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Perovskite solar cells have long promised a cheaper, more versatile alternative to conventional silicon photovoltaics, yet the manufacturing methods needed to turn that promise into mass-produced devices remain stubbornly difficult. A new study reports a way to produce fully screen-printed perovskite solar cells in ordinary air while improving both their efficiency and operational stability. The devices achieved a power conversion efficiency of 22.41%, with an independently certified efficiency of 21.86%. They also retained more than 90.5% of their initial performance after 2,000 hours of accelerated light-soaking, and showed no degradation after 900 hours of operation at 85 °C and 50% ± 10% relative humidity. The results point to a manufacturing strategy that tackles one of the least visible but most consequential problems in perovskite photovoltaics: how liquid precursor materials move and crystallize inside thick, multilayered films.
Perovskites are a family of crystalline materials whose electronic properties can be tuned through their chemical composition. In solar cells, they absorb sunlight efficiently and generate mobile charge carriers, making them attractive for lightweight, flexible and potentially low-cost photovoltaic technologies. Screen printing could make these devices especially scalable because it deposits functional materials through patterned meshes, much like industrial printing processes. In a fully screen-printed architecture, multiple layers can be deposited sequentially, including the charge-transporting components, the perovskite absorber and the carbon electrode. The approach reduces reliance on vacuum equipment and could simplify manufacturing. But thick printed layers create a difficult physical environment for crystallization. A precursor solution must penetrate downward through the porous structure, react and solidify in the correct sequence, and form a continuous semiconductor without leaving voids, defects or mechanical stress behind.
The researchers identify inefficient vertical phase transformation as a central obstacle. During fabrication, the liquid perovskite precursor must undergo a transition from a solution containing dissolved and dispersed chemical components into an ordered crystalline solid. If crystallization begins too early at the surface, a crust can form before the underlying material has been fully infiltrated. That premature surface nucleation blocks further penetration and leaves the lower portions of the film poorly converted. Incomplete infiltration can create disconnected regions, while uneven crystallization generates defects that trap charge carriers. Residual stress may also accumulate as the material shrinks or rearranges during solidification. Each of these problems can reduce the current extracted from the cell and increase recombination, a process in which electrons and holes meet before they can do useful work in an external circuit. In thick printed films, controlling the path and timing of the liquid is therefore as important as controlling the final crystal chemistry.
To address the problem, the team developed what it calls a fluid motion crystallization strategy. The method uses a co-solvent system composed of the ionic liquid methylammonium propionate and butyronitrile. Ionic liquids are salts that remain liquid under relatively mild conditions and can strongly interact with precursor species, while butyronitrile is used here to alter how the precursor solution flows and solvates its ingredients. According to the study, butyronitrile reduces the resistance to fluid motion and helps disperse aggregates of lead iodide, a key precursor component. The result is an optimized solvation structure: rather than allowing large or poorly dispersed precursor clusters to impede movement, the liquid remains sufficiently mobile to travel rapidly and deeply into the printed film. This fluid-control step is crucial because it shifts crystallization from a surface-dominated event to a more coordinated transformation throughout the film’s depth.
The proposed mechanism begins with rapid, deep infiltration of the precursor into the multilayered structure. Once the liquid has reached the lower regions, the material undergoes a bottom-up, ordered phase transition. In practical terms, crystallization starts in the interior or lower portion of the film and progresses upward before a competing crystalline layer can form at the exposed surface. This sequence helps the entire precursor volume participate in the conversion, reducing the likelihood of unfilled pockets and poorly connected grains. It also suppresses the formation of defects associated with abrupt or incomplete solidification. The importance of this ordering lies in the fact that a solar-cell absorber is not simply a layer of light-absorbing material; it must also provide a continuous route for photogenerated charges to reach the electrodes. A film that appears visually complete can still contain microscopic barriers that cause electrical losses if its crystals are poorly connected or riddled with defect sites.
After the controlled phase transition, the researchers observed the growth of a dense, interconnected network of perovskite nanocrystals. Nanocrystals are crystalline domains measured on the nanometre scale, and their connectivity determines how efficiently charges can move through the absorber. The reported network is accompanied by an island-like surface morphology rather than an entirely flat interface. That morphology strengthens contact between the perovskite and the carbon electrode deposited above it. The interface is a critical region in a printed solar cell: photogenerated electrons and holes must be transferred across it without becoming trapped or recombining. Intimate physical contact can lower interfacial resistance and provide more direct pathways for charge extraction. By combining a compact internal crystal network with a better-connected surface, the strategy appears to address two linked sources of loss—poor transport through the absorber and recombination near the electrode boundary.
The performance figures suggest that the processing method does more than improve an isolated laboratory measurement. The air-processed, fully screen-printed cells reached 22.41% power conversion efficiency, meaning that fraction of incident solar power was converted into electrical power under the reported testing conditions. The certified value of 21.86% is particularly significant because certification provides an independent assessment of the device’s measured output. Efficiency alone, however, is an incomplete measure of photovoltaic progress. Perovskite materials have historically faced concerns over long-term stability, with heat, light, moisture and electrical operation all capable of accelerating degradation. In this study, the devices preserved over 90.5% of their starting efficiency after 2,000 hours under ISOS-L-1 accelerated light-soaking conditions. They also showed no degradation after 900 hours at 85 °C and 50% ± 10% relative humidity under the ISOS-L-3 operational protocol, combining elevated temperature, moisture and continuous operation.
Those durability results are closely connected to the film’s microscopic structure. Defects and voids can act as chemical and electrical weak points, allowing moisture or heat to trigger local deterioration and creating pathways for further damage. Residual stress can have a similar effect by making the film more vulnerable to cracking or interfacial failure during thermal cycling. A dense, interconnected nanocrystal network may limit these vulnerabilities, while stronger contact with the carbon electrode can help preserve the electrical connection as the device operates. The study does not present stability as a separate coating or after-treatment solution; instead, it links durability to how the precursor flows and crystallizes during fabrication. That is an important shift in emphasis. Controlling the earliest stages of film formation may prevent the structural imperfections that later become visible as efficiency losses, rather than attempting to repair them after the solar cell has already been built.
The work also illustrates why manufacturing physics can determine whether an emerging photovoltaic technology remains a laboratory curiosity or becomes an industrial contender. Perovskite absorbers can be deposited at relatively low temperatures and are compatible with solution-based processing, but those advantages are realized only if the liquid precursor can be controlled across large areas and through multiple layers. Screen printing offers a potentially high-throughput route, yet its patterned deposition process naturally creates films whose thickness and porosity must be managed during conversion. A co-solvent that tunes fluid resistance, precursor aggregation and the order of crystallization could therefore be valuable beyond the specific devices tested in this study. The reported approach is not merely an adjustment to the final electrode or a small optimization of a laboratory coating; it targets the coupled relationship between fluid dynamics, chemical solvation, nucleation and charge transport. That integrated control is what makes the result potentially relevant to scalable production.
The researchers’ results do not eliminate every challenge facing perovskite solar technology, and the reported tests do not by themselves establish how the cells would perform over many years outdoors or across industrial-scale modules. Nevertheless, the combination of air processing, full screen printing, certified efficiency above 21%, and strong resistance to demanding light, heat and humidity tests gives the strategy unusual news value. The core insight is both technically specific and broadly understandable: in a thick printed solar cell, the route taken by a liquid before it becomes a crystal can determine how well the finished device works. By making the precursor more mobile, dispersing lead iodide aggregates and forcing crystallization to proceed from the bottom upward, the team created a more continuous absorber and a more effective carbon interface. The result is a perovskite solar cell designed not only to capture sunlight efficiently, but also to survive the physical stresses imposed by practical operation.
Subject of Research: Air-processed, fully screen-printed perovskite solar cells using fluid motion and crystallization control
Article Title: Fluid motion and crystallization control enable air-processed fully screen-printed perovskite solar cells
Article References: Chen, C., Yao, Q., Ding, Y., et al. (2026). Fluid motion and crystallization control enable air-processed fully screen-printed perovskite solar cells. Nature Photonics. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41566-026-01991-3
Image Credits: AI Generated
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41566-026-01991-3
Keywords: perovskite solar cells, screen printing, crystallization control, fluid motion, photovoltaic manufacturing, carbon electrodes, charge transport, solar-cell stability
Tags: Air-processed perovskite fabricationCrystallization behavior in multilayer perovskite filmsCrystallization control in thin-film photovoltaicsFluid dynamics in perovskite crystallizationFully screen-printed perovskite solar cellsImproving efficiency and stability of perovskite photovoltaicsLong-term operational stability of perovskite solar devicesLow-cost manufacturing techniquesPerovskite solar cell manufacturingScalability of perovskite solar cell production
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Given the price of gas these days, electric vehicles sound like an affordable alternative. However, what you save on gasoline you will likely spend on higher electricity bills and registration fees. You might try to mitigate these costs by charging your electric vehicle with solar panels, but Chinese automakers have a more portable idea.
Recently, the company Fuyao Group, one of China’s leading suppliers of glass for cars (windshields, side windows, etc.), announced it is ready to mass produce “photovoltaic sunroofs” that can charge cars as they drive. The name isn’t wordplay or anything — Fuyao didn’t develop solar panels that are installed on the roof to soak up the power of the sun. Instead, the company designed laminated glass panels (i.e., actual sunroofs) with embedded solar cells. Unlike perovskite panels that go on top of existing windows, Fuyao’s photovoltaic glass is designed to fit vehicles sold by BYD Auto, specifically its Han and Tang models, for an additional installation fee.
According to various solar industry reports, Fuyao Group has been working closely with BYD Auto for several years on the photovoltaic sunroofs. Fuyao previously told investors that it could begin production as early as 2024 and could increase production by 2026.
While the technology behind Fuyao Group’s photovoltaic sunroofs sounds promising, the news of its development has spurred several rumors about its capabilities. People who are expecting these photovoltaic sunroofs to revolutionize the electric vehicle industry might have to temper their expectations.
Those same industry reports note that the output of Fuyao’s photovoltaic sunroofs tops out at around 720 watts, which is a drop in the bucket compared to what EVs generally need. While driving on highways, electric cars require tens of kilowatts to keep the vehicle moving at a steady speed. Then again, the energy from these sunroofs is mainly intended for onboard electric equipment, which at the very least can free up battery power for the engine and squeeze out a few more miles during long trips. However, neither Fuyao nor BYD Auto published these reports. The companies haven’t even provided any technical specifications or pricing estimates, so it’s anyone’s guess as to how much energy or long-term savings the components will actually provide.
If Fuyao Group’s sunroofs live up to expectations, we can add them to our list of reasons why Chinese EVs should be sold in the US. Or, at the very least, Fuyao could license out production schematics to local car manufacturers. Who wouldn’t want to buy an add-on that pays for itself in charging cost savings over the long term?
Fuyao Group is not the first car company to offer photovoltaic sunroofs. Toyota has been selling solar roofs as an add-on for its Prius Prime (specifically the XSE Premium trim) for several years. However, just because two companies have the same (or similar) ideas doesn’t mean the concepts are executed in identical fashion.
The first major difference is the types of cars that use these solar roofs. Whereas the BYD cars designed to use the add-on, the Han and Tang, are fully electric, the Prius Prime is a plug-in hybrid. You still need to fill the tank with gas, but you technically get more miles to the gallon thanks to the electric motor.
While Fuyao’s glass only supplements dashboard electronics, the company states the photovoltaic sunroof provides a constant supply of electricity, which implies the vehicle charges while in motion. Meanwhile, Prius Prime owners state their car’s solar roof really only charges the vehicle while it’s parked, ideally in direct sunlight. However, while both the BYDs’ and Prius Prime’s photovoltaic sunroofs can power auxiliary systems, Prius owners are split when it comes to usefulness. Some think the roof helps their commutes, while others believe it is borderline useless. We can’t rely on owner feedback on Fuyao Group’s solar glass roofs since they aren’t widely available yet, but time will tell if they’re an improvement over Toyota’s version.

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The current draft reflects an attempt to balance access and oversight for small clean energy projects.
Photo Credit: iStock
After several years of local discussion, Amherst, Massachusetts, may soon formalize standards for smaller solar arrays and battery systems, an effort aimed at allowing more clean energy development without threatening drinking water.
If approved, the measure could make it easier for local property owners to install money-saving energy systems while setting clearer safeguards for wells, farmland, and wildlife.
Amherst’s proposed Small Clean Energy Infrastructure Bylaw, a 19-page measure, has cleared its first reading before the Town Council, according to the Daily Hampshire Gazette.
Councilors are expected to revisit it for a second reading and possible vote on September 14.
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District 4 councilor Pam Rooney, who chairs the Community Resources Committee, said the proposal is designed to bring Amherst into line with state law through one consolidated permit process and provide clear siting rules for solar arrays and battery storage systems.
The measure comes after more than four years of work, including efforts launched by the Solar Bylaw Working Group in March 2022 and recommendations finalized in August by the Planning Board and Community Resources Committee.
Going solar is one of the best ways to save money on home energy over time. Homeowners curious about the numbers can explore EnergySage to get free solar installation estimates and compare quotes.
Questions during the discussion centered on whether the proposal does enough to protect nearby residents.
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District 2 councilor Lynn Griesemer noted roughly 5% of Amherst residents use private wells and asked whether those wells deserve the same 200-foot no-disturbance buffer applied to other water sources.
She also questioned whether the town should require ongoing inspections once solar installations and battery systems are up and running, along with hazardous-waste insurance to cover damage caused by storms or other disasters.
Environmental impacts to animals came up as well. District 5 councilor Ana Devlin Gauthier argued the draft gives wildlife only a “passing glance” and said it should say more about migration corridors, bird-friendly glare reduction, and fence designs that limit harm.
Town Council president Mandi Jo Hanneke responded that the bylaw’s Site Suitability Score already covers mitigation and biodiversity.
💡Go deep on the latest news and trends shaping the residential solar landscape
The current draft reflects an attempt to balance access and oversight for small clean energy projects. It spells out siting, operating, and removal expectations, and Rooney said it also adds larger setbacks from wells and permits agrivoltaics, which place solar panels over active farmland.
For homeowners beyond Amherst, tools that clarify the cost of renewable energy can be just as important as rules that clarify permitting. EnergySage’s free services can help people compare options with less guesswork, including EnergySage’s solar map to research average costs by state. Together, those resources can help readers get the best price for rooftop solar panels and access available incentives.
Adding battery storage to a solar setup is one of the best ways to protect your home during outages, save money on energy, and go off-grid. Homeowners interested in backup power can explore EnergySage for information about home battery storage options.
“In a nutshell, this document represents the town of Amherst’s adaptation of the state mandate to have and allow a single consolidated permit available for applicants starting October 1,” Rooney said.
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Global investment in renewable energy reached $327.5 billion (€281 billion) in the first half of 2026, virtually unchanged from the previous six months but 21% below the record set in the second half of 2024.
Data from BloombergNEF (BNEF) show that renewable energy deployment remains on track despite regulatory changes in key markets, including the United States and China. Investment, however, is increasingly shifting toward assets that offer greater flexibility in managing revenues.
Financing for standalone utility-scale solar fell more sharply than investment in onshore wind. Investment in standalone solar PV declined 20% year on year to $75.4 billion (€64.7 billion), its lowest level since the solar investment boom began in 2021.
Growing revenue uncertainty, driven by solar price cannibalization, curtailment and grid congestion, is pushing investors and developers toward more flexible project configurations.
Against this backdrop, co-located solar-plus-storage projects attracted a record $25 billion (€21.5 billion) in investment in the first half of 2026. The figure was nearly double the total recorded in the second half of 2025 and three times the amount invested in the first half of that year. The United States and Australia led investment in the segment.
The United States was the second-largest market for renewable energy investment, behind China but ahead of the European Union, recording 54% year-on-year growth. Developers accelerated project financing to meet tax credit deadlines and respond to surging electricity demand, driven in part by data centers.
Solar investment rose 41% to a record $45.8 billion (€39.3 billion), while wind investment reached $13.8 billion, more than double the previous year’s figure. Projects that remain eligible for tax credits could sustain construction activity in the short term, with the final installations scheduled through 2030.
Global wind investment totaled $92.3 billion, down 27% year on year. Offshore wind was particularly hard hit, with investment plunging 72% amid poor auction results, higher capital and financing costs and a shrinking pipeline of projects likely to reach financial close.
Onshore wind investment declined by a more moderate 4% to $80.7 billion. Europe, however, bucked the trend, with Germany, Romania and Serbia all recording record investment levels following recent auctions.
China accounted for just one-quarter of global investment, down from more than half in 2022, following reforms to its electricity market. By contrast, Vietnam quadrupled its investment, while investment across Southeast Asia surpassed $12 billion. Nigeria increased investment in distributed solar and storage, Central Asia maintained investment above $4 billion, and Brazil helped push global biofuel investment to $7.7 billion.
BloombergNEF expects new renewable energy installations in 2026 to fall below 2025 levels, marking the first year-on-year decline in more than a decade. It expects growth to resume in 2027.

