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‘Few better uses of public money’: Solar panels and batteries cut lower-income households bills by two thirds  BusinessGreen
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This week on Projects Weekly, Energy Vault has acquired more than 2.3 GW of BESS projects from Goshe Energy Storage in a consequential deal for the U.S. energy sector. In Arizona, GridStor has closed a debt financing package for its White Tank project with a number of investment partners. NorthStar Clean Energy’s Hart Solar Project finished construction in Michigan last week, supplying more than 200 GWh of renewable energy across the Mitten State. Slightly southwest in central Illinois, PureSky Energy launched its first community solar farm in the Land of Lincoln. In Colorado, Cloudbreak Energy Partners and NORD/LB closed on financing for the Pueblo Battery Resource installation in the Black Hills, and Apex and Meta agreed to a seventh solar-related deal in Texas. Finally, Madison Energy Infrastructure announced a new community solar initiative with help from partners across the U.S. Keep reading for all the details and more!

GridStor and investment partners close debt financing for Arizona battery project

Utility-scale battery energy storage system (BESS) developer GridStor has secured a debt financing agreement worth $220 million for development of its White Tank project in Arizona.
Signed in conjunction with KeyBanc Capital Markets, ING Capital, and Zions Capital Markets, the financing will go toward construction of 100 MW / 400 MWh of renewable energy for the Grand Canyon State. Aiming for a 2027 energization date, the project will operate within a 20-year tolling agreement with Arizona Public Service, the state’s largest electrical utility.
“We are proud to work with three distinguished financial partners to complete the financing of the White Tank Reliability Project,” says Chris Taylor, CEO, GridStor. “Trusted partnerships like these are critical for advancing large-scale power supply and infrastructure to meet surging demand for new power capacity. We thank ING, KeyBanc Capital Markets, and Zions for placing their trust in us.”
Bright spot: The financial close marks GridStor’s fourth major financing milestone over the past year. The company now boasts a project pipeline of more than 3 GW of battery storage projects either in late-stage development or under construction across much of the U.S.
Filipe Barreto, director of ING, says the growth of renewable energy, especially batteries, provides a prime opportunity for investment banking firms like his.
“The rapid growth of renewable generation is driving increasing demand for energy storage solutions, making BESS assets an integral part of energy infrastructure and one of the primary themes in energy financing,” he says. “This transaction reflects ING’s confidence in the sector and our commitment to financing energy infrastructure that enhances grid reliability and supports the transition to a lower-carbon energy future. We look forward to building on this success with GridStor.”

Hart Solar Project comes online in Michigan

NorthStar Clean Energy has announced the completion of the Hart Solar Project, a new 120 MW utility-scale solar installation in Oceana County, Michigan.
Officials expect the new installation will generate more than 200 GWh of electricity every year, powering more than 21,000 homes throughout the Mitten State. The project will avoid about 96,000 metric tons of carbon emissions each year, officials add, operating through power purchase agreements with Executive Energy Services and the Michigan Public Power Agency (MPPA) to serve customers across the region.
“Hart Solar is an important investment in Michigan’s energy future and demonstrates how strong partnerships can help deliver clean energy solutions to communities across our state,” says Brian Hartmann, president and CEO of NorthStar Clean Energy. “By working with organizations like Executive Energy Services and MPPA, we’re helping meet customer energy goals while strengthening Michigan’s energy infrastructure with additional renewable generation.”
Bright spot: The new project also aims to strengthen the state’s communities through a number of economic investments and partnerships. NorthStar officials say the project created more than 300 construction jobs, making “significant contributions” to the state’s economy throughout its development.
“Oakland County and small businesses across Michigan are expected to save on electric supply charges through the Hart Solar Project,” says Robert Bernardi of Executive Energy Services. “Through a partnership with NorthStar Clean Energy, Oakland Schools and 45 other public school districts statewide are projected to save approximately $25 million over a 10-year agreement.
“These savings will allow schools to redirect funds toward students, staff, and core educational priorities while advancing their clean energy goals.”

Cloudbreak Energy closes financing for Pueblo Battery Resource project

Energy developer and IPP Cloudbreak Energy Partners and NORD/LB have closed on $60 million in construction financing for the Pueblo Battery Resource energy storage project in Colorado.
The 50 MW / 200 MWh storage installation will be the first of its kind built in Black Hills mountain range territory, according to representatives. The project also marks Cloudbreak’s first foray into battery storage as a whole, which the company says paves the way for future storage development.
“This financing demonstrates Cloudbreak’s ability to finance and deliver on grid-scale storage assets,” says Alec Shobe, COO of Cloudbreak Energy. “Nord was the right partner for us on this deal, bringing both thoughtful deal structuring and storage-financing expertise to get Pueblo Battery Resource to this milestone. This transaction lays the foundation for the broader battery storage pipeline we’re building across the country.”
Bright spot: The financing deal “reflects NORD/LB’s continued commitment to supporting the energy transition through tailored financing solutions,” according to Sondra Martinez, head of originations for the Americas at NORD. As the first of its kind, the investment firm says the battery project represents a unique opportunity, not only for its bankers, but for the regional energy grid.
“The project represents an innovative battery storage solution supporting Black Hills Energy under a unique Build-Transfer structure,” says Sondra Martinez, head of originations for the Americas at NORD LB. “We appreciate the strong commitment and collaboration demonstrated by both Cloudbreak and Black Hills Energy throughout the process and look forward to building on these relationships.”

Energy Vault acquires gigawatt-scale Goshe Energy Storage portfolio

Grid-scale energy storage firm Energy Vault has made a move to purchase a portfolio of more than 15 utility-scale battery storage projects from Coloradan project developer Goshe Energy Storage.
Bright spot: In total, the projects account for more than 2.3 GW of BESS development, officials say. The project portfolio adds more than just energy, as the company’s team of BESS development and management professionals will also join Energy Vault’s ranks.
“This portfolio fits squarely within Energy Vault’s strategy of acquiring late-stage, de-risked development projects that can be moved efficiently toward construction and operation,” says Cory Magnuson, President of Asset Vault. “The team has a track record of originating and advancing high-quality BESS projects, and we’re glad to have them join us as we continue to scale our owned-asset portfolio across U.S. markets.”
Anchoring the portfolio is a duo of projects worth 150 MW and 200 MW of storage respectively. Set to reach commercial operation during Q1 2028, the projects will generate about $30 million in combined annual run-rate EBITDA once operational.
The deal expands Energy Vault’s development pipeline under its Asset Vault business segment, officials say. Additionally, the portfolio purchase bolsters the company’s strategy of financing, developing, owning, and subsequently operating storage and AI infrastructure assets around the U.S.
“Joining Energy Vault allows our team to continue the work we started – developing and delivering the storage projects the grid needs – with the backing of a large, vertically integrated and global platform,” says Goshe CEO Bailey McCallum. “We’re pleased that S2G will continue as a financing partner through this transition, and we look forward to seeing this portfolio through to construction and operation as part of Energy Vault’s platform.”

PureSky Energy launches first solar project in Illinois

PureSky Energy has launched its first community solar farm in Illinois, providing renewable energy to income eligible households in Ameren Corp.’s utility area.
Now operational, the 1.45 MWac project sits on about 36 acres of farmland in the Land of Lincoln. The project draws power from more than 3,360 individual solar panels, aiming to generate over 3.1 GWh for the community on an annual basis.
“Launching McLean 1 as our first project in Illinois—and dedicating it entirely to income-eligible households—is an important milestone for PureSky,” says Nicholas Topping, VP of community solar at PureSky Energy. “By participating in Illinois Solar for All and partnering with trusted local organizations, we’re ensuring that the clean energy transition delivers real, measurable benefits to the people who need them most.
“Projects like McLean 1 show how community solar can advance energy equity while strengthening local communities.”
Bright spot: The new solar farm is set to provide Bloomington, Illinois and the surrounding area with over $5.4 million in 30-year savings, officials say, while powering up to 439 homes. In total, the project will have the same environmental effect as removing 491 cars from the road.
“Affordable homeownership extends beyond the cost of housing itself,” says Tyler Wiggs, director of operations of Habitat for Humanity of McLean County. “Energy expenses can place a significant burden on household budgets, particularly for families with limited incomes. McLean 1 provides meaningful utility savings that can help families achieve greater financial stability while participating in Illinois’ clean energy future.” 

Apex and Meta add 144 MW to energy partnership in Texas

Apex Clean Energy has announced another power purchase agreement with Mark Zuckerberg-led tech giant Meta for “exclusive rights to all environmental attributes associated with energy from the Starling Solar project in Gonzales County, Texas.”
This deal, the seventh between Apex and Meta, accounts for 144 MW of renewable energy from the project, officials say. That energy will add new generation to the local grid, with the companies’ combined portfolio now totaling about 1.2 GW across five states.
“Seven projects over nearly as many years speaks to a partnership built on shared principles of responsible building and disciplined execution,” says Apex CEO Ken Young. “Starling brings new capacity to Texas and lasting value to Gonzales County long after construction wraps.”
Bright spot: Starling Solar is set to create “significant economic benefits” for the south-central Texas community. Along with $27 million in tax revenue over the project’s lifetime, the site will create 400 to 450 jobs during construction and more than $26.3 million in landowner payments.
“The best clean energy projects are the ones the surrounding community feels the benefit of directly—in school funding, in landowner payments, in local hiring,” says Amanda Yang, head of clean and renewable energy for Meta. “Starling brings all of that to Gonzales County, along with new solar generation for a Texas grid.”

Madison Energy Infrastructure launches gigawatt-scale community solar effort

Madison Energy Infrastructure has kicked off its Community Infrastructure Initiative, aiming to develop an additional 1 GW of distributed energy generation capacity by 2028.
The company’s financial commitment will mobilize up to $2 billion in capital, officials say, to help meet the growing power demands of AI data centers. Additionally, the initiative aims to create and deliver “lasting benefits” for communities, including potentially major bill savings.
“AI requires power at a speed and scale we’ve never seen before, and building that infrastructure successfully requires more than capacity,” says Richard Walsh, CEO of Madison Energy Infrastructure. “Community Infrastructure is about helping AI labs and hyperscalers show up for communities, not just in them. We’ve spent years cultivating the right relationships, development capabilities, and national ecosystem needed to turn that idea into local energy infrastructure at scale.”
Bright spot: Madison already has a number of projects and partnerships underway, including 50 MW of standalone energy storage in Colorado, 16 MW under construction with the Denver International Airport, and other ongoing partnerships to supply distributed generation across the U.S.
“The buildout of AI infrastructure and data center capacity provides a unique opportunity to deliver clean energy and local benefits to communities across the country,” said Andrew Brodeur, VP of national real estate and the sustainability team leader at EdgeConneX. “We are excited to grow our partnership with Madison and show up as a force for good in the communities we call home.”

Tags: commercial and industrial, Community Solar, Financing, project, Projects Weekly, utility-scale


