Solar Now

Defining agrivoltaics: Spanberger, local lawmakers celebrate bill-signing at Loudoun farm event  Rappahannock News
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Corporate funding, public market financing, and debt investments in the global solar sector experienced 131% year-over-year growth to open the first quarter of 2026, said Mercom Capital Group.
The $11.1 billion raised across 53 deals represents a substantial volume growth from the $4.8 billion secured across 39 deals in the first quarter of 2025.
Global venture capital funding for the solar sector reached $1.1 billion across 17 deals in Q1 2026, down 21% compared to the $1.4 billion raised over 14 deals in the year-ago period. However, VC funding increased 74% quarter-over-quarter compared to the $606 million raised across 20 deals in Q4 2025.
Solar downstream companies accounted for $543 million across 10 deals this quarter, down from $1.3 billion in 12 deals in Q1 2025. The largest VC deals over the period were $343 million raised by Inox Clean Energy, $165 million raised by Clean Max Enviro Energy Solutions, and $150 million raised by Amarenco. Grew Solar and Radiance Renewables also secured significant rounds of $118 million and $100 million, respectively.
Public market financing in the solar sector totaled $1.1 billion in eight deals in Q1 2026, marking an increase from the $20 million raised in two deals in Q1 2025. Quarter-over-quarter, public market investments rose 24% from the $900 million raised in eight deals during Q4 2025.
Announced solar debt financing totaled $8.9 billion across 28 deals in the first quarter of 2026, a 154% increase compared to the $3.5 billion raised over 23 deals in Q1 2025. Debt financing also rose 162% sequentially compared to the $3.4 billion secured in 20 deals during the final quarter of 2025.
Corporate mergers and acquisitions activity expanded year-over-year, with 28 solar M&A transactions in Q1 2026 compared to 19 deals in Q1 2025 and 21 transactions in Q4 2025.
Large-scale solar project acquisition activity also trended upward, tracking 75 transactions in Q1 2026 compared to 63 transactions in the year-ago period. In terms of capacity, a total of 18.4 GW of solar projects changed hands in Q1 2026, up from 13.6 GW in Q1 2025. Project developers and independent power producers were the most active buyers, acquiring nearly 11.9 GW, while investment firms and infrastructure funds secured 3.8 GW. Other buyers, including industrial conglomerates and energy companies, took 1.8 GW. On the utility and manufacturing side, a utility company acquired an 830 MW project, an oil and gas firm took a 40 MW project, and a manufacturing company acquired a 20 MW project. 
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Smarten to Expand Distributor Network Beyond 350 Partners in FY 2026–27, Strengthening Nationwide Reach for Power Backup and Solar Energy Solutions  SolarQuarter
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Any individual or organization that is not good at using AI tools to transform itself will be eliminated.
“We’ve reflected on it, and there’s one thing we underestimated – our understanding of the power grid wasn’t fast enough.”
When saying this, Hui Hengyu’s tone was very calm, without the deliberate solemnity of reviewing “lessons”. As a managing partner of Chaoxi Capital, he has been investing in the manufacturing industry for more than a decade. He has witnessed the “531” new photovoltaic policy in 2018, the complete cycle of lithium prices dropping from 600,000 yuan per ton to tens of thousands of yuan, as well as the booming new energy trend in 2023 and the global rise of the lithium – battery industry in the past two years. He knows that a downward trend is the norm, and an upward trend will eventually come.
In the past, when the industry predicted the installed capacity, it was always a 50% annual growth. However, hardly anyone seriously asked: Can the power grid handle the electricity generated? “New energy is not the final product; it’s just a power – generating product.” When facing this huge market worth trillions of yuan, he didn’t come up with any astonishing conclusions but corrected a industry – wide cognitive bias. This “bottleneck” was ignored by everyone when the industry was advancing rapidly. It was only when the supply – demand mismatch really broke out that people realized they might have been wrong from the start.
This pragmatism runs through Hui Hengyu’s judgment of the entire cycle. He doesn’t avoid problems or exaggerate anxiety. When talking about the invested enterprises, he said that none of them became “zombie enterprises” because of the cycle. When talking about energy storage, he said, “The market won’t converge to just three to five companies like the photovoltaic market.” When talking about internationalization, he said, “This is already a must – answer question, not an optional one.” Every sentence is supported by data and cases, without redundant rhetoric.
But he’s not the kind of person who only focuses on the present. The so – called “new energy” such as wind, solar, and energy storage in people’s traditional perception is just a small part of what he pays attention to. He closely follows AI, believing that it has opened up a new world for the development of energy and electricity. After the demand increases, the supply side will surely see new players. He also spent a long time explaining the underlying logic of “space photovoltaic + space computing power” and deduced the competition logic of ground – based new energy. “It will take at least five years to verify this space – related direction,” he said. “But we have to track it from the angel and seed rounds.”
This rhythm of “looking far ahead but not being hasty in action” might be the underlying reason why Chaoxi Capital hasn’t been caught up in the bubble or frozen by the cold winter in several cycles. Hui Hengyu put it more straightforwardly: “In the trough, you have to hold on even if you don’t have the courage – no one will take over, and the actual controller is also unable to help you exit. All you can do is stand with the invested enterprises and move towards each other.”
He doesn’t be emotional or beat around the bush. He never takes a step back when he should shoulder the responsibility. This style is somewhat similar to the manufacturing enterprises he invests in – not flashy but solid.
The following is an edited transcript of Hui Hengyu’s interview with “China Entrepreneur” (with some deletions):
In the past two or three years, the most drastic changes have undoubtedly occurred in the lithium – battery and photovoltaic industries. The lithium – battery industry started to decline at the end of 2022 and will emerge from the trough in 2025. The photovoltaic industry entered a downward trend at the end of 2023. The general consensus in the industry is that an inflection point will appear in about a year.
To be honest, since we come from an investment background in the manufacturing industry, we’re mentally prepared for the cycle. In investment, 90% of the work is done before investment – when making an investment, you have to predict whether the enterprise has the ability to resist adversity when the downward cycle comes, whether the founder has a sense of crisis, and how to pre – research and allocate the capital strategy, talent strategy, and market strategy in advance.
In our investment decisions at that time, we didn’t invest much in the photovoltaic main – material industry that relies on the expansion of production scale. In fact, since Chaoxi started to layout minority equity investments, investments related to photovoltaics have accounted for less than one – fifth.

Source: Respondent
Currently, none of the enterprises we’ve invested in have seen their value go to zero due to the cycle. However, we also have some reflections. There’s one aspect where our analysis was insufficient – the impact of new energy on the power grid came faster and more violently than we predicted.
New energy is not the final product; it’s just a power – generating product. To transform from power – generating equipment into actual electricity consumption, it has to cross the hurdle of the power grid – grid connection, transmission, and consumption. There are bottlenecks in each link. The current problem facing the global new – energy development is that intermittent energy sources such as wind and solar power have impacted the power grids of various countries, while the construction cycle of the power grid is relatively lagging.
In the past, people were very optimistic about the prediction of installed capacity, with an annual growth of 30% – 50%. However, they underestimated the carrying capacity of the installed capacity. Now, on the surface, it seems to be a demand problem. In fact, it’s because the demand was estimated too optimistically, leading to a bold expansion on the supply side and a huge supply – demand mismatch. From leading enterprises to small companies, all are suffering from the pain of declining profits, operating losses, and tight cash flow.
As institutional shareholders, what we need to do is not to “step on” the enterprises during the downward period but to help them soberly navigate through the cycle: reduce unprofitable bids, not take market share as the only indicator, ensure cash flow, restrain capacity expansion, and continue to invest in new technologies.
The current relationship between new energy and the power grid, as well as the high demand of AI for stable computing power, have made energy storage even more indispensable. Last year, the industry’s installed capacity was nearly 600 gigawatt – hours, a 50 – to 60 – fold increase in five years. Even so, compared with the existing installed capacity of wind and solar power, it’s still far from enough. The existing global installed capacity of wind and solar power is nearly 4 terawatts. If 50% of it is equipped with energy storage for 2 to 4 hours, the market scale will exceed 4 terawatt – hours.
However, energy storage is fundamentally different from photovoltaics: it doesn’t rely on manufacturing attributes. Photovoltaics are basically commodities, winning by scale and cost. Energy storage is different. It’s not a heavy – asset industry but relies more on solutions – understanding the users and the power grid. The power – grid structures in different countries and regions are completely different. Is it grid – forming or off – grid support? Is it single – phase or three – phase? How to install during delivery? How to conduct subsequent maintenance? There are no standard answers to these questions.