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For two decades, the solar EV sector’s core problem wasn’t panels — it was physics. Bolt solar panels onto a two-ton SUV that burns 350 watt-hours per mile, and a full day of Southern California sun barely adds ten miles of range. The panels were never the issue. The math was wrong. Now, for the first time, an independent testing organization has confirmed that a production-stage solar EV is solving the math correctly.
TÜV Rheinland, the German testing and certification firm founded in 1872, dispatched a solar specialist to Aptera’s Carlsbad, California headquarters for three days of on-site measurements in July 2026. The firm confirmed that the company’s Atlas vehicle generates 4.23 to 4.75 kWh of usable energy from its solar panels per day — enough, at Aptera’s claimed efficiency of roughly 100 watt-hours per mile, to cover 42 to 47 miles of driving entirely on sunlight. According to DOE household travel survey data, the average American in a one-vehicle household drives approximately 30 miles daily, meaning a fully parked Aptera in a sunny region could go weeks without touching a charging cable.
That result matters because solar EVs have been promising this outcome for years and failing to deliver it — not because of bad engineering, but because no prior solar vehicle was efficient enough for the panel output to matter.
This is not a panel spec sheet figure. That distinction is the heart of what makes this verification unusual.
Dr. Giorgio Bardizza, a solar specialist at TÜV Rheinland, wired sensors to each string — calibrated data loggers recording current, voltage, and power across each individual solar string on the vehicle’s body. His team simultaneously monitored the high-voltage bus feeding the battery pack. The verified figures represent energy delivered to the battery after conversion losses — not the raw output printed on a manufacturer’s spec sheet, and not what the panels could theoretically produce under laboratory conditions.
The technical reason this matters: Aptera’s solar charge controller uses Maximum Power Point Tracking, or MPPT, a real-time optimization system that continuously adjusts its operating point to extract the maximum available power from each string as sun angle, cell temperature, and shading vary throughout the day. Because the Atlas’s teardrop body wraps solar cells at dozens of different angles simultaneously, each string operates at a different optimal point at any given moment. A single measurement point would miss this complexity; per-string monitoring captures it.
In addition, the solar cells operate at relatively low voltage; the battery pack operates at approximately 400 volts. A boost converter steps up voltage, losing a small percentage of energy in the process. TÜV measured energy entering the battery after that conversion — the number that actually matters for range.
The three test days were structured differently to model distinct real-world conditions:
The day one figure is the one a prospective buyer should care about. Park the car, walk away, and it still clears Aptera’s stated 40-mile daily solar target without a single adjustment.
“The most exciting result is the day we simply parked the vehicle in the sun and let it do the work,” said Steve Fambro, Aptera’s co-founder and co-CEO.
“When American innovation turns sunlight into miles, independent testing helps turn that promise into confidence,” said Jonathan Kotrba, VP of Products at TÜV Rheinland.
Aptera has made its full TÜV Rheinland test report publicly available for download on its website.
Here is the arithmetic that prior solar EVs could not clear.
A conventional electric SUV consumes 300 to 400 Wh/mile. At 400 Wh/mile, a full day of verified solar output — 4.23 kWh — delivers just 10.6 miles. At Aptera’s target of approximately 100 Wh/mile, the same 4.23 kWh delivers 42.3 miles. The panel output is identical. The mileage is four times higher. Efficiency is the multiplier; panels are just the input.
The Atlas achieves that efficiency target through three specific engineering choices. First, a teardrop aerodynamic body produces a coefficient of drag of 0.13 — roughly half the drag coefficient of a typical modern sedan and about one-third that of popular electric crossovers. Second, the vehicle’s structure uses carbon fiber and fiberglass composite construction, bringing the 44 kWh Launch Edition to a curb weight of 998 kg (2,200 lbs) — less than half the weight of most electric crossovers and comparable to some small European city cars. Third, because the vehicle is classified as a three-wheel motorcycle under US federal regulations rather than as a passenger car, it operates under a different regulatory envelope that permits the structural and design choices that make that weight possible.
The solar cells themselves are supplied by Maxeon Solar Technologies, using Maxeon’s Interdigitated Back Contact (IBC) cell architecture. IBC cells place all electrical contacts on the rear surface of the cell, maximizing the active light-capturing area. Maxeon’s IBC panels achieve module efficiencies of 23% to 24% — roughly 20% higher than conventional mono-PERC panels per square meter. For a vehicle body with more than three square meters (approximately 32 square feet) of curved surface area, that efficiency premium adds meaningfully to total output. The 700 watts of installed solar capacity on the Atlas reflects approximately 220 watts per square meter of effective area, consistent with IBC-class performance.
One supply-chain note: Maxeon Solar Technologies entered its own restructuring proceedings in Singapore in 2026. The current status of Aptera’s supply agreement with Maxeon under that process has not been publicly confirmed, and represents an operational risk the company has not publicly addressed in detail.
The verification arrives at a moment when the sector’s credibility has been tested by high-profile failures.
Lightyear, the Dutch startup that grew out of the student team that built the record-setting Stella Lux solar car, raised substantial investment and accumulated more than 21,000 pre-orders from fleet operators for its Lightyear 2 solar EV. The company declared bankruptcy in January 2023, just two weeks after opening that waiting list. A restructured entity subsequently emerged, but the episode rattled confidence across the category.
Sono Motors, a German startup, drew approximately 21,000 reservations for its Sion solar EV before canceling the Sion in February 2023, laying off 300 employees, and pivoting to selling its solar integration technology to commercial vehicle manufacturers. The Sion was a conventionally sized and weighted hatchback — at roughly 1,400 kg (3,086 lbs) and planned to consume roughly the same energy per mile as any other small EV, its solar roof was always going to deliver modest range supplementation at best.
That is the structural difference. Both Lightyear and Sono attempted to make solar work at conventional vehicle weights and consumption levels. Aptera’s efficiency advantage doesn’t just make solar output look better — it makes a fundamentally different product category possible.
Aptera Motors (Nasdaq: SEV) built its first validation vehicle off the assembly line in March 2026, at its Carlsbad facility. The 14-station line marked the transition from hand-built prototypes to a repeatable assembly process. The company is targeting delivery of its first 40 production vehicles in the fourth quarter of 2026 through its Launch Design manufacturing partnership.
Aptera listed on Nasdaq in October 2025 under the ticker SEV, having raised more than $145 million in total funding through equity offerings and community investment rounds. However, the company’s 2025 annual filing with the SEC requires additional capital — an additional $45 million to $50 million — to complete vehicle validation and prepare for low-volume production. Battery options range from 25 kWh to 100 kWh, with claimed EPA ranges of 250 to 1,000 miles from plug-in charging via a NACS (Tesla-compatible) connector at up to 50 kW DC. Full-scale production is planned for 2028, pending additional funding.
The TÜV Rheinland verification establishes an independently measured baseline ahead of that production ramp. No production-stage solar EV had previously received this level of independent daily output verification. If Aptera reaches meaningful volume, TÜV Rheinland’s measurement methodology — per-string monitoring plus high-voltage bus confirmation, measuring energy delivered to the battery after conversion losses — could become a reference standard for how the industry evaluates solar charging claims, much as EPA range testing established a common baseline for battery range comparisons.
The parked-car number — 4.23 kWh delivered to the battery without anyone touching the vehicle — is the figure the solar EV sector has been trying to produce for the better part of two decades. For Aptera, an independent auditor now says it’s real.
The verified output numbers apply to optimal Southern California sun conditions in July, tested at Aptera’s Carlsbad headquarters. Drivers in cloudier climates, higher latitudes, or winter months will see proportionally lower figures. Aptera’s own in-house data shows the vehicle consistently produced 3.6 to 4.6 kWh across varied real-world weather conditions at its Carlsbad test site. The technology is real; the location math is on the buyer to calculate.
TÜV Rheinland independently measured 4.23 kWh of daily solar output under normal parked conditions (no adjustments, hatch closed) at Aptera’s Carlsbad, California facility during July 2026 on-site testing. At Aptera’s claimed 100 watt-hours per mile of energy consumption, that translates to approximately 42 miles of range from solar alone. With a single mid-day repositioning of the vehicle and the hatch raised, the figure rises to 4.75 kWh, or about 47 miles.
Prior solar EV programs failed for two reasons: funding and physics. On the physics side, Lightyear and Sono were building vehicles with conventional weights (Sono’s Sion weighed about 1,400 kg, or 3,086 lbs) and conventional energy consumption (roughly 200–300 watt-hours per mile). At those numbers, even excellent daily solar output produces only modest range supplementation — not enough to eliminate the need for regular charging. Aptera’s approach reduces consumption to approximately 100 watt-hours per mile through radical aerodynamics and lightweight composite construction, making the same panel output worth three to four times as much range. That efficiency multiplier is what changes the solar EV equation. Sono Motors canceled the Sion in February 2023; Lightyear’s parent company collapsed that same month.
TÜV Rheinland, founded in 1872, is a German testing and certification organization widely recognized as an independent standard-setter for automotive safety and technical compliance. Its significance here is specific: the firm measured energy delivered to the battery pack after conversion losses, not the raw panel output that a manufacturer would print on a spec sheet. That distinction makes the verified figures directly usable as real-world range estimates rather than theoretical maximums. No production-stage solar EV had received this type of independent daily output verification before Aptera.
Solar output varies with latitude, season, and local climate. The TÜV Rheinland figures were measured in Carlsbad, California, in July — close to peak solar conditions for North America. Southern states including Arizona, Texas, New Mexico, Nevada, and Florida receive enough annual sun hours that the verified solar range would remain close to the tested figures for much of the year. Northern states and the Pacific Northwest will see materially lower output, especially in winter. Aptera’s own Carlsbad solar generation data showed consistent output between 3.6 and 4.6 kWh across varied weather conditions, including overcast days. Buyers should calculate their specific region’s average daily solar hours before treating the 42-mile figure as typical for their area.
ⓒ 2026 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.