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Oyster Renewable to Supply MS Agarwal Foundries 48 MWp Hybrid Power  energynews.pro
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India launches first LNG train: How is it different from a hydrogen train?  Business Standard
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“It’s very strong and will irritate your skin, so wear eye protection and gloves when you use it.”
Photo Credit: Reddit
Skipping one simple HVAC maintenance chore can leave even a nearly new outdoor unit surprisingly clogged.
One homeowner’s before-and-after photos served as a reminder that a 15-minute cleanup can protect an expensive piece of equipment and keep it running efficiently.
After finding their outdoor unit in bad shape, a homeowner wrote that a once-a-year cleaning was well worth the small effort.
“Ideally, you should be doing this annually. It’s extremely easy to do and all it takes is 15 minutes,” they wrote.
What caught the poster off guard, they said, was seeing that much buildup on a system that had been installed in late 2024.
“I’m surprised mine was this bad as its a brand new unit that was installed in late 2024 so I skipped cleaning it last year,” they added, later sharing an after photo in the comments.
For homeowners looking beyond maintenance alone, upgrading your heating and cooling system is also one of the best ways to save money on utility bills and protect yourself against rising energy prices. Palmetto can help homeowners understand their HVAC options and slash their energy bills with new, efficient HVAC systems and heat pumps, and its Comfort Plan network can connect you with vetted installers.
Heating and cooling are among the biggest expenses on many utility bills, so even small efficiency losses can add up quickly.
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To get started, just answer a few questions about your home — no phone number required. Within a day or two, EnergySage will email you the best options for your needs, and their expert advisers can help you compare quotes and pick a winner.
Solar panels can save you more than $50k over their 25-year lifespan, and EnergySage can help you save as much as $10k on installation. Which begs the question — isn’t that worth an email or two?
There is no universal answer on timing.
In the comments, one reader asked whether the cleaning was better done ahead of cooling season or once peak use was over.
“You can realistically do it whenever,” the original poster replied. “Some will argue that spring is best before it’s about to be used for the season. Others will argue that fall is best to get all the crap off so it’s not rotting on the coil all fall and winter. I like to do it in fall because it’s likely not to get dirty while not being used.”
The replies also suggested that location and home setup affect timing.
One commenter recommended cleaning “early in the season, late spring, after the heavy pollination period is done,” and another noted that an all-electric household keeps the system running year-round.
Add an outdoor unit check to your yearly maintenance list.
Another practical point was cleaner strength. Recommending Nu-Brite by Nu-Calgon, the original poster warned: “Its very strong and will irritate your skin so wear eye protection and gloves when you use it.”
If you’re unsure, bringing in a professional may be the safer move.
Maintenance helps, but an older or inefficient system may still be costing you more than it should. Palmetto’s Comfort Plan can help you explore efficient heating and cooling upgrades, and if you’re not ready to spend upfront, the plan includes $0-down options that can lower your heating and cooling costs by up to 50%. It also includes 12 years of free maintenance.
Homeowners can also pair solar panels with electric appliances, such as efficient HVACs, to drive utility costs even lower. EnergySage makes it easy to find the best solar system and installer for your home and budget, saving you up to $10,000 on installations.
Skipping an outdoor-unit cleaning isn’t the only HVAC habit that can hurt performance.
• An HVAC technician warned that vacuuming disposable HVAC filters can damage them and reduce performance.
• A home maintenance expert urged homeowners to clean an air conditioning unit.
• An HVAC specialist said closing too many vents can strain airflow and raise bills.
Get TCD’s free newsletters for easy tips, smart advice, and a chance to earn $5,000 toward home upgrades. To see more stories like this one, change your Google preferences here.
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“I would expect it to be included in the cost of the house, not have to take over a loan from the previous owner.”
Photo Credit: iStock
A homebuyer who offered $80,000 over asking on a house said a financed solar system nearly derailed the entire deal.
After nearly two weeks of trying to get EnFin to move a roughly $40,000 solar loan transfer along, the buyer said they were prepared to walk away unless the sellers paid it off.
Writing on Reddit, the buyer said the closing was being delayed because the home’s solar financing had to be transferred first. They said the remaining balance was still about $39,000 on an original $40,000 loan and that repeated phone calls and emails to EnFin had not resolved the issue.
By their account, the budget had no room left for another major expense.
Want to go solar but not sure who to trust? EnergySage has your back with free and transparent quotes from fully vetted providers in your area.
To get started, just answer a few questions about your home — no phone number required. Within a day or two, EnergySage will email you the best options for your needs, and their expert advisers can help you compare quotes and pick a winner.
“I already went 80K OVER ASKING,” the buyer wrote, adding that their real estate agent, lender, the sellers, the listing agent, and the title company had all tried reaching EnFin without success.
Among the replies, one comment captured the hesitation many readers expressed: “If you’re having this much of an issue with the company holding the note on the solar panels now just imagine how much you’re going to enjoy dealing with them for the next decade while you pay off that loan.”
Financing problems can overshadow the benefits of rooftop solar. Going solar is still one of the best ways to save money on home energy, especially when homeowners can compare equipment and installer pricing upfront. Tools such as EnergySage let shoppers get free solar installation estimates and compare quotes before signing anything.
Several commenters said the unpaid solar balance should be handled by the seller, like other debts tied to the property.
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“I would expect it to be included in the cost of the house, not have to take over a loan from the previous owner,” one commenter wrote.
Another user added: “The seller should bear the costs for this. They’re the ones getting a big wad of money out of the deal.”
Solar panels can lower utility bills and reduce pollution from dirty energy, but a confusing loan structure or poor servicing can turn what should be a cost-saving upgrade into a risk for the deal.
Before closing, buyers can confirm whether a solar setup is owned outright, leased, or financed and examine the terms carefully. It can also help to review electric bills from before and after installation, since expected savings don’t always match what a particular household sees.
💡Go deep on the latest news and trends shaping the residential solar landscape
For homeowners considering solar, comparison shopping can make a major difference. With EnergySage’s help, the average person can save up to $10,000 on solar purchases and installations. EnergySage’s solar map also shows the average cost of a home solar panel system state by state, along with details on solar panel incentives. Together, those resources can help homeowners get the best price for rooftop solar panels and access available incentives.
Adding battery storage to a solar setup is also one of the best ways to protect your home during outages, save money on energy, and go off-grid. You can explore EnergySage for information about home battery storage options, including competitive installation estimates.
These stories look at some of the same issues that come up when solar financing is part of a home sale.
• In Virginia, a homeowner found paid-off solar eased buyer concerns when listing their property.
• Homeowners weighing a sale heard unbiased takes on resale value after adding rooftop panels.
• Former EnergySage president Charlie Hadlow broke down what really drives solar costs for homeowners trying to avoid surprises.
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West Bengal Allots Land to Websol for 4 GW Solar Facility  energynews.pro
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“They seem pretty expensive for what I’d save in electricity costs.”
Photo Credit: iStock
A new kind of low-hassle solar panels is coming to Connecticut as the state legalizes balcony solar.
Soon, plug-in panel kits capped at 1,200 watts can be used without prior approvals, if they are at least UL-approved. That possibility is already drawing interest from residents facing steep electricity prices. 
But it has also exposed a basic problem. While the legal pathway opens Thursday, the products that many people want won’t actually be available.
The issue surfaced in a Reddit thread on the site’s r/DIYSolar community, where a Connecticut resident asked whether any plug-in solar kits would make financial sense once the state’s rule begins. 
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To get started, just answer a few questions about your home — no phone number required. Within a day or two, EnergySage will email you the best options for your needs, and their expert advisers can help you compare quotes and pick a winner.
The original poster described the planned change as allowing UL-approved systems without advance approval and summed up the cost question: “They seem pretty expensive for what I’d save in electricity costs, although I’m in one of the top 3 states for expensive electricity.”
The OP then asked the forum: “Advice on 1,200 watt plug-in panel kits?”
Replies suggested these setups can reduce how much electricity a home pulls from the grid, but many users said shoppers may be early to a market that is not ready yet. One response was especially blunt, writing: “No UL approved kits yet.”
A different commenter pointed to a cheaper route using “UL 3700 certified microinverters” with panels bought locally, while stressing that the equipment sends electricity into the home overall instead of serving one dedicated appliance. The user added: “They are not intended to power anything specific, they just put power back into your house where it is used, offsetting grid consumption.”
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Much of the discussion then centered on what Connecticut will actually require for certification.
Some commenters said the rule could be interpreted to mean the entire package must qualify as a UL 3700-certified system, rather than relying on certification for only the microinverter.
If that reading holds, people may technically have a legal option before stores have compliant products to sell them. Multiple users said fully packaged UL 3700 kits do not seem to be on the market. 
A smaller, simpler setup could lower the barrier to entry for people who are not ready for a full rooftop installation, especially in a state with high power bills. Yet, several commenters said uncertified or partially certified combinations could create legal or interconnection headaches, especially for first-time solar users.
💡Go deep on the latest news and trends shaping the residential solar landscape
For homeowners looking for bigger savings, getting rooftop solar is still one of the best ways to save money on home energy. You can try EnergySage to get free solar installation estimates and compare quotes. With EnergySage’s help, the average person can save up to $10,000 on solar purchases and installations. 
EnergySage’s solar map shows the average cost of a home solar panel system by state, along with details on solar panel incentives for each state.
Adding battery storage to a solar setup is one of the best ways to protect your home during outages, save money on energy, and go off-grid. Batteries can also help households keep more of the power they produce instead of wasting potential generation when usage and production do not line up. Homeowners can explore EnergySage for information about home battery storage options, including competitive installation estimates.
Connecticut’s rule, scheduled to begin Thursday, is part of a broader push to legalize plug-in solar and make home installations easier.
• New Hampshire signed plug-in solar into law, blocking utilities from charging fees or demanding approval.
• California moved a step closer to legalizing plug-in solar with no permit required.
• Across the U.S., plug-and-play solar panels gained momentum as more states considered legalization.
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EDF power solutions launches remote operations center in Brazil  energynews.pro
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The responses suggested the marks might be more than a simple cosmetic issue.
Photo Credit: Reddit
One Reddit user spotted three newly darkened cells on a 2-year-old solar panel. The panel still produced power, but the main worry was about reduced output.
The discussion quickly turned to whether the change was merely cosmetic or evidence of a developing fault.
The issue surfaced in a Reddit post, where the owner described a ground-mounted DMEGC panel showing three dark areas that appeared to line up with individual cells. The original poster wrote: “Three cells have darkened suddenly … No cracks I can see front or back.”
Among the replies, one commenter asked whether the panel had shown any slight voltage drop and advised inspecting the busbars closely, while another said: “Micro crack can make such a thermal profile.”
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To get started, just answer a few questions about your home — no phone number required. Within a day or two, EnergySage will email you the best options for your needs, and their expert advisers can help you compare quotes and pick a winner.
The responses suggested the marks might be more than a simple cosmetic issue.
Going solar is one of the best ways to save money on home energy, but getting strong long-term value depends on solid equipment and installation. If you’re comparing options, EnergySage can help you get free solar-installation estimates and compare quotes.
The original poster said cloudy weather made it hard to tell whether production had been affected. They also explained that the panel was wired in series with another module, so they planned to test it separately in full sun. 
In the comment thread, someone else suggested checking the back of the affected area for heat, since unusual warmth can point to a developing failure: “IF micro crack is the cause, In day time, when the temperature is high enough, micro-crack will generate a heat. touch the backside of the cell. (power loss become worse when become warmer due to the thermal expansion).”
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An unchecked panel issue can reduce production and cut into the utility-bill savings that made solar attractive in the first place. If the module is only 2 years old, documenting the issue early could also help if the seller or manufacturer needs to review a warranty claim.
A sensible next step is to test the panel on its own in strong sunlight, compare its voltage, and use an infrared thermometer if available to see whether the darkened section is running unusually hot. If those checks suggest the panel is underperforming, contacting the seller would be a good next move.
For homeowners shopping for solar more broadly, tools that make pricing more transparent can pay off. With EnergySage’s help, the average person can save up to $10,000 on solar purchases and installations. 
EnergySage’s solar map shows the average cost of a home solar panel system state by state, along with details on solar panel incentives for each state, which together can help homeowners get the best price for rooftop solar panels and access available incentives.
💡Go deep on the latest news and trends shaping the residential solar landscape
Adding battery storage to a solar setup is also one of the best ways to protect your home during outages, save money on energy, and go off-grid. Homeowners interested in that option can explore EnergySage for information about home battery storage options, including competitive installation estimates.
The mystery remains unsolved for now.
“For me those dark cells are not normal,” one commenter said, while the original poster noted: “It may just be something I have never noticed before and be ok.”
These stories cover weather-related performance risks, cleaning mistakes, and new findings on solar-cell durability.
• Researchers found temperature swings can trigger failure in next-generation perovskite solar cells.
• Tests showed common cleaning products can harm solar panels instead of helping them.
• Scientists reported an increase in the durability of perovskite solar cells with a new tweak.
Get TCD’s free newsletters for easy tips, smart advice, and a chance to earn $5,000 toward home upgrades. To see more stories like this one, change your Google preferences here.
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Vikram Solar, an Indian solar photovoltaic module manufacturer, has secured a 400 MW solar module supply order from an EPC company for decentralised solar projects across Maharashtra. The Kolkata-headquartered company manufactures photovoltaic modules and has a commercial presence across 39 countries. Vikram Solar will supply its N-Type TOPCon G12R modules with 620 Wp output, with deliveries scheduled to begin in October 2026. The modules will be deployed across multiple geographically distributed solar installations in the state. According to the company, the projects are associated with MSKVY 2.0, a Maharashtra programme focused on solarising agricultural electricity supply. The order will use Vikram Solar’s G12R TOPCon module technology for the distributed installations. The company did not identify the EPC customer or disclose the contract value in the supplied information.
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Northwestern and southern India and Pakistan saw above-average solar irradiance during the 2026 summer monsoon, while August tropical depressions reduced irradiance in eastern and central India, according to analysis using the Solcast API. Fortunately, the majority of India’s utility-scale PV capacity is in the regions with favourable conditions. After late-August flood damage in Nepal, India began exporting electricity there, supported in part by Indian PV generation.
The monsoon arrived slowly in June and rainfall has been below average in the sunnier regions. Early June–September analysis, using forecasts out to the end of September, puts irradiance around 5% above the long-term average in those areas, whilst August saw up to 10% above average. The weaker monsoon is consistent with the strong El Niño that has developed throughout 2027. These effects are also influenced by a marginal positive Indian Ocean Dipole, an Indian Ocean temperature pattern that can counteract El Niño’s influence.
Accumulated irradiance at Jodhpur, near Rajasthan’s PV-producing areas, is provisionally tracking as the second-highest year since 2007. Bahawalpur, near solar installations in Pakistan’s Punjab province, is tracking at the top of its comparison years since 2007.
Eastern and central India followed a different course. Several tropical depressions, or low-pressure systems formed over the Bay of Bengal in August and moved northwest across land, carrying cloud and heavy rain. August irradiance in the affected areas was 20–30% below the monthly average. The provisional June–September estimate is around 10% below average across Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Odisha, eastern Madhya Pradesh and
Maharashtra.
Spot analysis of time-series data in impacted locations demonstrates the impact this has for local solar production, revealing the impacts of the onset of the monsoon. Seen below, Nagpur started above average after the late monsoon onset, but August rain pushed its seasonal total below average. Abikapur, in Chhattisgarh, is tracking toward its lowest accumulated summer-monsoon irradiance in the comparison record after an average start.
Less PV capacity is deployed in these eastern areas than in India’s main solar-producing regions in the northwest. The sharp local irradiance decline therefore had a more limited bearing on national PV production potential than the August irradiance data alone might suggest.
Late-August floods in Nepal and Tibet, attributed glacial collapse, damaged 12 hydropower plants, PV facilities and transmission lines. Nepal’s generating capacity fell by 10%. Normally an exporter of hydropower to India during the summer monsoon, Nepal instead began importing electricity from India after the damage. Indian PV generation supported those exports, alongside the favourable irradiance across India’s main solar-producing
regions.
Solcast produces these figures by tracking clouds and aerosols at 1-2km resolution globally, using satellite data and proprietary AI/ML algorithms. This data is used to drive irradiance models, enabling Solcast to calculate irradiance at high resolution, with typical bias of less than 2%, and also cloud-tracking forecasts. This data is used by more than 350 companies managing over 350 GW of solar assets globally.
The views and opinions expressed in this article are the author’s own, and do not necessarily reflect those held by pv magazine.
This content is protected by copyright and may not be reused. If you want to cooperate with us and would like to reuse some of our content, please contact: [email protected].
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Intersolar Mexico concluded its seventh edition at Centro Banamex with a remarkable growth in visitor participation. Over the three days of the event, the number of visitors entering the exhibition floor increased by more than 50% compared with 2025, reflecting renewed momentum in Mexico’s solar and energy storage markets.
Together with Aquatech Mexico, the events welcomed more than 11,000 visitors and over 350 exhibitors, bringing together technology providers, developers, integrators, investors, energy users, government representatives, industry organizations and academia for three days of business, technology exchange and professional networking.
Intersolar Mexico’s content program also achieved record participation, with more than 860 attendees taking part in the International Conference and the free Innovation Forum. The program featured 56 speakers from Mexico, Germany, Spain, Colombia, the United States and Denmark, representing industry, government and academia, with women accounting for 50% of the speakers. Combined attendance at both stages increased compared with 2025, reinforcing Intersolar Mexico’s role as a platform for market intelligence, technical expertise and exchange on the developments shaping Mexico’s solar industry.
Government participation was particularly significant this year, reflecting the growing dialogue between public institutions and the solar industry. Senator Olga Patricia Sosa Ruiz, Secretary of the Senate Committee on Energy, opened the event, while Dr. Mariano Birlain, Director General for Technological Development and Access to Energy at SENER, delivered the keynote presentation outlining the federal government’s energy priorities and plans for new renewable and storage capacity. Fidel Carrasco, Coordinator at SENER, presented one of the federal government’s major solar initiatives: the development of two hybrid concentrated solar power (CSP) and photovoltaic projects in Baja California Sur.
Senator Sosa Ruiz commented:  “Mexico plans to add 32,000 MW of new capacity by 2030, with 22,000 MW coming from renewable sources. The challenge is not only to generate more energy, but to do so efficiently, reliably and affordably, with solar power playing a pivotal role in building a cleaner, safer and more sustainable energy future.”
During his keynote presentation, Dr. Birlain elaborated on these prospects, noting that Mexico aims to achieve 99.99% electricity access by 2030. He also highlighted the role that solar power and energy storage will play in the planned expansion, with approximately 14,000 MW of new solar capacity and 5,500 MW of energy storage.
Carrasco noted that the two hybrid CSP and photovoltaic projects will total 300 MW of solar capacity and incorporate up to 16 hours of thermal energy storage. The tender is planned for the final quarter of 2026, with the projects also expected to foster a national value chain.
The federal perspective was complemented by government representatives from Nuevo León, Tamaulipas, Querétaro and Mexico City, who brought regional priorities into discussions on energy demand, industrial development, investment, energy efficiency and the energy transition.
Industry experts also brought market and technology insights into the discussion. Carla Ortiz, President of ASOLMEX and Executive Director of RER Energy, highlighted the potential of photovoltaic self-consumption, noting that permits have been granted for roughly 130 MW, while solar currently represents only 15% of that capacity. Sayra Gómez, research scientist at the German research institute Fraunhofer ISE, pointed to Mexico’s strong potential for industrial solar heat, with 130 installations already supplying heat to industrial processes in the country by 2025 and significant opportunities for further growth.
The strong response was also evident on the exhibition floor, where exhibitors highlighted both the quality of the audience and the business opportunities generated during the event.
“At Intersolar Mexico, I found qualified visitors and an exhibition with a very strong audience,” said Javier García López, Managing Director of GAAL Instruments-HIOKI.
“The people attending are highly qualified and show genuine interest in the solutions we offer. That has enabled us to have meaningful conversations and develop concrete business opportunities during the event,” added Ernesto Kuri, Sales Director and distributor for the Power Road brand.
Florian Wessendorf, Managing Director of Solar Promotion International, commented: “What we experienced during these three days confirms the important role Intersolar Mexico plays in bringing the market together. The engagement of the industry and the closer dialogue with government representatives creates a very positive foundation for the continued development of the event, and we see strong potential to further expand the exhibition in 2027.”
The next edition of Intersolar Mexico will take place from September 7–9, 2027, at Centro Banamex in Mexico City.
For more information visit: Intersolar Mexico.