Source: AI – generated
So, the energy – storage market won’t be like the photovoltaic market, which will eventually converge to only three to five companies. It will be a fragmented market. In the large – scale energy – storage field, the patterns of CATL, Hichen Energy Storage, and Eve Energy have been initially established. In the household – energy – storage field, MaiTian Energy, Deye Technology, and Siger New Energy each dominate in regional markets. The industrial and commercial energy – storage field has another set of strategies.
The capital market has a very high enthusiasm for energy storage and can offer a price – earnings ratio of more than 100 times. For enterprises, going public is not the end. There are two real decisive factors in energy storage: one is the in – depth understanding of the power grid, which determines how much profit you can make; the other is the internationalization ability, which determines how much market share you can capture and how far you can go.
The equipment industry is an area where we’ve invested more. Companies like Laplace, Shanghai Lianfeng, and Hefei Xinyihua… still hold leading positions in their respective fields. The characteristic of the equipment industry is that when the downstream expands, orders are full, but when it contracts, the order – confirmation cycle becomes longer, and accounts receivable are the biggest risk.
However, it’s a light – asset industry. Apart from human resources, it basically has nothing else, mainly focusing on R & D, assembly, and on – site debugging. So, from the beginning, we told equipment enterprises: They should make a platform – based layout, taking orders from a variety of sources and from different industries.
The founder of one of our invested enterprises has a very rational saying – if an equipment industry has a continuous stream of orders every day, it’s abnormal. No industry is always expanding production; it’s just a stage – by – stage phenomenon. Therefore, being prepared for danger in times of safety is a compulsory course for entrepreneurs in the equipment industry.
Microtech started to get involved in semiconductor equipment in 2020; Robotek did it even earlier, acquiring an optical – module equipment company around 2019; Shanghai Lianfeng is now engaged in helium recovery – the helium used in semiconductor memory – chip production and rocket launches; Jiangsong Technology is trying out the intelligent parking – lot business…
The advantage of the equipment industry is that the technologies are interoperable, and there’s a large space for platform – based expansion. The speed and determination of transformation depend on the entrepreneurs themselves. It’s really difficult to “go against the current” to explore new battlefields, but if they don’t expand, they’ll be very passive when the cycle comes.
An important change in the past year is that internationalization has changed from a “vision” to a “must – option”. LONGi Green Energy built its first photovoltaic – module factory in the United States. It took about a year from construction to production, and it’s profitable. Canadian Solar’s North American factory was also completed in about a year, which was unimaginable before.
Building a factory in the United States is the most complex. EPC (Design – Procurement – Construction) can’t be outsourced to Chinese people. Land acquisition, land leasing, approval, hearings, environmental protection, resident noise, and employment all have to go through a long process.
The greatest contribution of the photovoltaic industry to China is not just products and technologies but the cultivation of a large number of international talents. In the past 20 years, although some photovoltaic companies have fallen, the talents have remained around the world. They understand the social rules in the United States and Europe and can communicate seamlessly with local governments and residents.
This is the foundation of internationalization ability: It’s not about whether you can speak English but whether you have a group of talents who can be trusted by the decision – making level of Chinese companies and accepted by local society.
Energy – storage enterprises are also following this path. In the future, they need to produce, assemble, and create employment locally, becoming “citizen enterprises” in the local area to dispel customers’ concerns about supply – chain security and subsequent maintenance.
One of our invested enterprises, Hichen Energy Storage, has a saying: “Without a stable domestic market, it’s hard to stand; without an international market, it’s hard to be strong.” The domestic market still needs to be grasped, but many rules are still in the exploration stage, and there may be a temporary imbalance between cost and benefit. Although the overseas market has thresholds, the market doesn’t recognize “low price means good”.
The most certain impact of AI on energy is currently on the demand side. Global computing – power construction is driven by electricity, and these demands are currently mainly concentrated in the United States. However, the energy structure in the United States is mainly based on natural gas, so the demand for gas turbines is triggered first, followed by other energy sources such as photovoltaics. However, all power generation needs to be equipped with energy storage, so the market elasticity of energy storage is actually greater.
This is just the story on the ground. Elon Musk is promoting “space photovoltaic + space computing power”. The sunlight duration in space is three to four times that on the ground. Once the heat – dissipation problem is solved, the unit computing – power cost in space may be lower than that on the ground. However, it will take at least five years to verify this direction, requiring the mass launch of starships, the deployment of space photovoltaics, and a service life of more than 10 years.

Source: AI – generated
So, AI has opened up a new world for energy, not only expanding the demand but also presenting new technological paths. Currently, we’ll track early – stage startups that can clearly explain the first – principle and connect with the ecosystem. It’s not yet the time for large – scale investment.
AI also has a revolutionary impact on cost – reduction and efficiency – improvement on the energy supply side. For example, for the battery electrolyte formula, it used to take two to three months to conduct experiments manually, but with AI tools, it may only take a week. For equipment – debugging parameters, in the past, masters had to try one by one, but now AI fixes the best parameters, and the production – line adjustment will be very fast… Any individual or organization that is not good at using AI tools to transform itself will be eliminated.
Actually, in our internal strategy meetings in the past two years, “AI for Energy, Energy for AI” has long become a core concept that we can’t ignore. In our energy investments, the integration ratio of technology and energy is constantly increasing, which is also the unique solution of our industrial investment institution when facing the new world.
This article is from the WeChat official account “China Entrepreneur Magazine” (ID: iceo – com – cn), author: Miao Shiyu. Republished by 36Kr with permission.
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36kr Europe (eu.36kr.com) delivers global business and markets news, data, analysis, and video to the world, dedicated to building value and providing business service for companies’ global expansion.
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After a very long wait, Aptera’s solar car is finally rolling and ready for journalist drives. So we headed down to San Diego to check out how development is going on this unique solar electric vehicle.
If you’ve been around the EV industry for a while, you’ve probably heard plenty about Aptera.
Based in California in sunny San Diego county, Aptera is a startup hoping to make a hyper-efficient solar electric vehicle.
But it’s been hoping for a long time. A really long time.
In fact, I’ve been driving electric vehicles since 2009, which I’d say is rather early in the technology’s lifespan. And yet, the idea behind Aptera is older even than my involvement in this industry.
The company was founded all the way back in 2005. At least, its original incarnation was. At the time, they were trying to make a 300+ mile per gallon gas-powered vehicle. Then the company folded, restarted, folded again, and restarted again in 2019, with its original founders back at the head.
In this incarnation, Aptera ditched the gas engine and went fully electric, and covered the car with solar cells.
Normally, solar cells on a car are a bit of a gimmick. Cars are generally too big, heavy, and inefficient for solar to make a meaningful difference in energy usage.
That’s why experimental solar vehicles, like those you’d see at solar car competitions like the Electrek Formula Sun Grand Prix (yes, Electrek, that’s us!), really don’t look anything like a car. They’re small, ultralight, use narrow tires, and have big flat surfaces and extreme aerodynamic designs.
That’s why, in order to make solar work on an EV, you really need to rethink what a car is, and how a car looks. Which is what Aptera has done, with a super aerodynamic shape that looks, well, somewhere inbetween those solar racers and what we traditionally think of as a car.
This does mean it’s not quite what you’d expect out of a car. It has two seats rather than four, as the tapered end couldn’t fit more people. It has a very long cargo area, but not a tall one. It has three wheels to reduce aerodynamic disturbance at the rear of the vehicle, and covered front wheel pods for the same reason.
And it took a lot of interesting engineering to get to this point, like multiple iterations on a unique suspension design and changes to motors, wiring, wheel pods, the charging system, and so on. All in service of making a car more efficient in ways that “normal” cars never really have to think of.
All that talk about engineering is interesting, and I can (and will, in another article about Aptera’s factory) go on about it forever. But what’s more important is that the car is now in a driveable state, with the first validation prototype completed in March. So since it’s driveable… how about we go for a drive?
We headed down to Aptera’s facility in San Diego county for a chat and a tour (which we’ll be writing up separately), and also to see and drive the newest version of Aptera’s prototype.
The car is still a prototype – some things are still being iterated upon, some suppliers are being switched, and some capabilities aren’t turned on. We didn’t have speakers or regenerative braking, for example, and there’s still a drivetrain tuning issue (specifically at 4mph) and some NVH (noise, vibration and harshness) work to do.
But it runs, has most of the same parts and layout as we’d expect to see out of a finalized version, and gives us a general idea of what the experience and vehicle dynamics will be like. So let’s dive in.
The first thing that greets you (behind the cool butterfly doors) is a relatively small cockpit… and you can see the whole thing in the photo above. There’s plenty of shoulder room, though headroom leaves a bit to be desired (I’m 6′ tall). The seat can be slid forward and backward, and the seat back can be tilted, both with manual controls.