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“It is definitely getting warmer and I feel like summer is just shifting to be later and later now.”
Photo Credit: iStock
The Santa Barbara City Council has received a two-year climate progress report outlining how the city plans to reach carbon neutrality by 2035.
Major strategies include more home solar, more battery storage, more electrification, and a bigger push to shift electricity use away from peak-demand hours.
City leaders said those steps are central to cutting pollution while making everyday energy use cleaner and more resilient.
Santa Barbara’s 2035 carbon-neutrality target was the focus of a two-year update delivered to the City Council by Jefferson Litten, the city’s Energy and Climate Division manager, as KEYT reported. Work is underway across city departments to move that goal forward.
Adopted in July 2024, the Climate Action Plan serves as the city’s guide for that effort. The report said Santa Barbara’s biggest sources of polluting gas are on-road passenger travel and energy use in buildings.
“The city has a really ambitious climate action plan goal of reaching carbon neutrality by 2035,” he said. “So that is going to be a combination of adding EV charging, converting our buildings to electric buildings and adding solar storage wherever we can.”
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Highlighted programs include home electrification, EV charging for both residents and city operations, and tree-related efforts, the report said.
Buildings that switch from gas-powered appliances to electric systems can help reduce indoor air pollution, while rooftop solar and batteries can give households more control over energy bills and help keep the power on during outages or periods of grid stress.
The city is also emphasizing off-peak electricity use, a strategy that can ease pressure on the grid when demand surges.
In practice, that can mean encouraging households to charge batteries or vehicles and run major appliances during lower-demand hours, which may also line up with cheaper utility rates.
Transportation remains another major piece of the equation. Replacing gas-powered vehicles with EVs, alongside expanding bike and pedestrian infrastructure, could help curb tailpipe pollution that contributes to both planet-warming pollution and local air quality concerns. 
Hotter weather is part of the backdrop for the issue. At the State Street farmers market, visitor Jenna Davis connected the city’s planning to what local families are already feeling. 
“It is always changing, it is definitely getting warmer and I feel like summer is just shifting to be later and later now, so kids are going back to school, but it is going to be hot at their school, and in the classroom,” she said.
The city expects to put significant emphasis on solar and on electrifying municipal buildings. The effort isn’t limited to government sites, though, and also includes exploring ways to help residents shift to cleaner energy systems at home.
The report’s actions include incentives for residential solar and battery installations, plus measures meant to move more electricity use into off-peak periods.
Santa Barbara is weighing a student climate innovation grant contest as well as potential partnerships with UC Santa Barbara and Santa Barbara City College.
“The presentation was really well received by council, it was great to see praise for the department and our other departmental partners for all the work we have been trying to do to advance our climate goals,” Litten said.
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LUXEMBOURG, Aug. 28, 2026 /CNW/ — Westbridge Renewable Energy S.A. (WEB) (OTCQX: WEGYF) (FRA: PUQ) ("Westbridge" or the "Company") is pleased to announce that it has entered into a definitive share purchase agreement dated August 27, 2026 (the "Agreement") for the sale of its Red Willow solar-plus-storage project in Alberta (the "Transaction"), through the sale of all of the issued and outstanding shares of its wholly-owned subsidiary, Red Willow Solar Inc. ("Red Willow").
Summary of key terms
Red Willow is an advanced-stage, utility scale solar-plus-storage project comprising a solar power plant of up to 225 MWac and a proposed 100 MW battery energy storage system, located in Stettler County No. 6 in central Alberta. The project's power plant and battery energy storage system have received power plant and substation approvals from the Alberta Utilities Commission (AUC), and the project holds an interconnection position in the Alberta Electric System Operator (AESO) process.
Under the terms of the agreement, Westbridge will receive an upfront cash payment at closing, together with additional milestone payments. The total receivables should reach CAD $26.725m, if all the conditions in the agreement are met, comprising the following milestone payments:
The transaction is subject to customary closing conditions, including regulatory approvals and other conditions precedent. No finder's fees are payable in connection with the Transaction, and the Transaction is an arm's length transaction.
The transaction represents another significant milestone in Westbridge's strategy of originating, developing and de-risking high-quality renewable energy and energy storage infrastructure projects while maintaining a diversified development pipeline across North America and Europe.
Stefano Romanin, Chief Executive Officer of Westbridge, commented:
"The sale of Red Willow represents another important validation of Westbridge's development and monetization strategy. Since establishing our Alberta platform, we have focused on siting projects in favorable locations with strong renewable resources, transmission access and long-term strategic value. Red Willow is an excellent example of that approach, and this transaction demonstrates continued demand for well-positioned renewable energy and energy storage assets. We remain focused on creating value by developing high-quality projects across our international portfolio."
Improving Fundamentals and greater certainty for Alberta's Renewable Energy Market under the Canada-Alberta TIER agreement
On May 15, 2026, Canada and Alberta finalized an Implementation Agreement establishing a long-term trajectory for Alberta's Technology Innovation and Emissions Reduction system through 2040.2 The framework maintains a carbon price of $95 per tonne in 2026, rising to $100 per tonne in 2027, $130 per tonne by 2035 and $140 per tonne by 2040. It also introduces a regulated minimum price for carbon credits beginning at $60 per tonne in 2030 and increasing to $110 per tonne by 2040.
Potential electricity demand from large loads and data centres
At the same time, prospective large-load transmission-service requests reported by the AESO have exceeded 16 GW, compared with Alberta's current system peak of approximately 12 GW.3 If this prospective demand is ultimately developed and connected, it could contribute to firmer electricity prices and improve the economics of new generation in the province. Solar generation paired with battery storage may have a role in supplying this additional demand alongside firm generation sources. Actual outcomes will depend on regulatory decisions, connection capacity and the timing and scale of the proposed developments.
Westbridge's Alberta advantage
Westbridge is an active independent developer of utility-scale solar and battery energy storage in Alberta, with an advanced-stage portfolio in the province. Highlights include:
With approved and interconnection-stage solar and storage assets in the province, Westbridge believes it is well positioned to respond when PPA demand returns, offering competitively priced, clean electricity.
The AI Infrastructure Boom Is Reshaping U.S. Power Demand
The rapid expansion of AI computing has made electricity a central constraint on how quickly the sector can grow. Renewables and solar paired with battery storage in particular are increasingly central to how AI infrastructure is powered. This shift is already visible in the market. Over the past year, hyperscalers have signed a series of large solar and battery-storage power purchase agreements (PPAs), particularly in Texas, converting AI-driven demand into contracted offtake for new renewable projects. Publicly reported examples include:4
Westbridge's U.S. positioning
This demand is being met by a rapid acceleration in U.S. renewable deployment. The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) forecasts that 2026 will be a record year for new electricity capacity, with solar and battery storage the primary drivers. Approximately 86 GW of new utility-scale generating capacity is expected to be added in 2026, the largest single-year increase since 2002. Solar is projected to lead with a record of approximately 43 GW, up roughly 60% year-over-year. Battery energy storage is projected to reach a record of approximately 24 GW, while wind is expected to more than double to approximately 12 GW.
Solar and battery storage, the core technologies in Westbridge's development portfolio, support this build-out, reflecting their competitive cost and their ability to deliver the firm, round-the-clock power that AI and data-centre loads require. These figures are EIA forecasts and remain subject to change. 5
In the United States, the Company holds a strategic development portfolio, including:
This positions Westbridge as a developer, in the clean-power infrastructure the U.S. AI build-out requires.
Spotlight: Southern Prairie, Louisiana6
Among the Company's U.S. projects is Southern Prairie, a 200 MWac solar photovoltaic project paired with a 55 MW battery energy storage system in Calcasieu Parish, Louisiana. The project has secured site control, completed initial environmental studies and selected a point of interconnection. Southern Prairie is located in Louisiana, a state experiencing significant growth in industrial, manufacturing and data-centre-related electricity demand, positioning the type of low-carbon capacity the Company develops in proximity to new demand.
Stefano Romanin, CEO of Westbridge, commented:  "The defining constraint on AI is increasingly power, and the fastest way to add generation capacity in many U.S. markets is utility-scale solar paired with storage. We have spent years building a development portfolio across the United States, including in states where data-centre demand is growing quickly, and we believe that positions us to help supply the clean, reliable power this build-out needs. Southern Prairie is one example of the kind of project we develop in strategic locations."
Citations:
About Westbridge Renewable Energy S.A.
Westbridge Renewable Energy S.A. (WEB; OTCQX: WEGYF; FRA: PUQ) is a development-stage developer of utility-scale renewable energy infrastructure, including solar photovoltaic generation and battery energy storage systems, with a project portfolio across North America and Europe. The Company originates, develops and monetizes clean-power projects through their development lifecycle.
http://www.westbridge.energy  |  Twitter  |  LinkedIn
Third-Party Information
References to third parties and their projects or data — including Meta Platforms, Inc., Entergy, Google, Linea Energy, TotalEnergies, Enbridge, AES and demand and capacity estimates attributed to the International Energy Agency, Janus Henderson Investors, Goldman Sachs Research, McCarthy Tétrault LLP, Lexology, Osler Hoskin & Harcourt LLP and the U.S. Energy Information Administration — are drawn from publicly available information, are provided for illustrative market context only, and do not imply any relationship with, endorsement by, or commercial arrangement with those parties. As of the date of this news release, Westbridge has no relationship, agreement, arrangement or affiliation with Meta Platforms, Inc., and its Louisiana projects are independent of, and unrelated to, any Meta data-centre project.
Forward-Looking Statements
Certain information in this news release contains "forward-looking information" and "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of applicable Canadian securities laws, including, without limitation, statements regarding the completion of the Transaction and the satisfaction of its closing conditions and the timing thereof; the receipt and amount of the base purchase price and any contingent additional solar payment; the future development, permitting, construction and commercial operation of the Red Willow project; potential improvement in Alberta's renewable energy market and the impact of the Canada–Alberta TIER agreement and carbon-pricing framework; expected large-load, data-centre and AI-driven electricity demand and its potential effect on wholesale power prices; projected U.S. renewable capacity additions; potential future PPA demand; and the Company's development portfolio and its potential to support or benefit from these trends. Forward-looking statements are frequently identified by words such as "anticipate," "believe," "expect," "intend," "estimate," "potential," "positioned," "may," "could" and similar expressions.
Such statements are based on assumptions, including that the closing conditions to the Transaction will be satisfied; that announced agreements and regulations will be implemented as described; that forecast demand and capacity additions will materialize; and that the Company's projects will advance through permitting, interconnection, financing and construction on anticipated terms and timelines. Actual results may differ materially due to risks and uncertainties, including the failure to satisfy closing conditions or obtain required regulatory or stock exchange approvals; regulatory and policy changes; wholesale electricity price volatility; permitting, interconnection and construction risk; availability and cost of financing; and the other risk factors described in the Company's continuous disclosure filings available under its profile on SEDAR+ at http://www.sedarplus.ca. Statements regarding AI and data-centre demand describe market conditions and infrastructure the Company develops and should not be read to imply any signed hyperscaler or data-centre offtake, AI-related revenue, or contracted capability that has not been separately announced. There can be no assurance that the Transaction will be completed on the terms described, or at all, or that anticipated market developments will occur. The forward-looking statements in this news release are made as of the date hereof, and the Company undertakes no obligation to update them except as required by law.
Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.
SOURCE Westbridge Renewable Energy S.A.
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Ulrich W. Paetzold is at the Institute of Microstructure Technology, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, 76344 Eggenstein-Leopoldshafen, Germany, and at the Light Technology Institute, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Karlsruhe, Germany.
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Paul Fassl is at the Institute of Microstructure Technology, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, 76344 Eggenstein-Leopoldshafen, Germany, and at the Light Technology Institute, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Karlsruhe, Germany.
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Market-leading solar cells use crystalline silicon to convert sunlight into electricity, but have essentially reached the limit of the percentage of incoming light that they can harness. Solar cells that use materials called perovskites in tandem with silicon can exceed the conversion efficiency of silicon-only devices and are rapidly approaching commercialization. Yet it remains uncertain which manufacturing process will enable economically viable production of such solar cells on an industrial scale¹. Writing in Nature, Luo et al.² report a key advance that suppresses the degradation of a compound that is used to make thin films of perovskites through a method called thermal evaporation. This enables the fabrication of high-performance perovskite–silicon tandem solar cells at much lower temperatures than have been needed previously, and at the sizes required for commercial production.
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By: Luis Reyes
Published: Aug 28, at 5:00am ET
America has decided to build its own solar supply chain, and it is not being quiet about it. Tesla filed paperwork this month for a $10.1 billion cell and module campus outside Houston. A presidential proclamation signed on August 6 drops a hard price floor under every imported panel starting December 4.
Europe ran this play first. The result is a building outside Catania, Sicily, roughly 2.15 million square feet of it (200,000 square meters), tooled to turn out 14,000 solar modules and 800,000 cells a day.
The equipment is all installed. The line is running. It has never run full.
That last sentence is the part worth carrying into any conversation about American solar factories. 3SUN, the Enel company that runs the plant, has the technology, about a billion euros of investment behind it and an Italian tax code that currently makes its modules the only realistic option for certain state incentives. None of that has filled the hall.
The site sits in the Etna Valley, the semiconductor cluster southwest of Catania, and it does both halves of the job under one roof: cells and modules. That vertical integration is the whole point, and it is rare in Europe.
The numbers come from Marina Foti, Head of Advanced Technology Development, R&D and Technology Transfer at 3SUN, who laid out the ramp at a technical conference covered by TaiyangNews in March. Roughly 200,000 square meters of floor. About 800,000 cells and 14,000 modules of daily capacity. A design target of 3 GW a year.
Total investment runs to about €1 billion, of which roughly €200 million came through European and Italian public programs. Enel’s own corporate page puts the 3 GW target at around 15,000 modules a day and lists 600 employees, on the way to a stated goal of 1,000 direct jobs.
Foti’s own account was the honest part. All the equipment has been commissioned, and the plant has not moved to full-capacity operation, because of where the market currently is. Enel was still advertising line-operator posts in Catania as recently as this spring.
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So the 3 GW figure is what the building can do on paper. It is not what came off the line last month, and anyone quoting it as output is quoting a blueprint.
Most of the world’s solar cells are TOPCon. 3SUN builds heterojunction, which sandwiches a crystalline silicon wafer between thin layers of amorphous silicon, and the manufacturing differences are not cosmetic.
HJT runs below 200°C. TOPCon processes can go past 800°C. HJT takes around six process steps where TOPCon takes roughly fourteen. Fewer steps and lower heat mean tighter process control and more automation, which is exactly what you want when your labor is European and your competitor’s is not.
The cells are symmetric, which lets you go thinner on the wafer and use less silicon. 3SUN’s cell efficiency sits above 24%, and its B60 module runs 610 to 640 watts with bifaciality up to 90%. A bigger B66 with 132 cells and up to 730 watts has been slated for this year.
The catch is silver. HJT has always eaten more of it than TOPCon, along with indium in the transparent conductive layer, and silver is not getting cheaper. The industry response is copper: at a TaiyangNews equipment conference on August 25, DKEM’s Cong Chen put silver-coated copper paste for HJT at 3.4 mg per watt. 3SUN is working the same problem from silver-copper pastes toward straight copper metallization and indium-free coatings.
Good technology, then. Which has never been the thing that kills a European solar factory.
Meyer Burger was the European HJT champion, the company whose SmartWire designs got licensed around the industry. It opened a 1.5 GW module plant in Goodyear, Arizona in 2024, the only HJT manufacturer in the United States.
Then D. E. Shaw Renewable Investments terminated a supply agreement covering up to 5 GW in November 2024, and the whole thing came apart fast. The German subsidiaries filed for insolvency on May 31, 2025. Arizona production stopped the same day and the US workforce was let go. Chapter 11 followed on June 25, 2025, and the assets were sold off inside 90 days.
American appetite for the technology did not die with it. TOYO and SEG Solar have both pushed HJT cell and module plants forward in the US this year. But the cautionary tale is sitting right there: the technical case for HJT was never the problem, and it did not save anybody.
Here is where Catania stops looking like a factory story and starts looking like a policy one.
A 2023 Italian decree set up a register at ENEA sorting EU-made modules into three categories. Category A covers EU-made modules at 21.5% module efficiency or better. Category B needs EU cells and modules at 23.5% cell efficiency. Category C requires bifacial silicon heterojunction or tandem cells made in the EU, at 24% cell efficiency or better.
An amendment in December 2025 knocked category A out of Italy’s 2026 super-depreciation benefit, leaving only B and C. Category B currently has no modules registered at all. Category C is nearly empty of anything actually in production, because Meyer Burger is still listed and no longer manufacturing.
Which leaves, in practice, one supplier. Eleven European manufacturers filed a complaint with EU institutions objecting to what they called a possible de facto monopoly, according to Italian energy outlet QualEnergia, which has tracked the rule since it appeared.
No EU body has ruled on that complaint, and no authority has found 3SUN or Enel in violation of anything. The rules were written by the Italian legislature, not by the company that benefits from them. But it is worth sitting with the arithmetic: a factory with a legally protected home market still has not filled its building.
The reason anyone outside Italy pays attention to Catania is perovskite. 3SUN stacks a perovskite top cell on an HJT bottom cell in a two-terminal design, developed jointly with France’s CEA at the INES campus.
The lab results are real. CEA and 3SUN certified 30.8% efficiency in January 2025 on a 9 cm² cell, up from 28.4% a year earlier. Most tandem records get set on 1 cm², so the larger area matters for anyone who wants to eventually build these by the million.
The timeline is the part that has moved. Enel Green Power was once talking about offering tandem modules from 2026. The current target, per Foti’s March presentation, is initial industrial deployment before the end of the decade, with the technology moving from lab cells onto a pilot line running full wafer formats.
The wider industry roadmap agrees with the slower version. Presenting the latest ITRPV findings at that same August conference, Markus Fischer projected tandem reaching about a 15% share of the market by 2036, at mass-production module efficiencies around 31%. HJT and TOPCon are still doing the work in the meantime.
So Catania is not shipping tandem panels. It is running heterojunction on the main line and perovskite on a pilot next door, and telling you honestly which is which.
Tesla’s filing with the Texas Comptroller, signed July 22 and surfacing publicly on August 6, asks for a ten-year property tax limitation on a 3,050-acre site near Richmond. The capital number is $10.116 billion, split into about $1.5 billion of real property and $8.6 billion of equipment, with 9,712 permanent jobs projected and commercial production targeted for the first quarter of 2029.
The application does not state a nameplate capacity. Joe Hennessy, market research analyst at PV Tech Research, called it as big as anything the sector has seen for a single site, and estimated it could clear 10 GW. Tesla says it is still weighing a competing out-of-state location.
The gap this is meant to close is real. US module assembly capacity was running around 60 GW in early 2026 while domestic cell capacity sat under 15 GW, which is why the December 4 proclamation sets separate floors at $0.22 a watt for cells and $0.38 for modules, plus a 15% tariff on the derivative products.
Catania is what the far end of that road looks like when the building goes up before the demand does. Sicily has the vertical integration Texas is proposing, the technology Arizona lost, roughly €1 billion spent, and a national tax code that currently steers buyers toward its modules and almost nobody else’s.
It still has not filled the hall. The building was never the hard part.
Did we nail it or blow it?
Luis Reyes · Aug 24, 2026
Luis Reyes · Aug 19, 2026
Dave McQuilling · Aug 13, 2026
Luis Reyes · Aug 12, 2026
Luis Reyes · Aug 14, 2026
Luis Reyes · Aug 10, 2026
Olivia Richman · Aug 27, 2026
Chema Bonilla Díaz · Aug 27, 2026
Luis Reyes · Aug 27, 2026
Luis Reyes · Aug 27, 2026
Luis Reyes · Aug 27, 2026
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Solar project, meant to power 70,000 homes near KCI, put on hold indefinitely  Kansas City Star
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Utilities can avoid some costly emergency measures, while customers can earn money from equipment they already have.
Photo Credit: Reddit
A new in-app offer gave a home battery owner in Louisiana a look at a growing energy trend in which utilities pay residents to share stored power when the grid is under strain.
A FranklinWH customer wrote on Reddit that they were shown a new in-app promotion offering cash rewards tied to a utility’s use of their battery during high-demand periods.
“If I tap through the link, it brings me to an enrollment page, which touts how much money I could theoretically earn, but without much information about what I need to do or how the program works,” they said.
Trying to get a clearer picture only raised more questions. The signup page focused on how much money participants might make, while giving little detail about what enrollment would actually involve. They added that the terms and conditions were only slightly more helpful and that a linked Greater Grid page for Entergy Louisiana led to a 404 error.
Programs like the one described in the post are often part of a virtual power plant model, in which large numbers of home batteries are coordinated to ease grid strain during times of high demand. When these programs work well, utilities can avoid some costly emergency measures, while customers can earn money from equipment they already have installed.
Battery storage is one of the most effective ways to protect a home during outages, particularly when storms or grid disruptions interrupt service. It can also help households lower energy costs by storing power for later use and, in some cases, support a more off-grid lifestyle.
The battery itself is only one part of the equation. Program rules, compensation structures, export permissions, and utility billing treatment can all shape whether an offer that looks appealing on paper is actually worth it.
For anyone comparing home storage options, the math depends on several factors, including the manufacturer, the upfront installation price, and how much energy the system can hold. A battery that already proves useful during outages may look even better if it also brings in ongoing utility-program payments.
FROM OUR PARTNER
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.
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?
Full terms in plain language can clarify how often the battery may be called upon, whether a minimum reserve level will be maintained for backup protection, and how any credits will appear on the utility bill.
Manufacturers, utilities, and program operators can help by making enrollment pages easier to understand and ensuring support links stay active. Clear examples of expected earnings, battery usage, and customer protections could go a long way toward building trust.
For homeowners still weighing whether battery storage is worth the investment, EnergySage is a great resource to compare prices and access incentives. Those who want backup power but are not ready for a whole-home system can also look into alternatives such as Pila.
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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Waaree Renewable Technologies Secures LOA for 291 MWp Solar PV and 280 MWh BESS Project  SolarQuarter
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California legislators approved a bill on Aug. 26 that could help reduce skyrocketing energy costs for residents by allowing them to install plug-in solar panels as an alternative, portable way to meet household energy needs.
The bill, Senate Bill 868, authored by Senator Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco), would establish safety standards for portable solar systems, also known as “balcony solar systems,” which allow residents who may not be able to install a rooftop solar system to still take advantage of California’s sunny climate.
With this system, residents can place a few small solar panels in their backyard or on their balcony to generate energy, then plug the system directly into their home’s standard 120‑volt outlet to prioritize drawing from the solar panels rather than the electrical grid.
“This is a way that we can expand access to solar to a huge array of Californians who are not benefiting now, including renters, including people who own smaller, more modest homes,” Wiener said when he introduced the bill to the California Senate Committee on Energy, Utilities and Communications, on March 17.
The bill is now heading to Gov. Gavin Newsom’s desk, awaiting either his signature or a veto.
Although these portable solar systems are new to California, this emerging technology is being widely adopted in Europe; in Germany, over 1 million systems have been installed nationwide, according to the World Resources Institute.
This wide adoption is evident as it’s become available at stores like IKEA, which offer affordable plug-in solar systems on their European websites, starting at about $570 as of August 2026.
Additionally, eight other states have already taken a leap of faith by approving plug-in solar legislation, with Utah becoming the first state to legalize the practice in 2025.
When it comes to energy costs, Californians experience some of the highest rates in the nation, stemming from state subsidies, infrastructure investments and companies increasing their rates over the last few years,
When Wiener introduced the bill, he noted that residents have been fighting the affordability crisis as rates continue to rise year over year. He specifically pointed attention to customers of companies like Pacific Gas and Electric Co., which have seen their electricity rates increase by “nearly 40% between 2022 and 2025.”
Advocates for plug-in solar systems, such as Solar United Neighbors, argue that adopting this technology could help California residents save $400 to $800 annually.
“A typical plug-in system can cut your electricity bills by several hundred dollars per year. The average payback time for a system purchased today is about five years,” the Solar United Neighbors website reads. “The cost for plug-in solar is forecast to drop from nearly $3/watt today to just under 60¢/watt within 2-3 years of enabling legislation in a critical mass of states.”
Although the bill passed both the California Assembly and the Senate, organizations such as the California State Association of Electrical Workers expressed their disapproval of the new law and the technology as it made its way through the chambers.
The association was primarily concerned about the potential danger of allowing consumers to purchase and install plug-in solar systems without establishing installation, maintenance or inspection standards.
“This is a dangerous precedent, because adding additional current from a (Plug-In Photovoltaic) system that is not protected by an upstream panelboard branch circuit overcurrent protective device – rather than hard-wiring into a home’s main electrical panel – could overload conductors, increasing the risk of electric shock and fire,” the CSAEW statement reads.
“It is a near certainty that, if PIPV solar generation is approved, an unsuspecting homeowner or renter will unknowingly create a hazardous situation, putting their home and/or loved ones at risk.”
Although the bill does not require residents to hire a professional or seek approval from an “electric corporation or a local publicly owned electric utility” to install these plug-in systems, it does allow a company to require customers to notify and register their devices with the company.
Additionally, companies will not be allowed to pay any fees related to the device or to force residents to connect their devices to a building’s electrical system.
Noe Padilla is a Northern California Reporter for USA Today. Contact him at npadilla@usatodayco.com, follow him on X @1NoePadilla or on Bluesky @noepadilla.bsky.social. Sign up for the TODAY Californian newsletter or follow us on Facebook at TODAY Californian.

