are further enhancing adoption, as these panels are able to withstand varying weather conditions with minimal degradation over time. Technological innovations, including the development of passivated emitter rear cell and half-cut cell designs, are improving the efficiency and performance of monocrystalline modules even further.
The ability to deliver consistent performance under low-light conditions is reinforcing their appeal across diverse geographies As demand increases for high-efficiency solar solutions in both residential and utility-scale projects, monocrystalline panels are expected to maintain their leadership by offering reliable performance and strong return on investment.

The power plants segment is anticipated to account for 29.4% of the solar panel market revenue share in 2025, making it the leading application category. Growth in this segment is being fueled by increasing investments in large-scale solar farms and utility projects aimed at meeting national renewable energy targets. The scalability of solar power plants allows governments and private developers to generate significant amounts of clean electricity, reducing reliance on fossil fuels and improving energy security.
Falling panel costs and technological improvements in installation and maintenance are making solar plants more economically viable. International commitments to decarbonization, along with regional policy frameworks, are further accelerating deployment. Enhanced grid integration technologies, including smart inverters and energy storage solutions, are improving the reliability of power generated from solar plants.
With electricity demand rising globally, particularly in emerging economies, solar power plants are expected to remain central to energy transition strategies Their ability to deliver large-scale, cost-effective, and sustainable power makes them a key driver of long-term market growth.

The photovoltaic segment is expected to capture 64.2% of the solar panel market revenue share in 2025, establishing itself as the dominant technology. This leadership is being reinforced by the widespread adoption of photovoltaic systems across residential, commercial, and utility-scale applications due to their scalability, efficiency, and declining installation costs. Continuous advancements in photovoltaic cell design, including bifacial modules and perovskite-silicon tandem structures, are significantly improving efficiency levels, making solar power increasingly competitive with traditional energy sources.
Photovoltaic systems are versatile, allowing deployment in both grid-connected and off-grid scenarios, which broadens their appeal in developed and emerging markets. The technology’s ability to generate electricity directly from sunlight without mechanical components reduces operational costs and improves long-term reliability.
Supportive government policies, coupled with expanding production capacity across leading solar manufacturing nations, are ensuring steady supply and cost reductions As global efforts to decarbonize intensify, photovoltaic technology is expected to remain at the forefront of the solar industry, driving large-scale adoption and sustained growth over the forecast period.
The rise of floating solar farms represents an innovative trend, utilizing water bodies to overcome land constraints and improve energy yields. Digitalization and smart solar solutions, leveraging IoT and AI, enable real-time monitoring and optimization of solar systems, contributing to enhanced performance.
The development of perovskite solar cells presents a breakthrough trend, promising higher efficiency and lower production costs compared to traditional silicon-based cells.
Advancements in photovoltaic (PV) technology enhance efficiency and reduce costs, making solar power more accessible. Increasing awareness of climate change and environmental concerns drives individuals and businesses to adopt renewable energy solutions.
The declining cost of solar panels, resulting from economies of scale and technological improvements, further fuels market growth. Corporate initiatives toward sustainability and renewable energy targets push the adoption of solar power, aligning with global environmental goals.
Despite the positive solar panel market outlook, several restraints hinder the industry's full potential. Initial high installation costs can deter adoption, especially in emerging economies. The intermittency of solar power, dependent on weather and daylight conditions, poses a challenge for consistent energy supply.
Land availability and usage for large-scale solar farms present a constraint in densely populated or land-scarce regions. The complexity and cost of integrating solar energy into existing grid infrastructure can slow down widespread implementation. The recycling and disposal of solar panels pose environmental and regulatory challenges, impacting the ecosystem's long-term sustainability.

In the United States, the global demand for solar panel is fueled by federal tax incentives, such as the Investment Tax Credit (ITC), which has significantly boosted solar installations. State-level policies and renewable portfolio standards (RPS) further encourage solar adoption.
Technological advancements, particularly in PV efficiency and energy storage, enhance the feasibility of solar power. The declining cost of solar panels, driven by economies of scale and improved manufacturing processes, makes solar energy more competitive.
Corporate sustainability initiatives and commitments to renewable energy targets contribute to increased solar investments. The rise of community solar programs provides opportunities for individuals and businesses to benefit from solar power without owning rooftop installations.
The United Kingdom's solar panel global market size benefits from supportive government policies and ambitious renewable energy targets. The United Kingdom's Clean Growth Strategy emphasizes solar power as a key component of the nation's energy mix.
Advancements in PV technology contribute to increased efficiency and reduced costs, making solar installations more attractive. The growing awareness of climate change and environmental sustainability drives both residential and commercial sectors to adopt solar solutions.
The expansion of community solar projects and shared solar farms enhances access to solar energy for a broader population. Innovative financing models, such as power purchase agreements (PPAs), facilitate investment in solar projects, supporting the sector's growth.
India's solar panel market forecast highlights significant potential due to the country's ambitious renewable energy targets and favorable policies. The National Solar Mission aims to achieve substantial solar capacity, driving market growth.
Government incentives, including subsidies and tax benefits, encourage both utility-scale and rooftop solar installations. Technological advancements and declining costs make solar power an attractive option for addressing India's energy needs.
The increasing demand for clean energy solutions to combat pollution and reduce carbon emissions drives solar adoption. Expansion of solar projects in rural and remote areas enhances energy access and supports socio-economic development, contributing to the ecosystem's positive outlook.
Monocrystalline solar panels offer the highest efficiency rates making panels a preferred choice for installations where space is limited. This high efficiency translates to more electricity generation per square meter, addressing the needs of urban and suburban settings where roof space can be constrained.
The long lifespan and superior performance in low-light conditions further enhance the appeal of monocrystalline panels. Advances in manufacturing processes have reduced costs, making this technology more accessible to a broader spectrum.
The sleek, uniform appearance of monocrystalline panels appeals to consumers who prioritize aesthetics in addition to functionality. This visual advantage plays a significant role in residential and commercial settings where the look of the solar installation impacts property value and owner satisfaction.
The high efficiency and reliability of monocrystalline panels make them suitable for various climatic conditions, ensuring consistent energy production across different regions.
The room residential application segment of the sector is experiencing growth due to increasing awareness of renewable energy benefits and supportive government policies.
Homeowners are increasingly seeking energy independence and cost savings on utility bills. Solar panel installations on residential rooftops provide a practical solution for generating electricity directly at the point of use, reducing reliance on grid power and lowering energy costs.
Advancements in solar technology, combined with financial incentives such as tax credits and rebates, make residential solar installations more affordable. The rising cost of traditional energy sources and concerns about environmental sustainability are driving more homeowners to consider solar energy as a viable alternative.
The integration of solar panels with home energy storage systems allows for the efficient use of generated power, further enhancing the attractiveness of solar solutions for residential use.