It’s definitely a different seating position than most cars, so if you don’t have a low-slung sportscar (like I do…), it might take a bit of getting used to. The “dead pedal” footrest is a little close if you ask me. The yoke-style steering wheel – which I don’t normally like, but was actually quite satisfied with here – only moves up/down with a manual control, a telescoping wheel would have been nice to offer more positioning options.
Despite the small cockpit, the Aptera actually has an extremely long trunk. It’s not very tall, but can easily store long objects – some 2x4s, a surfboard (shortboard only), or a bag of golf clubs. Heck, I even managed to lay down in it, though I did have to lay a little diagonally (I’m 6′ tall).
Laying down in the trunk opens up the possibility of camping, and Aptera has floated the idea of a tent attachment. Given the car has solar built in, you could power HVAC or even some camping equipment (some sort of V2L capability is planned, but we couldn’t get many specifics on that).
Aptera even thinks there are commercial possibilities for this large amount of cargo space. A hyper-efficient vehicle could be useful for certain fleet tasks, after all. Though that’s probably a question for a more-distant future, and the focus right now is on delivering Launch edition cars.
There is also some interior storage in the cockpit. Two different-sized cupholders, a closed center console, another small cubby (which will have USB-C connectivity, but is currently filled with diagnostic cables on the prototype), and a small zip-bag under the passenger side dash, in place of a glove box, for documents like registration or owner’s manual.
Controls are handled almost entirely through a central iPad-like touchscreen. The only physical controls are the legally required button for hazard lights and thumb buttons on the steering wheel, the right button honks the horn and the left button controls stereo volume (the prototype I drove did not have a working stereo).
While many decry the lack of physical controls these days, I didn’t find it to be a problem here. The screen is simple and responsive, and you’ll probably keep it on the same main “page” of controls all the time. Since the car has fewer tech features, it also has fewer settings, which allows for a simpler interface. (Though Aptera will have over-the-air update capability, and says CarPlay/Android Auto support will come eventually, and will fill the bottom-right segment of the screen)
The few controls you’ll use are easy to access, with three sliders across the bottom of the screen for temp, fan speed and volume. The screen even controls the windows – to lower a window, you swipe down on the left or right side of the car graphic; to raise it, you swipe up. It feels very cool.
Two other displays live in the car, both functioning as mirror replacements. The rear and side view mirrors are both handled by cameras, with the rear view display sitting where it normally does high on the windshield, and the side view is in a driver display above the steering wheel (these displays are currently very hard to see with polarized sunglasses on, but Aptera is aware and this should be an easy fix).
The Aptera ships with physical side view mirrors, but they’re genuinely useless and actually intended to be removed after delivery, with cameras handling everything – since it’s technically registered as a “motorcycle,” this is allowed.
The cameras do help a lot, but they’re also necessary – there’s no rear window to look through and the side windows are partially blocked by the large structural/aerodynamic bar running across them.
Our drive experience was about 40 minutes long on wide roads in the commercial area around Aptera’s headquarters. More than a test drive, but not enough for an entirely full review.
The car feels peppy enough, but isn’t particularly powerful (we don’t have horsepower numbers, but it should be somewhere in the ~200hp range). 0-60 is a bit under 6 seconds, which is frankly more than enough for practical purposes but won’t win you any races. Front-wheel drive and a torquey electric motor means it’s easy to give it a little wheelspin, though I didn’t feel much torque steer.
The throttle is reasonably responsive, though since regenerative braking wasn’t active, it was hard to test what the eventual one-pedal driving capability might feel like.
Three wheels does make handling feel a little different, especially since the front two wheel pods lead to a very wide front track – so you might want to take turns a little wider as you get used to the car’s width. But the car actually does feel surprisingly planted for such a unique configuration, perhaps because it’s so low-slung.
HVAC was strong enough to keep two people comfortable on a warm SoCal day, and the cockpit is small enough that it cools down quickly. The HVAC is channeled mostly through vents around the screen, which is an interesting idea, though the louvers to aim the air are a bit chintzy.
But one issue with the HVAC system is that the compressor is poorly isolated from the chassis, causing a lot of vibration, and a good amount of noise echoing from the cavernous rear trunk, when it’s turned on.
Which brings up probably the biggest downside of the drive: it still needs a lot of work on Noise, Vibrations and Harshness (NVH).
I like a firm suspension, but this could stand to be loosened up a bit. Some components need better isolation, even if it costs a little more or adds a little more weight (the car is only 2,200lbs, after all, in seeking maximum efficiency). And everything needs to be tightened up a bit, as there were a good amount of squeaks and rattles.
But these are common issues to find in validation, and NVH is one of the last steps in vehicle development anyway. Aptera said it’s working on these things, and also has an idea for isolating the cabin from the trunk, which could help both with noise and HVAC efficiency.
That said, there’s a certain amount of harshness that can’t be removed. To keep weight down (and safety up), the car makes heavy use of sheet molded carbon fiber. But carbon fiber transfers vibration and noise very well, which means the car will be inherently harsher as a result. It was a little less noisy than a carbon tub car usually is, because the outboard wheels didn’t kick as many bits of asphalt up into the car’s body (unlike the Tesla Roadster I drove down in).
So in short: I’m impressed with the progress, they do actually have a working vehicle, and it does something no other vehicle does (i.e. adds significant solar power). But it still needs polishing.
The thing is, Aptera has raised somewhere on the order of $150 million. That’s a lot of money, but to put a car on the road, that’s not much at all. It usually takes more like a billion dollars to start from nothing and get a car on the road. Validating the car as a “motorcycle” helps to keep those costs down, but the process is still enormously costly.
Since when is 200hp not powerful? Prior to today’s “turbo all the things” mindset, 200hp was more than most family cars had.
So, now we’ve at least had a taste of what the Aptera is like in its current form. But there is still work to be done, and questions to answer.
The next question is: when will we see the final form? And can Aptera make it there at all? We’ll examine that in a future article about our factory tour.
Aptera is taking reservations now for $100 a pop. If you want to get in line, you can use our Aptera Referral Link for $30 off the refundable reservation fee.
If you *don’t* have solar on your car, you can always charge your electric vehicle at home using rooftop solar panels. Find a reliable and competitively priced solar installer near you on EnergySage, for free. They have pre-vetted installers competing for your business, ensuring high-quality solutions and 20-30% savings. It’s free, with no sales calls until you choose an installer. Compare personalized solar quotes online and receive guidance from unbiased Energy Advisers. Get started here. – ad*
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Jameson has been driving electric cars since 2009, and covering EVs, sustainability and policy for Electrek since 2016.
You can reach him at jamie@electrek.co.
Use our Aptera Referral Code for $30 off a reservation for the upcoming Aptera solar electric vehicle.
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“The biggest thing for us is probably not even the power generation. It is the shade.”
Photo Credit: LinkedIn
After more than a decade of district planning, Ellwood Elementary has now joined Goleta Union’s solar-powered schools as the latest campus to make the switch.
In addition to cutting pollution, the project is expected to bring financial and day-to-day benefits. The Santa Barbara News-Press reported that it could save the district big over the years and create a cooler, shaded outdoor area for students.
District officials marked the start of Ellwood’s new solar operation on June 12. According to the News-Press, the school joins Hollister and Mountain View as the district’s three campuses now equipped with solar panels.
Money for the project came from Measure M, the $80 million bond voters approved in 2020. The News-Press reported that the measure was designed to cover campus repairs, classroom updates, internet improvements, and more renewable energy work.
Construction across the three campuses ran from January through March, district officials said, and the arrays have generated more than 27,202 kilowatt-hours since entering service in April.
Solar work is set to continue at the district office, where construction is expected to start by June 29. After that installation is finished, about one-third of the district’s electricity is expected to come from solar power.
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Assistant Superintendent of Fiscal Services Jordan Goines told the News-Press that the district expects nearly $2 million in electricity-bill savings over 20 years, enough for the solar systems to largely offset their own cost. 
The paper reported that the district also anticipates receiving $1.2 million from the IRS under the Inflation Reduction Act, representing 34% of its equipment spending.
For Ellwood, the benefits are not only financial. By placing the panels above the lunch tables, the school has added a cooler gathering spot for students during recess rather than having them sit on the blacktop.
“The biggest thing for us is probably not even the power generation,” Principal Ned Schoenwetter told the News-Press. “It is the shade.” 
Cleaner energy also reduces reliance on fossil fuels, helping curb the air pollution tied to a range of health concerns.
Local residents praised the initiative and its impact on the young students in the News-Press.
“Today’s kindergarteners are going to grow up in buildings that run on the sun, and they’re going to think that’s completely normal,” former board member Susan Epstein declared to the paper.
It doesn’t seem like the trend is stopping any time soon, either.
“We have schools that are ready to go saying, ‘please, us next,'” Superintendent Mary Kahn told the News-Press.
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© 2025 THE COOL DOWN COMPANY. All Rights Reserved. Do not sell or share my personal information. Reach us at hello@thecooldown.com.