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Hongqi has developed a prototype solar sunroof using perovskite photovoltaic technology.
Chinese automaker FAW Hongqi has unveiled a prototype solar sunroof that uses next-generation perovskite photovoltaic technology to turn part of an electric vehicle into a power generator.
The full-size prototype, installed on Hongqi’s EHS7 electric SUV, can reportedly produce up to 300 watts of power under sufficient sunlight and generate around 400 kilowatt-hours of electricity annually.
While solar roofs are not new, Hongqi’s approach replaces conventional crystalline silicon cells with thin and flexible perovskite photovoltaic materials. The company ultimately hopes to expand the technology beyond the sunroof and onto other parts of the vehicle, potentially allowing an EV to generate enough electricity for up to 80 km (50 miles) of driving range per day.
According to reports, Hongqi integrated the perovskite photovoltaic elements directly into the panoramic sunroof of the EHS7, which is sold in China as the Tiangong 08.
Unlike conventional crystalline silicon solar cells, perovskite-based photovoltaics can be thinner, lighter, and more flexible. Those characteristics could make them better suited to the curved surfaces and complex shapes found on modern vehicles. However, integrating the material into a car roof presents its own engineering challenges.
Hongqi’s researchers reportedly had to address the sensitivity of perovskite materials to water, oxygen, and ultraviolet radiation, while also adapting the photovoltaic layer to the curved glass surface of the panoramic roof. The prototype reportedly generates up to 300 W in sufficient sunlight, with annual energy production estimated at approximately 400 kWh.
That electricity would not necessarily be used solely to charge the vehicle’s main traction battery. Instead, Hongqi said the solar roof could help supply lower-voltage electrical loads, including air conditioning, refrigerators and the vehicle’s sentry or monitoring systems.
The bigger ambition lies beyond the roof. Hongqi plans to explore integrating perovskite photovoltaic elements into additional body panels, including the hood. If enough surface area can be covered with solar cells, the company estimates that a vehicle could generate as much as 10 kWh of electricity per day.
According to Hongqi, that could theoretically translate into up to 80 km (50 miles) of additional driving range under favorable conditions. The actual energy produced would depend on factors such as sunlight intensity, weather, parking location, and the total photovoltaic surface area available. Hongqi has also not provided a timeline for bringing the technology into production vehicles.
Still, the prototype highlights why automakers are increasingly interested in perovskite solar technology. Traditional silicon panels can be difficult to integrate into vehicle surfaces because of their rigidity and weight. Perovskites, meanwhile, offer the possibility of lightweight and potentially flexible solar layers that could conform to roofs, hoods and other body panels.
The solar sunroof is part of a broader technology push from Hongqi as the historic Chinese luxury brand expands its electric vehicle lineup. The EHS7 used for the prototype is a large electric SUV with a reported WLTP range of up to 475 km and peak power of 253 kW.
Hongqi is also exploring other advanced EV technologies, including high-power charging systems and solid-state battery development. The solar sunroof remains a prototype. But if the company can overcome the durability and manufacturing challenges associated with perovskite photovoltaics, future EVs may do more than simply consume electricity. They could generate a small but potentially useful portion of it themselves.
Kaif Shaikh is a journalist and writer passionate about turning complex information into clear, impactful stories. His writing covers technology, sustainability, geopolitics, and occasionally fiction. A graduate in Journalism and Mass Communication, his work has appeared in the Times of India and beyond. After a near-fatal experience, Kaif began seeing both stories and silences differently. Outside work, he juggles far too many projects and passions, but always makes time to read, reflect, and hold onto the thread of wonder.
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JinkoSolar Reports RMB 12.36 Billion Q2 2026 Revenue as Module Shipments Rise 16.7% Sequentially  SolarQuarter
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Renting remains expensive, but buying a home is even farther out of reach for many Americans.
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The average rent in Phoenix still sits below the U.S. average, yet that relative advantage can be diminished by heavy summer air conditioning expenses.
A new rental snapshot shows that even a relatively small increase in rent can still push the income needed to stay financially comfortable much higher for many households.
According to Zillow’s July rental data summarized by AZFamily, Phoenix’s average rent was $1,727 in July. That was 0.3% higher than in July 2025, although still below the national July average of $1,962.
A typical Phoenix-area renter would need about $69,094 in annual income to afford a standard rental.
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.
Nationwide, the income needed for a typical rental was roughly $78,488 a year, and Zillow said rent growth reached 2.3% — the fastest pace in more than a year.
For homeowners who are feeling squeezed by bills, going solar is one of the best ways to save money on home energy. It may be worth exploring EnergySage to get free solar installation estimates and compare quotes.
Renting remains expensive, but buying a home is even farther out of reach for many Americans.
Zillow estimated that affording a typical mortgage in the U.S. requires nearly $99,800 in yearly income, which is more than $21,000 above the amount needed for a typical rental — a gap that could keep more people in the rental market longer, adding pressure even in cities where rents are not rising as quickly as the national average.
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And in Phoenix, monthly housing costs extend beyond the lease payment, since summer air conditioning use can sharply increase household monthly spending.
On paper, Phoenix fares somewhat better than the country as a whole, but that does not necessarily translate into noticeable relief for local renters.
For renters, revisit monthly budgets, check whether there is room to negotiate at lease renewal, and compare neighborhoods or unit sizes before signing a new lease. Even small savings on utilities can make a difference when housing already takes up a large share of income.
For homeowners looking to cut another major recurring expense, EnergySage’s free services can be a useful tool. 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 on a state-by-state level, along with solar panel incentives available in each state. Together, these resources can help readers 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. For households worried about both rising bills and power disruptions, that extra backup can add resilience as well as long-term savings. Readers can also explore EnergySage for information about home battery storage options, including competitive installation estimates.
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CrossBoundary Energy’s solar photovoltaic and battery energy storage system serving the Kamoa-Kakula copper complex in the Democratic Republic of Congo has reached commercial operation and is now supplying 30 MW of firm baseload power to Kamoa Copper. The facility entered commercial operation on August 12, 2026, around 16 months after the power purchase agreement was signed in April 2025. The system combines 233 MWp of solar PV capacity with 123 MVA/526 MWh of battery storage and is designed to provide continuous power at a 95% annual availability factor.
During early operations, the solar plant has already delivered more than 150 MW of output, with around 50 MW supplied directly to the mine network and the balance used to charge the battery system, according to CrossBoundary figures cited by Energy-Storage.news. The facility’s maximum expected solar output is around 180 MW, while the battery system enables renewable generation to be stored and dispatched outside daylight hours, supporting the 30 MW round-the-clock power guarantee.
The new facility adds another source of reliable electricity to Kamoa-Kakula, which is principally owned by Ivanhoe Mines, Zijin Mining and the DRC government. The operation already relies on hydropower supplied through cooperation with state utility SNEL, while solar-plus-storage is intended to reduce reliance on diesel generation and strengthen the resilience of the mine’s power supply.
The start of commercial operation represents an important infrastructure milestone for Kamoa-Kakula, where power reliability remains critical to stable mining and processing. Although the 30 MW firm-power contribution is modest relative to the complex’s overall electricity requirements, the combination of large-scale solar generation and battery storage provides an additional layer of supply security and could reduce exposure to diesel costs and grid-related disruptions.
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Energy News Beat
The Intersection Between Energy and Finance
Commercial production is targeted for the first quarter of 2029 if Tesla picks the Texas site, wins incentives, and clears permits. Tesla has not disclosed annual gigawatt output, so any panel-count figure is an estimate, not an official number.
The internal name is Project Crystal Sun. The public paper trail is a Jobs, Energy, Technology and Innovation (JETI) application, file J0050, with Lamar Consolidated ISD and the Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts. It was signed July 22, 2026, posted August 6, and later supplemented on August 14 and August 20.
Tesla has not issued a standalone press release announcing the plant. A company spokesperson did not comment when asked. The closest official Tesla language is in the Q2 2026 shareholder update and Form 10-Q: site work and equipment procurement for solar manufacturing “progressed,” and the company is “developing our solar manufacturing.” CFO Vaibhav Taneja said on the earnings call that Tesla intends to multiply U.S. solar manufacturing “by an order of magnitude.”
The application describes a solar-cell manufacturing campus on portions of five parcels totaling about 3,050 acres near Richmond / Needville, along FM 762 and FM 1994 in Fort Bend County, southwest of Houston.
Planned investment: $10.116 billionAbout $1.5 billion real property
About $8.6 billion equipment and personal property
Spend is front-loaded in three years:2026: about $2.33 billion
2027: about $3.29 billion
2028: about $4.49 billion
Then commercial operations in Q1 2029. The requested JETI limitation would run 2029–2038.
The equipment list is the important part. Tesla is not describing a simple module-assembly line like Buffalo. The filing lists ingot manufacturing, wafer manufacturing, coating, metallization and printing, cell testing, cleanrooms, and automated material handling — an ingot-to-cell (and potentially module) stack. The NAICS code is 334413, semiconductor and related device manufacturing.
Kroll’s economic statement attached to the filing projects 9,712 permanent jobs at full buildout, a peak of about 1,147 construction jobs, roughly $107 billion in Texas GDP impact, and about $6.4 billion in state and local tax revenue over 38 years. Those are consultant projections used to support a tax deal, not audited results.
The filing is real. The factory is not locked.
Tesla’s own application says it is evaluating sites “across multiple U.S. states,” comparing Fort Bend with an unnamed out-of-state alternative, and that without the JETI limitation plus local abatements the Texas site’s economics are worse. If incentives fail, Tesla says it would further evaluate the investment outside Texas.
That is how large Texas incentive filings work: they put a maximum project on paper so the company can shop tax treatment. SpaceX used the same JETI process for its Texas chip plans. Crystal Sun should be treated as a site-selection and incentive bid, backed by real spending signals, not as a notice to proceed.
Those spending signals matter. Tesla’s Q2 2026 materials already listed solar manufacturing among multi-year infrastructure buildouts. Earlier in 2026, reporting pointed to large purchases of solar manufacturing equipment (including from Chinese toolmakers such as Suzhou Maxwell) and to a possible Houston-area solar build near Tesla’s Megapack Megafactory in Brookshire. Crystal Sun is a different Fort Bend greenfield, about 45 minutes southwest of Houston. It may replace, complement, or compete with that earlier site rumor. Tesla has not publicly reconciled the two.
Elon Musk’s January 2026 World Economic Forum remark is the strategic frame Tesla cited in the filing: SpaceX and Tesla teams are separately working toward 100 GW a year of manufactured solar power in the United States, “that’ll probably take us three years or something.” A Tesla solar-manufacturing job posting earlier in 2026 used similar language: a 100 GW facility from raw materials in the United States before the end of 2028. Crystal Sun is the first large public capital number attached to that goal. It is not proof the 100 GW target will be hit on that timetable.
On Tesla’s own calendar:
“This year” construction is possible only if Texas wins the site fight and local approvals move fast. As of late August 2026, the Comptroller page still shows the application in the posted / supplement phase, not an executed JETI agreement. After completeness review, the Comptroller has a statutory window to recommend the project to the Governor; the school district and Governor must then agree. Fort Bend County would still need to create the reinvestment zone.
A 2029 start is aggressive for a greenfield, vertically integrated cell fab, but it is consistent with buying turnkey Asian production tools and running Tesla as its own general contractor — something Taneja noted Tesla already does on most of its factories. It is not consistent with Musk’s “about three years” 100 GW comment if that clock started at Davos in January 2026. A plant that first ships in early 2029 cannot be at 100 GW in 2028. Investors should treat 100 GW by 2028 as an aspiration across Tesla’s whole solar program (Buffalo plus new sites), not as Crystal Sun’s opening rate.
Tesla did not disclose nameplate capacity. That is the most important capacity fact in the filing.
What is known:
Buffalo / Gigafactory New York currently assembles Tesla’s new TSP-420 residential panels at on the order of 300 MW per year — Tesla’s first in-house-designed conventional module, shipped starting Q1 2026. Crystal Sun would be a different order of magnitude if built as described.
Musk’s public target is 100 GW/year of U.S. manufactured solar for Tesla (and separately for SpaceX).
One industry read of the $10.1 billion capex is that this campus is a foundation stone toward that target, not the entire 100 GW by itself. Another estimate circulating in trade coverage suggested on the order of $16 billion might be needed to reach 100 GW of fully integrated U.S. capacity. Neither figure is Tesla guidance.
A simple illustration, not a forecast: 100 GW is 100 billion watts. At Tesla’s current 420 W residential module, that would be roughly 238 million panels a year. Utility modules in the 600–700 W class would mean fewer physical panels for the same watts. Crystal Sun’s actual annual output could be a slice of that, all of it, or something else entirely. Until Tesla names a GW rating, panel-count headlines are speculation.
Homeowners and edge-grid resilience, or solar farms and Megapacks?Both, according to the filing. Storage pairing is Tesla’s business model, not a stated exclusive offtake contract for this plant.
The application says the plant would make photovoltaic cells and/or assembled modules “for deployment in utility-scale, commercial, and distributed solar installations,” and discusses utility-scale plus on-site, behind-the-meter generation. That is the full market stack: rooftops, C&I, and solar farms.
Tesla’s current consumer product is already a resilience package. Official Tesla materials describe 420 W panels engineered in California, assembled in Buffalo, with 18 “power zones” for shade performance, a rail-less Panel Mount, and integration with Powerwall and the Tesla app. Tesla discontinued Solar Roof tiles in August 2026 and pointed customers to conventional panels. Energy revenue growth has been storage-led — Powerwall and Megapack — not rooftop generation. Megafactory Texas is scheduled to start Megapack production in 2026, which would sit in the same broader Houston-area energy cluster if Crystal Sun is built.
The strategic logic is obvious: domestic cells reduce tariff and supply-chain risk; Tesla can feed Buffalo residential assembly, third-party installers, its own storage-plus-solar packages, and utility projects that sit in front of Megapacks. Musk has also tied large-scale solar to AI electricity demand and, separately through SpaceX, to space-based power. The Fort Bend filing does not assign output to orbital arrays. SpaceX has its own solar-manufacturing track.
For Energy News Beat readers, the clean read is this: Crystal Sun is designed as a cell and module foundry, not a residential-only factory and not a captive solar-farm EPC shop. If Tesla executes, homeowners get a more secure domestic panel supply paired with Powerwall. Utilities and data-center offtakers get a potential U.S. cell source that can be coupled with Megapack. The mix will be set by price, 45X production credits, and which customer can absorb volume first.
Crystal Sun is the largest U.S. manufacturing investment Tesla has put on a Texas incentive form. It is also still a maybe. The factory becomes “real” when Tesla stops evaluating other states and starts pouring slabs.
Appendix: sources and links
Official/primary
Filing and project reporting
Musk 100 GW remarks and Tesla Energy context