With the highly cluttered competitive landscape, key players in the solar panel industry are experiencing an extremely high competitive force. To cater to constant growth in the sector, key competitors expand using product innovations.
New entrants have very little chance of sustaining this high competitive force. Such players, however, can use innovations, strategic alliances, and other key methods to consolidate the position in the industry. Prominent developments augmenting the global solar panel global market size are as follows.

The Solar Panel Market is expected to register a CAGR of 8.5% during the forecast period, exhibiting varied country level momentum. China leads with the highest CAGR of 11.5%, followed by India at 10.6%. Developed markets such as Germany, France, and the UK continue to expand steadily, while the USA is likely to grow at consistent rates. Brazil posts the lowest CAGR at 6.4%, yet still underscores a broadly positive trajectory for the global Solar Panel Market. In 2024, Germany held a dominant revenue in the Western Europe market and is expected to grow with a CAGR of 9.8%. The USA Solar Panel Market is estimated to be valued at USD 69.1 billion in 2025 and is anticipated to reach a valuation of USD 138.9 billion by 2035. Sales are projected to rise at a CAGR of 7.2% over the forecast period between 2025 and 2035. While Japan and South Korea markets are estimated to be valued at USD 10.4 billion and USD 5.7 billion respectively in 2025.
How big is the solar panel market in 2025?
The global solar panel market is estimated to be valued at USD 194.8 billion in 2025.
What will be the size of solar panel market in 2035?
The market size for the solar panel market is projected to reach USD 440.3 billion by 2035.
How much will be the solar panel market growth between 2025 and 2035?
The solar panel market is expected to grow at a 8.5% CAGR between 2025 and 2035.
What are the key product types in the solar panel market?
The key product types in solar panel market are monocrystalline, polycrystalline, thin film and concentrated pv.
Which application segment to contribute significant share in the solar panel market in 2025?
In terms of application, power plants segment to command 29.4% share in the solar panel market in 2025.
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From a spark to Spanish leadership: the history of solar energy
On April 21, 2025, solar energy managed to contribute peaks of renewable generation to the Spanish energy system, reaching 61.5% of the total demand. It broke its record again on July 16 and reached 50% on a sustained basis for months from the electricity generated in the solar fields of Castilla, Extremadura, and Andalusia.
 
However, the history of solar energy didn’t begin with adjustable silicon panels forming solar farms in strategic places throughout the peninsula, but rather it was the result of scientific curiosity. In 1839, the French physicist Alexandre-Edmon Becquerel ignited the “spark”. He discovered the photovoltaic effect after verifying that light could generate electricity when striking a silver electrode.
 
Over a century passed until Bell Laboratories, in Murray Hill (New Jersey, USA), succeeded in creating the first silicon solar cell in 1954. At that time, its efficiency was limited to 6%, and its cost was so high that only NASA could afford it to push the space race in satellites like Vanguard I.
 
In just a few decades, this formula had already expanded. In Spain, the first photovoltaic power plant connected to the grid that used silicon solar cells was inaugurated in 1984 in San Agustín de Guadalix (Madrid), with 100 kilowatts of installed power.
 
 
Spain is no longer just a solar market with a lot of potential, as it has become the continent’s undisputed benchmark for solar power. At the end of last year, the state network of solar parks surpassed 40.2 GW of cumulative power, adding 9 GW more in the final stretch of the year, according to the data of Red Eléctrica Española (REE). In this way, it rose to become the second European market behind Germany, which leads it by installed capacity
 
For its part, the Ministry for Ecological Transition and Demographic Challenge has also made clear its commitment to solar energy as the main lever for a decarbonized and more sustainable economy.
 
Spain currently exports a unique model by promoting solar hybridization with storage and other renewable energies for a more stable and sustainable electricity system, fostering innovative projects through public renders. Nevertheless, the path to making the country a leader in solar energy has not been easy, with legislative and technological ups and downs. In this regard, the removal of barriers to domestic installation for self-consumption has marked the beginning of a solar revolution.
 
 
According to the National Integrated Energy and Climate Plan (PNIEC 2023-2030), Spain has set the target of reaching 76 GW of installed photovoltaic power. Another line of work for the present and future involves the recycling of panels from the early century installations that are already reaching the end of their useful life. Spain leads European circular economy projects to recover up to 95% of materials (glass, aluminum, and silicon) and reduce the impact of its production.
 
Lastly, another issue that explains the rise of solar energy in Spain in the last five years is domestic self-consumption and local energy communities, which have grown by 40% in the last year, allowing neighbors to share the energy generated on public roofs. For UNEF, the Spanish photovoltaic employer, solar energy is the true engine of industrialization, which is reflected in its latest report. However, the challenge lies in improving storage capacity so that daytime solar energy can also sustain nighttime consumption.
 