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Solar power is growing, but dust significantly reduces panel efficiency. A startup, Clear Solar, is using technology developed for Mars rovers to clean panels. This electrodynamic dust shield removes 97 percent of dust. The system is cost-effective, saving millions for large solar farms. This innovation could boost solar energy’s reliability and sustainability globally.

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Thousands of pages of documentation are generated during the development, financing, construction, and operation of a solar project. Environmental studies, engineering reports, permitting records, contracts, inspections, and compliance documentation all exist for one reason: to reduce risk.
Risk is the underpinning variable across nearly all financial decisions and is especially omnipresent in the development of power generation projects. It is striking how little risk-adjusted decision making is done when defining an end-of-life panel management strategy. 
As panels break or become obsolete, the industry is confronting a critical gap in the supply chain: a lack of transparency around what happens to panels after they leave a project site. While attention has been paid to the awareness of the need for recycling, far less attention has been dedicated to defining the pathways for ethical material traceability. 
The challenge is that the path a panel follows after collection can be difficult to wholly understand. Panels routinely cross state lines for processing, materials may be transferred between multiple facilities, and downstream handoffs are commonplace. Even worse, panels are often exported overseas with inaccurate labels that bypass export scrutiny, and then the problem “just goes away” for all involved. Or so some believe… 
The technical realities of solar recycling add another layer of complexity. While many facilities can recover easily accessible materials (aluminum frames and copper wires), nearly none possess the technical or operational expertise to decompose the laminate (key limiting factor) and cleanly recover materials from the panel itself. 
At the same time, there is no nationally harmonized framework for end of life panel traceability in the United States. Power generators must navigate a patchwork of state waste regulations, certifications, and reporting expectations. While these programs can provide value, they do not necessarily guarantee complete visibility throughout the recycling chain.
As a result, many asset managers are left asking a simple question: how do we know where our panels actually went? The answer requires an understanding of the recycling technology landscape, as well as the metal and glass supply chains that exist domestically and abroad.  
Material traceability first begins with an understanding of a company’s ownership structure. Are they a wholly or partially owned subsidiary of a foreign metal refinery, owned by private equity, or publicly traded? If owned by a foreign metal refinery, it may become more obvious where the panel materials end up. Companies with institutional ownership and public market requirements are much more likely to ensure domestic material reuse and provide certifiable attestations as to their material pathways.
Process methodology disclosure is equally important. It is not about recovering 91, or 96, or 98 percent of the value of the solar panel. It is only about ensuring all the panel materials are safely recovered in such a way that they can be domestically reused with full downstream traceability with auditable & credible companies. 
The sole variable towards the binary: can all materials be recovered and reused domestically (yes / no) is (another binary): can the technology used to recover the panel materials decompose the laminate layers?  
If, and only if, a technology can decompose the laminate layers then all materials can be safely recovered and reused in the domestic supply chain (with full traceability). It is this simple.
Finally, third-party audits provide an important layer of accountability. Independent verification, from trade associations, government agencies, or specialized auditors, help ensure that a company’s propagated statements align with the actual operational reality.
These requirements are consistent with the standards the solar industry already applies throughout the rest of an asset’s lifecycle. No investor would accept vague assurances about project performance during development or operations. End-of-life management should be no different.
For asset managers, implementing these practices starts with making traceability a procurement requirement rather than an afterthought. Expectations should be established before selecting a recycling partner, with documentation and reporting requirements built directly into contracts.
When export pathways are involved, procurement teams should require three key disclosures: where materials are being sent (and to whom), what environmental controls / standards are in place, and what the final intended disposition will be. Exporting material is inherently problematic; undisclosed exporting creates unnecessary risk, undermines transparency, and threatens the security of our national material supply chain. 
Asset managers should also build accountability mechanisms into contracts. Reporting requirements, audit rights, and documentation obligations help ensure that visibility is maintained throughout the recycling process rather than depending on voluntary disclosures.
The solution is taking institutional ownership of the verification process and codifying the standards needed to validate the absolvement of downstream risk (and associated peace-of-mind that materials are being handled with care). Asset managers have both the influence and the responsibility to drive this shift by making transparency a requirement throughout the end-of-life value chain.
As solar deployment continues to accelerate, the volume of retired panels will grow alongside it. The decisions made today will help determine whether the industry can help develop a defensible national supply-chain predicated upon environmental stewardship, ethical material handling, and transparency. 
Real due diligence does not end when a panel leaves the site. It extends through its final destination. Establishing those best practices now will help protect asset managers, strengthen industry accountability, and support the long-term credibility of solar recycling for decades to come.
Paul Harshbarger is the Director of Strategic Planning and Supply Chain Operations for Comstock Metals’ solar panel recycling business. His role at Comstock Metals is multi-faceted and spans back to the early days of the company’s operation. Paul’s previous experience includes various roles at a private equity fund, a Canadian power services company.
The views and opinions expressed in this article are the author’s own, and do not necessarily reflect those held by pv magazine.
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A study run by the University of Technology in Baghdad, Iraq, has tested solar tracker pneumatic actuator design for harsh environments raising average efficiency by 62.3% and 66.4% respectively on a test panel using one axis and a single actuator, and two axes and two actuators.
Sydney-headquartered distributor of pneumatic technology for industrial actuation Air Springs Supply Technical Products Manager Vinh Lam said all the advantages that the engineers conducting the study found, apply to Australian conditions.
“Air spring actuators are well suited to a wide range of urban and rural solar actuation applications, and especially well-suited to rugged isolated conditions, such as mines and outback solar farms, or to rooftop applications, where users prize maintenance-free durability and long service life,” Lam said.
Published in 2025, in Science Direct, the study, titled Design and implementation of pneumatic actuators in a dual-axis solar tracker under the harsh climatic conditions of Karbala city, aimed to design pneumatic actuators needed to drive a closed-loop dual-axis solar tracker at the lowest costs, taking into account the maximum load under the worst climatic conditions in Karbala city, including wind speed and impact angles. 
The approach relied on factors including inclination angle, actuator displacement, and required power to drive a closed-loop dual-axis solar tracker adapted to an arid desert climate, where summer temperatures peak at 45 degrees Celsius but frequently exceed 50 degrees Celsius.
The scientists explain in the study that two double-acting pneumatic cylinders were used in the tracking system as actuators to track the sun’s daily movements from east to west and seasonal movements from north to south. The inner piston diameter and cylinder stroke length are included in the design.
“Two valves and throttles were used to regulate the position of each pneumatic actuator to facilitate the movement of the cylinder. A rotating disk and chain on a slide converted the linear motion of one of the cylinders into rotational motion. The stability of the pneumatic system was also analysed by subjecting it to a PID-based closed-loop control,” they said.
The study reported three consecutive days were allocated to conduct experimental testing of the system.
“According to the findings, the average efficiency of the solar panel was raised by 62.3 % when it was moved on one axis using a single actuator and by 66.4 % when it was moved on two axes using two actuators,” the study said.
“A stability investigation of the pneumatic cylinder movement under PID control unit revealed that the system reacts satisfactorily, with steady-state error of 0.00734 %, overshoot of 0.505 %, settling time of 1.034 s, and rising time of 145.76 ms.”
Lam added that air spring actuators are designed to stroke through an arc without needing a mechanical clevis, allowing for an angular motion of up to 30 degrees.
“This is particularly useful in applications where movement is not perfectly linear, reducing complexity and wear points,” a company statement said.
Lam said the initial cost of air spring actuation can be half that of conventional pneumatic or hydraulic cylinders with similar force capabilities, and they are far simpler too than electric actuation and highly tolerant of adverse operational conditions.
“Naturally no single technology is universally ideal for all applications, but air springs have so much to recommend them for urban and rural solar that they certainly merit the engineering attention they are receiving as Australia advances into the solar era.”
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Gautam Solar’s upgraded facility is designed to conduct accelerated lifetime testing, support research and development of new module technologies, and validate product durability under India's diverse climatic conditions.
June 17, 2026. By Abha Rustagi

Integrated EPC Solutions are IB Solar’s Strongest Differentiator: Aakshi Mahajan

Transformers to Power Energy Future as Grid Modernisation Accelerates, Says Satyen Mamtora

Future of Renewable Infra Will Be Built on Resilient Structures, Not Cheapest Ones: Vedant Goel