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Silver’s Solar Demand Boom Starts to Fade as High Prices Bite  Bloomberg.com
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China can catalyse local finance for home solar in the Global South  Dialogue Earth
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By: Luis Reyes
Published: Aug 26, at 2:30pm ET
Every solar farm has to sit on something, and that something is usually a field that used to grow food. That fight gets tedious fast, which is why floating solar keeps coming up in countries that ran out of cheap flat land years ago. Reservoirs, gravel pits and flooded quarries are already dead water, and nobody is planting anything on them.
A cement plant in Belgium pushed that logic about as far as it goes.
Holcim and TotalEnergies covered a flooded chalk quarry at the Obourg site near Mons with 55,000 solar panels, 31 megawatts in total, floating on water the company created by eating its own raw material for a century. The array was inaugurated on March 20 and puts out around 30 gigawatt hours a year.
None of that electricity goes to the grid. It walks next door into the cement plant.
And the machine those panels were sized to run is the half that has stopped moving.
Cement has been made at Obourg for more than 110 years, and for most of that run the site fed two wet-process kilns on chalk quarried on the doorstep. Wet process means grinding the raw material into a slurry and then boiling the water back out of it inside the kiln, which is about as energy-efficient as it sounds.
That chalk is nearly gone. Holcim’s project documentation puts the exhaustion of the Obourg reserves at around 2034, which is why the replacement kiln is built for dry-process limestone hauled in by rail from the Tournaisis area instead.
What the old quarry left behind was a pit deep enough to fill with water and call a lake. The panels went on top of it.
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Floating arrays get moored one of two ways: cables down to the lakebed, or lines out to the shoreline. Obourg went entirely to the bottom.
Per Holcim’s own account of the project, the panels are anchored only to the floor of the pond and not to the banks, on the reasoning that the shallow edges are where most of the life in a quarry lake actually is. Trade publication Industrial Info Resources counted 128 anchors holding the island in position. Construction was also scheduled around nesting, with work suspended through breeding seasons, according to Stany Vaes, Holcim Belgium’s head of sustainability, corporate affairs and communication.
Getting the power ashore took more than 2,290 feet of horizontal directional drilling (over 700 meters), so the cable run to the substation goes under the landscape rather than across it.
Anchoring to the bed instead of the bank is quietly becoming the default on industrial water. A Dutch quarry lake at Bomhofsplas did the same under 73,000 modules and then hung shellfish cages underneath to see what moved in. Germany’s biggest floating plant, on a flooded lignite pit at Cottbus, is moored to the old mine floor and still sat finished for months without sending a kilowatt-hour anywhere, because the rising lake beat the grid connection to it.
Obourg does not have that problem, because Obourg does not need a grid connection.
All 30 gigawatt hours a year get consumed on site. TotalEnergies calls it the largest floating solar plant in Europe dedicated to self-consumption, and that qualifier is doing real work. The Sellingen array in the Netherlands is bigger in raw terms at 41.1 megawatts peak. What Obourg has that Sellingen does not is one industrial buyer standing on the same bank.
That is worth more than it sounds. No interconnection queue. No power purchase agreement. No transmission to build or pay for.
Holcim expects the array to cover up to 15 percent of the electricity used by its new plant by 2030, which the company equates to roughly 8,500 homes, and to avoid 110,000 metric tons of CO2 over its operating life. Vincent Michel, who runs the GO4ZERO program for Holcim Belgium, gave Industrial Info the practical version: “On sunny days, we will be self-sufficient.”
The same logic is turning up at a fraction of the size. A Bavarian gravel works stood 2,600 panels bolt upright on its own lake for exactly this reason: the crusher and the power plant share a shoreline.
GO4ZERO is a two-phase program worth more than 500 million euros, backed by an EU Innovation Fund grant awarded in 2023.
Phase one is the kiln. A dry line replaces the two wet ones, cutting CO2 by close to 30 percent per ton of clinker, with first clinker due in 2027.
Phase two is where the plant was supposed to get to net zero. The kiln is built air-oxyfuel switchable, meaning it can burn on oxygen rather than air so the exhaust comes out concentrated in CO2 instead of diluted with nitrogen. Air Liquide’s Cryocap OXY unit then purifies that stream past 99.5 percent, Fluxys pipes it to the Antwerp@C export hub, and it gets liquefied, loaded onto ships and stored under the North Sea. Design capacity is about 1.1 million tons of CO2 a year.
The final investment decision on that half was due in February. Holcim did not take it.
Michel told Belgian media the risk was too high and that signing then would be “pure suicide,” as reported by Global Cement. The blocker is not the capture hardware. It is that the CO2 has nowhere to go until the terminal and pipeline work at the Port of Antwerp is actually sanctioned, which leans in turn on BASF’s decisions there. Obourg’s net-zero date slipped from 2029 to late 2030 or early 2031.
Air Liquide and Holcim did sign an agreement in late February to develop the capture unit anyway, and both were explicit that the investment decision still depends on more partners across the chain plus public support, including regulatory clarity and de-risking mechanisms. The GO4ZERO page still lists 2029.
Some scale on what is parked. Obourg makes about a quarter of Belgium’s cement and emits roughly a million tons of CO2 a year. The solar array avoids 110,000 tons across its entire lifetime. The capture plant was the instrument that actually moved the number, and the instrument is sitting still.
This is not a European failure mode. It is a cement industry failure mode, and the freshest case is in Alberta.
On August 19, Heidelberg Materials confirmed it has delayed the full-scale carbon capture project at its Edmonton cement plant, the one marketed as the building sector’s first at that scale. It was meant to be running by the end of 2026, capturing more than a million tons of CO2 a year and sending it to Enbridge’s Wabamun hub.
David Perkins, vice president of sustainability and public affairs at Heidelberg Materials North America, told Edmonton outlet Taproot that carbon prices came in below what the business case assumed. Capital costs could now reach 2 billion Canadian dollars against the 1.36 billion the project was announced at in 2023, according to International Cement Review. A lessons-learned report on the project found the capture technically feasible and put the blame for delay on policy uncertainty.
The American version happened faster and harder. In 2025 the Department of Energy canceled 24 awards worth about $3.7 billion, and the largest were cement: $500 million apiece for Heidelberg’s plant in Mitchell, Indiana and National Cement’s plant in Lebec, California, plus $189 million for Brimstone.
The floating solar column of the US ledger looks nothing like that. NREL put the technical potential on federally controlled reservoirs alone at 861 to 1,042 gigawatts, enough to run something like 100 million homes. Wood Mackenzie expects the country to actually add less than one gigawatt by 2033, mostly because ground-mounted panels are cheaper and the water sites are awkward.
Obourg is the exception that shows why. It got built because it needed exactly one thing that already existed: a customer standing on the same shoreline with a meter and a kiln. No permit fight over farmland, no queue, no counterparty.
Everything else about pulling the carbon out of cement needs a pipeline nobody has built, a port terminal nobody has sanctioned and a carbon price nobody can forecast far enough out to underwrite a nine-figure bet. Holcim finished the easy half and got a very good aerial photograph out of it. The hard half is still somebody else’s investment decision.
Don’t bite your tongue. Speak up.
Olivia Richman · Aug 24, 2026
Luis Reyes · Aug 1, 2026
Luis Reyes · Aug 14, 2026
Luis Reyes · Aug 7, 2026
Luis Reyes · Aug 18, 2026
Luis Reyes · Aug 21, 2026
Olivia Richman · Aug 27, 2026
Chema Bonilla Díaz · Aug 27, 2026
Luis Reyes · Aug 27, 2026
Luis Reyes · Aug 27, 2026
Luis Reyes · Aug 27, 2026
Autonotion is the English-language automotive editorial by Autonocion.com — car news, reviews, and industry analysis for American readers.
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Australians ‘going gangbusters’ on Chinese batteries in renewable energy shift  Financial Times
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The future is bright for nurse practitioners and solar photovoltaic installers.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics published new job projections on Thursday, showing which roles are set to experience massive employment declines and which may flourish between 2025 and 2035.
The jobs projected to grow the fastest over the decade are a mix of healthcare, energy, and tech work.
Nurse practitioners, who typically earn six figures, had the highest percent increase at 41%, far faster than the overall projection of 3.5%. One reason for that projected demand is that in many states, they can perform duties that used to be reserved for physicians.
Two renewable energy-related jobs are also expected to quickly grow: Solar photovoltaic installers had the second-highest percent increase, and wind turbine service technicians had the fourth-highest.
“As the cost of PV systems continues to decrease, more households are expected to take advantage of these systems, resulting in greater demand for the workers who install and maintain them,” BLS said.
Employment of data scientists is projected to increase by about 35% because businesses will need to hire workers to handle the expected increase in data usage and collection. Computer and information research scientists are also among the projected fastest-growing jobs, partly to work on AI tools.
Typical educational requirements vary among the top 12 jobs. BLS said solar photovoltaic installers typically need a high school diploma or the equivalent for entry. Nurse practitioners, computer and information research scientists, and physician assistants need more schooling. BLS said those jobs typically need a master’s degree for entry.
Overall, US employment is projected to increase by 5.9 million over the decade, or by 3.5%, down from the 10.9% growth from 2015 to 2025. The private healthcare and social assistance sector could be a great place for job seekers to look, as it’s projected to add the most jobs, due to an aging population and a rise in chronic health conditions. The AI boom is expected to affect the utilities sector as data centers continue to demand more electricity. BLS said the relatively small sector is projected to surge by 10%, the fastest among major sectors.
Are you a nurse practitioner, solar photovoltaic installer, or working in any of the other fastest-growing jobs? Reach out to this reporter to share at mhoff@businessinsider.com.
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Scottsdale, Arizona-based SolarWindow Technologies Inc. has launched its newest product for the commercial market in the form of its ElectroFlex brand of bendable solar panel cells.
Formally announced Aug. 26, the new product aims to generate electricity on both flat and curved surfaces that more traditional solar products could never reach. The company says the new technology is thinner than a standard U.S. dime, making it less than 1.35 millimeters wide.
The bendable product extends SolarWindow’s current catalogue beyond its LiquidElectricity brand of window coatings. The company’s top brass say the ElectroFlex brand is just the beginning, and that SolarWindow has a fleet of new and innovative solar-related products in the works for the coming years.
“In my recent letter to shareholders, I shared plans to release a family of innovative energy products unlike anything available today,” says SolarWindow president and CEO Amit Singh. “ElectroFlex is the first, and I look forward to additional new-product releases as we grow our SolarWindow portfolio to span across the full energy value chain.”
Initially targeting transportation, marine, aerospace, architectural, and agricultural markets, SolarWindow is going after infrastructure with the new product. The firm claims the ElectroFlex could provide “transformative” growth for the solar industry, taking photovoltaic modules to places they previously never could have accessed.

Ease of use

Crucial to its bendable form factor, the ElectroFlex has no frame and no rigid glass of any kind. Rather than needing traditional bolting or mounting setups, officials say the new product works with peel and stick capabilities and is, in essence, “solar without the solar panel.”
“It is designed to generate electricity on irregular structures,” the company says, “and could be applied to data centers and buildings, rooftops of fleet vehicles and commercial trucks, contoured panels of trains, drones, and airplanes, and other curved surfaces that have previously never been able to carry solar.”
Along with making the ElectroFlex easier to use, the team engineered the product to combat a common customer complaint with more traditional solar panels: a lack of aesthetics. The new brand eliminates all bulky racking, mounting, structural reinforcements, and other engineering hassles that often make solar an “eyesore,” the company says.
SolarWindow’s ElectroFlex product is currently open to Tier-1 OEM manufacturers in the U.S., the company says. Representatives add that there are plans to expand the product’s geographical footprint to further American markets, as well as Asia, in the near future.