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French development finance institution Proparco and Banco Santander have invested into Grupo Enhol’s 467MW Illa solar PV project, which is currently under development in southern Peru.
The investment takes the form of a US$40 million senior loan, and is part of a US$289 million financing package, which includes a US$250 million mini-perm facility underwritten by Santander, Proparco and a number of global development financiers, such as Spain’s Instituto de Crédito Oficial E.P.E. (ICO). The mini-perm structure comes with a seven-year maturity and Proparco says that the finance will support the Illa project through construction and operational maturity.
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“This transaction demonstrates the value of combining the structuring and syndication capabilities of private financial institutions with the long-term financing, environmental and social expertise and risk-sharing capacity of development finance institutions,” said Proparco regional director Stanislas De La Riviere.
Grupo Enhol CFO Roberto Aguado added that the project will be Peru’s largest solar project when it begins commercial operation, which is currently scheduled for next year. The company added that the project is expected to account for 2.5% of Peru’s national electricity supply, and the news follows a number of utility-scale project advancements in the country. Earlier this year, Spanish independent power producer (IPP) Zelestra started construction at, and then announced additional financing for, a 242MW solar project.
This growth follows the publication of a report from trade body SolarPower Europe last year, in which it described the Latin American solar sector as standing at a “pivotal” moment. The report said that Peru and Colombia are “entering a new phase of energy diversification,” and Peru has already announced plans to expand its solar and wind sectors to account for 20% of domestic electricity generation by 2030, up from less than 10% in 2024.

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Fujiyama Power Systems, an India-based solar energy, has established a 1.2 GW solar cell manufacturing facility in Ratlam, Madhya Pradesh. The project utilizes TOPCon technology and is expected to commence production by the end of the current fiscal year. An investment of approximately INR 350-400 crore (~$36.5 million to ~$41.7 million) supports this specific development. Upon completion, this new capacity will aggregate with the existing 1.1 GW plant in Dadri, Uttar Pradesh, bringing the company’s total cell output to approximately 2.3 GW. Management stated that commercial operations will begin within this ongoing financial period. This initiative represents a backward integration step designed to strengthen the company’s value chain and lower reliance on open market supplies for inputs.
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Elgin, an Independent Power Producer(IPP), has completed the acquisition of the approximately 200 MW Blackhall Solar Farm in County Meath, Ireland, from GP Joule. Elgin is a utility-scale solar and storage independent power producer that develops, finances, constructs and operates renewable energy projects. Blackhall is a late-stage, consented solar project with grid connection arrangements already in place. The acquisition adds capacity to Elgin’s Irish pipeline ahead of the upcoming Renewable Electricity Support Scheme (RESS) auction. Elgin expects to invest approximately €200 million in the development and construction of the project. The company is also finalising construction and energisation of approximately 150 MW of solar projects in Ireland from a previously announced portfolio transaction. GP Joule had developed Blackhall from its early stages through planning and development before completing the sale to Elgin.
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India added 50.6GW of solar module manufacturing capacity and 9.7GW of solar cell manufacturing capacity in the first half of 2026, according to Mercom India’s State of Solar PV Manufacturing in India H1 2026 report.
India installed a record 27GW of solar generation capacity in 1H 2026, up 49% year on year from 18GW in H1 2025, according to the research firm.
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The growth followed a record first quarter, with India installing 15.3GW of solar generation capacity in Q1 2026, up 143% year on year from 6.3GW in Q1 2025 and 49% from 10.3GW in Q4 2025, according to data released by Mercom in May 2026.
Cumulative annual module manufacturing capacity reached 261.7GW as of June 2026, while annual solar cell manufacturing capacity stood at 36.6GW.
Of the cumulative capacity, 225.5GW of module manufacturing capacity was listed under the Approved List of Models and Manufacturers (ALMM) List-I, while ALMM List-II covered nearly 35.5GW of cell manufacturing capacity.
Tunnel oxide passivated contact (TOPCon) accounted for 80% of ALMM-listed module manufacturing capacity as of June 2026, making it the dominant technology.
Monocrystalline passivated emitter and rear cell (PERC)/TOPCon accounted for 11%, followed by Mono PERC at 4%, heterojunction technology (HJT) at 3%, and thin-film technology at 2%.
Gujarat remained the largest manufacturing hub, accounting for nearly 45% of India’s module manufacturing capacity and more than 36% of cell manufacturing capacity. Rajasthan and Tamil Nadu ranked second and third for module manufacturing, with 26.1GW and 23.4GW of capacity, respectively.
For solar cells, Gujarat led with 37% of annual production capacity, followed by Tamil Nadu with 4.3GW and Telangana with 4.2GW.
India’s solar cell and module imports increased 18% in 1H 2026 compared with the first half of 2025. Solar cells accounted for 81% of total imports, while modules represented the remaining 19%.
The US remained India’s largest export market for solar cells and modules in 1H 2026, accounting for 92% of total exports.
However, this could be adversely affected by the US Department of Commerce’s (DoC) final anti-dumping and countervailing duties on crystalline silicon PV cells from India, announced earlier this month, with a combined rate of 249.13% for Indian manufacturers. The rate comprised a 123.04% final dumping margin and a 126.09% countervailing duty.
The country’s manufacturing capacity also remained concentrated among major producers. The top 10 manufacturers accounted for 60% of India’s total module manufacturing capacity.
According to an IEEFA and JMK Research & Analytics report released in September 2026, India’s solar module production capacity had reached approximately 233GW, with factories operating at an estimated 35–40% utilisation. The report estimated that a further 135GW of module capacity backed by firm investment commitments and near-certain commissioning schedules was in the pipeline.
Meanwhile, Mercom reported that Indian Mono PERC module average selling prices declined 1.8% quarter over quarter.
India’s installed renewable power generation capacity reached 288GW as of June 30, 2026, accounting for about 54% of total installed energy capacity, according to JMK Research & Analytics’ Q2 2026 India RE Update, released in August 2026.
Solar accounted for 162GW, or 56%, of installed renewable generation capacity, followed by wind at 57GW and large hydro at 52GW.
Around 149GW of renewable power generation projects, including solar, wind, hybrid and storage, were in the pipeline as of June 30, with commissioning expected over the following four to five years. A further 48GW was in the bidding phase, with tenders issued but auctions yet to conclude.
India’s renewable energy transition, from solar PV and energy storage to grid integration, will be a key topic of discussion at the Renewable Energy India (REI) Expo, co-located with the Energy Storage Summit India (ESS India), in Greater Noida on 22-24 October 2026. For the full agenda and booking details, click here.