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

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

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The Sitapur Solar Project is a landmark initiative that brings together renewable energy, energy storage, and defence infrastructure for the first time in India. Developed on around 850 acres of vacant defence land in Uttar Pradesh, the project is expected to become a model for future green energy projects across defence establishments. It reflects India’s efforts to strengthen energy security while promoting sustainable development.
One of the most significant features of the project is that it is India’s first large-scale solar power project to be built on defence land. Instead of leaving large areas of land unused, the Ministry of Defence is utilizing them to generate clean electricity. This not only reduces the need for acquiring new land but also demonstrates how government-owned assets can be used efficiently to support national development and environmental sustainability.
The Sitapur project is also the first initiative of the Ministry of Defence to combine solar power generation with a Battery Energy Storage System (BESS). Since solar energy is available only during daylight hours, the battery system will store excess electricity generated during the day and supply it whenever needed. This will help ensure a stable and uninterrupted power supply while maximizing the use of renewable energy.
Reliable electricity is essential for modern defence operations. Military facilities depend on continuous power for communication systems, surveillance networks, command centres, and radar installations. The integrated battery storage system will provide backup power during grid failures, natural disasters, emergencies, or periods of high demand. As a result, the project will strengthen India’s energy resilience and improve the operational readiness of the armed forces.
The project is an important step towards building greener and more sustainable defence infrastructure. By increasing the use of solar energy, it will help reduce carbon emissions and decrease dependence on conventional sources of electricity. It also aligns with India’s broader goals of expanding renewable energy capacity and achieving long-term energy security.
A Battery Energy Storage System (BESS) is a technology that stores electricity for future use. It captures surplus energy generated from renewable sources such as solar and wind power and releases it when required. In simple terms, it works like a giant rechargeable battery that helps ensure a continuous and reliable power supply.
The working of BESS is simple. During the day, solar panels generate electricity. Any excess power that is not immediately consumed is stored in batteries. Later, when solar generation decreases, electricity demand increases, or the grid faces disruptions, the stored energy is released. This ensures that electricity remains available even when renewable energy production fluctuates.
As the share of renewable energy grows, energy storage is becoming increasingly important. Solar power is available only when the sun shines, while wind energy depends on weather conditions. However, electricity demand continues throughout the day and night. BESS helps bridge this gap by storing excess energy and supplying it whenever required. This improves grid stability, reduces energy wastage, enhances energy security, and supports greater use of clean energy.
Besides BESS, several other technologies are used to store energy. Pumped Hydro Storage (PHS) stores energy by pumping water to a higher reservoir and releasing it through turbines when electricity is needed. Compressed Air Energy Storage (CAES) stores energy in the form of compressed air, which is later used to generate electricity. Flywheel Energy Storage stores energy as kinetic energy in a rapidly spinning wheel, while Gravity Energy Storage generates power by lowering heavy masses that were previously lifted using surplus electricity. Together, these technologies play a crucial role in ensuring reliable power supply and supporting the transition towards a cleaner and more sustainable energy future.
The Sitapur Solar Project is not merely a renewable energy project. It represents the convergence of national security, clean energy transition, energy storage technology, and efficient utilization of public assets, making it a significant milestone in India’s journey toward sustainable and self-reliant defence infrastructure.
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Jackery, a company best known for its portable power solutions, has unveiled four new products designed to meet the more stationary needs of many different kinds of customers, a move the company describes as a “design evolution into premium interior home power backup.” 
The company’s latest products include:
All of the new products use lithium iron phosphate (LFP) battery cells with promised lifespans of up to 6,000 cycles before hitting 70% remaining capacity.
The newly-announced product lineup is part of what company COO Steven Wang calls “essential home backup.” In an interview with pv magazine USA, Wang said the company has done extensive customer research to determine the major priorities for backup power of homeowners, its core users. 
Wang listed the five most important home backup needs as the refrigerator, router, phone chargers, lighting, and — in the summer in certain areas — air conditioning. 
The research revealed that “Jackery power stations are (a) very popular (way) to back up these essentials,” said Wang. “For the next step, we want to see, are there even more, better user experiences, form factors and products that we can create to make backing up those essentials seamless? That’s what we call ‘essential home backup.’”
Wang said Jackery is focused on not only bringing that seamless experience to its users, but also on reducing the barrier to entry for home backup in general. He asserts that the current marketplace of large, fixed battery systems places backup power out of reach of most Americans, but that DIY solutions are not currently ready to take over. 
“We see this trend towards DIY… I go on the forums, I watch the YouTube videos of the projects… It’s very exciting, and it shows that there’s demand for this type of product, but it’s still very difficult and it’s very enthusiast-driven right now,” Wang said. “For essential home backup, we’re thinking of solutions to achieve two things: Number one is bringing costs down, number two is reducing installation difficulty.”
If it all goes right, Wang envisions a time when Jackery can serve a new customer class: grid operators. 
“The more batteries we sell, the more consumers we have, the more creative we can be with, ‘how we can do a VPP that’s off-grid?’” Wang said. “Say we have one gigawatt hour, and we have enough customers whose batteries all have software to really talk with these guys. (We can) say, ‘Hey look I have this amount of batteries in the wild. We can use my coverage in order to help you solve peak shaving issues.’ We’ve had really productive talks and we’re piloting some things with some of these operators.”
Red Cross branding collaboration
In addition to its product launch, Jackery has announced the “Power the Rescuers” program — a branding collaboration with the American Red Cross. The collaboration consists of the HomePower Emergency Pro series of portable power stations, a forthcoming product line in Red Cross livery.
Jackery says it will donate mobile power equipment to first responders equal in value to 10% of the profits it receives from selling HomePower Emergency Pro units.
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The solar photovoltaic (PV) system at Menlo Park’s City Hall is now fully operational and generating renewable electricity.
The system reached commercial operation June 1, marking an important milestone in the City’s efforts to eliminate the use of fossil fuels in municipal operations.
The solar installation is expected to generate approximately 413,000 kilowatt-hours (kWh) of electricity each year. Over the 20-year power purchase agreement term, the project is projected to reduce City energy costs by approximately $637,000.
The City Hall installation is part of Menlo Park’s broader solar partnership with Peninsula Clean Energy to expand renewable energy generation at City facilities. In addition to City Hall, the solar project at Menlo Park Library is also operational and generating clean electricity.
Construction of solar installations at the Belle Haven Child Development Center and Arrillaga Family Gymnastics Center has been completed, and the systems will be energized this year to further expand renewable energy generation across City facilities.
Community members can view real-time performance and energy production from the City Hall solar system through the online monitoring dashboard.
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India needs around 10 GWh of battery storage immediately to stop renewable energy curtailment when the coal fleet cannot ramp down below its technical minimum, according to a new analysis by energy think tank Ember.
With solar power flooding the grid at midday, several coal-based power plants are required to operate at or even below their minimum technical loads (MTL) — the lowest levels at which they can safely operate. As a result, grid operators are curtailing clean electricity to keep coal-based power plants online for the nighttime surge in demand and to provide necessary reserves.
Ember’s analysis found that about 2.1 TWh of renewable electricity generation was curtailed in fiscal year 2025–26, running from April 1, 2025, to March 31, 2026, equivalent to 1.3% of total renewable generation, to keep coal-fired power plants operating at their minimum technical load. The report estimates that around 10 GWh of energy storage, charged during peak midday solar generation hours, would have been sufficient to absorb this surplus renewable output, maintain coal plants above their minimum technical load, and avoid the curtailment altogether.
“Solar and wind curtailment is becoming a visible part of India’s real-time grid balancing, and the volumes are already noticeable and rising,” says the report’s author, Neshwin Rodrigues, Senior Energy Analyst at Ember. “Without sufficient flexibility, including storage, this could become a constraint on the next phase of renewable energy growth.”
The report highlights that the core issue is that coal still provides almost all of the grid’s flexibility, including its ancillary reserves. As solar capacity has grown, coal is being cycled from near-full output at night to its lowest point at midday every single day.
For example, on March 6, 2026, solar and wind reached 41% of the generation mix at midday, pushing coal generation down by around 49 GW in six hours before it had to climb back up by 51 GW in the evening as solar collapsed. “Coal was built for sustained high output, not this daily deep cycling,” says Rodrigues.
Once coal plants reach their minimum technical load — around 55% of rated capacity — they can no longer provide downward reserves, and renewable generation would need to be curtailed to keep the fleet at this technical minimum. By April 2026, coal was breaching that floor in more than half of all midday dispatch intervals. Renewable curtailment met 37% of down-regulation that month, up from near zero a year earlier.
“This is curtailment required purely to keep coal plants at their MTL,” Rodrigues said. “Before the system even considers reserve requirements or grid constraints, renewable generation is being cut simply to make space for coal to remain operable. The constraint is structural.”
With solar capacity on the rise, the report highlights that curtailment of clean electricity is increasing in the absence of the country deploying alternatives like battery storage for grid flexibility. India added around 24 GW of solar capacity between October 2025 and April 2026, reaching approximately 154 GW. Peak-hour curtailment had returned to 4% of solar and wind generation by April 2026, comparable to the most constrained months of late 2025, despite April falling outside the worst seasonal window.
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Middle East Conflict Accelerates Southeast Asia’s Solar Shift Amid Rising Energy Costs—Report  SolarQuarter
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This shift could eventually mean lower electric bills and less pollution from the power sector.
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For the first time, solar produced a larger share of U.S. electricity than coal over the course of a single month, The Associated Press reported.
These sorts of changes are occurring across the country, and The Nevada Independent piggybacked on the report by detailing how the changing energy mix is transpiring in the state.
May’s numbers from Ember, released alongside a Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) and Wood Mackenzie report, showed solar trailing only natural gas and nuclear among U.S. power sources, the AP said. 
Per the analysis, solar reached 12.8% of generation for the month, just ahead of coal at 12.2%. That crossover arrived as President Donald Trump has kept championing coal and undoing some federal backing for clean energy, as the AP noted.
He reinforced that stance last week by proposing nearly $700 million for coal plants and exports as the outlet  recounted, saying that “coal’s a great business” and that “in terms of power, there’s really nothing like it.”
But the market is heading another way. SEIA and Wood Mackenzie said solar and battery storage made up 91% of new generating capacity in the first quarter in the report.
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Nevada offers a local example, as the Nevada Independent revealed. The state energy provider NV Energy says solar already represents roughly one-fourth of its utility mix in Northern and Southern Nevada, and it is planning thousands of megawatts more in solar and battery storage.
Meanwhile, the state is also getting ready for a sharp rise in demand from data centers.
This shift could eventually mean lower electric bills and less pollution from the power sector. Cost is a big reason for the shift, Sean McKenna of the Desert Research Institute told the Nevada Independent. 
“Leveled cost of electricity from solar is now the cheapest generation of electricity in many states,” he told the paper. 
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As electricity demand climbs with artificial intelligence, manufacturing, and electrification, solar remains one of the fastest resources to bring online. States like Nevada are also ramping up natural gas production, per the Nevada Independent. 
Still, Nevada mirrors the rest of the country with solar and battery storage dominating future projects that hope to contend with skyrocketing power needs. 
Ember analyst Nicolas Fulghum characterized the shift as years in the making to the AP.
“For years solar power has risen in the U.S. electricity mix,” Fulghum told the outlet. “At the same time, coal power has lost its status, first as the largest source in the U.S. mix, and then gradually over the years has fallen even further.”
The White House rejected that argument in comments to the AP. 
“The President has reversed the Left’s devastating policies, saved the American coal industry, prevented the retirement of more than 17 gigawatts of power, and saved lives during heightened demand periods,” spokeswoman Taylor Rogers told the outlet.
SEIA’s Darren Van’t Hof ripped the Trump administration’s moves to stifle clean energy in a statement provided to the AP.
“Impeding the only sector that is actively building new power is a reckless gamble that will only drive electricity bills higher,” he said, per The Nevada Independent.
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Thanks to solar, electric grid more prepared for summer heat  Environment America
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STREET, Md. — Two megawatts of power.
If Chaberton Energy gets its way, solar panels will produce enough energy from this 20-acre ridge near Federal Hill Road in Street, Maryland to power 250 homes.
So, why then, do its prospective neighbors in Dove Hill Estates feel so powerless?

Harford County landowners push back on solar farms

“They’re saying it’s okay to put an industrial power plant in my back yard? Really. That’s okay? That’s not okay,” said Richard Orlando whose property backs up to the acreage.
Orlando and his wife, Donna, moved out to the country 16 years ago to get away from the hustle and bustle of urban living and now question how state leaders could give solar companies free reign to paste prime agricultural land with unsightly panels in the name of green energy.
They say the buck stops with Governor Wes Moore.
“He absolutely could have vetoed it,” said Donna, “To take away… the county government—they’re doing their jobs. They said on community solar on ag land. He could have definitely stopped it, and he is the cause of all of this.”
Proponents claimed the controversial state law allowing the companies to bypass local planners was needed to meet the state’s renewable energy goal of 50 percent by the year 2030, but at what cost?
“That’s not good. It really isn’t,” Richard told us, “You’re not helping out the ecology of Maryland. You’re not helping out the environment. You’re not helping out the animals and just everything that’s in this area that lives here and is going to be disturbed by it.”
Not to mention its impact on communities—pitting enriched neighbors who sell out against those who place a greater value on their quality of life.
“This man has decided to come in for a land and money grab to destroy everybody in this area,” said Donna, “It’s affecting three different communities, plus 165, which is very scenic.”
 Chaverton Energy will be hosting a community meeting to answer questions about this project.
 It’ll be held next Thursday, June 25, here at the Jarrettsville Volunteer Fire Company.
 It gets underway at 6:00.
Harford County Executive Bob Cassilly announced on Wednesday that he’s gotten a go ahead from the county council to potentially take legal action against the state due to contamination concerns and health risks surrounding the solar farms and their battery energy storage units.
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Thousands of retired solar panels have been transformed into colorful building facades and fences at a demonstration base in Tianjin, showcasing a new approach to tackling the growing challenge of photovoltaic waste.
The project uses colorful microlayer technology, developed by Colorfulead Power (Beijing) Technology, to repurpose decommissioned photovoltaic modules as architectural materials while preserving most of their power generation capacity.
According to Zhou Yongqiang, general manager of the company, the technology makes retired PV components usable throughout their lifecycle. The treated panels retain more than 80 percent light transmittance and most of their electricity-generating capability, while avoiding localized overheating. The technology allows the panels to double as decorative building materials and power-generating assets in urban renewal and infrastructure projects.
The company said the first generation of domestically developed production equipment has completed testing and is expected to enter full operation in the second half of this year, ending the reliance on customized imported machinery.
China is expected to face a sharp rise in retired photovoltaic modules as early solar installations approach the end of their economic lifespan. Industry forecasts predict decommissioning volumes will peak around 2030.
The Tianjin base, a collaboration between China Resources Recycling Group and the Tianjin municipal government, is designed as a model zero-carbon industrial park and circular economy project, offering a potential solution for the sustainable reuse of photovoltaic waste.
Copyright 1994 – . All rights reserved. The content (including but not limited to text, photo, multimedia information, etc) published in this site belongs to China Daily Information Co (CDIC). Without written authorization from CDIC, such content shall not be republished or used in any form.