Ultimately, the discovery of the “Becquerel spark”, the scientific evidence that light has power for electricity generation, is more significant today than ever for the energy transition. Reports from the International Energy Agency (IEA) confirm that solar energy is already the cheapest source of electricity in human history and the technology with the greatest potential for expansion for a more sustainable future.
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In Texas, we routinely connect a residential solar-plus-storage system in under two weeks. In North Carolina, an identical job can take 70 days. The two installations used the same equipment, the same installation methods, and met the same safety standards. One just ran into a lot more bureaucracy than the other. 
That gap is why distributed solar isn’t scaling as fast as the grid needs it to. Freedom Power has deployed thousands of residential solar and storage systems across five states, navigating utility territories that range from frictionless to Byzantine. After all those installations, I can tell you with confidence that the technology is not the problem. 
The grid needs distributed solar 
Grid operators face historic load growth challenges across the country. In Texas alone, consumer electric rates are projected to rise 29% over the next five years. Nationally, residential electricity costs have increased by 30% since 2021. The centralized grid infrastructure built in the twentieth century doesn’t meet today’s demand, and the timelines for bringing new systems online don’t match the urgency. For some perspective, a new gas plant takes five to ten years to permit and build. Distributed solar-plus-storage can be commissioned in under two years, with no utility capital outlay.  
Texas led the country in new solar capacity installed in both 2023 and 2024, adding nearly 10 gigawatts last year alone. In the summer of 2025, batteries on the ERCOT grid were supplying an average of 4 gigawatts during the 8 p.m. hour, right when solar output falls and demand remains high. Last summer in California, tens of thousands of home battery systems, many paired with rooftop solar, discharged more than 500 megawatts back to the grid during evening heat waves. In Puerto Rico, residential batteries prevented blackouts during four separate grid emergencies. The technology works. The barriers are cost, process, and policy, which are entirely within our control to fix.  
Hardware choices and process efficiency drive down costs 
It’s easy to blame tariffs or federal policy for high installation costs. Some of the most impactful levers are in our own hands.  
Take roof utilization as an example. In jurisdictions that allow spanning over drain-waste vents, installers see 10 to 20% more capacity on the same roof and hardware savings of $0.04 to $0.07 per watt. Yet code variations across jurisdictions create inconsistent access.  
Inverter selection also directly impacts project margins. A Tesla Energy report found that string inverters cost $0.10 to $0.20 per watt less than microinverters and deliver better economics for 93% of installations. Microinverters make sense in high-shade scenarios, but those account for only about 7% of jobs. Yet the 45X Advanced Manufacturing Production tax credit structure has historically favored microinverters, adding an avoidable $960 to $1,920 per typical residential system. Policy incentives should be technology-neutral.  
Then there’s customer acquisition, which remains the industry’s most expensive and least examined cost center. Industry-wide customer acquisition runs roughly $0.87 per watt, or about $8,400 per average job. That figure reflects a sales-heavy model built around overcoming skepticism rather than systematically educating customers. When utilities provide itemized billing that separates generation, transmission, and distribution costs, homeowners can actually understand what they’re paying for. With rates rising across ERCOT, the math sells itself. Conversion rates improve, acquisition costs fall, and utilities gain a partnership opportunity that almost no one is maximizing.  
The utilities that have deployed VPP models have real numbers to show for it. Green Mountain Power’s virtual power plant delivers approximately $3 million in annual savings for all customers through peak shaving and avoided transmission charges, with Vermont’s PUC calculating a positive lifetime net present value of $2,749 per battery system for ratepayers. Massachusetts’ ConnectedSolutions program returned a 2.14-to-1 benefit-cost ratio for residential ratepayers. The model works. The question is how quickly utilities elsewhere choose to replicate it.  
Survey, design, and project management remain manual even when automation is available, but adoption is slow. Long timelines compound the problem. Every week of delay reduces solar conversion rates as circumstances change and financing expires. Those sunk costs get priced into everyone’s systems, raising prices and shrinking the addressable market.  
Interconnection standardization is the unlock 
The 13-day versus 70-day gap isn’t an anomaly. Delays remain the norm across a fragmented interconnection landscape.  
In Texas, Oncor and CenterPoint run straightforward online portals, charge no fees, and maintain sub-1% rejection rates. Their average interconnection timeline runs under two weeks. That standard should apply to every utility. Regulators must push for even progress, as localized bottlenecks persist. Dallas still uses two separate online portals that aren’t connected to each other, with multiple city staffers reviewing applications in sequence rather than simultaneously. One major installer told Environment Texas they stopped operating in Dallas entirely to avoid the delays.  
Delays hold back clean capacity when the grid needs it most. There are 6,050 megawatts of distributed energy resources already connected to the ERCOT grid, and rooftop solar alone accounts for more than 3,100 megawatts of that total. ERCOT projects that number to reach 4,000 megawatts and beyond.  
Texas passed a third-party solar permitting law that gets municipal permits issued within three business days of plan approval. That policy represents real progress. But interconnection with transmission and distribution utilities—Oncor, CenterPoint, AEP, and others—falls outside that law, leaving the core bottlenecks unresolved.  
SolarAPP+, the DOE-funded automated permitting platform, now processes 17% of all California solar permits with near-instant approvals. Other states should adopt it or an equivalent platform immediately.  
Nationally, there are 3,000 utilities across the U.S. that maintain 3,000 different interconnection processes, with no alignment on the core data set that every utility legitimately needs. Today, utilities conduct an engineering study on every single system before granting connection, despite only 2% of residential installations requiring any infrastructure upgrades at all. A “connect and manage” framework for systems under 50 kilowatts would change that: allow immediate operation after commissioning, with grid export authorized following documentation review. In practice, the 98% of installations that create no infrastructure issues would no longer wait months for approvals.  
A partnership model that scales 
The right relationship between installers and utilities requires clear division of labor. Manufacturers and installers handle customer acquisition, education, financing, installation, and maintenance. Private companies carry the business risk. Utilities provide grid integration expertise, emergency dispatch coordination, and rate structures that fairly value grid services.  
In markets where that relationship functions well, it’s genuinely a win for everyone. The economics support it, given that only 2% of residential installations require infrastructure upgrades. Strategically placed distributed systems reduce peak loads and defer expensive substation work. For a grid like ERCOT—where 77% of new generation interconnection requests in 2025 were solar and energy storage—distributed resources aren’t a fringe strategy. They represent the core strategy.  
Time-varying export compensation—paying more for power delivered during peak demand—ensures fair cost recovery while recognizing the real grid value solar provides. Programs modeled after Green Mountain Power and Massachusetts ensure the utility, the solar customer, and all ratepayers each capture a net benefit.  
Three actions to unlock scale 
Projects succeed or stall based on utility processes, hardware choices, and installation discipline. To get from fragmented projects to a true distributed power plant model, stakeholders must move on three fronts:  
The market Is already moving 
The grid of the future runs on both centralized baseload generation and distributed resources for peaks. In some states, including Texas, it’s already the reality. Solar and wind together hit 37% of ERCOT’s electricity supply in 2025. Battery storage is now a meaningful part of evening reliability, and ERCOT forecasts for the Texas grid alone are expected to reach over 100,000 megawatts of total capacity by 2030.  
Nothing accelerates distributed solar faster than the price of power. Not incentives, rebates, or financing, which remain short-term drivers. When power gets expensive, solar becomes the obvious answer for customers, installers, and the utilities smart enough to build relationships with distributed energy companies now rather than later. 
By Bret Biggart: Biggart is CEO of Freedom Power, one of the largest residential solar installers in the
United States. He is also an endurance athlete and a native Texan.
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Solar PV solutions provider Nextpower has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire BESS system integrator Prevalon Energy for up to US$365 million.
The acquisition would mark Nextpower’s entry into the utility-scale battery energy storage system (BESS) market; however, it is not its first time in the BESS space.
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Indeed, in 2017, the company – then still known as Nextracker – partnered with flow battery maker Avalon Battery to launch the NX Fusion and NX Fusion Plus. Our colleagues from Energy-storage.news spoke, at the time, with Nextpower’s CEO, Dan Shugar, about developing and selling energy storage systems.
Nearly a decade later, Nextpower reenters the BESS market, this time with the acquisition of Prevalon, which is expected to extend its technology platform across BESS and intelligent control for critical power infrastructure.
The company forecasts that by 2030, the global demand for BESS will reach US$35 billion, of which US$15 billion will be in the US.
Prevalon Energy is a spin-out from Mitsubishi Power Americas, specifically from Mitsubishi Heavy Industries’ BESS division, and has so far deployed more than 6GWh of BESS systems globally and 1.3GW of firm supply contracts supporting AI and hyperscaler data centre infrastructure deployments. The transaction is expected to close in the third quarter of 2026 (Q2 of the company’s fiscal calendar), subject to customary regulatory approvals and closing conditions.
As covered by our colleagues at Energy-storage.news (subscription required), Prevalon’s main BESS contract manufacturer is China-based Clou Electronics, part of conglomerate Midea Group, which is known in large part for air conditioning systems.
“Many of our customers have rapidly expanded their storage programs and asked us to extend Nextpower’s platform into power conversion and BESS to deliver fully integrated firm power solutions,” said Dan Shugar, founder and CEO of Nextpower.
“Together with our recently announced and complementary power conversion acquisition, we expect that Prevalon’s BESS platform will open new market opportunities for Nextpower in AI data center power supply applications.”
The recent power conversion acquisition that Shugar refers to is of Spain-based Zigor Corporation and its US subsidiary, Apex Power, earlier this month. The transaction valued at approximately US$80.5 million and comes only a few months after Nextpower started testing its own power conversion technology at the beginning of 2026.
When the company rebranded from Nextracker to Nextpower in November 2025, it reflected its evolution from a tracker supplier to a full-platform provider of integrated energy solutions following a spree of acquisition in the past couple of years.
The acquisitions cover an array of sectors, including steel frames with Origami Solar, AI and robotics companies, electrical balance of system (eBOS) with Bentek Corporation or Ojjo and Solar Pile International in the solar foundation field.
Prevalon’s acquisition further expands the company’s growth into an integrated energy technology platform spanning structural systems, electrical infrastructure, power conversion, energy storage, controls, automation, and software.
Furthermore, in relation to the acquisition, Nextpower has raised its fiscal year 2027 outlook – which begins in April – and expects its revenue to be between US$4-4.4 billion, up from US$3.8-4.1 billion in the previous outlook. It has also increased its adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortisation (EBITDA) outlook from US$825-900 million to US$845-930 million.