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Connecticut will allow no-permit plug-in solar, but the 1,200-watt kits may not exist yet  Yahoo
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Securing planning permission for solar farms exceeding 100 MW has become second nature for UK developers, yet the question of who will actually construct these facilities took center stage during a panel session moderated by pv magazine. The discussion occurred at Solar & Storage Live UK in Birmingham, the nation’s biggest trade exhibition and conference for the sector, and examined the practical challenges of delivering the Nationally Significant Infrastructure Project pipeline, encompassing solar developments of 100 MW or larger as well as utility-scale solar in general.
Panelists noted that obtaining planning consent is no longer the primary difficulty for UK solar projects, with achieving financial close continuing to be the main obstacle for utility-scale solar. When asked if a gap exists between the government’s clean energy goals and the revenue support provided, Ben Fawcett, head of business development UK at Lightsource bp, stated that policymakers must take further action to provide investors with revenue certainty for large-scale projects. Although recent contracts for difference auctions have been successful and set new records for procured capacity, Fawcett suggested the sector requires a ninth CfD round to obtain the contracted revenues necessary for investors to support a growing pipeline of large-scale projects.
Labor shortages emerged as another key topic. Large-scale installations demand significant skilled labor, and as additional solar projects link to the transmission network, the availability of engineers qualified to work at extra-high voltages may become strained. Tracey Elliot, director at Eden Sustainable, noted that earlier waves of high-volume solar construction in the UK relied on workers from abroad, and argued that generating skilled, meaningful employment within the country should be prioritized and could help foster community backing for developments.
David Hoare, technical director at RSK Group, tackled the issue of community opposition. RSK Group has been involved in 40 NSIP projects that obtained development consent orders, providing the firm with expertise in securing planning consent. Hoare cautioned that the industry’s customary consultation method may prove inadequate going forward and urged developers to engage more proactively with local residents to address objections to large-scale solar.
Simon Wheeler, director of development at Enso Energy, concluded the session by emphasizing that the sector requires regulatory stability, with no additional mandatory requirements for solar developers who already face sufficient challenges when constructing major infrastructure projects.
Utility-scale was not the sole topic at the event, which came after the August introduction of plug-in solar regulations permitting consumers to self-install arrays up to 800 W. The UK government initially committed to plug-in solar in February 2026. Some exhibitors perceived the policy as only partially developed. In leading plug-in markets like Germany, consumers can purchase and install plug-in solar and plug-in battery storage, but UK rules have not been revised to allow amateurs to install energy storage in that format, a constraint in a market where storage attachment rates are rising.
Products on display at the show included modules with a microinverter that connects to households through a British Standards three-pin plug, although plug-in battery products were also visible. Manufacturers are prepared, but an ongoing consultation on plug-in battery safety means it could take over a year before regulations are enacted. One manufacturer reported positive discussions with retailers and wholesalers on the exhibition floor. Plug-in devices have yet to gain traction on the UK high street, but major retailers have previously demonstrated interest and more products may soon appear on shelves.
The residential sector is also poised to gain from expanded policy support, with grants available via the UK government’s Warm Home Grants program and more favorable financing terms anticipated soon through Warm Home Loans, a government initiative that will see the state underwrite the risk of a solar loan and reduce the interest rate paid by consumers on financed installations.
UK consumers also face a 4% energy price rise from 1 October when the price cap enforced by regulator Ofgem comes into effect. The cap shields approximately 22 million UK households on default tariffs by restricting maximum rates and standing charges. Under the current cap a typical household pays GBP 1,663 per year on gas and electricity, so the 4% increase would bring an average bill to GBP 1,723 per year. Some exhibitors anticipated that higher energy bills combined with anxiety over conflict in the Middle East will result in more retrofit solar and energy storage installations.
Regarding energy storage, the United Kingdom has been a pioneering market for utility-scale battery energy storage systems for some time, and despite a challenging grid connections process the pipeline remains significantly oversupplied. New measures such as introducing financial commitments for pipeline projects are expected in a bid to further rationalize the connections queue.
Residential energy storage has entered a major growth phase, and battery storage is now often installed without solar. Australian solar consultancy SunWiz presented data at the show indicating that standalone energy storage installations now exceed standalone solar in the United Kingdom. The data did not distinguish between retrofits to buildings with existing PV systems and installations on buildings without solar, but the opportunity to arbitrage energy through time-of-use tariffs offered by major UK utilities is strengthening the case for household battery storage.
Solar & Storage Live UK was held across Sept. 22-24 at the Birmingham National Exhibition Centre. The show will return to the Birmingham NEC on Sept. 21-23, 2027.
This report provides an in-depth analysis of the Solar Panels market in the United Kingdom, covering market size, growth trajectory, demand structure, supply capability, trade flows, pricing, competitive landscape, and forecast to 2035.
The study is designed for manufacturers, distributors, importers, exporters, investors, procurement teams, advisors, and strategy teams that need a consistent, data-driven view of market dynamics and a transparent analytical definition of the product scope.
This report covers photovoltaic (PV) solar panels, which are devices that convert sunlight directly into electricity. It encompasses the global market for finished modules, including all major product technologies and form factors designed for a wide range of end-use applications.
The report combines the standard market-statistics backbone with strategic chapters that are useful for commercial planning, sourcing decisions, market entry, competitor monitoring, and portfolio prioritization.
The market is segmented into decision-relevant buckets so that demand drivers, pricing logic, supply constraints, and competitive positions can be compared across the same analytical frame.
The market data is classified and analyzed according to international trade codes, primarily under the Harmonized System (HS) headings for photovoltaic cells and electric generating sets. This ensures consistent tracking of trade flows for assembled solar modules and relevant apparatus across global markets.
Coverage focuses on United Kingdom and includes demand, supply capability where present, trade flows, pricing, competition, and outlook.
The report combines official statistics, trade records, company disclosures, product-level evidence, and analyst validation. Data are standardized, reconciled, and cross-checked to keep market sizing, trade flows, pricing, and forecasts comparable across countries and time periods.
All indicators are mapped to a consistent product definition and reviewed against the segmentation framework used in the Table of Contents.
Report Scope and Analytical Framing
Concise View of Market Direction
Market Size, Growth and Scenario Framing
Commercial and Technical Scope
How the Market Splits Into Decision-Relevant Buckets
Where Demand Comes From and How It Behaves
Supply Footprint and Value Capture
Trade Flows and External Dependence
Price Formation and Revenue Logic
Who Wins and Why
How the Domestic Market Works
Commercial Entry and Scaling Priorities
Where the Best Expansion Logic Sits
Leading Players and Strategic Archetypes
How the Report Was Built
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Community Solar Project Now Under Construction In Northeast Portland  FM News 101 KXL
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by Justine Anifowose September 28, 2026, 8:00 am
What if turning ocean water into fresh drinking water didn’t require massive amounts of energy or leave behind a trail of toxic environmental waste? Well, researchers at the University of Rochester’s Institute of Optics recently achieved this with a monumental breakthrough.
While traditional desalination plants rely on high-energy heat or heavy pressure to filter out salt, they come with a massive downside: liquid brine. This super-concentrated, salty sludge gets dumped right back into the sea, lowering oxygen levels and harming marine life.
Researchers at the University of Rochester’s Institute of Optics have cracked the code on a clever, self-cleaning solution. Led by Professor Chunlei Guo, the team developed a solar-powered desalination system that transforms seawater into fresh drinking water, all while skipping the toxic liquid brine entirely.
At the heart of this tech are custom solar panels made of black metal. But these aren’t your typical rooftop panels. The team treated the metal using ultrafast “femtosecond” lasers—bursts of light lasting just one quadrillionth of a second—to carve microscopic grooves onto the surface.
This laser treatment turns the metal into a superwicking material. When seawater touches it, the liquid instantly spreads out into a micro-thin layer instead of forming droplets. Because the dark metal absorbs almost all incoming sunlight, it heats up fast and evaporates the water into clean steam.
Here’s where things get really smart and interesting. Desalinating real ocean water, which contains a messy cocktail of magnesium, calcium and sodium, usually coats equipment in a hard, stubborn crust that clogs up the whole system. To fix this, the team harnessed a phenomenon you’ve probably seen on your kitchen counter: the coffee ring effect.
Just like a dried coffee drop leaves a dark ring along its outer edge, the panel’s micro-grooves push evaporating salts away from the central “active” zone and slide them over to the outer “passive” edges. Tested on actual ocean water from the Pacific, Atlantic and Indian Oceans, the surface continuously cleaned itself while keeping its efficiency sky-high.
Instead of creating messy liquid sludge, this system extracts nearly 100% of the sea’s dissolved minerals as a dry solid. That means no harmful brine dumped into coastal ecosystems—and a huge opportunity to harvest useful materials like ordinary table salt.
What is even more remarkable is that the team figured out how to mine rare tech components right out of the leftovers. By embedding hydrogen titanate nanoparticles into the metal’s laser-carved grooves, the panels can isolate lithium, the critical mineral used in electric vehicles, laptops and smartphones. In tests using water from the Great Salt Lake, the modified setup successfully recovered about 50% of the available lithium.
Supported by heavyweights like the National Science Foundation and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, this proof-of-concept design is built to scale. It could one day deliver safe drinking water to millions while quietly supplying the raw materials for our clean-energy future.
Sources: ScienceDaily, University of Rochester
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Two government-backed trials are now underway in New South Wales, Australia, each exploring how the advantages of distributed solar and battery storage can reach households unable to put up their own systems.
A virtual power plant pilot worth AU$11 million (US$7.4 million) for social housing tenants in the Illawarra has been announced by the NSW and federal governments. The Social Housing Virtual Power Plant pilot, unveiled on 28 September, will see rooftop solar panels and batteries fitted at chosen social housing properties inside the Illawarra Renewable Energy Zone, before being linked to a virtual power plant so stored electricity can be exported at moments of greatest value to households and the grid.
Of the total funding, AU$10 million comes from the Australian government via the Albanese government’s recent AU$145 million expansion of the Social Housing Energy Performance Initiative, while the NSW government supplies the remaining AU$1 million. Upgrades to roughly 400 homes in the Illawarra Renewable Energy Zone have already been financed through the Initiative, among them 136 rooftop solar installations.
To help shape the pilot’s design, a market sounding has been opened seeking input from solar and battery installers and virtual power plant operators, with replies due by 25 October 2026.
Penny Sharpe, NSW minister for energy, said the pilot would show how solar, batteries and virtual power plant technology can cut bills for tenants who usually cannot obtain those benefits on their own. Josh Wilson, federal assistant minister for climate change and energy, described the investment as practical cost-of-living relief that also advances the wider shift toward cheaper, cleaner energy.
The pilot forms part of a broader effort to establish the Illawarra as Australia’s first urban renewable energy zone, an approach that sets itself apart from conventional zones by centring on distributed generation and consumer energy resources instead of utility-scale wind and solar. This difference shapes how NSW is ordering its rollout: work is already progressing on the state’s Hunter-Central Coast renewable energy zone, an AU$590 million network upgrade carried out by Ausgrid and EnergyCo that will deliver 1GW of additional transfer capacity for utility-scale generation and storage, leaving NSW with two models operating side by side, one centred on transmission-scale infrastructure and one centred on what households and small businesses can produce and store themselves.
Ausgrid’s Community Power Network trial addresses the same underlying challenge through a different route. Instead of fitting solar and battery storage systems on individual properties, it encourages owners of large rooftops, such as industrial sites, shopping centres and schools, to add more solar capacity than they require, with the surplus then held in a network of community batteries and released to about 32,000 nearby Ausgrid customers during the evening peak.
Marc England, Ausgrid CEO, said the model was intended to let renters, apartment dwellers and other households lacking their own solar or battery storage share in the savings, with estimated annual bill rebates of AU$150 to AU$200 for a customer without solar.
Community consultation on where batteries should be sited is taking place in the first trial area, covering Botany, Mascot, Pagewood, Eastlakes and Roseberry, while consultation for the Central Coast is set to start next year.
The trial rests on infrastructure Ausgrid has spent several years developing. In 2024 the company introduced an energy storage-as-a-service offering alongside its ninth community battery in Bondi, giving retail customers a means to draw directly on stored community battery energy.
ARENA confirmed earlier this month that its Community Batteries Funding Initiative had reached its 100th installation nationwide, while Ausgrid separately obtained AU$8 million under Round 2 of that programme for a network-led scale-up of 21 additional community batteries across Sydney, the Central Coast and Hunter regions, funding kept separate from the Community Power Network trial yet mirroring the same underlying strategy.
Approaches to deploying community batteries still differ between jurisdictions. The ACT government, for example, finished its first three-battery network in March 2026 with a 450kWh system in Dickson, a smaller programme led by a territory government.
This report provides an in-depth analysis of the Solar Panels market in Australia, covering market size, growth trajectory, demand structure, supply capability, trade flows, pricing, competitive landscape, and forecast to 2035.
The study is designed for manufacturers, distributors, importers, exporters, investors, procurement teams, advisors, and strategy teams that need a consistent, data-driven view of market dynamics and a transparent analytical definition of the product scope.
This report covers photovoltaic (PV) solar panels, which are devices that convert sunlight directly into electricity. It encompasses the global market for finished modules, including all major product technologies and form factors designed for a wide range of end-use applications.
The report combines the standard market-statistics backbone with strategic chapters that are useful for commercial planning, sourcing decisions, market entry, competitor monitoring, and portfolio prioritization.
The market is segmented into decision-relevant buckets so that demand drivers, pricing logic, supply constraints, and competitive positions can be compared across the same analytical frame.
The market data is classified and analyzed according to international trade codes, primarily under the Harmonized System (HS) headings for photovoltaic cells and electric generating sets. This ensures consistent tracking of trade flows for assembled solar modules and relevant apparatus across global markets.
Coverage focuses on Australia and includes demand, supply capability where present, trade flows, pricing, competition, and outlook.
The report combines official statistics, trade records, company disclosures, product-level evidence, and analyst validation. Data are standardized, reconciled, and cross-checked to keep market sizing, trade flows, pricing, and forecasts comparable across countries and time periods.
All indicators are mapped to a consistent product definition and reviewed against the segmentation framework used in the Table of Contents.
Report Scope and Analytical Framing
Concise View of Market Direction
Market Size, Growth and Scenario Framing
Commercial and Technical Scope
How the Market Splits Into Decision-Relevant Buckets
Where Demand Comes From and How It Behaves
Supply Footprint and Value Capture
Trade Flows and External Dependence
Price Formation and Revenue Logic
Who Wins and Why
How the Domestic Market Works
Commercial Entry and Scaling Priorities
Where the Best Expansion Logic Sits
Leading Players and Strategic Archetypes
How the Report Was Built
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Free Data: Electric Accumulators — Australia
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Q ENERGY Inaugurates 11 MWp Solar Farm in France’s Marne Department  energynews.pro
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by Fischer Espiritu Argosino and Christopher Knittel, CommonWealth Beacon
September 28, 2026
A RECENT CommonWealth Beacon op-ed, “Before cutting solar credits, Massachusetts should do the math MIT didn’t,” argues that our research on renewables and electricity affordability is invalid because we supposedly ignored the grid-connection costs that utility-scale solar farms impose on the delivery system, while counting every cost of residential rooftop solar.
That’s an understandable worry about a certain kind of study. It isn’t a description of ours.
The op-ed takes issue with our finding that while utility-scale solar (and wind) projects are associated with lower retail rates, residential rooftop solar installations by homeowners are correlated with higher rates for the majority of state residents.
Our paper does two things the op-ed says it doesn’t. First, our primary result comes from realized residential retail prices — total utility revenue divided by total electricity sold, as reported to state and federal regulators. That number already reflects whatever utilities recover through the rate base, including the cost of upgrading a line to interconnect a solar farm. If large-scale solar farm were quietly loading costs onto the delivery system the way the op-ed describes, that would show up as a higher price coefficient on utility-scale solar in our results. It doesn’t. It shows up negative — utility-scale solar is associated with lower prices, not higher ones.
Second, and more directly on point: We didn’t stop at prices. We went and got the delivery-cost data itself. Using Federal Energy Regulatory Commission filings — the actual operating and capital expenditures utilities report by category, including transmission and distribution — we estimated how each generation technology’s share of a state’s power mix relates to delivery costs. A higher share of utility-scale solar is associated with lower transmission and distribution operating costs and lower transmission and distribution capital spending across multiple empirical models. Residential rooftop solar shows the opposite pattern on distribution costs. This is an entire section of the paper, with its own set of results tables, built for exactly the question the op-ed says we never asked.
None of this means large solar farms never require a line upgrade — of course some do, and developers typically pay for that interconnection directly, which is part of why it doesn’t show up as a rate-base cost the way the op-ed assumes. What our results say is that across 27 years and every contiguous state, the net effect of utility-scale solar on the delivery system’s costs runs in the other direction from what the op-ed claims, and we didn’t have to assume that — we measured it.
On rooftop solar, the op-ed leans heavily on a 2017 Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory study concluding that distributed solar’s rate impact would “remain negligible for the foreseeable future.”
That study was built on national rooftop solar penetration of roughly 0.4 percent of retail sales at the time. Massachusetts today is at roughly 13 percent. Lawrence Berkeley’s own analysis didn’t claim penetration was irrelevant — it explicitly found that impacts scale with adoption and can run as high as several percent of rates in higher-penetration cases even on 2015-era data.
Our results say the same thing in a more direct way: When we split states by rooftop solar penetration, the price relationship is concentrated almost entirely in the higher-adoption half of the country, and it strengthens, not weakens, once we let each state follow its own trend.
Massachusetts sits squarely in that higher-adoption group. Citing a 2017 estimate calibrated to a fraction of a percent of national penetration as a rebuttal to what’s happening in a 13 percent-adoption state today isn’t really a rebuttal; it’s a description of a different point on the same curve we identify.
We’d also note that the literature the op-ed cites as uniformly supportive of net metering is one side of a genuinely divided empirical debate — one we discuss at length in the paper.
Researchers including Paul Joskow, and, separately, Johnson, et al. and Ansarin et al. , along with our own prior work with Ignacio Pérez-Arriaga (here and here), have found real cross-subsidization from non-solar to solar households under volumetric rate recovery.
Others, including the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab and O’Shaughnessy et al. — work that the op-ed cites — find smaller effects. Both bodies of work are legitimate; the honest reading is that the answer depends heavily on adoption levels and rate design, which is precisely our paper’s point, not a threat to it.
A simple accounting check shows why our estimated magnitude isn’t a stretch. In Massachusetts, fixed costs make up roughly 60 percent of total system costs, and about 13 percent of customers have rooftop solar and pay very little, if anything, toward those costs because net metering zeroes out their bills. When this happens, the fixed cost of running the grid doesn’t shrink; it just gets divided over a base that’s 13 percent smaller.
That alone pushes the fixed-cost portion of everyone else’s bill up by about 15 percent (13 ÷ 87), the same shift we cited in our Boston Globe op-ed on this issue, and works out to roughly a 9 percent increase in the average total bill once weighted by the fixed-cost share.
That’s arithmetic, not a regression model — and it lands in the same range as our estimated effects, which is what you’d expect if the mechanism we describe is the one actually driving the results.
To be clear about what we are and aren’t arguing. We are not, necessarily, arguing against net metering, and our study takes no position on cutting net-metering credits outright. What we found is that Massachusetts recovers most fixed grid costs through a per-kilowatt-hour charge, and that as more customers reduce their metered consumption to near zero by installing rooftop solar, the households left buying full-price power from the grid — including many lower-income households — absorb more of those fixed costs.
That’s a rate-design problem, and it has rate-design solutions: shifting more fixed-cost recovery into fixed charges, funding public-policy programs through general revenue rather than electric bills, and, at the center of it, paying solar exports what they’re actually worth to the grid.
Ultimately, rooftop solar should be compensated for the savings it provides the system — the avoided generation, the deferred upgrades, the peak demand it shaves — no more, and no less. This is exactly why we recommended that the Massachusetts DPU conduct a value-of-solar study. Getting that number right, rather than defaulting to the full retail rate, is the actual reform this debate should be about.
New Hampshire has already moved partway there. We said as much in our Globe piece, and we say it again here: The goal is a grid that’s both decarbonized and affordable, and getting there requires an accurate account of where the costs and benefits actually land — which is what our data, not the op-ed’s assumptions about our data, provide.
Fischer Espiritu Argosino is a former graduate student in MIT’s Technology and Policy Program and a research assistant at the MIT Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research. Christopher Knittel is the George P. Shultz Professor and associate dean for climate and sustainability at the MIT Sloan School of Management and director of CEEPR.