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According to the latest IndexBox report on the global On Grid Solar Pv market, the market enters 2026 with broader demand fundamentals, more disciplined procurement behavior, and a more regionally diversified supply architecture.
The global on-grid solar PV market has entered a new phase of expansion, transitioning from a subsidy-dependent niche to a primary source of new bulk power generation. By 2025, unsubsidized Levelized Cost of Energy (LCOE) for utility-scale solar has undercut fossil fuel alternatives in most major markets, making solar the default choice for new capacity additions. This structural shift is supported by rapid technology maturation, including bifacial modules, single-axis tracking, and module-level power electronics, which have become standard for maximizing yield and project bankability. The inverter has evolved from a simple DC-AC converter into the central grid-integration asset, with grid-forming capabilities becoming critical for project approval and a key differentiator for suppliers. Market growth is increasingly constrained not by demand or cost, but by systemic bottlenecks in grid interconnection queues, specialized EPC labor, and the availability of advanced balance-of-system components. Supply chain concentration, particularly in polysilicon and module manufacturing in Asia, presents a persistent strategic risk, prompting regionalization efforts in the US, EU, and India that are reshaping cost structures and trade flows. The long-term value pool is migrating downstream from hardware manufacturing to project development, asset management, and long-term O&M, where margins are defended by localized expertise, operational data, and service contracts. Regulatory volatility, especially in net metering and interconnection rules, represents a more significant near-term risk to market forecasts than technology cost or performance, directly impacting residential and commercial segment economics. This report provides a structured, commercially grounded analysis of the glob
The baseline scenario for the on-grid solar PV market from 2026 to 2035 assumes continued global decarbonization policies, declining system costs, and increasing grid integration challenges. Global annual installations are projected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of approximately 7.2% from 2025 to 2035, with the market index reaching 200 by 2035 (2025=100). This growth is supported by the ongoing phase-out of coal-fired generation in developed economies and the rapid electrification of transport and heating in emerging markets. Utility-scale projects will continue to dominate, accounting for over 60% of new capacity, driven by corporate power purchase agreements (PPAs) and government auctions. The commercial and industrial (C&I) segment will see accelerated growth as energy-as-a-service models and on-site generation economics improve, while residential solar faces headwinds from net metering policy changes in key markets like California and Australia. Grid interconnection bottlenecks remain the single largest constraint, with queue times exceeding five years in some regions, pushing developers toward hybrid projects with storage and advanced inverter capabilities. Technology trends favor bifacial modules, which are expected to capture over 50% of the utility-scale market by 2030, and string inverters with multi-MPPT capability for improved performance in complex terrain. Supply chain localization efforts in the US, EU, and India will gradually reduce dependence on Asian manufacturing, but will increase module costs by 10-20% in the near term. The market will also see a shift toward repowering and lifetime extension of existing plants, creating a secondary demand stream for high-efficiency modules and advanced inverters. Overall, the market outlook is po
Utility-scale on-grid solar PV remains the largest end-use sector, accounting for 62% of global installations in 2025. This segment is characterized by large ground-mounted systems (typically 50 MW to 500+ MW) that sell electricity under long-term PPAs or merchant exposure. Demand is driven by the unsubsidized LCOE advantage, which in 2025 is $20-40/MWh in sunbelt regions, undercutting combined-cycle gas and coal. Key demand-side indicators include corporate renewable procurement targets (e.g., RE100 members), government auction schedules, and wholesale electricity prices. Through 2035, utility-scale solar will benefit from hybrid pairing with battery storage, enabling firm capacity and higher revenue capture. However, interconnection queue times in the US and Europe (averaging 4-6 years) are a major bottleneck, pushing developers to invest in grid-forming inverters and advanced plant controls to secure grid access. The sector will also see a shift toward repowering older plants (10+ years) with bifacial modules and trackers to improve yield by 15-25%. Current trend: Dominant and growing, driven by corporate PPAs and government auctions.
Major trends: Hybrid solar-plus-storage projects becoming standard for firm capacity, Bifacial modules and single-axis trackers achieving >90% adoption in new builds, Grid-forming inverters required for interconnection in high-penetration grids, Corporate PPAs expanding to include 24/7 carbon-free energy matching, and Repowering of existing plants driving secondary demand for high-efficiency modules.
Representative participants: NextEra Energy Resources, Enel Green Power, EDF Renewables, Adani Green Energy, LONGi Green Energy, and First Solar.
The C&I segment accounts for 22% of global on-grid solar PV installations, driven by businesses seeking to reduce electricity costs and meet sustainability goals. Systems range from 50 kW to 10 MW, installed on rooftops, parking canopies, or small ground-mounts. Demand is fueled by the narrowing payback period (now 4-7 years in most markets) and the availability of third-party financing models such as solar leases and PPAs. Key demand-side indicators include commercial electricity tariffs, corporate sustainability commitments, and investment tax credit structures. Through 2035, the segment will benefit from the electrification of industrial processes and the rise of energy-as-a-service providers that bundle solar with energy efficiency and battery storage. However, net metering policy changes in key markets (e.g., California NEM 3.0) are shifting economics toward self-consumption and behind-the-meter storage, reducing the value of exported solar. The sector will also see increased adoption of module-level power electronics (MLPE) for safety and performance monitoring, particularly in rooftop installations with shading or complex geometries. Current trend: Accelerating growth via energy-as-a-service and on-site generation economics.
Major trends: Energy-as-a-service models reducing upfront costs for businesses, Behind-the-meter battery pairing to maximize self-consumption under new net metering rules, Module-level power electronics (MLPE) becoming standard for rooftop safety and monitoring, Corporate sustainability mandates driving on-site solar for Scope 2 emission reduction, and Integration with electric vehicle (EV) charging infrastructure at commercial sites.
Representative participants: SunPower Corporation, Sunnova Energy International, Enphase Energy, SolarEdge Technologies, Tesla Energy, and Altus Power.
Residential on-grid solar PV represents 12% of global installations, driven by homeowners seeking energy independence and lower electricity bills. Systems are typically 3-10 kW, installed on rooftops and connected to the grid via net metering or feed-in tariffs. Demand is highly sensitive to retail electricity rates, net metering compensation, and financing availability. Key demand-side indicators include residential electricity prices, solar loan interest rates, and state-level net metering policies. Through 2035, the segment will face headwinds from net metering policy rollbacks in major markets like California, Australia, and parts of Europe, which reduce the financial return on exported solar. This is driving a shift toward self-consumption optimization, with homeowners adding battery storage and smart home energy management systems. The sector will also see increased adoption of all-in-one solar-plus-storage solutions, such as the Tesla Powerwall and Enphase Ensemble, which simplify installation and provide backup power. However, high upfront costs (typically $15,000-$30,000 before incentives) and long payback periods (8-12 years) remain barriers, particularly in emerging markets where financing is limited. Current trend: Moderate growth, constrained by net metering policy changes and high upfront costs.
Major trends: Shift toward self-consumption and behind-the-meter storage due to net metering changes, All-in-one solar-plus-storage systems gaining popularity for simplicity and backup, Smart home energy management systems optimizing solar usage and grid interaction, Community solar programs expanding access for renters and low-income households, and Virtual power plant (VPP) aggregation of residential solar and storage for grid services.
Representative participants: Tesla Energy, Enphase Energy, Sunrun Inc, Sunnova Energy International, SolarEdge Technologies, and Generac Power Systems.
Government and institutional on-grid solar PV accounts for 3% of global installations, driven by public sector commitments to reduce carbon emissions and energy costs. Installations include rooftop and ground-mount systems on schools, hospitals, municipal buildings, and military facilities. Demand is supported by government grants, tax incentives, and green bond financing, as well as mandates for renewable energy procurement. Key demand-side indicators include public sector budgets, renewable energy targets, and the availability of concessional financing. Through 2035, the segment will benefit from the growing trend of municipal climate action plans and the electrification of public transportation and building heating. However, budget constraints and long procurement cycles can slow deployment. The sector is also a key early adopter of innovative technologies, such as building-integrated photovoltaics (BIPV) and solar canopies for parking lots, which serve dual purposes of energy generation and infrastructure improvement. Current trend: Steady growth supported by public sector sustainability mandates and grant funding.
Major trends: Municipal climate action plans driving solar installations on public buildings, Green bonds and concessional financing reducing upfront costs for public entities, Building-integrated photovoltaics (BIPV) for aesthetic and functional integration, Solar canopies for parking lots providing shade and EV charging infrastructure, and Resilience-focused solar-plus-storage for critical facilities like hospitals and emergency centers.
Representative participants: SunPower Corporation, Ameresco, Inc, ENGIE Impact, Schneider Electric, Siemens Smart Infrastructure, and Johnson Controls.
Agricultural and rural on-grid solar PV represents 1% of global installations, driven by farmers and rural communities seeking to reduce energy costs and improve energy access. Applications include solar on farm buildings, irrigation pumps, and remote facilities, often connected to the grid for net metering or feed-in tariffs. Demand is supported by government agricultural subsidies, rural electrification programs, and the growing interest in agrivoltaics (co-locating solar panels with crops or livestock). Key demand-side indicators include agricultural electricity tariffs, irrigation water costs, and government support for rural renewable energy. Through 2035, the segment will benefit from the expansion of agrivoltaics, which can improve land-use efficiency and provide additional income for farmers. However, the sector faces challenges from limited financing options, lower electricity consumption in rural areas, and competition for land use. The segment is also a key market for smaller-scale, modular solar systems that can be easily installed and maintained by local technicians. Current trend: Niche but growing, supported by agrivoltaics and rural electrification programs.