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A study by British energy think tank Ember suggests that the prospect of round-the-clock solar photovoltaic (PV) availability is drawing closer. Solar PV generated just over 10% of global electricity in the first half of 2026, up from 8.9% in the same period of 2025. Its share has nearly doubled from the 5.6% recorded in the first half of 2023.
Over the past three years, solar PV generation has grown seven times faster than total electricity generation. While global electricity generation rose by 12% between the first half of 2023 and the first half of 2026, solar generation more than doubled, from 769 TWh to 1,564 TWh.
However, this growth remains heavily concentrated around midday. On an average day in the first half of 2026, solar met more than 25% of global electricity demand between 11:00 and 14:00, before falling to near-zero levels between 20:00 and 05:00.
In markets with higher levels of solar PV penetration, this concentration is even more pronounced. In Chile, where solar met 26% of electricity demand in the first half of 2026, its contribution reached 71% at midday but had virtually disappeared by 21:00. In the Netherlands, solar met 58% of demand at 13:00, while in Germany it covered 55% at midday. In both markets, however, solar’s contribution fell to zero a few hours later.
The expansion of solar PV is displacing fossil-fuel generation during the day, but hours without sunlight remain a key domain for conventional generation. Between the first half of 2023 and the first half of 2026, average fossil-fuel generation between 11:00 and 14:00 fell from 86 GW to 69 GW. During the evening peak, between 19:00 and 21:00, however, the decline was much smaller, from 106 GW to 101 GW.
New battery storage installations in 2026 are projected to reach 459 GWh, up 50% from the 307 GWh added in 2025. According to Ember data, this capacity could theoretically shift 34% of new daily solar generation to non-solar hours.
This proportion is nearly double the 18% estimated for batteries installed in 2025 and compares with just 4% five years earlier, in 2021.
Falling battery installation costs have been a key driver of this progress. Average global costs fell by 95% between 2010 and 2025, from $2,634/kWh to $140/kWh.
While batteries installed globally in 2025 could shift the equivalent of 18% of new daily solar generation, some countries achieved significantly higher shares.
Bulgaria installed enough storage to shift 77% of its new daily solar generation, followed by Chile at 76% and Australia at 60%.
Bulgaria’s growth has been particularly rapid. The country went from virtually no battery storage capacity in 2023 to adding around 3 GWh in 2025. By May 2026, installed capacity had surpassed 8.6 GWh.
Chile followed a similar trajectory, adding 4 GWh of battery storage in 2025 and bringing its installed capacity to 7.6 GWh. Most of the new storage was installed alongside solar plants, helping to reduce curtailment and shift solar generation into the evening hours.
The United States added 58 GWh of storage in 2025, enough to shift approximately one-quarter of its new daily solar generation.
The European Union, meanwhile, added 27 GWh of battery storage in 2025, equivalent to shifting 16% of new daily solar generation and below the global average.
In California, the combination of solar and battery storage met more than a quarter of electricity demand during the evening peak, between 19:00 and 21:00, on an average day in the first half of 2026. In the first half of 2023, the figure stood at 6.8%.
In the first half of 2026, batteries enabled solar energy to meet more than 10% of evening electricity demand in Chile. In Bulgaria, solar and storage together covered nearly a quarter (24%) of electricity demand between 19:00 and 21:00 and supplied an average of 10% of demand between 19:00 and 07:00.
However, developing solar generation capable of supplying electricity beyond daylight hours will require more than additional battery capacity. Electricity markets must also enable batteries to participate effectively and operate where they provide the greatest value to the power system.
Ember concludes that batteries do not eliminate the need for a diversified electricity mix. Wind, hydropower, nuclear power, and long-duration energy storage will continue to play significant roles, particularly during extended periods of low solar or wind generation.
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A new era of home solar power has begun, as plug-in solar panels become legal in the UK for the first time. Argos is the first major retailer to start selling DIY kits that could help save on household energy bills.
From 27 August, households will be able to buy specially designed solar systems that generate electricity and feed it directly into a home through a standard three-pin socket – potentially giving renters, flat-dwellers and homeowners without suitable roofs a cheaper route into solar panels.
The government has described the change as a way to give households the chance to “significantly cut energy bills”, while Energy Secretary Miatta Fahnbulleh said the technology could make solar “more accessible to households across the country”.
The legal change sets out the requirements products must meet – and this specification matters. The new rules do not mean consumers can simply buy any solar panel online and plug it into the wall. The government says the specification sets the minimum technical standards needed for a system to be “lawfully connected to the grid” and covers its electric design, British plug, mounting system and fire protection.
“The big advantage of plug-in solar is that it will fit almost any property and you can install it yourself without needing a professional fitter or electrician”, technology journalist Alastair Jennings explains. “Just buy the kit, plug it in, and you’ll start to generate instantly usable electricity, cutting your reliance on the grid and ultimately saving you money.”
The principle is surprisingly straightforward. Solar cells generate electricity from sunlight. A microinverter converts that electricity into the type of alternating current used in homes, and the system feeds it into the household electrical circuit through a standard socket. The plug-in solar panels can be placed in the garden, or on walls and balconies if rules permit.
The solar electricity is then available for appliances to use, reducing the amount of electricity taken from the grid. This means households could save up to £110 a year, according to the government.
However, this depends on the size and position of panels, sunlight, shading and how much electricity is used during daylight hours. Unlike conventional solar installation, the initial plug-in systems do not include a plug-in battery, so excess electricity cannot simply be stored for use that evening.
The government has suggested that plug-in solar could cost around £400-£600, although the first approved products arriving on the market are considerably more. UKSOL’s systems cost up to £1,199, but insiders suggest budget supermarket Lidl will sell them for around £400 – we’ll just have to wait a little longer for its systems to launch.
As market competition increases, prices are expected to fall.
Argos is the first major retailer to launch plug-in solar today, with Amazon, Currys, B&Q and Screwfix set to follow. At Argos, you can buy UKSOL’s plug-in solar panels. UKSOL is the first manufacturer to sell plug-in solar panels in the UK, after becoming certified and compliant ahead of the government’s new ruling.
The cheapest 515W kit costs £599 (Argos.co.uk), while the most premium 1260W kit sets you back £989 (Argos.co.uk). There’s also a 460w plug-in solar pro ground mount bundle for £849 (Argos.co.uk), a duo 890w pro plug in solar kit with hybrid mount bundle for £849 (Argos.co.uk), and a 1030w pro plus plug in solar panel kit with hybrid mount bundle for £899 (Argos.co.uk).
Each UKSOL kit from Argos comes with a mount bundle – which includes the hardware needed to attach the solar panel to a roof, wall, balcony, railing, or another fixed structure – or a ground mount bundle, which includes a freestanding frame that lets you install the panel on the ground, rather than attaching it to your house.
Direct from UKSOL, the compact 460W kit costs £849, while the duo 890W kit costs £1,199, but the systems are slighty cheaper through retailer City Plumbing (£670.80, Cityplumbing.com, £951, Cityplumbing.com).
Lidl was among the first big names to announce it was manufacturing plug-in solar panels, but it’s not yet confirmed when they’ll be available. The supermarket is working with the government to produce compliant, tested, lightweight DIY kits featuring two solar panels and a micro-inverter, designed for balconies, patios, or gardens that plug straight into a standard wall socket.
Anker solix has launched its solarbank 4 E5000 Pro in the UK (from £1,699, Ankersolix.com). The product is a solar battery, but you can add on up to 4kW of solar panels at an extra cost. The 5kWh battery stores electricity, but it also includes an inverter and control hardware to supply power to the home through a plug-in connection. Anker’s “plug-in-ready solar battery” is available to pre-order for delivery from 8 September.
Electrical Safety First urges shoppers to only buy from reputable high street retailers to ensure the device is safe and meets the new interim product specification.
“We advise households to avoid buying these devices from third-party sellers on online marketplaces, no matter how appealing this may be, as these platforms are currently not legally responsible for the safety of goods sold via their sites, exposing people to substandard versions that may put you and your home at risk,” the charity advises.
The government has emphasised the technology’s benefits to those who can’t install conventional rooftop solar panels. The plug-in panels are particularly useful for renters and those in flats with balconies. However, renters must have permission from the landlord, and planning or building restrictions can apply depending on where the panels are installed.
There are other things to be aware of, as Luke Osborne, Technical Director at Electrical Safety First, explains. “Plug-in solar panels send electricity in the opposite direction in your property’s wiring. Whilst many modern homes may be able to enjoy this technology safely, we still have concerns plug-in solar panels may damage older devices in people’s homes which protect people from electric shock, known as RCDs.
“Because of this, it is our view that not every home will currently be suitable for plug-in solar. We urge households to ensure they have an RCD suitable for this technology and to consult a competent electrician if they are unsure if they have the right protections in place in their home.” 
The charity adds that you should never plug in solar panels through extension leads, travel adapters and multi-way adapters, and to have your electrics checked before you buy.
Read more: Plug-in solar panels go on sale in shops and online after legal barriers removed
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Politics often has a way of sneaking its way into the discourse surrounding various topics, renewable energy included. Then, as partisan agendas spread, misinformation can take the front seat, which is the case with green power sources being labeled as damaging or ineffective. In reality, both wind and solar power have come a long way in recent times. One could argue that they’re becoming a little bit too efficient, so much so that solar farms in Europe produced an energy surplus, turning energy prices negative.
This is why countries like Germany shut down or reduce the output of their renewable energy sources, including wind farms. This practice, referred to as curtailment, is generally necessary when producing extra electricity becomes fiscally unviable — as in locations like the Iberian Peninsula. Though this practice has decreased across Europe overall, Germany is the outlier where curtailment grew by 20% in 2026. It’s due to the Solar Peak Act from 2025, which postulates that renewable energy assets are no longer eligible for subsidies when prices fall below zero. Thus, it makes more commercial sense for wind farms and solar operators to pull the plug instead of producing a surplus of energy.
Opponents of renewable energy could point to this issue as a reason to stick with fossil fuels. However, the problem isn’t the energy generated by wind farms and solar plants. Rather, it’s the storage and transmission technology, which, if improved, would allow countries to stop wasting energy. So, demand response combined with better energy storage could fix this curtailment issue.
Renewable energy may get a bad rap, but there’s an outdated myth about solar power that it requires fossil fuel backup. The US Department of Energy says that storing electricity enables the use of surplus supply as needed. In turn, investing in storage facilities improves power quality and resilience, helps match supply and demand, and can limit curtailment by balancing energy loads more effectively.  The International Renewable Energy Agency also found that by combining different sources of green power and boosting battery storage, solar and wind farms can provide reliable power and compete with coal plants on cost.
If Germany follows the example set by other European countries, it might find that legislation can help with curtailment. France, for instance, has subsidies that incentivize renewable power plants to keep their facilities on. This worked when you consider that negative price hours increased 14% in 2025, but curtailment dropped 32%. Similar outcomes were seen in countries like Finland and the Netherlands, proving that local laws can fix the issue from the top down.
Along with improved storage and incentivizing power producers to continue running, countries can encourage citizens to play along. For example, smart meters allow households to track their energy expenditure with more precision. As prices decrease when demand is low, households could save money by running power-hungry appliances during these times. That helps soak up the surplus produced by wind and solar farms — a win-win on the renewable energy front.

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This report, produced by Ember in partnership with African Tech Futures Lab (ATFL), presents Ember’s estimates of solar power capacity installed in every African country from 2023 to 2026, built from Chinese customs data using a new calibrated methodology. It compares these estimates with official national and international statistics, examines the split between utility-scale and distributed solar, and reviews Africa’s emerging solar panel manufacturing. It follows Ember’s August 2025 report, “The first evidence of a take-off in solar in Africa.”
A year after Ember found the first evidence of a take-off in solar in Africa, a new methodology makes the boom measurable – and shows it running far ahead of the official record.
Chinese exports of solar panels to Africa surged in the 12 months to June 2026, to levels similar to each of the Middle East and Latin America. This report introduces a new methodology, showing around 73% of Chinese imports globally have been installed, with an average six-month delay. This makes it possible to estimate full-year 2026 installations already. This shows 17 GW of solar was installed in 2026, equal to around 100,000 solar panels every day. That is a 45% rise year-on-year; 2025 rose by 51% and 2024 by 25%.
19 countries have seen year-on-year growth of over 100%, including 544% in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), 282% in Zimbabwe, 176% in Egypt and 117% in Zambia. Solar growth used to be dominated by South Africa, but its share of African installations in 2026 will be below 20% for the first time since 2019, as other countries surge. Solar is now the single biggest addition to grid capacity in many African countries – Senegal will add solar capacity from 2023 to 2026 equivalent to almost 80% of its entire 2023 grid capacity, with DRC and Kenya adding more than half.
2026’s installations will generate around 23 TWh a year – 2.3% of Africa’s electricity generation, above the 2.2% average annual demand growth of 2014 to 2024. There are ten countries where 2026’s new solar will add more than 10% to annual grid electricity generation – Sierra Leone (97%), Togo (24%), Somalia (21%), Djibouti (21%), DRC (14%), Comoros (14%), Namibia (12%), Liberia (12%), Chad (11%), Lesotho (10%). Together these countries are home to 190 million people.
Ember’s 2025 solar growth estimate is twice that of international statistics – 12.0 GW in 2025, compared with 6.2 GW from the International Energy Agency (IEA) and 4.6 GW from the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA). Ember forecasts annual installations in 2026 will rise another 45%, potentially increasing this gap further. However, international reporting can only be as good as national reporting, and that barely exists in many countries. We could only find official reporting for national solar capacity for 36 out of 54 countries; only 14 of those were for 2025, and even those 14 countries seem to underestimate the rise in solar. Only three countries – South Africa, Tunisia and Tanzania – publish some solar data monthly or quarterly.
Distributed solar, which is small-scale, customer-side solar installed mostly on rooftops – makes up most of Africa’s solar growth, and it’s the hardest type to measure. Ember estimates that 75% (20 GW of 26 GW) of the total solar capacity added between 2023 and 2025 is distributed solar. That’s because only a quarter of new solar can be explained by utility-scale and off-grid solar – utility-scale solar is fairly well-documented and visible through government procurement projects, and although off-grid solar is growing fast, its scale would still be very small in context of the gap.
This is the case even in countries with large utility-scale solar projects – in Egypt, for example, still 43% of its solar growth is estimated to be distributed.
There are just 12 countries that report an official or semi-official distributed solar figure, yet those still underestimate the growth. The lack of visibility on distributed solar is not unique to Africa, but a combination of factors makes it worse. A surge in companies, registries and licences show the solar rise is real.
Output will reach around 3.5 GW in 2026, a fifth of what Africa installs, led by new plants in Egypt and Tanzania aimed at the US market. 94% of panels installed in Africa are still imported from China, and huge Chinese cell and wafer shipments to Africa point to re-shipment rather than use in African solar panel manufacturing. Overall, manufacturing data quality is very poor, and it’s hard to state these numbers accurately.
The rise in solar capacity is likely to meet much of Africa’s electricity demand growth, and the sheer scale of cheap new supply could spur more demand growth too, creating huge human benefits.
Some of the solar is undoubtedly up-ending Africa’s diesel economics. Batteries, paired with solar, are the new diesel generator. A year of Chinese panel imports cost $2.4 billion USD; generating the same electricity from diesel would cost around that every three months. Africa is now importing more dollars of batteries than solar panels from China, led by Nigeria and DRC.
The rapid spread of distributed solar in sub-Saharan Africa is an underreported success story. However, since African countries are running blind to this change, they are not reflecting this rise in distributed solar in their plans. This will impact grid and battery investments. Countries also need to make sure they don’t overinvest in fossil fuel power plants that will sit idle.
It’s incredible seeing so many businesses and individuals, across so many African countries, choosing to install solar. Solar panels have become so cheap, the economics are compelling. But so much of this growth is hidden from view – national governments need to get better at gathering solar data. Countries are already leapfrogging into faster, more secure, cleaner energy growth, and the governments that get ahead of it stand to gain all the benefits.
Across Africa, distributed energy resources are rapidly expanding, and in many cases, overtaking grid capacity. This transition is chaotic and disruptive, and far from the orderly model planned in national strategies. Policymakers need to start responding to this shift. The choice now is whether these distributed assets remain a parallel power system that compensates for grid failure or are integrated in ways that unleash a wider range of benefits.
Ember is an energy think tank that aims to accelerate the clean energy transition with data and policy. Ember is the trading name of Ember Energy Research CIC, a Community Interest Company registered in England & Wales #06714443. ‘Ember’ is a trademark held at the United Kingdom and European Union Intellectual Property Offices. All content is released under a Creative Commons Attribution Licence (CC-BY-4.0). Website powered by 100% renewable electricity.
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Pennsylvania was a pioneer on renewable energy before the fracking boom upended that trajectory, and environmental advocates think it’s past time for state leaders to once again prioritize clean forms of power.
The nonprofit PennFuture outlined ways for Pennsylvania to do so in a new report, accusing the state’s legislature of “policy inertia” for failing to pass bills that would increase adoption and reduce the cost of energy for consumers.
The advocacy group said a majority of state lawmakers favor a policy of “more gas now” rather than enabling the development of increasingly cheap renewable energy and battery storage that would cut climate pollution. Among the measures that PennFuture suggested legislators support: allowing community solar, a way for renters and others who can’t install their own panels to tap into local solar arrays.
“Thoughtful solar policies can also facilitate development of PV [photovoltaic] panels on the countless rooftops of warehouses and distribution centers that populate the landscape,” the report said.
The report called on lawmakers to increase the share of renewable energy required by the state’s Alternative Energy Portfolio Standards, which currently mandate that some 18 percent of the electricity utilities distribute come from renewable sources. Neighboring New Jersey, by contrast, required utilities to source double that share last year and 50 percent by 2030.
David Hess, a former secretary of the state’s Department of Environmental Protection, said the Pennsylvania House, which has a slim Democratic majority, has passed many bills that would enable programs such as community solar, warehouse solar and expanding energy-efficiency programs at utilities.
But the bills have not become law because of opposition from the Republican majority in the state Senate, he said.
“Senate Republicans are using the same talking points they’ve been given by the natural gas industry for the last 15 years to lock us into a ‘one-of-the-above’ energy strategy — natural gas — and the price spikes and instability that comes from a market tied to LNG exports and international markets,” Hess wrote in an email.
Some 60 percent of Pennsylvania’s electricity is generated by gas. The state has a large supply, but over-reliance on one source does not promote stable electricity prices and ignores renewables that are cheaper than natural gas, Hess said.
Stephanie Catarino Wissman, executive director of the American Petroleum Institute Pennsylvania, said the report failed to consider all possible energy sources. “Pennsylvania needs an all-of-the-above strategy, including its abundant natural gas resources, along with permitting reform that allows us to build the infrastructure every energy source depends on. Natural gas will remain critical to delivering reliable, affordable energy while supporting continued emissions reductions,” she said.
Gas, when burned, is less polluting than coal. But it still contributes to the climate pollution that’s worsening costly, dangerous extreme weather in the state.
Republican Sen. Gene Yaw, who as chair of the environmental resources and energy committee has outsized power over the fate of renewables legislation, did not respond to a request for comment.
The PennFuture report also called for deploying energy-storage projects more rapidly, incentivizing solar development on industrial brownfield sites and developing solar fields on Pennsylvania’s many shuttered coal mine sites and former coal-fired power stations.
The alternative to boosting natural gas is to create a “new energy economy powered by clean energy, energy efficiency strategies and decarbonization technology,” the report said. “Pennsylvania can shake free its over-reliance on fossil fuels, do right by coal communities left behind, and lead the nation in innovation and clean energy.”
Data centers—more than 50 of which are planned for Pennsylvania—are driving big new demand for electricity, much of which may end up generated by natural gas. Residential electric rates in the state have risen by around 12 percent in the last year in anticipation of the new demand and the high costs of upgraded transmission.
Last week, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, a Democrat, issued an executive order directing data center developers to provide their own power and pay the full cost of transmission upgrades without shifting costs to ratepayers. The order, issued after growing community opposition to data center plans across the state, also requires the centers to buy an increasing amount of their power from renewable sources, including solar, advanced nuclear and battery storage, rising to 32 percent by 2035.
Donna Kohut, author of the PennFuture report, said Shapiro’s order for increasing renewable use was a step in the right direction but is no guarantee that the legislature will follow with measures that mandate greater use of renewables.
“Now that we’ve got this bit of momentum from the governor, it’s up to the state legislature to move forward,” she said in an interview.
David Masur, executive director of the nonprofit PennEnvironment, welcomed the report’s policy prescriptions.
“It’s been clear for a long time that the question isn’t one of technological capability or effectiveness of the policies but whether our elected officials have the political will and the intestinal fortitude to implement these much-needed energy policies,” Masur wrote in an email. “It’s time we take the policy steps necessary to move our energy systems out of the 19^th century and into … the 21^st century.”
Pennsylvania, he said, ranked 47th in the nation for renewable energy growth in the last 10 years.
“Red and blue states alike are rapidly pivoting to more renewable energy and stronger renewable-energy policies to stimulate that growth,” Masur said.
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Calendar Week 34 was a mixed bag for the TaiyangNews PV Price Index, with wafer and module prices recording increases, while cell prices fell by double digits week-on-week (WoW).
The polysilicon segment was unchanged for the fourth consecutive week.
The wafer segment recorded gains of 4.2% to 24.4% WoW, following increases of 9.1% to 12.5% in CW33.
After recording some of the largest WoW increases in recent weeks, cell prices fell by 11.8% to 19.7% in CW34. The category, however, remains up by double digits month-on-month (MoM).
Prices for the 4 TOPCon bifacial module types increased by 1.4% to 1.5% WoW.
The two solar glass variants have seen no price changes since CW17.
The TaiyangNews PV Price Index is now on a 4-week streak of relative stability, despite the sharp movements in wafer and cell prices over the past two weeks. While the polysilicon segment has lost more than a third of its value year-to-date (YtD), wafers and cells have significantly clawed back their earlier declines. Solar glass prices are down between 7.5% and 14.8%. Among modules, only one module type remains in the red YtD.
The data refers to average product prices in China. The data was collected by Chinese market research firm Gessey PV Consulting.
Disclaimer: TaiyangNews does not guarantee reliability, accuracy or completeness of this price index’ content. TaiyangNews does not accept responsibility or liability for any errors in this work.
TaiyangNews 2024