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Ireland’s first solar farm to operate under the Government’s Small-Scale Renewable Electricity Support Scheme (SRESS) has begun generating power in Co Cork.
The 650kW Meadhill Solar Farm in Meadstown, Kildorrery, was developed by farmer Sean Keating and installed by PV Generation.
The facility features more than 1,000 solar panels across 1.5 acres and can generate enough electricity to power around 150 local homes each year.
Sheep can continue to graze on the land beneath the solar panels, allowing the farm to maintain its agricultural use while generating renewable energy.
Energy company Flogas, part of DCC Energy, has signed a 15-year Power Purchase Agreement (PPA) with Meadhill Solar Farm, providing a long-term route to market for the electricity generated.

Ken O’Byrne, managing director of Flogas Energy, said the agreement demonstrated how PPAs could help farmer-led renewable projects secure investment.
“What makes Meadhill Solar Farm significant is that it shows how a long-term PPA can help a farmer-led renewable project move from an idea on paper to a fully operational asset,” he said.
SRESS supports small renewable energy projects generating between 50kW and 6MW by providing guaranteed payments for electricity produced.
Minister for Climate, Energy and the Environment Darragh O’Brien said the scheme would help farmers, rural communities and smaller developers participate in Ireland’s energy transition.
“Meadhill Solar Farm shows how the right policy framework can help turn locally developed ideas into operational renewable energy projects,” he said.
The project began in 2017 as part of Keating’s plans to diversify his farm’s income and create a long-term source of revenue.
Keating said support from SRESS and the Flogas PPA had been “key to making the project bankable”.
Minister of State at the Department of Agriculture Niall Collins said the project demonstrated how renewable energy could support the diversification of farming businesses.
The farm’s official commencement was marked at an open day hosted by the Keating family, attended by representatives from the Government, Flogas and project partners.
Photo: Flogas Energy Managing Director Ken O’Byrne, Minister of State at the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine Niall Collins, and Meadhill Solar Farm farmer and project manager Sean Keating at Meadhill Solar Farm in Kildorrery, Co. Cork