Major trends: Agrivoltaics integrating solar panels with crop production and livestock grazing, Solar-powered irrigation reducing water and energy costs for farmers, Rural electrification programs in developing countries expanding grid-connected solar, Community solar projects for rural cooperatives and agricultural associations, and Modular, easy-to-install solar systems for remote farm buildings and facilities.
Representative participants: LONGi Green Energy, JinkoSolar, Trina Solar, Canadian Solar, SolarEdge Technologies, and Enphase Energy.
Interactive table based on the Store Companies dataset for this report.
Asia-Pacific leads the global on-grid solar PV market with 55% share, driven by China’s massive utility-scale deployments and India’s ambitious 500 GW renewable target by 2030. Growth is supported by low manufacturing costs, government auctions, and corporate PPAs. Grid integration challenges and land availability are key constraints. Direction: Dominant and growing.
North America holds 18% share, led by the US with strong utility-scale demand from corporate PPAs and IRA incentives. Grid interconnection queues and net metering policy changes in key states like California are slowing residential growth. Canada’s hydro-rich grid limits solar penetration but supports niche markets. Direction: Steady growth with policy uncertainty.
Europe accounts for 16% share, driven by REPowerEU targets and corporate renewable procurement. Germany, Spain, and Poland lead installations. Grid bottlenecks, permitting delays, and labor shortages are key constraints. The region is a leader in grid-forming inverter adoption and hybrid solar-plus-storage projects. Direction: Moderate growth amid energy transition.
Latin America holds 6% share, with Brazil and Chile leading due to excellent solar resources and competitive auction results. Political and regulatory instability, grid infrastructure gaps, and financing costs are key barriers. The region is seeing growing interest from international developers and corporate PPAs. Direction: High growth potential from solar resource.
Middle East & Africa account for 5% share, driven by large-scale projects in Saudi Arabia, UAE, and South Africa. Low solar costs and government diversification plans support growth. Challenges include grid infrastructure, water scarcity for cleaning, and political risk in some markets. Off-grid and mini-grid applications are also emerging. Direction: Emerging growth from large-scale projects.
In the baseline scenario, IndexBox estimates a 7.2% compound annual growth rate for the global on grid solar pv market over 2026-2035, bringing the market index to roughly 200 by 2035 (2025=100).
Note: indexed curves are used to compare medium-term scenario trajectories when full absolute volumes are not publicly disclosed.
For full methodological details and benchmark tables, see the latest IndexBox On Grid Solar Pv market report.
This report is an independent strategic market study that provides a structured, commercially grounded analysis of the global market for On Grid Solar Pv. It is designed for battery and storage manufacturers, power-electronics suppliers, system integrators, EPC partners, developers, utilities, investors, and strategic entrants that need a clear view of deployment demand, technology positioning, manufacturing exposure, safety and qualification burden, project economics, and competitive structure.
The analytical framework is designed to work both for a single specialized storage or conversion component and for a broader renewable energy generation system, where market structure is shaped by chemistry, duration, project economics, system integration, safety requirements, route-to-market, and grid-interface logic rather than by one narrow customs heading alone. It defines On Grid Solar Pv as Grid-connected photovoltaic (PV) systems that generate electricity from sunlight and feed it directly into the utility grid, without on-site battery storage and examines the market through deployment use cases, buyer environments, upstream input dependencies, conversion and integration stages, qualification and safety requirements, pricing architecture, commercial channels, and country capability differences. Historical analysis typically covers 2012 to 2025, with forward-looking scenarios through 2035.
This report is designed to answer the questions that matter most to decision-makers evaluating an energy-storage, battery, renewable-integration, or power-conversion market.
At its core, this report explains how the market for On Grid Solar Pv actually functions. It identifies where demand originates, how supply is organized, which technological and regulatory barriers influence adoption, and how value is distributed across the value chain. Rather than describing the market only in broad terms, the study breaks it into analytically meaningful layers: product scope, segmentation, end uses, customer types, production economics, outsourcing structure, country roles, and company archetypes.
The report is particularly useful in markets where buyers are highly specialized, suppliers differ significantly in technical depth and regulatory readiness, and the commercial landscape cannot be understood only through top-line market size figures. In this context, the study is designed not only to estimate the size of the market, but to explain why the market has that size, what drives its growth, which subsegments are the most attractive, and what it takes to compete successfully within it.
The report is based on an independent analytical methodology that combines deep secondary research, structured evidence review, market reconstruction, and multi-level triangulation. The methodology is designed to support products for which there is no single clean official dataset capturing the full market in a directly usable form.
The study typically uses the following evidence hierarchy:
The analytical framework is built around several linked layers.
First, a scope model defines what is included in the market and what is excluded, ensuring that adjacent products, downstream finished goods, unrelated instruments, or broader chemical categories do not distort the market boundary.
Second, a demand model reconstructs the market from the perspective of consuming sectors, workflow stages, and applications. Depending on the product, this may include Bulk energy generation for utilities, On-site consumption for commercial facilities, Residential rooftop generation with net metering, and Solar farms for corporate PPAs across Electric Utilities, Commercial Real Estate, Industrial Manufacturing, Residential Housing, Agriculture, and Public Sector / Government and Site Assessment & Feasibility, System Design & Engineering, Permitting & Interconnection, Procurement & Logistics, Construction & Commissioning, Grid Integration & Performance Monitoring, and Long-term O&M. Demand is then allocated across end users, development stages, and geographic markets.
Third, a supply model evaluates how the market is served. This includes Polysilicon, Solar glass & encapsulants, Aluminum for frames & trackers, Copper for cabling, Semiconductors (IGBTs, SiC) for inverters, and Steel for mounting structures, manufacturing technologies such as Monocrystalline PERC/PERT cells, Bifacial modules, String inverters vs. central inverters, DC optimizers & module-level power electronics (MLPE), Single-axis solar tracking, and Grid-forming inverter capabilities, quality control requirements, outsourcing, contract manufacturing, integration, and project-delivery participation, distribution structure, and supply-chain concentration risks.
Fourth, a country capability model maps where the market is consumed, where production is materially feasible, where manufacturing capability is limited or emerging, and which countries function primarily as innovation hubs, supply nodes, demand centers, or import-reliant markets.
Fifth, a pricing and economics layer evaluates price corridors, cost drivers, complexity premiums, outsourcing logic, margin structure, and switching barriers. This is especially relevant in markets where product grade, purity, customization, regulatory burden, or service model materially influence economics.
Finally, a competitive intelligence layer profiles the leading company types active in the market and explains how strategic roles differ across upstream material suppliers, component and controls providers, OEMs, storage-system integrators, EPC partners, project developers, and distribution or service channels.
This report covers the market for On Grid Solar Pv in its commercially relevant and technologically meaningful form. The scope typically includes the product itself, its major product configurations or variants, the critical technologies used to produce or deliver it, the core input categories required for manufacturing, and the services directly associated with its commercial supply, quality control, or integration into end-user workflows.
Included within scope are the product forms, use cases, inputs, and services that are necessary to understand the actual addressable market around On Grid Solar Pv. This usually includes:
Excluded from scope are categories that may be technologically adjacent but do not belong to the core economic market being measured. These usually include:
The exact inclusion and exclusion logic is always a critical part of the study, because the quality of the market estimate depends directly on disciplined scope boundaries.
The report provides global coverage. It evaluates the world market as a whole and then breaks it down by region and country, with particular focus on the geographies that matter most for deployment demand, battery-material processing, cell and component manufacturing, power-conversion capability, renewable integration, and project delivery.
The geographic analysis is designed not simply to rank countries by nominal market size, but to classify them by role in the market. Depending on the product, countries may function as:
This study is designed for strategic, commercial, operations, project-delivery, and investment users, including:
In many energy-transition, storage, power-conversion, and project-driven markets, official trade and production statistics are not sufficient on their own to describe the true market. Product boundaries may cut across multiple tariff codes, several product categories may be bundled into the same official classification, and a meaningful share of activity may take place through customized services, captive supply, platform relationships, or technically specialized channels that are not directly visible in standard statistical datasets.
For this reason, the report is designed as a modeled strategic market study. It uses official and public evidence wherever it is reliable and scope-compatible, but it does not force the market into a purely statistical framework when doing so would reduce analytical quality. Instead, it reconstructs the market through the logic of demand, supply, technology, country roles, and company behavior.
This makes the report particularly well suited to products that are innovation-intensive, technically differentiated, capacity-constrained, platform-dependent, or commercially structured around specialized buyer-supplier relationships rather than standardized commodity trade.
The report typically includes:
The result is a structured, publication-grade market intelligence document that combines quantitative modeling with commercial, technical, and strategic interpretation.
Energy-Storage Market Structure and Company Archetypes
The Key National Markets and Their Strategic Roles
World's largest solar wafer and module producer
Major global module supplier, high volume
Leading producer of PV cells and modules
Top-tier module brand, strong in utility-scale
Vertically integrated, major project pipeline
Leading CdTe thin-film producer, US utility focus
World's largest inverter supplier by shipments
Major string inverter and smart solution provider
Large-scale integrated PV manufacturer
Major module producer, strong in heterojunction
Leading inverter brand, strong in utility
Dominant microinverter supplier for residential
Leading power optimizer and inverter company
Major module and cell producer
Leading Indian module maker and project developer
Vertically integrated, part of Adani Group
Major brand with manufacturing in US/Asia
Global inverter supplier, acquired ABB's business
Major string inverter supplier globally
Leading IBC and high-efficiency technology
World's largest solar cell producer