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How to Become a Solar Installer: Don’t Skip These Steps  Miami Herald
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Michigan approves first utility-scale renewable project under controversial siting law  Crain’s Detroit Business
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Solar Boom Sweeps Across Africa as Rooftop Demand Takes Off  Bloomberg.com
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First Michigan solar farm to seek state approval gets green light  MLive.com
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To the editor: I was surprised to learn about the Demand Side Grid Support program (“Sacramento should save the program that is saving the grid,” Aug. 25). I’ve had solar panels with batteries for a few years now, currently under the NEM 2.0 program, and use my batteries to minimize my use of the grid at peak times (and to achieve a higher credit for solar produced at peak times). Nevertheless, I had never heard of the program either from my provider, Southern California Edison, or from my Enphase app.
But, to be honest, I wouldn’t participate anyway. I’ve tried letting Edison control my smart thermostat and my electric vehicle charger, and both impacted my quality of life enough that I unenrolled in the programs. Further, based on the Legislature’s lack of support for residential solar (through the disastrous policies of the Public Utilities Commission), I no longer trust it or the electricity providers to do anything that benefits users such as myself. Real-world solutions are what are needed and they won’t come from the electrical providers or the politicians in their pockets.
Allen Simmons, Long Beach
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Aptera's will they/won't they flirtation with production has gone on two decades. It was first founded in 2006, but it was liquidated at one point and went radio silent for a few years. But for most of the last 20 years, it's promised a three-wheeled electric vehicle with solar panels for a roof, between 250-400 miles of range, and the ability to recoup about 40 miles of range from the sun. Yet, it hasn't delivered a single vehicle. So you'd be forgiven for any skepticism about its promises. However, independent German company TÜV Rheinland recently tested out Aptera's solar capabilities, and it seems to deliver.
TÜV Rheinland's team, including its solar expert Dr. Giorgio Bardizza, went to Aptera's Carslbad, California facility to measure just how much solar energy the electric three-wheeler can absorb. Aptera has consistently claimed that it can put about four kWh worth of juice back into its battery from the solar panels on its roof, tailgate, hood, and dashboard. That's only a fraction of the launch edition's 44 kWh battery, but it's said to be enough for around 40 miles of range in the ultra-light car, based on the brand's proposed efficiency.
Aptera solar electric vehicle production validation vehicle
Testing was done over three days, with a different test each day, each from sunrise to sunset in July in Southern California. For accuracy, TÜV Rheinland used its own instruments to measure the electricity actually put back in the battery, not just at the solar panels. You can even see TÜV Rheinland's detailed testing report, as well as watch a video on how it was done, so you don't just have to take Aptera's word for it. 
The first test had the car parked in Aptera's parking lot all day, in a fixed position, with its solar hatch closed, and it gained 4.23 kWh of energy, said to be worth 42 miles of range. The second test was repositioned once at noon, as if to simulate someone coming back from a lunch break and having to park in a different place. That gained 4.4 kWh, worth 44 miles. Finally, the team raised the solar hatch, positioning it toward the sun, and recouped 4.75 kWh, good for 47 miles of range. 
I'll be honest, I have my doubts about Aptera ever actually putting this three-wheeler on sale. But it's hard to argue with these test results. They were done by a trustworthy third party and all of the data is presented, so there's nowhere for Aptera to hide. 
Is anyone going to regularly park their car all day in the same spot from sunrise to sunset, with perfect sunny conditions? Probably not. But if someone has a short commute and parks their car in the sun for an eight hour workday, they might be able to recoup enough range to get home for free on a regular basis, saving them a ton of charging. So I'm rooting for this little guy, even if I'm still dubious of the company. 
Aptera Reveals The Secret To Building Its Solar EV: China
After Years Of Delays, Aptera Is Finally Preparing To Build Customer Cars
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The city of Niles is moving forward with plans to let a firm build a solar farm and battery storage facility at the airport. The mayor says the project will help the city meet Michigan’s renewable energy mandates for local communities.
The city council approved a series of agenda items related to the project this week. Mayor Nick Shelton says Michigan law requires municipal utilities like Niles to reach 50% renewable energy by 2030 and 60% by 2035.
Shelton says this project will get the city to about 15%.
The mayor declined our interview request but in a Facebook post he said, “In plain terms, this wasn’t the city deciding it simply wanted a solar farm. The state gave us a requirement and a deadline. Whether we like that mandate or not, ignoring it isn’t an option.”
A subsidiary of New York City-based Madison Energy Infrastructure will lease space at the airport to own and operate the facility. It will sell some electricity directly to the city before sending the rest out to the grid. Shelton says that will save the city money in the long run as increased demand from the mandate increases renewable energy costs for cities.

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Officials said agreeing to the settlement was the least expensive practical choice.
Photo Credit: Atmos Energy
Households in Denton, Texas, are facing another utility cost bump: starting Oct. 1, the typical home gas bill is expected to be about $13 higher each month.
The Denton City Council voted 6-0 to accept a rate settlement with Atmos Energy.
Typical commercial gas bills in Denton are projected to rise by $44.82 a month, or 9.9%, while the average residential bill will increase by $13.37, a 14.15% jump, KERA News reported.
Atmos first sought a $291 million increase in its 2025 cost-of-service study, and the agreement that followed covers the utility’s system as a whole through the Atmos Cities Steering Committee, a 181-member coalition of cities representing more than 1 million customers.
According to Matt Hamilton, the city’s chief financial officer, the negotiated amount was $260.5 million, trimming about $30.6 million from the original request for member cities.
Council members voiced frustration with the size of the change. Council member George Ferrie described it as “incredibly high for gas,” and Mayor Chris Watts told staff, “That’s a large increase.”
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For Denton residents, the higher gas charge may land alongside possible increases in electric and water bills, putting more strain on household budgets.
These charges work differently from electricity plans that Texans can sometimes shop for: once a city council approves a settlement, most households cannot avoid the gas delivery increase except by using less gas.
Officials said agreeing to the settlement was the least expensive practical choice. Hamilton told the council that turning it down could expose Denton to legal costs and send the case to the Texas Railroad Commission, where the city would be unlikely to prevail.
Watts warned that leaving the settlement could end up putting residents in a worse spot.
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Winnipeg
By Sofia Frolova
Posted August 27, 2026 5:32 pm.
The roof of a building in rural Manitoba has over 500 solar panels, making it the biggest solar project in the province.
De Jong Dairy Farm just outside of Winnipeg is paving the way in sustainable farming, taking another step to net-zero greenhouse gas emissions.
“To be emission-free. And this is our goal from the dairy farms of Canada in the future. But it has to include all the farms. We are not going to wait for them. We are going to be proactive. We want to be leaders in this,” said Peter De Jong, the owner of De Jong Dairy Farm.
De Jong moved to Canada from the Netherlands at the break of the century, bringing European farming traditions to Manitoba.
The farm just outside of La Broquerie started with 55 cows, but fast forward to 2026 and the farmers are milking over 900 cows.
The farm is paving the way in sustainable farming, now installing over 500 solar panels to power the new calf nursery.
“We visited the family back home, and we saw that over the past 25 years they went from 0 to 90 per cent solar panels on the roofs. And we were wondering why they never do it here in Canada,” said De Jong.
The project was installed by Evolve Energy, and it became fully operational in 18 months. The owners are expecting to see the investment paying back in the next six years, with the system saving $30,000 a year in hydro bills for the farm.
“We are going to be offsetting as much as 24 gas heat homes in the area, which really makes a huge impact. Most energy will be offset here on the farm. And it represents about 14 per cent of their total energy,” said Lorena Mitchell, the lead energy designer for Evolve Energy.
Previously, the farm upgraded lighting and ventilation systems to enhance its energy efficiency, but the owners are looking forward to new projects including the use of electric vehicles.
“We are looking forward to a next solar project as we continue this way as well. But you can never know where technology is going in the future. There are many ways in which you can harness the energy on the farm,” said De Jong.

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Stuart Gourley explores how financial models are beginning to reflect the value that renewable assets can bring landowners.
August 28, 2026
In this contributed blog, Stuart Gourley, founder director and chief of product at renewable land leasing specialist RELA explores the growth in financial models that can unlock the value of renewable assets for landowners.
Across the UK, utility-scale solar, wind and battery energy storage projects are becoming an increasingly important part of the rural economy. For the landowners who host them, theycreate something less frequently discussed: a valuable, income-producing asset.
That matters at a time when farming businesses are under pressure from rising costs, changing markets, succession planning, taxation, and the need to invest for the future. Capital may be needed to acquire neighbouring land, invest in machinery or infrastructure, reduce debt, diversify into other assets or provide for the next generation.
For some landowners, hosting utility-scale renewable energy has already become part of that diversification.
Related:Government greenlights Low Carbon’s 400MW Beacon Fen solar-plus-storage, first DCO under new energy minister
The question increasingly being asked is what else can be done with the value these projects create, while retaining ownership of the land itself.
Much of the discussion around renewable energy and agricultural land understandably focuses on the development stage: whether a project should proceed, how much land it will require and how farming and energy production can coexist.
Those are important questions.
But once a utility-scale project is operating, or approaching operation, the landowner’s position changes. A long-term lease with an established renewable energy operator can create an income stream extending for several decades.
That income can provide considerable financial stability. It can also create a valuable asset in its own right.
The difficulty is timing.
Traditional renewable energy leases generally pay rent periodically over the life of the project. A landowner may therefore have a significant future income stream but limited ability to access its capital value today.
That can matter when farming businesses face decisions that cannot wait 20 or 30 years.
There is no single answer for a landowner considering how best to use their renewable energy income.
For many, retaining the lease exactly as it is and receiving regular rental payments will remain the right choice. It provides predictable income if the landowner is confident that the project will continue to operate for the long-term, and requires no further financial decision.
Where significant capital is required, borrowing against the asset may be an option. However, conventional lending will generally involve interest, repayments that must be made irrespective of whether the project continues to operate, personal guarantees and security over the underlying land.
Related:Triple Point acquires 49.2MW Hessay Solar project from Recurrent Energy
Selling land can also release capital, but comes with the obvious consequence that the landowner gives up ownership and potentially an asset that has been held by the family for generations. That means giving up more than the current value of the property. The landowner also forgoes future capital growth in the land and, importantly for farming families, the ability for that land to remain in family ownership after the renewable energy project is renewed, repowered or eventually decommissioned. Depending on the project, retaining ownership may also allow agricultural activity to continue alongside energy generation.
There has been a recent shift in thinking around these questions. Historically, accessing a large amount of capital from land has often meant either borrowing against it or selling it. For renewable energy landowners, that need not necessarily be the case.
Increasingly, there is another option: capitalising some or all of the future income from the renewable energy lease itself.
Related:Statkraft’s Cornish solar farm secures planning permission after appeal
It is an approach that reflects the growing maturity of the utility-scale renewable energy market. As projects become established long-term infrastructure assets, the leases sitting beneath them also have an identifiable financial value.
New structures entering the UK market allow qualifying renewable energy landowners to exchange an agreed proportion of future fixed lease payments for an upfront lump sum.
Importantly, this does not require the underlying land to be sold. Ownership remains with the landowner, together with the long-term value and optionality that ownership provides.
RELA, an Australian-founded specialist that entered the UK market in 2026, is just one business introducing this model. Its focus is on utility-scale renewable energy projects, typically 25MW and above, including solar, wind and battery energy storage.
Under such a structure, the landowner retains ownership of the land, their existing lease with the renewable energy operator, their rights under that lease and any revenue-linked payments. A concurrent lease is created through which RELA provides an upfront payment in exchange for an agreed proportion of the future fixed rental income.
There is flexibility in how much is capitalised and for how long. A landowner might choose to capitalise only part of the lease, retaining some annual rental income, rather than treating the decision as an all-or-nothing choice.
That distinction is important. The purpose is not simply to replace rental income with a lump sum. It is to give the landowner another way to structure an asset they already own around their particular circumstances, without having to relinquish the land that sits beneath it.
The answer will be different for every landowner.
For one farming family, accessing capital may provide the opportunity to acquire additional land or invest in the existing farming operation. For another it may enable diversification away from a single property asset. Others may be considering succession, gifts to the next generation or wider estate planning.
In each case, retaining the underlying land can be significant. The family continues to own the asset and participate in any long-term capital growth, while preserving the ability to farm the land where the project allows and ultimately pass it to the next generation. When the renewable energy project reaches the end of its life, the land remains theirs.
Changes to Agricultural Property Relief and Business Property Relief have brought those questions into sharper focus for many UK farming families. From April 2026, changes to inheritance tax relief mean that some agricultural estates face potential liabilities that previously may not have arisen.
Renewable energy leases can further increase the value attached to agricultural property while the underlying asset remains relatively illiquid. A lease capitalisation transaction converts that into a liquid asset (cash) that can be gifted early and reduces the value of the land for IHT purposes.
Capitalising lease income will not provide the right answer in every circumstance and tax treatment needs careful professional advice. But having another source of capital available gives landowners more choices when considering those decisions.
The significance of this extends beyond individual farms.
RELA estimates that more than 3,000 UK landowners could potentially hold leases associated with utility-scale solar, wind and battery projects of sufficient scale to consider capitalisation. It estimates the current UK renewable energy lease market at approximately £4 billion.
As the UK continues to expand utility-scale renewable energy, that market will grow.
The renewable energy transition is therefore doing more than changing how electricity is generated. It is creating long-duration assets across rural Britain and new sources of wealth for some of the landowners hosting the infrastructure.
The financial market is beginning to evolve around those assets.
For landowners, the important point is not that one approach is inherently better than another. Some will value decades of regular rental income. Others will have a better use for some of that capital today.
What has been missing until now is the ability to make that choice without necessarily selling the land or borrowing against it.
As Britain’s utility-scale renewable energy sector matures, giving landowners greater flexibility over the value created on their land should be part of that evolution.
Read more about:
Stuart Gourley
Founder director & chief of product, RELA
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MANILA, Philippines — Renewable energy producers ACEN Corp. and Yanara secured a P2.3-billion loan from Rizal Commercial Banking Corp. to develop a 75-megawatt solar farm in Pangasinan.tt solar farm in Pangasinan.
On Friday, the Ayala-led firm announced that it secured the loan facility through Renovable Earth Corp., a joint venture between ACEN and Yanara.
READ: Ayala’s ACEN eyes capital raising for more renewables
Additionally, the new funds would help both parties construct the Sual solar project, which is under the government’s green energy auction program round 4.
Once it starts generating power, the solar plant can produce about 112 gigawatt-hours of renewable electricity per year, enough to energize around 69,000 homes.
READ: ACEN sees 2026 a better year despite Middle East war
“This financing is a strong vote of confidence in our partnership with Yanara and in the long-term growth of renewable energy in the Philippines,” said Patrice Clausse, group chief investment officer at ACEN.
“As demand for reliable and sustainable power continues to grow, investments such as Sual Solar help strengthen the country’s energy security, support local economic development, and advance the transition to a cleaner energy future,” he added. /pai
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Nextnova Solar, a solar cell manufacturing company based in Oklahoma City, has announced plans to open a 2 GW solar cell manufacturing facility in a 42,550 m2 building in nearby Yukon, Oklahoma.
The company plans to begin work on the facility in November 2026, with mass production starting in March 2027. Nextnova says the facility will initially require 300 workers, but notes that the facility has the potential to scale to 5 GW of annual capacity with demand, which may result in additional employment.
In public-facing materials on its website, the company touts its fully integrated Manufacturing Execution System (MES) and advanced process control laboratory. The company also promises “complete material traceability” and that it says will enable customers to verify product origin, demonstrate regulatory compliance, support ESG reporting and rapidly investigate quality-related issues.
“Nextnova is being built to deliver more than high-efficiency solar cells,” said Nextnova chief strategy officer Nathan Miller in a statement. “We are creating a manufacturing platform that gives customers greater confidence through advanced technology, rigorous quality systems and complete transparency across the supply chain.”
The Nextnova announcement comes at a time when domestic module manufacturers are facing new tariffs on imported solar cells under Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962, which impose a price floor and 15% ad valorem tariffs on all imports of solar cells, which apply to the base cost of the imports and stack together, potentially raising the price of imported cells above the cost of similar cells from domestic suppliers. 
The U.S. does not currently have enough domestic solar cell production capacity to meet the needs of module assemblers. According to the latest numbers shared by the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) on its U.S. Solar Manufacturing Dashboard, the capacity of operational U.S. solar cell facilities is now around 10.6 GW, with another 23.1 GW announced or under construction, while operational module assembly capacity now tops 74.1 GW, with 26.7 GW planned or under construction. 
Nextnova to present at Solar Manufacturing USA 2026
Nextnova is among the sponsors of the Solar Manufacturing USA 2026 conference, presented by pv magazine USA, in partnership with Finlay Colville of Terawatt PV Research. 
“Nextnova’s inclusion at the inaugural Solar Manufacturing USA 2026 event forms a direct match with one of the major themes underpinning the conference — revealing the companies that are currently investing into new solar cell manufacturing sites in the United States,” said Colville, adding “The presentation by the company’s Chief Strategy Officer, Nathan Miller, promises to be one of the highlights of the opening sessions. Following the latest Section 232 action, the strategic imperative to invest in and build out the U.S. domestic solar supply chain has never been more critical.”
The conference takes place on September 22 and 23, 2026 in Austin, Texas. Registration is open now.
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Monday, October 26, 2026
10:30 am – 11:30 am CEST, Berlin, Paris, Madrid
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Our special edition for Intersolar South America 2026 is here!
Discover the latest insights into the Brazilian solar market – in Portuguese.
Entries open in seven categories: Modules, Inverters, BoS, BESS, Manufacturing, Sustainability, Projects.
April 01 – August 31, 2026
A two-day conference in Austin, Texas, bringing together leaders in US solar manufacturing, equipment specification, and factory execution.
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pv magazine USA hosts its multi-day virtual event on U.S. solar and energy storage, covering domestic manufacturing, distributed energy and the growing role of solar-plus-storage in meeting AI-driven power demand.
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Importing solar modules to the US will “no longer make any economic sense” under new Section 232 tariffs for polysilicon-based products, according to Intertek CEA.
Speaking on a webinar yesterday, Christian Roselund, research manager for policy at quality assurance, supply chain and technical services provider Intertek CEA, said he expects US module manufacturers to “dominate the market in 2027” due to the price increases for imported solar PV modules under Section 232.
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The tariff introduces minimum import prices (MIP) for polysilicon, silicon ingots/wafers, solar cells and modules, as well as a 15% tariff rate on top of that. The MIP for modules is US$0.38/watt, and cells are US$0.22/watt.
Despite the expected dominance of US module producers from 2027, Roselund said he expects their profit margins to take a hit due to the increased cost of importing cells.
Currently, the US has a roughly 50GW disparity between its solar cell and module production capacities, with around 11GW of cells to match over 60GW of PV module capacity. This means most module-only manufacturers will continue to rely on imports, hitting their margins and increasing module prices.
A similar thing will affect cell-only producers like ES Foundry or Suniva, Roselund suggested, as they will have to pay for imported silicon wafers at the MIP of US$100/kg. Cell producers will raise their prices to sell to module factories, passing the costs down the supply chain.
“The big exception to this is vertically integrated companies,” he says, which stand to benefit most from the Section 232 levies. These are few and far between in the current US solar landscape. Hanwha Qcells produces solar PV cells and modules, as do T1 Energy, Toyo Solar and a selection of others, but the figures show that cell, and especially wafer, production lag significantly behind module assembly.
Those companies, either with US cell or captive cell overseas, benefit from the fact that the MIPs are lower further up the supply chain. There are more benefits to importing wafers at roughly US$0.12/watt, or cells at US$0.22/watt, and manufacturing the rest in the US.
Currently, Intertek CEA says that imported modules in the US are selling around US$0.46/watt and US modules with foreign cells between US$0.38 – US$0.44/watt. Modules with US cells are US$0.45-50/watt, due to US cell scarcity, and fully domestic supply chains (which is limited to production from Corning and Hemlock) are around US$0.50/watt due to their insulation from future tariffs.
Those prices are slight market overreaction to the shock of new costs, said Joseph C. Johnson, associate director for market intelligence at Intertek CEA. As such, they might change and lower over time, but the trend is clear: US module prices are going up, to the benefit of a small number of established companies.
The webinar did discuss the possibility of more “competitive” practises between manufacturers as the industry adapts to the new reality, with some finding ways to sell modules more cheaply.
This is especially true out into the 2030s, when CEA expects US module manufacturing capacity to massively exceed annual demand. Solar installations are expected to remain relatively flat through 2030, while module capacity could reach over 115GW, and even cell capacity could exceed deployments based on already existing “credible” expansion plans.
 Ultimately, there is too much uncertainty around the Section 232 policy and other factors in the US solar market to encourage investment in new upstream manufacturing, Roselund said.
First, “this policy is not static,” he said. There is scope for the Secretary of Commerce to adjust the MIPs over time, depending on market conditions, which could see them fluctuate up or down on an unpredictable schedule.
Moreover, the US is facing new bans on power equipment like inverters and transformers, various other tariffs which all stack on top of Section 232, and the expiry of tax credits to incentivise solar deployments.
New cell or wafer facilities can require investments of up to US$165 million per GW and years of construction before they become viable. Roselund points out that by the time new facilities came online, the 45X Advanced Manufacturing tax credit would be about to expire, removing a major incentive for domestic content and cell production in the US.
There are also technology concerns, with litigation ongoing over TOPCon technology, a lack of proven market appetite for HJT cells, and the looming obsolescence of PERC technology. PV Tech Premium looked in depth at the prospects for upstream US manufacturing capacity in a blog earlier this month.
The Section 232 update will have a significant impact on the US solar supply chain, which will be discussed in more detail at the PV CellTech USA conference on 13-14 October 2026. The event will address the policy and investment landscape for US solar manufacturing, across the supply chain, and include speakers such as Solar Energy Manufacturers for America (SEMA) Coalition executive director Mike Carr. Read the full agenda here and book tickets on the event website.