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It looks like you currently have JavaScript disabled in your browser. For the best user experience we recommend enabling JavaScript when using our website. We can not guarantee that all features will work as intended without JavaScript. To access a list of our Council services – click here.
Helping Worcestershire’s homeowners invest in renewable energy for their property.
The Council has partnered with independent experts in group-buying, iChoosr, to  help Worcestershire’s homeowners invest in renewable energy for their property.
Switch Together Worcestershire (previously known as Solar Together) is an innovative scheme offering high-quality solar photovoltaic (PV) panels and battery storage. It is a group-buying scheme, bringing Worcestershire households, small businesses and community groups together to purchase solar PV systems at a competitive price. Participants will be supported through the process and kept informed at every stage.
The 2024 scheme Solar Together Worcestershire scheme delivered a total of 3,501 solar panels across the county with an estimated 10% saving on market rates. It is estimated that these installations will deliver 280 tonnes of carbon savings over a year, in addition to the energy bill reductions
Registrations close on 26 April 2026 so register now using the link below.
Switch Together
iChoosr has a designated page for FAQs on their website covering a range of questions around the topic. 
Visit: Support & FAQ’s | Switch Together 
Solar photovoltaic (PV) panels provide access to a renewable source of energy: the sun. Your solar PV system will generate electricity for you, meaning you are less dependent on energy companies and can save money on your electricity bills by using the energy you generate.
The sun provides a clean and renewable source of energy – unlike finite fossil fuels such as oil, gas, and coal – you will help to reduce CO₂ emissions and contribute to a more sustainable future of energy production.
Your solar PV system generates electricity during the day as soon as there is daylight. The more light there is, the more electricity is generated. This means your solar PV system will produce more electricity on longer days in the summer than shorter days in winter.
Solar PV systems require minimal maintenance and all Solar PV installations carried out as part of Switch Together come with extended guarantees and warranties.
It is not necessary to clean your solar PV system as there is regular rainfall all year round that does the cleaning for you. However, if you do wish to clean your solar panels we would suggest you can contact a specialist solar panel cleaning company.
The installation usually takes one or two days. Scaffolding has to stay up for another two working days after the installation has been completed. This is to allow for any follow up work or inspections that may not be possible during installation.
The council is working in partnership with iChoosr, independent experts in group-buying, to deliver Switch Together Worcestershire. The Council does not select the contractor or monitor their installations. The Council’s role is to help promote the opportunity to residents in our area. iChoosr is responsible for the process up until the moment you accept your personal recommendation and pay your deposit. After you have paid your deposit the winning installer will take over the responsibility of your installation.
iChoosr will remain available to provide assistance and answer any questions you may have.
iChoosr are responsible for appointing installers, for which they have a vetting process. In order to ensure that any installers entering the Switch Together auction can offer the required high level of service to a large group of customers in the required timeframe, the experience, quality, stability and capacity of the installers is interrogated beforehand through a rigorous qualification procedure. The qualification procedure takes a number of weeks, and is designed to ensure that only installers that can successfully execute the group-buying scheme can enter the auction. This is in order to safeguard the required level of quality. The qualification includes a review of all essential certifications and insurance policies, as well as customer satisfaction and a detailed financial due diligence of the company.
You can speak to an agent from the Switch Together Helpdesk via 0800 014 8851 (Mon-Fri: 8:00am – 5:00pm). Alternatively, you can contact an agent via the Switch Together contact form:
Whilst the Council promote and support the Switch Together scheme, we recommend you get at least more than one solar panel quote before making a decision. As every property is different and there are differences between solar panels, getting multiple quotes will allow you to compare prices and services which will suit your property best and get the best value for your money.
If your roof is unsuitable for installing a solar PV system (e.g. because it contains asbestos), the installer will inform you about this after the on-site roof survey. In this case, your deposit will be fully refunded.
Solar PV panels are known as a “permitted development”. This means that for most domestic properties, planning permission is not required. If you are only having a battery installed, you will not need any planning permission. However, if you live in a conservation area you may need planning permission.
If you want to install panels on a listed building then you will require listed building consent. If you want to install on a building that is not listed but within the grounds of a listed building then you will need planning permission.
If you think you need planning permission or listed building consent, please arrange this with your council as quickly as possible:
It may take several weeks or months for the permission to be approved.
If you haven’t received an offer you should contact Switch Together. You can contact Switch Together Helpdesk via 0800 014 8851 (Mon-Fri: 8:00am to 5:00pm). 
Alternatively, you can contact an agent via the Switch Together contact form:

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The American-Made Solar Prize is a multimillion dollar competition designed to spur innovations in U.S. solar hardware and software technologies and address challenges to rapid, equitable solar energy deployment. This challenge requires competitors to make progress quickly, form private-sector partnerships, and engage customers to bring their ideas to life over the course of three escalating challenges. Competitors have the opportunity in each stage to also compete in the Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (JEDI) Contest. Should they opt in, at each stage, the competitors will describe how their solution addresses solar market barriers faced by underserved communities and work to substantially advance their approach towards JEDI goals.
On June 12, 2023, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Solar Energy Technologies Office (SETO) opened applications for the American-Made Solar Prize Round 7. For Round 7, DOE added a new Power Up Contest to support and advance new and diverse teams that have compelling applications but are not selected as Ready! Contest winners. 
On January 11, 2024, DOE selected 20 teams to receive $50,000 each and advance to the next stage of the competition. Four teams were also selected to win the Ready! JEDI Contest and receive an additional $25,000. DOE awarded $10,000 prizes to 10 teams through the Power Up Contest. On May 29, 2024, DOE hosted a pitch competition where they selected one winning team.
On May 1, 2024, DOE announced the 10 finalist teams to receive $100,000 each and advance to the next stage of the competition. Three teams also split a $50,000 prize in the Set! JEDI Contest.
On September 10, 2024, DOE announced two winning teams at a live event at the RE+ conference. Each team received $500,000 in cash and $75,000 in vouchers to use at the national laboratories and other qualified fabrication facilities. Two other teams won the Go! JEDI Contest, splitting the $50,000 prize.
Fram Energy (Newburgh, NY) – This team is developing a platform to incentivize landlords to install solar by enabling both the renter and landlord to capture savings from a solar installation. This software helps the landlord select the best solar system for their property and distributes the benefits of solar to both the tenant and property owner, expanding renters’ access to solar energy. Set! JEDI Winner
Gritt Robotics (Belmont, CA) – This team is developing a solution combining robotics and artificial intelligence for automated construction of utility-scale solar. By converting off-the-shelf construction equipment into intelligent robots, this innovation will accelerate solar construction and improve worker health and safety.
Gridwave (Finalist) (Austin, TX) – This team, formerly known as PowerMe, is developing a pre-assembled, modular solar carport for the commercial market to decrease costs and safety risks associated with current carports and expand solar electric vehicle (EV) charging. They will reduce costs compared to common solar carports by using offsite construction, a wind-load reducing design, and concrete precasting.
Vatio (Palo Alto, CA) – This team is developing a plug-in solar kit that can be used in a regular home outlet to save residential homeowners money on their energy bills. This system will make residential solar affordable and accessible to customers locked out of the current solar market.  
Pavilion Solar (Finalist) (Miami, FL) – This team is developing a hurricane-resistant, accessible, and cost-effective ground-mounted solar canopy. This innovation will increase residential solar adoption in hurricane-prone areas by providing a product that can endure storms and growing electricity needs.
Couillard Solar Foundation Team (Deerfield, WI) – This team is developing an aesthetically pleasing, weatherproof, wooden solar canopy for residential and public spaces to broaden solar adoption. Sales of this product will fund charitable solar programs to benefit underrepresented populations. Ready! JEDI Winner
Addicted 2 Impact (Ladera Ranch, CA) – This team is developing modular plug-and-play, low-voltage direct current (DC) microgrids for rural and indigenous communities in the United States. By adding solar and storage, this system can quickly and affordably power homes without access to traditional grid and interconnection infrastructure. Ready! JEDI Winner
Buck Boost (Apex, NC) – This team is developing a two-stage, low-cost PV system architecture that combines wide-bandgap semiconductor-based compact DC-DC nanoconverters, at the panel level, with an optimized central inverter, also based on wide-bandgap devices. This new system design will achieve higher efficiencies, help prevent shading issues, and extend the lifetime of PV systems.
NC Solar Inverters (Finalist) (Cary, NC) – This team is developing a novel inverter design that leverages the high performance of silicon carbide technology but uses 40% less material, slashing inverter costs. This innovation will enable cost-effective, high-performance inverter technology to be manufactured in the United States.
ICoN Energy (Ithaca, NY) – This team is developing a compact power converter for trucks to utilize solar power for auxiliary systems, such as heating and cooling. This vehicle-integrated photovoltaics innovation will allow trucks to harness solar power from a solar panel installed on the truck roof and reduce truck emissions.
VL Offshore (Houston, TX) – This team is developing a rapidly deployable, floating offshore solar system that can move with the ocean’s waves, rather than a rigid structure resisting wave motion. This system, which is designed to withstand high waves and wind speeds, will supply energy to coastal and remote communities. 
Voltic Shipping (Whitney, TX) – This team is developing foldable, rotatable, and retractable solar panel systems to power canal, lake, and marine cargo vessels. This innovation will enable zero-emission, solar-powered cargo ships and help decarbonize the shipping industry.
EmpowerSun Solutions (Finalist) (Denver, CO) – This team is developing a platform for underserved communities that provides customized solar planning resources and connects landowners with pre-certified project partners. This innovation will help underserved communities, farmers, and tribal entities to effectively leverage their land for the development of solar energy. Ready! JEDI Winner, Set! JEDI Winner, and Go! JEDI Winner
1Climate (Finalist) (New York City, NY) – This team is developing a solar regulatory platform for faster permitting and interconnection by automating regulatory, permitting, contracting, and incentive filing processes. This will streamline the solar project development process, increase the ease of securing project financing, and monetize tax credits more reliably and efficiently.
Wildgrid, Inc. (New York City, NY) – This team is developing a free solar financing education and planning tool to help users interested in going solar easily understand, personalize, and streamline their solar project and financing. This financial planning tool will make solar adoption a financial reality for users by finding available tax incentives and helping consumers apply for zero- to low-interest green loans.
Electra (Finalist) (Bellingham, WA) – This team is developing a smart digital network for solar panel recycling to reroute retired solar panels from landfills to reuse locations or recycling facilities. This platform will optimize the collection, logistics, and matchmaking of solar panel recycling, leading to less waste and increased second-life opportunities.
Solar Unsoiled (Finalist) (Durham, NC) – This team is developing a software for large scale solar farms that provides optimized solar panel cleaning schedules based on a model that predicts daily soiling. This solution will increase system energy yield and reduce panel maintenance costs.
Reliable Autonomy (Basking Ridge, NJ) – This team is developing a software solution for homeowners with solar and second-life battery systems. This software integrates probabilistic solar forecasting and battery secondary life health diagnostics to maximize system integration efficiency and reduce costs for homeowners to adopt solar energy.
Keeping Solar Power Plants Green (Xenia, OH) – This team is developing a robotic arm to kill unwanted vegetation growing around mounting posts on solar farms with light that disrupts photosynthesis. This non-chemical treatment eliminates the need for expensive and hazardous herbicides, reducing operations and maintenance costs and increasing the safety and sustainability of solar farms.
Illumination Solar Training (Finalist) (Jefferson, WI) – This team, formerly known as Midwest Renewable Energy Association, is developing portable, interactive solar training carts that provide affordable, hands-on solar training for communities and colleges. This solution offers relevant equipment, comprehensive concepts, and easy transport for real-world solar training to bridge the solar skills gap. Ready! JEDI Winner, Set! JEDI Winner, and Go! JEDI Winner
Fundusol (Stanford, CA) –This team is developing a software solution that assists farmers in adopting solar energy. The platform will help to design the best system for their farm by modeling multiple factors to predict the performance of the agrivoltaic system on each farm’s crop and/or livestock. 
First Principle Energy (Sunnyvale, CA) – This team is developing a high-strength cable wire rope to mount solar panels, leading to lower levelized costs of electricity, installation costs, and foundation costs. The structure will adapt to uneven terrain due to its light weight, making field assembly easy and less time-consuming.