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Renewable Properties Acquires 71.8 MW PJM Solar Portfolio in Pennsylvania  energynews.pro
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Most solar installers have historically avoided multi-tenant properties unless a state offered a dedicated program for multi-family buildings, according to an analysis by Tim Montague, president of Clean Power Consulting Group, published by Solar Power World. Malls, warehouses and apartment complexes have earned a reputation for consuming time and stalling in the pipeline, and many contractors keep at least one shelved multi-tenant project they would prefer not to discuss.
That picture is shifting as more companies attack the complications from different angles, making the multi-tenant solar market worth a fresh look.
The first obstacle is the split incentive between the property owner who controls the roof and the tenants who pay the electricity bills. Owners typically cover only common-area electricity, while each tenant handles utility costs in its own space. Tenants, who would capture the largest savings from rooftop solar, have little influence over whether a shared-roof project is approved, and owners face weaker financial motivation to pursue one.
That disconnect matters more as power prices climb. The average U.S. commercial electricity rate rose nearly 5% between June 2025 and June 2026, increasing the value of onsite solar savings for tenants. Balcony solar, which lawmakers in more than two dozen states have introduced legislation to support, can serve an occasional apartment dweller with a sunny patio, but it barely reduces a building’s actual tenant load and leaves the split incentive unresolved.
The second obstacle is allocating and billing solar production as tenants move in and out. Varying lease terms and uneven tenant interest complicate splitting output across dozens of separately metered spaces. A solar system may run for decades while the tenant mix changes constantly, undermining long-term planning. Even when a landlord agrees to act as energy provider, someone must still issue bills, track rate changes and field tenant calls.
The core issues are not about equipment or installation, but about ownership, billing relationships and who remains available to answer the phone years later.
Because of these difficulties, few multi-tenant solar projects were developed for years. Some solar companies are now finding success with approaches that address different parts of the problem.
Allume Energy’s technology allows a single rooftop system to serve multiple individually metered apartments. The developer Catalyze uses an integrated model in which it finances, owns and operates the installation while the property owner earns rent without paying for or managing the project. King Energy takes a similar path but combines the property lease with tenant enrollment and billing. It rents roof or parking lot space from the owner, then finances, owns and operates the solar and battery system. The landlord collects rent without spending anything, while tenants may choose to buy solar power at roughly 10% below utility rates.
King Energy has also built a distinctive billing process. Rather than sending tenants a second, potentially confusing invoice, it merges utility and solar charges into one bill. Both line items appear so the discount is clear, and a small business owner could compare a prior year’s bill with the current one and see that only the logo and total have changed.
The company does not perform construction itself, partnering instead with regional EPCs. Individual projects can be as small as 100 kW when part of a larger portfolio, though the sweet spot is above 500 kW. King Energy does not aim to compete with EPCs for installation or operations and maintenance work; it seeks to serve as the financing and billing partner operating in the background, with services white-labeled or co-branded as needed.
Before reviving an old opportunity, several questions deserve consideration. A project merits another look when an engaged owner or REIT stands behind it and it sits within a portfolio of properties rather than a single building. Strong candidates also have roofs with substantial remaining life, reliable access to meter data and utility rules that support a workable billing model. Walking away still makes sense when ownership is murky, load data is unavailable, the roof needs replacement soon or no one on the team will manage billing and tenant turnover for the next two decades.
Multi-tenant solar still requires careful qualifying, and many projects will remain too tangled to pursue. Even so, shelved opportunities may deserve re-examination. The hardware was never the real problem; what matters is whether the property, the utility market and the install team can support a long-term structure for ownership, billing and tenant management. The right combination of players can make it work.
Tim Montague is president of Clean Power Consulting Group, host of the Clean Power Hour podcast and author of the forthcoming book Wired for Resilience: The Battery and Microgrid Playbook. He serves on the advisory board of Luminous Robotics.
Interactive table based on the Store Companies dataset for this report.
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How the Market Splits Into Decision-Relevant Buckets
Where Demand Comes From and How It Behaves
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Major US solar manufacturer
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Former Cree LED business
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LED technology & solutions
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Residential solar panels
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US & Canadian manufacturing
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US-made solar panels
US operations of Korean parent
3D architecture LEDs
High-quality lighting
High-brightness microdisplays
Disinfection & purification
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Manufacturing equipment
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Former Philips business
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However, cell availability remained a constraint for manufacturers and project developers. Module manufacturing capacity expanded faster than domestic cell production, tightening the supply of compliant modules and affecting project activity. Capacity listed under the Approved List of Models and Manufacturers (ALMM) stood at 225.5 GW for modules and nearly 35.5 GW for cells.
Imports of solar cells and modules rose 18 per cent in the first half of 2026 compared with the corresponding period of 2025. Cells accounted for 81 per cent of total imports, while modules made up the remaining 19 per cent, highlighting the continuing dependence on overseas supply amid the domestic cell shortfall.
Gujarat remained India’s largest solar module manufacturing hub, accounting for nearly 45 per cent of national capacity as of June. Rajasthan followed with 26.1 GW of module capacity, while Tamil Nadu had 23.4 GW. Gujarat also held the largest share of annual solar cell production capacity at 37 per cent, followed by Tamil Nadu and Telangana with 4.3 GW and 4.2 GW, respectively.
The sector remained concentrated among major manufacturers, with the top 10 companies accounting for 60 per cent of total module capacity. Among technologies listed under ALMM, Tunnel Oxide Passivated Contact (TOPCon) accounted for 80 per cent of module capacity, followed by monocrystalline PERC/TOPCon at 11 per cent, Mono PERC at 4 per cent, heterojunction at 3 per cent and thin film at 2 per cent. The US was India’s largest solar export destination, receiving 92 per cent of shipments during the period.
India added 50.6 GW of solar module manufacturing capacity and 9.7 GW of solar cell capacity during the first half of 2026, according to Mercom India. The expansion took cumulative module manufacturing capacity to 261.7 GW as of June, while cumulative solar cell capacity reached 36.6 GW. However, cell availability remained a constraint for manufacturers and project developers. Module manufacturing capacity expanded faster than domestic cell production, tightening the supply of compliant modules and affecting project activity. Capacity listed under the Approved List of Models and Manufacturers (ALMM) stood at 225.5 GW for modules and nearly 35.5 GW for cells. Imports of solar cells and modules rose 18 per cent in the first half of 2026 compared with the corresponding period of 2025. Cells accounted for 81 per cent of total imports, while modules made up the remaining 19 per cent, highlighting the continuing dependence on overseas supply amid the domestic cell shortfall. Gujarat remained India’s largest solar module manufacturing hub, accounting for nearly 45 per cent of national capacity as of June. Rajasthan followed with 26.1 GW of module capacity, while Tamil Nadu had 23.4 GW. Gujarat also held the largest share of annual solar cell production capacity at 37 per cent, followed by Tamil Nadu and Telangana with 4.3 GW and 4.2 GW, respectively. The sector remained concentrated among major manufacturers, with the top 10 companies accounting for 60 per cent of total module capacity. Among technologies listed under ALMM, Tunnel Oxide Passivated Contact (TOPCon) accounted for 80 per cent of module capacity, followed by monocrystalline PERC/TOPCon at 11 per cent, Mono PERC at 4 per cent, heterojunction at 3 per cent and thin film at 2 per cent. The US was India’s largest solar export destination, receiving 92 per cent of shipments during the period.
Passive design is an integral part of energy-efficient architecture. Sophisticated building systems also contribute to this end. But what role do materials play in enhancing a building’s energy-efficiency?“Material selection is one of the earliest opportunities to influence how a building performs,” says Tejbeer Singh, Principal Architect & Founder, Expressionist by Tejbeer Singh. “The objective is not simply to select materials that look appropriate but to understand how they behave within the climate and construction system.”To read the full article Click Here ..
India’s infrastructure sector is building at a scale few markets can match. New highways, expressways, metros, bridges and complex engineering projects are transforming the country’s landscape. Yet, behind this rapid expansion is a growing concern within the contracting community: Can infrastructure be delivered sustainably when competition pushes prices below commercially viable levels?For Praveen Sethia, Founder & Director, Infra Advisors, who moderated the discussion, the question goes beyond the contractor’s commercial interests. Contractors may be one of the two parties to a contract,..
Gurugram’s luxury housing market has expanded beyond its traditional prime locations, with corridors such as Dwarka Expressway and Golf Course Extension Road emerging as key centres for premium residential development. Larger homes, integrated developments and amenity-led communities are attracting demand from end-users and investors.A 2025 report by Sotheby’s International Realty in collaboration with CRE Matrix identified Gurugram as India’s fastest-growing ultra-luxury housing market. The city overtook Mumbai in total sales value for homes priced above Rs 10 crore, recording nearly Rs..
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Proparco and Finnfund inject $33 million into Colombian solar platform ERCO  energynews.pro
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Mercom India’s State of Solar PV Manufacturing in India H1 2026 report shows the country brought online 50.6GW of module production capacity and 9.7GW of cell production capacity during the first six months of 2026.
The same research firm found that 27GW of solar generation capacity was installed in that half-year period, a record figure and a 49% rise from the 18GW recorded in the corresponding period of 2025.
That surge came on the back of an unprecedented opening quarter, in which 15.3GW of solar generation capacity was added during Q1 2026. This represented a 143% year-on-year jump from 6.3GW in Q1 2025 and a 49% sequential gain over the 10.3GW logged in Q4 2025, per Mercom data published in May 2026.
By June 2026, cumulative annual module production capacity had climbed to 261.7GW, while annual cell production capacity reached 36.6GW. Of the cumulative module figure, 225.5GW fell under the Approved List of Models and Manufacturers List-I, whereas List-II encompassed close to 35.5GW of cell production capacity.
Tunnel oxide passivated contact technology dominated ALMM-listed module production capacity as of June 2026, holding an 80% share. Monocrystalline passivated emitter and rear cell combined with tunnel oxide passivated contact took 11%, trailed by monocrystalline passivated emitter and rear cell at 4%, heterojunction technology at 3%, and thin-film at 2%.
Gujarat retained its position as the leading manufacturing hub, contributing close to 45% of the nation’s module production capacity and over 36% of its cell production capacity. Rajasthan and Tamil Nadu occupied second and third places for modules, with 26.1GW and 23.4GW respectively.
In cells, Gujarat again topped the table with 37% of annual production capacity, followed by Tamil Nadu at 4.3GW and Telangana at 4.2GW. Production capacity also stayed heavily concentrated among large players, with the ten biggest manufacturers holding 60% of the country’s total module production capacity.
Imports of solar cells and modules into India rose 18% during the first half of 2026 relative to the same period a year earlier. Cells made up 81% of the total, with modules accounting for the remaining 19%.
The United States was the destination for 92% of India’s solar cell and module exports in that half-year, remaining the single largest market. This position faces potential disruption from the US Department of Commerce’s final anti-dumping and countervailing duties on crystalline silicon photovoltaic cells of Indian origin, unveiled earlier in September 2026, which impose a combined 249.13% rate on Indian manufacturers. That figure consists of a 123.04% final dumping margin plus a 126.09% countervailing duty.
A September 2026 report from IEEFA and JMK Research & Analytics put India’s solar module production capacity at roughly 233GW, with plants running at an estimated 35-40% utilisation. The same report identified an additional 135GW of module capacity in the pipeline, supported by firm investment commitments and near-certain commissioning schedules.
Mercom also noted that average selling prices for Indian monocrystalline passivated emitter and rear cell modules slipped 1.8% on a quarter-over-quarter basis.
As of June 30, 2026, India’s installed renewable power generation capacity stood at 288GW, representing roughly 54% of total installed energy capacity, according to the JMK Research & Analytics Q2 2026 India RE Update published in August 2026.
Solar contributed 162GW, or 56%, of installed renewable generation capacity, with wind at 57GW and large hydro at 52GW. Approximately 149GW of renewable power generation projects spanning solar, wind, hybrid and storage were in the pipeline as of June 30, with commissioning anticipated over the next four to five years. Another 48GW sat in the bidding stage, where tenders have been issued but auctions have not yet concluded.
India’s renewable energy transition, covering everything from solar photovoltaic and energy storage to grid integration, will feature prominently at the Renewable Energy India Expo, held alongside the Energy Storage Summit India in Greater Noida from 22-24 October 2026.
Interactive table based on the Store Companies dataset for this report.
This report is an independent strategic market study that provides a structured, commercially grounded analysis of the market for Solar Cells and Module in India. It is designed for battery and storage manufacturers, power-electronics suppliers, system integrators, EPC partners, developers, utilities, investors, and strategic entrants that need a clear view of deployment demand, technology positioning, manufacturing exposure, safety and qualification burden, project economics, and competitive structure.
The analytical framework is designed to work both for a single specialized storage or conversion component and for a broader renewable energy generation component, where market structure is shaped by chemistry, duration, project economics, system integration, safety requirements, route-to-market, and grid-interface logic rather than by one narrow customs heading alone. It defines Solar Cells and Module as Semiconductor devices that convert sunlight directly into electricity, manufactured as individual cells and assembled into modules (panels) for integration into solar power systems and examines the market through deployment use cases, buyer environments, upstream input dependencies, conversion and integration stages, qualification and safety requirements, pricing architecture, commercial channels, and country capability differences. Historical analysis typically covers 2012 to 2025, with forward-looking scenarios through 2035.
This report is designed to answer the questions that matter most to decision-makers evaluating an energy-storage, battery, renewable-integration, or power-conversion market.
At its core, this report explains how the market for Solar Cells and Module actually functions. It identifies where demand originates, how supply is organized, which technological and regulatory barriers influence adoption, and how value is distributed across the value chain. Rather than describing the market only in broad terms, the study breaks it into analytically meaningful layers: product scope, segmentation, end uses, customer types, production economics, outsourcing structure, country roles, and company archetypes.
The report is particularly useful in markets where buyers are highly specialized, suppliers differ significantly in technical depth and regulatory readiness, and the commercial landscape cannot be understood only through top-line market size figures. In this context, the study is designed not only to estimate the size of the market, but to explain why the market has that size, what drives its growth, which subsegments are the most attractive, and what it takes to compete successfully within it.
The report is based on an independent analytical methodology that combines deep secondary research, structured evidence review, market reconstruction, and multi-level triangulation. The methodology is designed to support products for which there is no single clean official dataset capturing the full market in a directly usable form.
The study typically uses the following evidence hierarchy:
The analytical framework is built around several linked layers.
First, a scope model defines what is included in the market and what is excluded, ensuring that adjacent products, downstream finished goods, unrelated instruments, or broader chemical categories do not distort the market boundary.
Second, a demand model reconstructs the market from the perspective of consuming sectors, workflow stages, and applications. Depending on the product, this may include Grid-connected solar farms, Commercial rooftop installations, Residential solar systems, Industrial self-consumption projects, Off-grid electrification, and Solar-powered consumer electronics and mobility across Power Generation (Utilities/IPPs), Commercial Real Estate, Industrial Manufacturing, Residential Construction, Telecommunications, and Public Infrastructure and Technology R&D and Pilot Lines, Capacity Planning and CAPEX Deployment, Supply Chain Sourcing and Qualification, Manufacturing Process Optimization, Quality Assurance and Certification, Sales Channel and Distribution Setup, and Project Design and System Integration. Demand is then allocated across end users, development stages, and geographic markets.
Third, a supply model evaluates how the market is served. This includes Polysilicon, Silicon Wafers (Mono Grown, Cast Multi), Solar Glass, Encapsulation Materials (EVA, POE), Backsheets, Frames (Aluminum), Silver Paste & Conductive Adhesives, and Specialty Gases and Chemicals, manufacturing technologies such as Passivated Emitter and Rear Cell (PERC), Tunnel Oxide Passivated Contact (TOPCon), Heterojunction Technology (HJT), Interdigitated Back Contact (IBC), Bifacial Module Design, Half-Cell and Shingled Cell Interconnection, and Advanced Module Encapsulation and Framing, quality control requirements, outsourcing, contract manufacturing, integration, and project-delivery participation, distribution structure, and supply-chain concentration risks.
Fourth, a country capability model maps where the market is consumed, where production is materially feasible, where manufacturing capability is limited or emerging, and which countries function primarily as innovation hubs, supply nodes, demand centers, or import-reliant markets.
Fifth, a pricing and economics layer evaluates price corridors, cost drivers, complexity premiums, outsourcing logic, margin structure, and switching barriers. This is especially relevant in markets where product grade, purity, customization, regulatory burden, or service model materially influence economics.
Finally, a competitive intelligence layer profiles the leading company types active in the market and explains how strategic roles differ across upstream material suppliers, component and controls providers, OEMs, storage-system integrators, EPC partners, project developers, and distribution or service channels.
This report covers the market for Solar Cells and Module in its commercially relevant and technologically meaningful form. The scope typically includes the product itself, its major product configurations or variants, the critical technologies used to produce or deliver it, the core input categories required for manufacturing, and the services directly associated with its commercial supply, quality control, or integration into end-user workflows.
Included within scope are the product forms, use cases, inputs, and services that are necessary to understand the actual addressable market around Solar Cells and Module. This usually includes:
Excluded from scope are categories that may be technologically adjacent but do not belong to the core economic market being measured. These usually include:
The exact inclusion and exclusion logic is always a critical part of the study, because the quality of the market estimate depends directly on disciplined scope boundaries.
The report provides focused coverage of the India market and positions India within the wider global energy-storage and renewable-integration industry structure.
The geographic analysis explains local deployment demand, domestic capability, import dependence, project-development relevance, safety and approval burden, and the country’s strategic role in the wider market.
This study is designed for strategic, commercial, operations, project-delivery, and investment users, including:
In many energy-transition, storage, power-conversion, and project-driven markets, official trade and production statistics are not sufficient on their own to describe the true market. Product boundaries may cut across multiple tariff codes, several product categories may be bundled into the same official classification, and a meaningful share of activity may take place through customized services, captive supply, platform relationships, or technically specialized channels that are not directly visible in standard statistical datasets.
For this reason, the report is designed as a modeled strategic market study. It uses official and public evidence wherever it is reliable and scope-compatible, but it does not force the market into a purely statistical framework when doing so would reduce analytical quality. Instead, it reconstructs the market through the logic of demand, supply, technology, country roles, and company behavior.
This makes the report particularly well suited to products that are innovation-intensive, technically differentiated, capacity-constrained, platform-dependent, or commercially structured around specialized buyer-supplier relationships rather than standardized commodity trade.
The report typically includes:
The result is a structured, publication-grade market intelligence document that combines quantitative modeling with commercial, technical, and strategic interpretation.
Energy-Storage Market Structure and Company Archetypes
Part of Adani Group; one of India's largest integrated solar manufacturers.
India's largest solar module exporter; capacity over 12 GW.
Leading module producer with global certifications.
Subsidiary of Tata Power; established player in solar manufacturing.
Integrated manufacturer of solar modules and encapsulation materials.
Rapidly expanding module capacity; strong domestic and export presence.
Known for high-efficiency modules and EPC services.
Diversified energy company with solar manufacturing division.
Focus on residential and commercial solar modules.
Manufacturer of polycrystalline and monocrystalline modules.
Part of Chiripal Group; new entrant with large capacity plans.
Known for high-efficiency mono PERC modules.
Exports to multiple countries; ALMM certified.
Growing manufacturer with focus on quality and innovation.
Part of the Goyal Group; produces mono and poly modules.
Diversified engineering group with solar manufacturing arm.
Major supplier of solar glass to module manufacturers.
One of India's oldest solar cell manufacturers; recently revived.
Part of Moser Baer Group; cell and module producer.
Specializes in solar cell production; under restructuring.
Integrated manufacturer with cell and module lines.
Part of Borosil group; produces modules for domestic market.
Focus on off-grid and rooftop solar solutions.
Part of Mahindra Group; major solar project developer.
Independent power producer; large solar portfolio.
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The project has been implemented by Kannur International Airport (KIAL) under the capital expenditure model. It comprises 2.163 MWp of ground-mounted solar capacity and 1.841 MWp of carport solar capacity, with the installations located at the airport’s carpark area.
KIAL had invited tenders for the project in February 2025. The original scope included 1.75 MWp of carport solar and 2.25 MWp of ground-mounted capacity, along with the design, supply, installation, testing, commissioning, operation and maintenance of the system.
Oriana Power received the order from KIAL for the project and undertook the engineering, procurement and construction work. Its scope also covered operation and maintenance, with the maintenance period set at five years after completion. The official Kerala e-tendering record describes the work as a 4 MWp grid-connected solar photovoltaic system.
The plant is intended to meet a substantial share of the airport’s daytime electricity demand. KIAL expects the project to generate several hundred thousand units of electricity each month and estimates that it could reduce power costs by about Rs. 3 mn per month. The project adds to a wider shift among Indian airports towards solar power, following similar initiatives at airports including Kochi, Hyderabad and Ahmedabad.
Kannur International Airport in Kerala has completed a 4 MWp grid-connected solar power project comprising ground-mounted and carport installations. The plant is scheduled to be formally inaugurated by Kerala Chief Minister V. D. Satheesan on September 28. The project has been implemented by Kannur International Airport (KIAL) under the capital expenditure model. It comprises 2.163 MWp of ground-mounted solar capacity and 1.841 MWp of carport solar capacity, with the installations located at the airport’s carpark area. KIAL had invited tenders for the project in February 2025. The original scope included 1.75 MWp of carport solar and 2.25 MWp of ground-mounted capacity, along with the design, supply, installation, testing, commissioning, operation and maintenance of the system. Oriana Power received the order from KIAL for the project and undertook the engineering, procurement and construction work. Its scope also covered operation and maintenance, with the maintenance period set at five years after completion. The official Kerala e-tendering record describes the work as a 4 MWp grid-connected solar photovoltaic system. The plant is intended to meet a substantial share of the airport’s daytime electricity demand. KIAL expects the project to generate several hundred thousand units of electricity each month and estimates that it could reduce power costs by about Rs. 3 mn per month. The project adds to a wider shift among Indian airports towards solar power, following similar initiatives at airports including Kochi, Hyderabad and Ahmedabad.
Passive design is an integral part of energy-efficient architecture. Sophisticated building systems also contribute to this end. But what role do materials play in enhancing a building’s energy-efficiency?“Material selection is one of the earliest opportunities to influence how a building performs,” says Tejbeer Singh, Principal Architect & Founder, Expressionist by Tejbeer Singh. “The objective is not simply to select materials that look appropriate but to understand how they behave within the climate and construction system.”To read the full article Click Here ..
India’s infrastructure sector is building at a scale few markets can match. New highways, expressways, metros, bridges and complex engineering projects are transforming the country’s landscape. Yet, behind this rapid expansion is a growing concern within the contracting community: Can infrastructure be delivered sustainably when competition pushes prices below commercially viable levels?For Praveen Sethia, Founder & Director, Infra Advisors, who moderated the discussion, the question goes beyond the contractor’s commercial interests. Contractors may be one of the two parties to a contract,..
Gurugram’s luxury housing market has expanded beyond its traditional prime locations, with corridors such as Dwarka Expressway and Golf Course Extension Road emerging as key centres for premium residential development. Larger homes, integrated developments and amenity-led communities are attracting demand from end-users and investors.A 2025 report by Sotheby’s International Realty in collaboration with CRE Matrix identified Gurugram as India’s fastest-growing ultra-luxury housing market. The city overtook Mumbai in total sales value for homes priced above Rs 10 crore, recording nearly Rs..
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Zambia’s 100 MW Solar Project Enters Commissioning Phase  SolarQuarter
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Imports of PV modules to Brazil have dropped by 48% year-on-year in the first half of 2026, from 10.6GW in 2025 to 5.5GW in 2026.
According to a recent report from Brazilian PV research and consultancy firm Greener, the decrease was more notable in the utility-scale segment, with an 82% drop from the same period a year ago, from 2.3GW in H1 2025 to 0.43GW in H1 2026. The distributed generation segment, which represents the bulk of installed solar PV in Brazil, also decreased from 8.2GW in H1 2025 to 5GW in H1 2026, representing a 39% drop.
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Similar to the decrease in imported PV modules to Brazil, installations of solar PV in the distribution generation (DG) segment dropped 23% YoY in H1 2026. In total, Brazil witnessed 4.2GW of new DG installations in H1 2026, down from the 5.2GW added in H1 2025. Cumulatively, DG installations reached 53 GW at the end of June 2026, while recent data from the country’s regulatory agency, the National Electricity Agency (ANEEL), show 23.6GW of cumulative installed utility-scale solar as of 8 September 2026.
Residential solar continues to account for the largest share of new PV additions in the distributed generation segment, at 65% in H1 2026. This is the highest share for residential solar since 2019, while commercial and industrial (C&I) dropped to 19% and 4%, respectively. At the beginning of the decade, the share of installations coming from C&I (35% and 8% respectively) was slightly above residential solar (41%), according to Greener.
Moreover, module prices for projects up to 300kWp increased by 7% in June 2026 compared with prices in January 2026. Residential systems of 4kWp have seen prices increase from R$2.66/Wp to R$2.91/Wp (US$0.56/Wp), up by 9% compared to January 2026. This is the first time that a 4kWp PV system has had its price increase since January 2022.
Commercial PV systems of 50kWp had a lower price increase than residential, with prices up by 4% between January and June of this year.

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For years, farming in Rajpati Devi’s village in Jharkhand followed the rains.
When the monsoon came, the fields could be cultivated. When it ended, there was little that could be done.
Then solar panels arrived.
Photo caption: Rajpati Devi in Korabar, where solar power now brings water to her fields.
Then solar panels arrived.
The panels did not just produce electricity. They powered a system that could pump water into the fields.

That meant something more consequential than a light switching on. Rajpati and other farmers could cultivate beyond the rainy season, growing crops throughout the year.
“We women can go and switch the system on ourselves,” she said. “The water reaches our fields.” For her, electricity arrived as water.
That may be one of the less obvious ways to think about the global energy gap.  Electricity is usually measured in connections, megawatts and households. But for people living without reliable power, its value is often measured in things that have little to do with electricity itself.
A pump that can bring water to a field.
A computer that can stay on in a classroom.
A clinic that does not have to depend on a backup generator.
A family that can earn enough to stay home.
Nearly 666 million people around the world still live without electricity.
And having an electricity connection does not necessarily mean having reliable electricity. In many places, the question is not whether a wire reaches a building, but whether there is enough dependable power to run the things people need.
Photo caption: Reliable power helps this Meghalaya clinic deliver essential healthcare.
That distinction becomes particularly important in rural areas, where electricity can be tied directly to livelihoods.
A farmer needs power to pump water. A small business needs it to operate equipment. A school needs it for computers and lighting. A health centre may need it to keep essential equipment running through the night.
Clean cooking is another part of the problem. About 2.1 billion people still lack access to clean cooking solutions. Traditional wood and charcoal stoves expose households to indoor air pollution and contribute to millions of deaths each year.
So providing energy is not simply a matter of adding more electricity to the world.
It is about deciding where it goes, what it powers and whether it can keep working.