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Published 5:43 am Friday, August 28, 2026
By Lia Portillo
JEFFERSON – Marion County residents heard details this week at community meet-and-greet events about a planned 2,000-acre solar farm, with some attendees saying their fears about the project being connected to a data center were put to rest.
Pathway Power, the company building the $200-million solar farm south of Avinger, held the events Tuesday and Wednesday at the Kellyville Community Center.
Poster boards depicting renderings of the project, pictures of the location and informational posters about the company and of the science behind solar farms were displayed across the room. Representatives of Pathway Power were scattered throughout the community center to answer residents’ questions. 
Shar Parr, who lives near Lake O’ the Pines, asked about the project’s possible impacts on the region’s water resources.
“I have been very involved in fighting to save the water for our region and for our future, for our growth,” she said. 
Parr also asked if the farm is a precursor to a data center. 
“And (the CEO of Pathway Power) said ‘No, absolutely not.’ And I’m quoting him when I say that. And so I was happy to hear that, although skeptical,” she said.
Parr also asked if the solar farm is connected at all with a data center being built in Blanchard, Louisiana, to which she was told no.
She said Pathway Power’s CEO told her the solar farm’s battery storage system would require some water, but that it was “an evaporative cooling system, and he referred to it as a system that would be closed.”
Closed-loop systems require significantly less water than traditional open-loop systems used in data centers.
Given the proximity of Johnson Creek Reservoir to Lake O’ the Pines, Parr asked if Pathway Power intends to place “catchment rows to be able to catch the siltation or runoff during heavy rainfall.” 
She said she was told yes and that the company plans to reseed the area.
Parr said she is still skeptical about this project but appreciated being able to ask questions.
“I think that that’s an important move forward, is being able to sit down at the table and say, ‘OK, here’s this, here’s this. We know it’s coming. Now how do we best work together?’” Parr said. “Because we’re not going to stop. I mean, I’m sure that my grandmother at some point told somebody, ‘Don’t ever go to the moon!’ And so I don’t want to be that person. But I also want to be responsible, because I owe it to the younger generation to do that.”
Jimmie Alford said he is interested in the project as the solar farm would be 30 feet from his daughter’s house.
He wanted to talk to Pathway Power representatives to ask what to do in case of an emergency.
“I was trying to find out what we needed to do as a fire department in case (of a fire from the battery system),” said Alford, who is Avinger’s assistant fire chief. “Well, do nothing. We’re not going in there and messing with it.”
Jean Noe, who moved to the Johnson Creek Reservoir area six years ago, said she attended the meet-and-greet to learn what is true and not from information she read online.
“There was so much information flying around that I didn’t know whether it was the truth or rumor,” she said. “(The event) put a lot of those concerns to rest because it’s not at this point in time what anybody thought it was going to be. (Pathway Power officials) insisted they have zero to do with any data centers. They’ve not built data centers or constructed solar for any data centers. They have never partnered with any data centers, and (there’s) nothing in the future plan.
“So, at this point in time, I will believe them. And I think that most everybody’s concern was these data centers coming in. And I mean they’ve kind of put my mind to rest for that to rest for that for right now. We’ll see what the future brings.” 
Hunter Bonner, the chair of the Marion County Republican Party, said this event was “much needed.” He said it was important for Pathway Power to meet its neighbors and learn more about the community.
One of his concerns about the solar farm and its battery system is safety. He said he was able to speak with an expert in batteries who told him that the technology to deal with containment of fires has increased over the years.
“(Pathway Power officials) were also able to answer questions about where the arrays were actually going to be,” Bonner said. “A lot of people think it’s just going to be this one continuous field of solar arrangement, (but) based upon the renderings that they showed, it’s going to be kind of in different areas.”
While he said Pathway Power representatives were very receptive, there is still more information that county commissioners should consider ahead of the company’s tax abatement hearing.
Pathway Power is seeking a tax abatement from Marion County that would reduce the amount of property taxes the company pays over a period of time. The project is expected to generate roughly $13 million in sales and use tax during construction and nearly $58 million in property taxes during the next 35 years. The project has an expected lifespan of 35 to 40 years.
The tax abatement process includes public hearings during Commissioners Court meetings and a vote by commissioners.
“One question I asked him was, ‘At what stage are you with engineering plans?’ And they’re about 30% done with that,” Bonner said. “We really need to see those engineering plans, and I would definitely say that those engineering plans need to be available before the Marion County commissioners even think about having an abatement hearing on this.”
Before attending the meeting, Bonner had tried reaching out to Pathway Power staff and had a hard time getting in touch with someone. It’s something he says he hopes the company works on.
“While I am glad that Pathway came out and did hold the event that they did, they need to be a little bit more visible and certainly more accessible than what they have been recently,” he said.
He also encouraged residents to make their voices heard and reach out to their local party officials and local representatives with concerns or questions. 
Jam Attari, managing partner and founder of Pathway Power, said when he and his team start a large-scale project such as the solar farm, they try to engage with the community.
“There is both short-term and long-term impact, both positive and negative, and we want to make sure the community is aware of what we’re doing on site, and to find different ways where we can support the community,” Attari said. 
Other than hearing about water concerns, Attari said he talked about road disruptions, economic impact to the area and more.
“Certainly, people are concerned with road use and what that impact will be. So we’ll certainly work with the community to make sure that they understand when trucks are moving on to the site and minimizing the disruption caused by construction traffic,” Attari said. “People are concerned about safety. So we want to make sure that we’re bringing the right kind of information to help have people understand at the end of the day, (a) fire is not a concern, any leaching chemicals … just doesn’t happen on power projects like this.”
Attari added that regional business owners have already approached him about being contractors for the solar farm’s construction.
“Part of this outreach is not just to local residents, but I’ve already met with three businesses that operate here locally that will engage in conversations,” he said.  “We’ll see where it goes, but there’s a concrete plant that is very conveniently local, (and) there’s a civil contractor that’s also local. Part of our requirement for folks that will contract to build our project is that they will use local labor and local contracting sources.” 
Construction is expected to start next year with operation slated for late 2028. 
“What we want to be able to do is to communicate (about this project), and what that means for the community,” Attari said. “Both in a real sort of physical way, what’s going to go on during construction and what’s going to go on during operation, and that at the end of the day, our intent is to minimize any disruption while adding a strong impact economically to what we’re doing.”
For information, go to pathway-power.com. 
Lia Portillo is a Report for America corps member covering the Hispanic community in the area and more. She graduated from Northwestern State University of Louisiana where she hosted a student podcast called “Latino Living” and led the student newspaper. She’s excited to tell the stories of Harrison County.
Email her at lia.portillo@marshallnewsmessenger.com.

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Solar-Fit has finished installing solar power systems on Palm Coast’s new fire stations — No. 26 at 72 Airport Commerce Center Way and No. 22 on the northeast corner of Palm Coast Parkway and Colbert Lane.
The installations took about six weeks for each building, Solar-Fit CEO Bill Gallagher said.
“Each facility has 305- to 590-watt solar panels, totaling 179,950 watts of DC power. Each system is projected to produce over 250,000 kilowatt-hours of free energy per year, resulting in an estimated energy savings of $22,000 to $25,000 annually,” he said.
Solar-Fit also installed the solar power system on the roof of the Southern Recreation Center in Palm Coast a few years ago.
“Palm Coast is leading the way for other municipalities to model regarding renewable energy utilization,” Gallahger said. “We salute our local leaders for the foresight to use the sun’s free energy to reduce the operating expenses of city facilities. These savings benefit all residents in our community.”
  
 
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Following the BLM announcements about the projects, conservation group Basin and Range Watch raised concerns about desert tortoises in the area.
The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) issued the final environmental impact statement and resource management plan amendment for the proposed Copper Rays Solar Project in Nye County last week.
According to its description, the project is located southeast of Pahrump and 40 miles west of Las Vegas, on about 4,414 acres of public land in Nye County managed by BLM.
“The electricity generated from the project would be collected at the onsite substation and conveyed to the existing Gamebird substation located northwest of the project site via a generation gen-tie transmission line,” reads the project description. “Construction for the facilities is estimated to take approximately 54 months over two phases.”
If approved, Copper Rays Solar LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Leeward Renewable Energy LLC, could develop an energy facility with integrated battery storage and interconnection to the regional electric transmission system, states the Aug. 21 BLM announcement.

Bonanza Solar Project

BLM also issued the final environmental impact statement and the proposed resource management plan for the Bonanza Solar Project on Aug. 21.
Approximately 5,133 acres of public lands managed by BLM in both Nye and Clark counties, 30 miles northwest of Las Vegas and five miles west of Indian Springs are in the application area, the project description states.
The proposed development from applicant Bonanza Solar LLC, a subsidiary of EDF Power Solutions includes construction, operation and decommissioning of a proposed 300 MW solar energy project including battery energy storage and interconnection to the regional transmission system, according to the description.

Environmental concerns

Basin and Range Watch, a nonprofit conservation organization, also issued a press release on Aug. 21 critiquing both the Copper Rays Solar Project and the Bonanza Solar Project.
“Large-scale solar projects in Southern Nevada are effectively playing a role in pushing the imperiled desert tortoise toward extinction,” Basin and Range Watch Co-Founder Kevin Emmerich said in a statement. “Each project takes out a significant chunk of crucial habitat for the species. The solar projects are playing a significant role in turning our diverse deserts into sacrifice zones. We should be considering brownfields and old mine sites for solar panels before we lose more habitat.”
Basin and Range Watch says both projects will impact rare plants, fossil beds, archaeology sites and over 6,000 acres of vital Mojave Desert tortoise habitat.
The conservation organization further states in the press release that the Pahrump Valley, where the Copper Rays Solar Project will be built, is a habitat that holds viable breeding populations of desert tortoises.
Basin and Range Watch describes the Indian Springs Valley, where the Bonanza Solar Project will be constructed, as a crucial desert tortoise connectivity corridor in Nevada.
“Connectivity links populations in different locations and maintains genetic diversity and viability,” the release reads.
Basin and Range Watch also claims that both projects will be visible for miles and use up groundwater.

Public input

Last week’s BLM notices opened a 30-day protest period for both projects that will end on Sept. 21. Protest instructions can be found at tinyurl.com/3fpzmkw5.
For more information about the Copper Rays Solar Project, visit tinyurl.com/2p8yb8fv.
Additional details about the Bonanza Solar Project can be viewed at tinyurl.com/3236jnnm.
Contact reporter Elijah Dulay at edulay@pvtimes.com
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