Recode Energy (Denver, CO) – This team is developing a software platform to help buyers navigate solar policies and incentives by developing personalization roadmaps and implementation tools for buildings. The platform will assess your portfolio for climate incentives, decode what those mean from a financial perspective, and guide you to a marketplace of resources, developers, and legal experts. Pitch Competition Winner
Soltheos (Denver, CO) – This team is developing a low-cost thermal battery for residential customers. This system will be able to provide heat when solar power is unavailable or when electricity prices are higher, producing savings for the owner.  
Ark Power Systems (Lake Linden, MI) – This solution is a modular, scalable, ground-mount solar racking system that enables the low-cost, fast installation of complete residential and commercial PV systems at scale. This can greatly reduce the soft costs of solar installations.  
NAS-LIION (South Orange, NJ) – This team is developing a quick swab test to detect leakage from lithium batteries in nanogrid applications that will increase quality control and failure analysis. This technology can improve quality control standards in second-life batteries in solar applications.   
Exergi (Buffalo, NY) – This team is developing a residential Solar Turbine System to provide homeowners with another option to adopt solar for those who can’t install on their roofs. It features a low space requirement, placement versatility, and easy installation and uninstallation.
Modular Microgrids (Mount Joy, PA) – This team is developing a solar-plus-battery microgrid for construction sites and modular homes and offices. It is aimed at replacing diesel generators often used at construction projects, improving the air quality around sites.   
Full Charge Solar (Mesquite, TX) – This team is developing a fully collapsible, emission-free, cart-based solar array with a battery and inverter that requires little to no maintenance, and provides electricity throughout the day while charging the battery to provide electricity at night. It can serve emergency situations when power is not available and has a grid-tie capability for non-emergency situations to offset electricity costs.
Amaterra Tech (Austin, TX) – This team is developing a distributed control system for microgrids that can integrate seamlessly with existing infrastructure. This solution will allow microgrids to expand quickly, reducing costs of adding new storage and generation to the systems.
The American-Made Solar Prize is a part of the American-Made Challenges and is administered by DOE’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory.
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Nearly twice as many Reform UK voters would back a solar farm in their area than support fracking, according to a new poll published today.
The findings, for the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit, are at odds with Reform’s national support for fracking.
The poll found that 43% of people who planned to vote Reform UK in this month’s local elections said they would back a solar farm as the best way to create energy locally.
This compared with 23% who said they would support fracking.
Among all voters, 60% said they would pick solar. Just 10% supported fracking.
Higher-volume fracking is currently prevented by a moratorium in England.
But Richard Tice, Reform UK’s energy spokesperson and deputy leader, has repeatedly called for a revival of fracking, particularly in Lincolnshire. He has also opposed renewable energy, including solar farms.
The party’s mayor of Greater Lincolnshire, Dame Andrea Jenkyns, has had talks with Egdon Resources, which wants to frack for shale gas in the Gainsborough Trough. Egdon is owned by the Texas-based oil and gas firm, Heyco Energy, which has used multi-stage hydraulic fracturing in the US Permian Basin.
Despite Reform UK’s national support for fracking, some of its local authorities have opposed the operation.
Lancashire’s Reform-led council said last year the countywas “not conducive” to fracking”. The Fylde region, near Blackpool, experienced experienced many small earthquakes caused by fracking by Cuadrilla at its Preston New Road site in 2018 and 2019.
Scarborough’s Reform-led town council unanimously opposed plans for lower-volume fracking in the North Yorkshire village of Burniston.
Alasdair Johnstone, of the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit, said today:
“Reform’s pro-fracking, anti-solar stance appears not only at odds with broad public opinion, but also the opinion of their voters who would prefer a quiet solar farm over a noisy fracking pad in their area.
“That divergence is also playing out between the national level of the party and local councils some of which have said they don’t want fracking in their area.
“Public opposition aside, Reform would find it tough to emulate Trump’s pro-fracking push as British geology is very different to that in the US.
“Reform voters clearly back renewable energy which is helping to reduce the UK’s dependence on volatile gas markets and foreign imports.”
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Tagged as: adults, Alasdair Johnstone, authorities, Dame Andrea Jenkyns, deputy leader, Egdon Resources, elections, energy, Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit, England, farm, Fracking, Gainsborough Trough, greater Lincolnshire, Heyco Energy, hydraulic fracturing, Lancashire, local, local election, Mayor, moratorium, More in Common, national, operation, opposed, poll, polling, prefer, Reform UK, renewable, revival, Richard Tice, Scarborough, shale gas, solar, support, voters
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Clean Energy Trade Hits $479B Despite Tariffs and Global Tensions: What This Means for the Energy Transition  CarbonCredits.com
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India’s experience in 2025 signalled that limited system flexibility will present a growing barrier to solar integration without prudent planning
Solar is meeting a growing share of daytime electricity demand and altering net load patterns. In 2025, this coincided with weaker-than-forecast daytime demand and limited operational flexibility. The coal fleet, which must remain available for the evening peak, could only ramp down so far during the day without breaching technical and reliability limits. As a result, system operators relied on real-time schedule revisions and emergency interventions to maintain grid security, leading to solar curtailment on certain days.
Although these generators get compensated for curtailed solar energy – based on emergency Tertiary Reserve Ancillary Service (TRAS) provisions – this phenomenon represents a notional loss to the system. Clean electricity is not delivered, fossil generation is not displaced and emissions reductions are foregone.
In 2025, emergency curtailment was primarily a result of muted demand and operational issues like forecasting error. However, as renewable penetration increases, such curtailment could become routine without an appropriate response. To avoid this, flexibility must keep pace with solar capacity. The coal fleet must flex further, energy storage must be deployed and demand-side response must be accessed. Curtailment this year did not reflect a lack of demand for clean power, but highlighted the flexibility required from the rest of the system to integrate it.
A massive 38 GW of solar capacity was added in 2025. Yet, curtailment of renewable energy emerged as a key theme of the year, driven by transmission constraints and grid security concerns through emergency measures. In many ways, such curtailment defeats the very purpose of building this capacity. While grid security-related curtailment in 2025 may not be a major concern in isolation, as it was largely triggered by lower-than-expected demand, it served as a real-world stress test for a high-solar future. It highlighted a fundamental reality: clean energy cannot scale efficiently without flexibility.
Solar curtailment between May and December 2025 for emergency reasons was driven primarily by the system’s inability to sufficiently flex conventional generation and create headroom for solar during periods of lower-than-forecast daytime demand.
On several occasions, the coal fleet’s load factor at midday was close to the mandated minimum thermal load (MTL) of 55%, and the fleet was not able to flex down further than this.
Even though renewable energy generators would receive approximately between INR 5,750 million – INR 6,900 million (~USD 63 million – USD 76 million) in compensation payments for the curtailment, the power system lost an estimated 2.11 million tonnes of unrealised CO2 abatement. This highlights that solar curtailment results in both economic and environmental losses, despite generators being compensated.
The experience of 2025 signals how the power system must evolve as solar capacity expands rapidly. Flexibility buildout across the three levers (supply, store and shift) now needs to keep pace with solar capacity additions.
Ember is an energy think tank that aims to accelerate the clean energy transition with data and policy. Ember is the trading name of Ember Energy Research CIC, a Community Interest Company registered in England & Wales #06714443. ‘Ember’ is a trademark held at the United Kingdom and European Union Intellectual Property Offices. All content is released under a Creative Commons Attribution Licence (CC-BY-4.0). Website powered by 100% renewable electricity.
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The recognition, issued under ISO/IEC 17025:2017 and under the responsibility of NCB SGS Belgium, enables Delhi Test House to conduct internationally accepted testing for PV modules in accordance with IEC standards.
May 29, 2026. By Abha Rustagi