Also Watch: How Reliable Electricity Is Changing Lives and Communities
In Menofia, Egypt, the connection between energy and water looks familiar.
Solar-powered irrigation and agricultural processing systems are helping nearly 46,000 people access water and support their livelihoods.
Photo caption: A solar-powered pump brings reliable irrigation to farming families in Menoufia.
The technology is different in different places. A solar home system might make sense for one household. A water-pumping system might be more useful for a farming community. A microgrid can provide power to an entire facility.

In Kenya, solar microgrids have been used at maternal health clinics in Matongo and Nyagoto, providing power around the clock.
The clinics had previously relied on backup generators.
Photo caption: Solar power keeps this maternity clinic in Kenya running around the clock.
The reported results were striking: maternal mortality fell by 83 percent and infant mortality by 70 percent.
At schools, the effects can be much more ordinary, and perhaps easier to overlook.
Elizabeth Mbati, an educator in Kenya, described being able to power school operations, including computers, lighting, security and phone charging.
Photo caption: For these Kenyan students, solar power means light, charging and access to technology.
Also watch: The power of solar where it matters most
There is another problem that becomes apparent once a solar system is installed in a remote place.
Someone has to keep it running.
A broken system can be as useless as no system at all if there is nobody nearby who knows how to repair it.
Schneider Electric’s Access to Energy programme has therefore invested not only in energy systems but also in people who can install, maintain and build businesses around them.
Photo caption: A solar-powered health centre in Meghalaya brings reliable electricity to essential care.
Since 2019, young people from underserved communities in India have been trained as clean-energy entrepreneurs. They bring solar-powered solutions to homes, schools, businesses and health centres across rural areas.
The network now includes 407 entrepreneurs.
Photo caption: Training local entrepreneurs helps communities install and maintain their own energy systems.
That creates a different kind of connection.
The person who brings electricity to a village can also become the person who maintains the system. And the skills required to do that can become a source of employment in the same community.
The effects can extend further.
In the Indian communities described by the programme, household incomes doubled while migration fell from 54 percent to 17 percent.
Also watch: The people powering solar change
The energy transition is often pictured at a much larger scale.
There are solar farms stretching across fields, wind turbines along coastlines and new power infrastructure being built to accommodate electric vehicles and growing demand.
But there is another transition happening far from those images.
It is happening in farms that need water pumps, schools that need computers and health centres that need electricity at 2 a.m.
For these communities, access to energy is less about replacing one source of electricity with another and more about gaining access to things that electricity makes possible.
Photo caption: Local skills can turn energy access into jobs within the same community.
That is why Schneider Electric’s programme has focused on more than supplying equipment.
Its Access to Energy initiatives combine energy solutions with training, local entrepreneurship and partnerships with organisations working on the ground.
The approach is also becoming more digital, with technologies that can help monitor systems remotely, anticipate maintenance needs and manage energy over its lifetime.
The aim is to make these systems useful not just when they are installed, but years afterward.
Rajpati’s story began with a solar-powered water pump. Elsewhere, the same basic idea takes different forms.
In Egypt, it means water for agriculture.
In Kenya, it means electricity for classrooms and maternal health clinics.
In India, it means farmers can cultivate beyond the monsoon and families can stay closer to home.
Since 2009, Schneider Electric Access to Energy have reached more than 64 million people around the world.
The company says it aims to reach 100 million people with clean and reliable electricity by 2030. The numbers are large.
But the reason energy access matters can sometimes be found in something much smaller: a woman turning on a pump and watching water move towards her field.
For Rajpati, that was what electricity looked like. 
Water.

Also watch: The solar power behind a better harvest
In collaboration with Schneider

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Enforced by the U.S. Department of Commerce, a 15% Section 232 tariff on imports of polysilicon products takes effect on December 4, leaving developers with a narrowing window to secure lower-cost supply. Anza, a solar and energy storage data and analytics company, recommends that developers prioritize inventory already in the U.S. and evaluate which additional shipments can clear customs before the December 4 deadline.
Developers should also lock in domestic-content supply, including considering whether blending domestic and imported products could reduce overall CapEx. At the same time, they should review how contracts allocate exposure to retroactive tariffs and stockpiling risks and, where possible, seek written commitments from suppliers to absorb those risks.
The 15% tariff that goes into effect in about ten weeks will raise prices on polysilicon as well as on solar ingots, wafers, cells and modules. Anza reports that the median price for imported modules was $0.27/W before the August 7 proclamation and is now $0.38/W for delivery after December 4, among suppliers that have repriced, an increase of more than 40%.
The tariff is the result of the Secretary of Commerce finding in a Section 232 investigation that the quantities and circumstances of polysilicon imports threaten harm to U.S. national security.
[Read Trump signs Section 232 tariffs, placing minimum import price on polysilicon imports]
The challenge for developers is to move quickly to secure lower costs before the minimum pricing takes effect, Anza says, adding that the options are to secure modules already in the U.S., accelerate imports or shift procurement strategies to preserve project economics.
Anza reports that as of September 9, 55% of active suppliers on its platform had Section 232-inclusive pricing, covering 65% of modules on the platform. While Anza has access to lower-cost pre-deadline supply, although “the window is shrinking.”  On quotes where Anza can compare the same SKU and contract terms, pricing has increased by about 15%.
Fortunately, the future holds promise for U.S. manufacturing across the U.S. supply chain. The Solar Energy Industries Association reports that the U.S. currently has 75.3 GW of module manufacturing capacity, which it says is enough to supply current market demand. Moving further up the supply chain shows less current capacity, the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) forecasts a jump in ingot and cell manufacturing in the next year and for polysilicon and wafer by 2028.
Developers who are in the procurement process now are entering the “most critical procurement window,” Aaron Hall, president of Anza said in a statement, adding that developers can’t wait until December 4 to make a procurement decision as modules need time to ship and clear U.S. Customers before the deadline.
“Developers need to understand what is available now, at what price and on what terms, and move quickly on the strategy that makes the most sense for their project,” said Hall.
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Chinese manufacturer TCL Solar, part of TCL’s solar business, presented its C2 back-contact (BC) PV module range at the Solar & Storage Expo Conference in Vicenza, northern Italy, last week.
Originally unveiled in Asia in early summer, the new products are now available for European orders, with first deliveries starting in the United Kingdom. The launch expands TCL Solar’s back-contact portfolio, following earlier products marketed under the TCL Solar and SunPower brands.
The new series comprises products for residential and larger-scale applications.
The C2 residential module uses 108 BC cells and is available in 480 W and 485 W versions, with efficiencies of 23.6% and 23.8%, respectively. The panel measures 1,800 mm × 1,134 mm × 30 mm and weighs 24.7 kg.
For larger projects, TCL Solar’s C2 M is available in six power classes ranging from 645 W to 670 W, in 5 W increments. Module efficiency ranges from 23.9% for the 645 W product to 24.8% for the 670 W version. The n-type bifacial, double-glass module uses 132 G12R back-contact cells. It measures 2,382 mm × 1,134 mm × 30 mm and weighs 32.5 kg.
The C2 M has a power bifaciality of around 75%. TCL Solar lists bifaciality coefficients of 80% for maximum power, 100% for open-circuit voltage and 80% for short-circuit current.
Both module formats incorporate 2.0 mm heat-strengthened, anti-reflective coated front glass and 2.0 mm heat-strengthened rear glass, an anodized aluminum-alloy frame and an IP68 junction box with three diodes. They are rated for maximum static loads of 5,400 Pa on the front and 2,400 Pa on the rear.
Both products operate at temperatures ranging from -40 C to 70 C and have a maximum system voltage of 1,500 V DC. They have a maximum-power temperature coefficient of -0.26%/C. Both carry Class II electrical protection and a Class C fire rating.
TCL Solar offers a 25-year product warranty and 30-year linear power coverage for the residential module, and a 15-year product warranty and 30-year linear performance warranty for the C2 M. Both have a minimum warranted output of 99% after the first year and maximum annual degradation of 0.35%, resulting in 88.85% warranted output after 30 years.
The residential module is packaged at 36 units per pallet and 936 units per 40-foot high-cube container, while the C2 M is packaged at 36 units per pallet and 720 units per container.
TCL Solar said the C2 series is available through authorized distributors across Europe. Pricing has not been disclosed.
The new product line also has clear predecessors inside TCL’s own catalog. TCL Solar’s E Class residential back-contact module, published in late 2025, reached 475 W and 23.8% efficiency. The new C2 S Black raises that to 495 W and 24.3%, while shifting to a gapless design. The progression is even clearer on the large module: the previous E Class HSM-BD66-GR family reached 665 W and 24.6%. C2 L retains the HSM-BD66-GR model family but increases the top rating to 670 W and 24.8%, while reducing listed module weight from 33.5 kg to 32.5 kg.
The launch also comes as TCL expands its back-contact manufacturing capacity. In July, pv magazine reported that TCL Zhonghuan, which is also part of TCL’s solar business, had completed its acquisition of DAS Solar and outlined plans to convert 20 GW of solar cell capacity and 25 GW of module capacity to back-contact production.
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Saudi Arabia is accelerating its clean energy transition—join the SunRise Arabia Clean Energy Conference 2026 in Riyadh to explore how solar PV and energy storage are powering its digital economy.
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India’s solar cell capacity lags module additions 5x in H1, imports up 18%  business-standard.com
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India launches first LNG train: How is it different from a hydrogen train?  business-standard.com
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DEWA refinances Noor Energy 1 PV project for $2.7bln  TradingView
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Tata Projects, MDS Aero to develop aero-engine testing infra in India  business-standard.com
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The answer is yes, solar panels can work under water and be used to generate cheap and clean electricity, according to researchers from China and Switzerland.
Scientists from the Yunnan University tested solar panels 10 metres below the surface of the South China Sea and generated 324 megawatt-hours of energy in two hours, enough to charge lithium-ion batteries.
What does this mean in reality? The scientists say there’s huge potential to power underwater sensors, cameras, and most importantly, industrial communication systems far away from land.
Underwater solar energy isn’t a completely new idea, it’s been held back because of sunlight drops in intensity very quickly once it goes below the surface.
How did the scientists make the solar panels work 10 metres under water? By creating a “customised laboratory system” with in-built “tailored optical filters” that simulated “underwater illumination at various depths”.
During the tests, the researchers found that the underwater solar panels worked best with wide bandgaps, which absorbs blue to orange light. After storing the cells in a glovebox filled with nitrogen gas for 300 days, the solar cells retained about 96% of their initial efficiency.
On top of that, the solar cells showed “no degradation” after 1,160 hours at a depth of 10 metres which suggests “exceptional durability underwater”.
The next phase of the tests involved underwater robots, powered by the submerged solar panels. The team said the panels showed “exceptional long term operational stability”.
Wen-Hua Zhang of Yunnan University and Southwest United Graduate School in Kunming, lead researcher and author of the paper, said they were surprised by how much electricity the panels generated at such depths.
Zhang also said that the tests provide “strong evidence for the operation of underwater photovoltaics”.
That’s a great question, and the answer is we don’t know at this stage. However, Zhang says his team is planning to test solar panels at deeper water depths to see just how far down sunlight can be captured to generate cheap and clean electricity.
Maybe one day we’ll be exploring the Mariana Trench with solar batteries one day soon.