AI, Digitalisation Will Drive Next Phase of India’s Energy Transition: Schneider’s Udai Singh

Iron-Air Batteries Can Power India’s Renewable Ambitions: Stuti Kakkar, Meine Electric

India’s EV Future Depends on Highway Charging Corridors: Kartikey Hariyani, ChargeZone

GoodWe India’s Aniket Sawant on Crossing 6 GW Shipments and the Future of Energy Storage

Encapsulant Selection is a Strategic Reliability Decision: Avinash Hiranandani

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The national electric average for electricity use (three-bed semi-D) is 4200kWh per year without an EV charge or heat pump (HP). Even a modest PV-solar array can clip a healthy percentage from year-round use by putting credit on a bill. File pictures
I admit, I have deep, disturbing solar-photovoltaic (solar-PV) envy. In 2019, my 4.2kWp array and 6.5kWh battery were considered a larger solar system. I even threw down money on a solar water diverter (Eddie by MyEnergy). Now, despite very welcome savings, my system is a flame-faced tiddler.
How about 60kWh-80kWh-plus in solar gain in a single spring or summer’s day? This delivers a whopping figure in excess kWh back to the grid as credit on a bill, while running the house in real time, topping multiple batteries, and powering a heat-pump or an electric car (EV).
The performance of some of today’s 10kWp-15kWp-plus arrays matched to 10kW-12kW inverters, with up to 25kWh of battery storage (or more), is dazzling. Some customers with deliberately over-sized roof or ground-mounted arrays have four-figure credits on their bills by September.
Yes, you read that right. Panel-maxing (also called DC-over sizing) can be used to kill the bill and beat a path through even cloudy weather to serious year-round savings. This is a growing trend for those who can afford the hardware.
There’s an expanding group of solar-PV users in the 6kWp-8kWp division also making impressive use of their systems 24/7, with collectors large enough to be useful 12 months of the year, and batteries big enough to both fill for household use and to feed the grid when the sun goes down, exceeding the simple parameters of personal consumption.

These are real enthusiasts who know how to hit that sweet spot and minimise wasteful “clipping” with advanced inverter settings.
New BER ratings bring increased value
The new BER ratings in place since May 24 of this year bring increased value to renewable energy contributions, including solar, potentially pushing some homes up a whole BER band when reassessed.
A new report by installer network EnergyEfficiency.ie, based on over 100,000 grant-supported installations from the SEAI’s solar-PV scheme data, shows that nationally, the average domestic solar-PV system increased in size by 68% between 2020 and 2025, rising from 3.7kWp to 6.2kWp.

The average cost per kWp (potential kW peak of power on the roof) has fallen almost 39% since 2020, slumping dramatically from €2,762 to €1,689 nationally. Little wonder there were 10,000 applications for the SEAI solar grant in the first three months of 2026.
There’s battery storage in around half of these installations.
One in every 18 homes nationwide installed solar panels with the support of an SEAI-managed grant from 2020 to 2025, offset by €219m in grants, with over 33,000 installs in 2025. This doesn’t even include systems installed or beefed up without grant aid.
Why is solar-PV so popular right now?
What is the reason for the growth in size and popularity of solar-PV? Brian Kelly, editor of EnergyEfficiency.ie, points to the removal of planning permission requirements for rooftop solar-PV installations from October 5, 2022, which allowed homeowners to install unlimited panels on their homes for the first time. “Previously, a solar system could not cover more than 50% of the roof, or more than 12m2 of roof space, without planning permission,” he says. “On May 1, 2023, the Government also removed VAT on domestic solar components, including solar panels, inverters, batteries and the installation itself,” he says.
Eyes to the skies
In my view, the helter-skelter of power prices has also turned many householders’ eyes to the skies. As domestic users, we pay €480 more for power than the EU average (€480 per household — Eurostat May 2026).
Standing charges become a distant memory as truly serious solar-PV systems flog excess from 19c to 25c a kWh back to the grid at up to 5.75kW per hour. Add a battery or multiple batteries, and a system can be set up to automatically download charge to one or multiple tiers of domestic batteries using smart-meter EV tariffs as low as 5.99c per kWh during the wee hours at 7kWh per hour (typically 2am to 5am) — Pinergy/EV drivetime.
Back to the grid
This cheaply collected power can be sold back to the grid later the same morning at a higher 19c to 25c per kWh. This export is treated just like excess straight off the roof and is enjoyed as credit on the customer’s power bill.
The empty batteries can now be topped up by the sun and be used alongside direct gain to run the home.
Bill credit just keeps piling up, and spring/summer is high season. As long as you work within the bounds of being a micro-generator, rather than a mini-generator, you just need that NC6 certification from the ESBN to cash in.
It is possible with the permission of ESBN to handle the export to the grid from a second dedicated inverter just to handle export to the grid (apart from the typical one handling the household usage).
For more of this technical wizardry, join the Irish Solar Owners group on Facebook to be illuminated by the system suppliers and residential pioneers juicing it all up.
There’s also a handy ESBN document for anyone nerdy enough to read it, see Media.esbnetworks.ie.
Heat pump and EV-charging
I had in decades past said that homeowners should dismiss the idea of using their solar-PV to run a heat pump (HP) or to charge an EV in any meaningful way.
These bold domestic micro-generators blast through all my shady notions, with impressive year-round solar gain and credit managed by app-based software, and good old maths-based planning.
That said, EV-charging overnight offers superb value that some say is best kept in place, leaving excess gain to be sold to the grid.