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Max joined The Eco Experts as content manager in February 2024 and became deputy editor in 2025. He has written about sustainability issues across numerous industries, including maritime, supply chain, finance, mining, and retail. He has also written extensively for consumer titles like City AM, The Morning Star, and The Daily Express.
He has represented The Eco Experts on national television several times, including the BBC’s Sunday Morning Live and ITV Tonight .
In 2020, he covered in detail the International Maritime Organisation’s (IMO) legislation on sulphur emissions and its effects on the global container shipping market as online editor of Port Technology International.
He also explored the initiatives major container ports and terminals have launched in order to ship vital goods across the world without polluting the environment.
Since then, he has reported heavily on the impact made by environmental, social, and governance (ESG) practices on the supply chain of minerals, with a particular focus on rare earth mining in Africa.
As part of this, in 2022 Max visited mines and ports in Angola to hone in on the challenges being faced by one of the world’s biggest producers of rare earth minerals.
His most recent sustainability-related work came much closer to home, as he investigated the eco-challenges faced by independent retailers in the UK, specifically looking at how they can cut emissions and continue to thrive.
Max lives in South London and is an avid reader of books on modern history. He has also recently learned to play the game Mahjong and takes every opportunity to do so. He is also yet to find a sport he doesn’t enjoy watching.
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The more-than $1 billion (USD 700 million) Waratah super battery built by Akaysha Energy on the site of the former Munmorah coal-fired power station on the New South Wales (NSW) Central Coast has reached full commercial operations.
With a total capacity of 850 MW and storage of 1,680 MWh, the Waratah battery energy storage system (BESS) is set to play a key role in NSW’s energy transformation, supporting the growing volume of renewable energy entering the grid and helping to deliver reliable electricity as ageing coal-fired power stations retire.
NSW Energy Minister Penny Sharpe confirmed on Monday that the battery has now received approval to operate at full capacity from the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO).
“The Waratah Super Battery is a game changer for NSW,” she said. “As ageing coal-fired power stations retire, this project will help keep the lights on for homes and businesses while enabling more renewable energy to flow through the grid.”
“This is exactly the kind of infrastructure NSW needs to deliver a reliable, affordable and modern energy system for generations to come.”
The BESS forms the foundation of the Waratah Super Battery Project, that also includes a 700 MW / 1,400 MWh system integrity protection scheme (SIPS) control system delivered by transmission company Transgrid. Together, the battery and control system are designed to act like a giant shock absorber for the grid, helping keep the system secure when major transmission lines are disrupted. At maximum output, the facility is capable of powering up to 340,000 NSW households at peak demand.
Transgrid Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Brett Redman said the SIPS control system is the “largest and most innovative” in Australia, capable of detecting network issues in real time and responding in real time, ensuring continuity of power supply for households and businesses.
“The delivery of the Waratah Super Battery provides an additional level of safeguard as coal plants retire and critical transmission infrastructure is built to connect more renewable energy into the Sydney, Illawarra and Hunter load centres,” he said.
The battery was due to commence full operations in late 2025 but a “catastrophic” failure of one of three giant transformers just days from final testing caused a major delay.
Akaysha CEO Nick Carter said the Waratah battery has been a “complex and demanding” project.
“This project tested us in many ways, but the team kept going, solved the problems in front of them, and delivered,” he said, adding it is a test testament to the grit, perseverance, and problem-solving capability of the Akaysha team.
“We are proud, grateful and humbled to reach this point, and focused now on the important role Waratah will play in supporting a more reliable, secure and renewable NSW electricity system,” he said.
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Jul 27, 2026
Update, August 20, 2026: This post has been updated to add detail from federal lobbying disclosures and Arevon’s response to CWP. Heatmap has not retracted its reporting on the Townsite project.
The Bureau of Land Management has approved an AI data center on national public land that was originally approved for a solar energy project, without conducting a new review or taking public comment on the switch. The project is believed to be the first data center approved on BLM-managed public lands. However, the project is relying on prior approval for not a data center but a solar energy project, swapping out an energy-generating project for one that would consume more energy than the entire neighboring community of Boulder City, Nevada.
Townsite Solar 2, LLC, the project developer, originally received approval in 2023 to build a solar energy and battery storage project on a BLM-managed parcel within the city limits of Boulder City. Earlier this year, TS2 amended its application to develop a data center instead, which the BLM approved without seeking public comment on the new proposal. “We’ve had no conversations, there’s been no chance for the community or for the city to provide any input to the federal government,” said Boulder City spokesperson Lisa LaPlante. “This feels so unprecedented for us to have a project placed in our city without the chance to weigh in.”
The BLM justified its approval by claiming that a solar project and a data center are “substantially the same,” noting similarities in acreage, perimeter, construction time, and the size and shape of the facilities. Relying on this rationale, the BLM used a Determination of NEPA Adequacy to transfer the 2023 analysis and approval to the amended project. “It’s an extraordinary and liberal interpretation of existing law and regulations,” said Mike Ford, a former high-level official at the BLM.
According to reporting by Heatmap, Arevon Energy, one of Townsite Solar’s financial backers, hired lobbyists from the Bernhardt Group, the firm led by former Interior Secretary David Bernhardt, around the time Townsite Solar 2 was preparing to shift from a solar project to a data center. Federal disclosures show the Bernhardt Group registered to lobby for Arevon effective November 15, 2025, on “general issues related to energy and permitting,” and has reported lobbying the Interior Department on Arevon’s behalf in every quarter since, collecting at least $160,000. Arevon’s registered lobbyists include Cole Rojewski, who ran congressional and legislative affairs at Interior during Bernhardt’s tenure. No other firm has registered to lobby for Arevon. In August, a public relations representative for Arevon told the Center for Western Priorities that the company did not hire the Bernhardt Group to work on Townsite Solar 2 and did not direct the conversion to a data center. Asked what projects or issues the Bernhardt Group is working on for Arevon, she declined to say.
“This was a bait and switch,” said Olivia Tanager, director of the Toiyabe Chapter of the Sierra Club. “If we allow this precedent to stand, the fear is that this could promulgate throughout not just Nevada, but all over the country in the interest of expediting data centers.”
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The question before us is simple: What kind of legacy will we leave? Will we choose short-term extraction, or will we choose to protect one of the most important Indigenous cultural landscapes in North America, a place whose meaning reaches far beyond any single administration?”
—Cochiti Pueblo Governor Phillip Quintana, High Country News
Doug Burgum wants to build data centers on public lands
Interior Secretary Doug Burgum is pushing data centers on public lands by claiming that the benefits are self-evident, the timeline is too urgent for a normal permitting process, and that any community that objects is on the wrong side of history, China, or both. At a Breitbart policy event in March 2025, he said, “We take electricity and […]
Statement on President Biden’s designation of Chuckwalla and Sáttítla National Monuments
“President Biden has secured his legacy as one of America’s great conservation presidents.”
Talking public lands extremism with Betsy Gaines Quammen
Kate and Aaron are joined by author Betsy Gaines Quammen to talk about public lands and extremism. Betsy has written two books about extremism in the West. Her first, American Zion, looks at the connection between Mormonism and extremism. Her second book, True West, which came out last year, digs into the myths that define […]
STATEMENT on changes to BLM sage-grouse conservation plans
“These plans show that a handshake doesn’t mean anything to David Bernhardt unless it’s with an oil and gas executive. At Bernhardt’s direction, the Interior Department is breaking a landmark deal that was brokered by Western governors, ranchers, and conservationists—all to allow more drilling and mining.
Faced with dire climate change warnings from his own agency, Interior Secretary Zinke steps on the gas
After stocking his department with oil and gas lobbyists, Zinke goes full speed ahead on drilling and mining Last week, as most Americans celebrated Thanksgiving, the Trump administration quietly released two stunning reports detailing the current and forecasted impacts of climate change to the United States. The comprehensive studies concluded that the United States is […]
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Germany: Greens Reject EEG Reform, Defend Rooftop Solar Support  energynews.pro
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Global solar additions reached around 690 GW in 2025, according to the latest report from the International Energy Agency’s Photovoltaic Power Systems Programme (IEA-PVPS).
IEA-PVPS’ Trends in Photovoltaic Applications 2026 report reveals last year’s additions represented a 15% increase on installations during 2024. 
By the end of last year, cumulative installed solar capacity reached 2.96 TW. The report says this capacity could theoretically generate around 3,845 TWh annually, equivalent to approximately 12% of global electricity consumption.
China installed 415 GW, or 60%, of global installations last year. India ranked second for annual additions, at 54 GW, followed by the United States (43 GW), Germany (18 GW) and Pakistan (14 GW). Collectively, the European Union added 68 GW. 
The report notes that PV deployment continued to broaden geographically, with 36 countries installing more than 1 GW of solar, three more than in 2024.
Centralised solar systems accounted for 410 GW of new solar systems last year, led by China (256 GW), India (42 GW), USA (35 GW), Spain (11 GW) and Germany (8.3 GW). The report also notes Saudi Arabia and the UAE’s as growing markets that are driven by centralised systems.
Distributed solar accounted for 282 GW of new installations in 2025, a record for the market segment, up from 228 GW in 2024. 
China deployed 159 GW of all distributed solar last year, followed by Pakistan (14 GW), India (12 GW), Germany (9.2 GW) and Brazil (7.9 GW). The report lists France, Türkiye, Japan and Australia as other countries where the distributed market is driving overall growth.
Last year saw Australia surpass the Netherlands as the country with the highest cumulative installed PV capacity per inhabitant, with 1,604 W/cap compared to 1,584 W/cap. Germany ranks third in this metric, with 1,413 W/cap.
An additional eight European countries – Spain, Greece, Austria, Denmark, Lithuania, Estonia, Switzerland and Belgium – are above 1,000 W/cap. China’s penetration rate also moved beyond this threshold, to stand at 1,040 W/cap.
In the report’s forward, co-managers of IEA-PVPS Task 1, Melodie de l’Epine and Izumi Kaizuka, and IEA-PVPS chair, Daniel Mugnier, wrote that last year’s deployments “continued alongside significant industrial imbalance.”
They explain that module production remains above annual installations figure, while low utilisation rates, continuing price pressure and weak profitability impact manufacturers throughout the value chain. 
Figures from the report state that global production of solar modules reached 722 GW last year, a 0.6% decrease on 2024. This represents a slowdown on the 61.7% year-on-year growth recorded between 2022 and 2023.
China accounted for 79% of global PV module production last year. The country’s global share dropped from 86% in 2024 as manufacturing capacity expanded in India and the USA.
Global PV module manufacturing capacity is estimated to have reached 1,531 GW/year last year, of which 71% was located in China. 
de l’Epine, Kaizuka and Mugnier added that the scale of solar deployment is changing the relationship between solar capacity, electricity systems and electricity markets.
“Curtailment, negative prices, declining capture prices and grid connection constraints are more increasingly visible in high penetration markets,” they said. “Storage, flexible demand, stronger networks, improved forecasting and appropriate market access are becoming essential to extending the contribution of PV beyond the hours in which it generates.”
Additional figures from the report highlight the considerable growth in storage deployment. Annual battery energy storage capacity additions across Europe, Canada and the US combined have grown from 2.9 GWh in 2020 to almost 79 GWh in 2025, representing a more than 25-fold increase.
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Last Updated: 24th Apr 2026
Do you hate the electricity companies?
Do you marvel at the electricity-generating ability of a decent-sized solar power system?
Ever thought “Why can’t I get all the electricity I need right from my roof during the day, store it in batteries, and really give the middle finger to those greedy, polluting power companies?”
Pretty natural thought process, right? And modern technology does agree with you – if cost isn’t a factor. For reasons I’ve outlined in another post it is possible to go completely off-grid with a big old pile of batteries and a boatload of cash.
I’ve taken some heat for suggesting that going completely off-grid may not be a great idea if you have a grid connection at your doorstep.
After all, there’s nothing inherently wrong with the grid. It is an amazing bit of infrastructure that has already been built, works very well 99.9% of the time and allows us to share our excess energy with our neighbours.
The problem lies in the attitudes and policies of the people who own the grid. Because the companies that own the grid are so hated, I’ve lost count of the times I’ve been accused of being a clandestine agent of the power companies when I dare to say:
“Think twice before spending $30,000 to $50,000 to go off-grid in the city!”.
The objective truth is this: Off-grid can make sense for you in certain situations (which I outlined in my original off-grid post), but otherwise it is a whole lot of expense for no other reason than a vague desire to “stick it to the power companies”.
Hybrid solar power systems offer the best of both worlds: You get the guaranteed (well, 99.9% of the time) electricity supply of the grid, with the ability to store your excess solar energy in a battery for use when the sun isn’t shining.  You can also switch over to your own battery reserves if the grid goes down.
Hybrid systems are also at least half the price of an off-grid system and don’t require diesel backup. They’re still more expensive than a purely on-grid system, but the benefits of solar batteries are persuading an increasing number of people to pay the premium. In fact, the number of hybrid enquiries to this website is doubling every year.
(If you want 3 competitive quotes for a hybrid solar system, from local hybrid specialists you can get them here. Otherwise read on to learn whether a hybrid system is right for you.)
1) To keep the electricity flowing if the grid goes down
Standard on-grid solar power systems shut down if they detect the failure of the grid. This is to protect any lineworkers making repairs to the wires outside your home. They wouldn’t like it very much if your solar panel system sent a current straight to their fingertips while they’re trying to work on the wires in your street.
A properly designed hybrid solar system can safely disconnect your house from the grid in the event of a power outage, and turn your house into a little mini grid. Imagine the smugness as yours is the only house in the street with the lights on, the TV blaring, the fridge humming and the beers cold.
2) To overcome solar system ‘export limits’ imposed by your local electricity network
Some unlucky folks have local electricity networks that are real control freaks.  They have really tight restrictions on maximum solar system sizes. They claim their poor little grid can’t handle the additional electricity that larger solar power systems provide (although they’ll be happy for you to install a 10kW air conditioner that intermittently pulls massive amounts of power from the same grid!). This often results in homeowners being forced into a solar power system size much smaller than they need to offset their bills.
The way that hybrid solar systems get around this limitation is by using a smart inverter that works in tandem with your battery bank. These hybrid inverters can be configured to have a maximum export rate that’s way below what your system can actually produce when the sun is at full whack. So to the grid your 10kW solar power system can look like a puny 2kW system. While only 2kW is exported to the grid, the other 8kW or so is diverted to your batteries. 
The result: Everyone is happy. You get your big solar power system, and your electricity company gets to stay in the 20th century with its arcane regulations.
3) To get your bill down at any cost
You just have this strong feeling that it’s unfair to send your generated solar electricity into the grid for half (or less) what you pay the power company. So – by dropping a lot of cash on a battery, you can get your bill to as close to $0 as possible.  This option is fine if you don’t mind if the battery never actually pays for itself.
4) Because you love technology and just want it on your house
I personally fall into this category! I’m what you’d call a solar geek, and I love testing new technology, so putting solar battery storage on my home was a logical choice.
5) To save money
Batteries can save households money but you will need high enough overnight electricity consumption, a large solar system, the right battery, and the right electricity plan.  Unless you receive a subsidy — such as through Queensland’s “battery booster” scheme — most households won’t come out financially ahead.  So carefully check what the likely savings will be if you want a battery system that will save you money
Yes, you can.
To make a standard solar power system compatible with batteries, I’d suggest a system size of at least 6.6kW so you can generate enough electricity to actually charge your batteries in the winter, and when the weather is overcast.
If you currently have a system that’s under 6.6kW in size, you should consider adding more solar panels, unless you have a really efficient house and a really small battery pack. If you are adding panels, you may need to increase the size of the inverter to cope.
It is actually fine (and often a very smart move) to oversize your solar panel array to your inverter. More kW won’t harm the inverter (as long as the voltage and current specs are maintained – which your installer can confirm).  Your installer can advise on whether your inverter needs to be upsized based on your local climate, your battery size, and your household energy usage.
The simplest way to retrofit batteries to an existing solar power system is to use a technique called “AC Coupling” – which means you don’t touch the existing solar wiring, and simply connect the battery into the house’s existing 230V AC circuit. 
Examples of batteries that can be retrofitted using AC Coupling are the Tesla Powerwall 2, the Enphase AC battery and the Sonnen battery.
Now we’ve reached the million-dollar question: How much extra can you expect to pay for a hybrid solar power system compared to a standard, on-grid system?
It all depends on how many batteries you want. But the short answer is: you’ll pay more than double for a hybrid solar system.
At the time of writing, a good 6.6kW system costs about $7,000 installed. If you want to add 10kWh of usable storage (a decent amount for the average Aussie home) to this, expect to pay about $18,000 for the complete system. 
There are now a wide variety of batteries available for the home residential market, and you can see them all on our Battery Storage Comparison Table.
In terms of lifespan – we aren’t seeing many battery manufacturers warrant their batteries for more than 10 years – that should tell you all you need to know about how long they expect them to last.
As of early 2025, if you are buying a battery for purely economic reasons, it may not pay for itself before the warranty expires. But that doesn’t mean the battery will be useless or fail the day after the warranty is over.  And if you are buying a battery for the other reasons we mentioned above, then only you can put a price on those reasons and just how much they’re worth to you.
One thing to be careful of is the concept of “blended payback“, where a solar company will sell solar + batteries in a package and rely on the incredibly fast payback of the solar panels to reduce the otherwise uneconomic payback of the battery system. To demonstrate this, try our solar and battery calculator, which will show you overall payback along with payback for solar panels and the battery system separately.
If you want 3 competitive quotes for a hybrid solar system, from local hybrid specialists (including payback calculations), you can get them here. 
I’m a Chartered Electrical Engineer, solar and energy efficiency nut, electric car and e-bike owner, dad, and founder of SolarQuotes.com.au. My last “real job” was working for the CSIRO in their renewable energy division. Since 2009 more than one million Australians have used my site to get quotes for high quality PV systems from pre-vetted solar installers.
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