The backed-up credit on a power bill, served by well-positioned panels (more than are technically needed to run the home), allows some householders to sail through winter not paying much, if anything, for electricity/VAT/PSO and standing charges.
These gains are vulnerable if there’s a prolonged period of bad weather, and a large HP or large EV battery are bleating for attention. However, a large credit on a customer’s account gathered throughout the spring and summer can ease the seasonal pain of solar-PV performance, reaching real energy independence.
Ground-mounted arrays
We rarely get a win with utilities. Ground-mounted arrays are fantastic for getting a perfect aspect and angle to harness free solar energy.
Ground-mounting is limited to those who have enough up-front capital and square metres of room to include them without vandalising the garden.
Reduced payback time
The payback time for a solar-PV installation has been reduced by better prices for arrays, and (I have to say) the soaring cost of power from the grid. “A typical household installing solar panels in 2020 was facing a payback period of around 10 years,” according to Brian Kelly of energyEfficiency.ie. “Today, that has fallen to no more than six years for most people.” As solar-PV users, we’ve proven that this technology works well in spotty Irish conditions. It’s about light, not blistering wall-to-wall sunshine.
Surely, sustainable energy should be there for everyone to enjoy, regardless of their income. In my opinion, the solar grant managed by the SEAI is not enough in the face of unstable power prices (currently ascending).
It’s only holding at €1,800 at the moment due to the mercy of the Government’s 2026 budget. The average pre-grant cost of all solar installations which received a solar-PV scheme grant in 2025 was a whopping €10,529.
I would suggest there should be a 75% to 100% means-tested award of all costs for a modest solar-PV system by the Government. This would be a solar-PV serving household needs primarily, but even without a battery, users would enjoy a little day-time excess and credit to their bill to offset winter utility bills.
A 2.5kWp-4kWp array would work for most families and house sizes, and batteries could be optional for a further investment.
A five-year lien on the property could ensure that the cost was paid back to the local authority if the house were sold (a similar condition is already used in the Vacant Property Refurbishment Grant).
With a new BER rating system pushing some homes down the scale and away from achieving green mortgages, let’s see what the government can do to bring everyone a little more sunshine.

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India’s energy investment is projected to reach a record $170 billion in 2026, driven by rapid growth in solar power, transmission infrastructure, energy storage and oil refining, according to the International Energy Agency’s (IEA) latest World Energy Investment 2026 report.
The report highlighted that India’s overall energy investment has expanded at an average annual rate of 11% over the last five years, reflecting the country’s increasing focus on energy security, infrastructure expansion, and clean energy transition.
According to the IEA, investment in solar photovoltaic (PV) projects has grown at an annual rate of 25% since 2020, while oil refining investment has increased by 23% during the same period. Together, both sectors accounted for nearly one-fourth of the rise in India’s overall energy spending.
The report noted that India’s refining sector expansion could increase the country’s refining capacity by nearly 15% by 2030, despite continued dependence on imported crude oil. However, upstream oil and gas investments have declined by an average of 7% annually since 2020, prompting the government to introduce new licensing reforms aimed at attracting fresh exploration investments.
Notably, India achieved its Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) target of sourcing 50% of installed power generation capacity from non-fossil fuel sources in 2025, supported by strong solar investments, which reached nearly $20 billion.
Solar and wind energy now account for more than half of India’s installed generation capacity, increasing the need for grid upgrades, energy storage systems and flexible power generation to manage renewable intermittency.
The report added that India currently invests around three dollars in renewable and nuclear energy for every dollar spent on fossil fuel-based power generation, compared to around 1.5 dollars five years ago. Meanwhile, investments in coal-fired generation have fallen to nearly 40% of their 2010 peak levels.
Despite the rapid rise of renewables, coal continues to play a dominant role in India’s energy system. The IEA identified India as the world’s second-largest investor in coal supply, with coal-related investments tripling over the last decade.
Investment in coal supply is expected to reach around $13 billion in 2026 as India works towards increasing domestic coal production from around 1 billion tonnes currently to 1.5 billion tonnes by 2030. Coal remains central to both electricity generation and industrial energy demand.
India is also witnessing a sharp increase in investments related to battery storage, transmission infrastructure and grid modernisation. Energy storage system (ESS) tenders crossed 100 GWh in 2025, more than double the previous year’s level and over ten times higher than in 2023.
Battery storage tariffs declined significantly as project sizes expanded, with discovered storage tariffs falling from around $14,700/MW/month in 2023 to below $3,000/MW/month in 2025, according to the report.
The government has also introduced viability gap funding support through the Power System Development Fund (PSDF) to accelerate battery storage deployment, subject to local content requirements. Additionally, the Central Electricity Authority (CEA) has outlined plans to develop 100 GW of pumped storage capacity by 2035-36.
Transmission and distribution investment is projected to reach $26 billion in 2026 after recording annual growth of 15% over the last five years. The report highlighted the Green Energy Corridor (GEC) programme, which has already added more than 3,000 kilometres of transmission lines to integrate renewable energy into national and state grids.
The IEA also noted that end-use energy investments, led by energy efficiency spending, have risen by more than 10 percent annually to around $18 billion. Electric vehicle investment remains relatively small at around $2 billion, accounting for nearly 5% of total vehicle sales, although growth in the segment continues to accelerate.
We are India’s leading B2B media house, reporting full-time on solar energy, wind, battery storage, solar inverters, and electric vehicle (EV)
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