Major module brand under Chint Group
Historic leading brand, remains significant
Global market leader in solar trackers
Major global solar tracker manufacturer
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Do solar panels in space produce way more power? Here’s the math behind the claim  qz.com
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An old coal mine in Illinois is now generating community solar power for hundreds of households and businesses.
Nexamp and TurningPoint Energy have completed two community solar projects on a reclaimed coal mine site in Woodford County, Illinois. The projects turn land that once produced coal from the Colchester Coal Seam from the 1870s to the 1940s into a new source of electricity for the local grid.
The former mine site is certified as a brownfield under Illinois Shines, the state’s solar incentive program. That means the projects qualify for incentives to put previously disturbed land back into productive use. They’re also the first Illinois Shines community solar projects developed in Woodford County.
TurningPoint Energy developed the projects, while Nexamp built, owns, and operates them. The Minonk solar farms are the companies’ first collaboration in Illinois.
Together, the solar farms can generate 9.8 megawatts of power and use nearly 17,000 solar panels spread across roughly 40 acres. The electricity flows directly to ComEd’s grid, and Nexamp says all the solar modules were manufactured in the US.
The projects are also notable because they’re among the first on ComEd’s system to use Distributed Energy Resource Management Systems (DERMS), software that helps utilities manage distributed energy resources such as solar in real time. The technology can help balance electricity demand and make it easier to bring more renewable energy onto the grid while maintaining reliability.
The projects are nearly fully subscribed, with more than 650 participants signed up. One serves about 450 residential customers, while the second serves around 200 low-income households, helping expand access to community solar savings.
Two large institutions, Rush University Medical Center and the College of DuPage, are also subscribers. Together, they account for 40% of the projects’ electricity offtake, providing a stable customer base that helps support broader community participation.
“This is exactly the kind of project we aspire to deliver with our partners and our customers,” said Nexamp CEO Zaid Ashai. “By turning a former coal mine into a pair of community solar farms, we are helping hundreds of subscribers reduce their energy costs today while strengthening their energy security for the long term.
“By pairing that affordability with US-manufactured equipment and advanced grid tools like DERMS, these Minonk projects not only put clean power within reach for households and institutions, they also show how community solar can make the grid smarter, more resilient, and better prepared for Illinois’ clean energy future.”
Read more: The biggest solar farm east of the Mississippi is now powering Chicago
If you’ve ever considered going solar, make it easy by finding a trusted, reliable solar installer near you that offers competitive pricing by checking out EnergySage. It has hundreds of pre-vetted solar installers competing for your business, ensuring you get high-quality solutions and save 20-30% compared to going it alone. Plus, it’s free to use, and you won’t get sales calls until you select an installer and share your phone number with them. 
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India’s solar industry has witnessed multiple recent developments, including module supply agreements secured by Waaree Energies and Gujarat Inject, as well as a significant engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contract awarded to Bondada Engineering.
Waaree Energies has obtained an order to deliver 800MW of solar modules to an undisclosed domestic client. The company described this as a one-time contract with no promoter or related-party involvement, and did not disclose financial terms. Execution is planned for the 2026-27 fiscal year. On a consolidated basis, Waaree posted a net profit of INR10.61 billion (US$112 million) for the fourth quarter of FY26, up 71.4% from INR6.18 billion (US$65.4 million) in the same period a year earlier. Revenue from operations for the quarter ended 31 March 2026 surged 111.8% year-on-year.
Separately, Waaree’s EPC subsidiary Waaree Renewable Technologies (WRTL) received a contract from Sunsational Power Private Limited (SPPL) to build a 300MW/450MWp ground-mounted solar PV project in India. The award, issued via a Letter of Award (LoA), covers EPC services and two years of operations and maintenance (O&M) support after commissioning. Completion is targeted for the 2026-27 financial year.
Hyderabad-based EPC firm Bondada Engineering has secured an INR13.38 billion (US$141 million) EPC contract from NTPC Renewable Energy Limited (NTPC REL) for a 250MW solar PV project paired with a 50MW/200MWh battery energy storage system (BESS) in Uttar Pradesh. The project, situated in Sitapur district, was awarded via a Notification of Award (NOA) and is to be finished within 18 months. This contract boosts Bondada Engineering’s solar EPC order book to roughly 5.5GWp and its BESS order book to about 1.1GWh.
Navitas Solar intends to invest around INR15 billion (US$158 million) in a 3.6GW solar cell manufacturing facility in Gujarat, along with a pilot wafer and ingot production line. The project will be rolled out in phases, with the first phase expected to start operations in 2027. Civil construction covering over one million square feet is already underway, and the plant is projected to create nearly 1,000 local jobs. The company also plans to set up a pilot wafer and ingot manufacturing line in 2027 to cut reliance on imported upstream solar components. Navitas currently runs 3GW of annual solar module manufacturing capacity, producing mono PERC and TOPCon modules, and manufactures solar encapsulants through its subsidiary Navitas Alpha Renewables.
Gujarat Inject has secured an order valued at approximately INR144.9 million (US$1.5 million) from Deon Energy for the supply of 16,129 solar PV modules rated at 620W. The company also recently obtained a purchase order worth about INR10 million (US$104,836) to supply solar PV modules from Gujarat-based Ottire Lifestyle, covering 1,334 units of 600Wp modules, with execution scheduled by June 2026. Additionally, Gujarat Inject announced it has received approval to change its name to Regenova Renewtech Limited.
Indian residential solar company SolarSquare has raised US$53 million in a Series C funding round led by B Capital, with participation from existing investors including Lightspeed, Elevation Capital, Lowercarbon Capital, Rainmatter by Zerodha and Good Capital. This brings the company’s total capital raised to over US$100 million since its founding in 2015. SolarSquare plans to use the funds to expand into new cities, enhance its technology and operations platform, and scale capabilities in battery storage and home energy management. The Mumbai-headquartered firm focuses on the residential rooftop solar segment and has installed rooftop solar systems at approximately 50,000 homes across India.
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Colorado Springs Utilities would give solar net metering customers two options to choose from as the utility looks to increase electric rates for residents who have a home solar panel.
The net metering program, which more than 11,000 homes in the city participate in, allows residents with solar panels to connect them to the city’s grid. Those residents receive credits for the excess power they produce during the day and send to the city’s power grid, which helps them cover the cost of the power they use at other times of the day.
Customers who join the program after April 1, 2027, would have two choices for how they are billed under a proposal discussed this week by the Utilities Board. They could either switch to Energy Wise rates and pay a monthly grid access fee to connect their solar panels to the city grid, or pay a “demand charge” based on the most power they use in a 15-minute section of the peak evening hours each month.
Utilities leaders have tried to adjust the program for years because of how little solar customers pay during the peak hours of electricity demand, a cost they say is passed along to other customers. Both options for the proposed changes are expected to increase net metering customers’ electric bills by about $30 a month.
Current net metering customers would be grandfathered into the program until 2032, at which point they’d have to pick one of the two new options.
“It felt like it was a reasonable plan that balances what we’re hearing from customers, that they need more time to manage the investment in the panels they put in place,” Utilities Financial Officer Tristan Gearhart said.
The peak demand charge was the only option provided last year when Utilities first proposed an overhaul of the net metering program. Solar customers widely opposed the change, arguing that it would be a punishing increase in the bills of people trying to help the city’s power system. The Colorado Springs City Council rejected the proposal in October.
Several members of the Utilities Board criticized how complicated the new proposal was to explain. Brandy Williams called it “brain damage” to understand how Utilities arrived at the rates and how it would play out for an individual bill.
David Leinweber, a net metering customer who serves on the board, voiced his concerns about basing costs on a 15-minute peak instead of multiple peaks.
“I still have a problem with having a single event during a month control your rate for that month,” Leinweber said.
Several net metering customers told The Gazette that the latest proposal is an improvement from the city’s first attempt at changing net metering, but the large rate increase still undercuts why customers invest in home solar panels.
Carolyn Dickerson added solar panels to her house in 2023, in part because the savings on her electric bill would pay for the cost of the panels in about 20 years, she said.
But under the proposal, she would go from saving $500 a year in utility costs to saving less than $200.
“They’re making it too expensive and they don’t want the energy from us,” Dickerson said.
The Utilities Board — composed of City Council members — did not vote on the proposal or modify the proposed rate case. The City Council is expected to have a hearing on the proposal in August before holding a final vote in September.
The utility has conducted focus groups and surveys since the council rejected the previous proposal last fall, including gathering comments from more than 150 residents about the two-option plan. Both options had some support, but many customers did not understand how much each option would affect their bills, Utilities Customer Insight Supervisor Leslie Smith said.
“It became very clear with all three of the outreach efforts my team has done that we’re still sitting in resistance, so we have some work to do,” Smith said.
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By: Luis Reyes
Published: Jun 17, at 10:30am ET
Solar power has one problem no amount of clever engineering has fully solved: the sun goes down. Panels that pump out gigawatts at noon are dead weight by midnight, which is why nearly every large solar farm on the planet leans on something else, whether gas, coal, or a hungry grid connection, to keep the lights on after dark. Abu Dhabi is now spending around $6 billion to build a plant designed to skip that handoff entirely.
The project, developed by the state-owned renewables company Masdar with Emirates Water and Electricity Company (EWEC), pairs a 5.2-gigawatt solar array with a 19 gigawatt-hour battery and is engineered to deliver a steady 1 gigawatt of power around the clock, day and night, every day of the year. It broke ground outside Abu Dhabi in October 2025 and is scheduled to start running in 2027. If it works the way it’s drawn up, it would be the first renewable project anywhere built to push a full gigawatt of baseload, the boring always-on kind of power usually associated with gas and nuclear stations, straight off sunshine and stored electrons.
Strip away the solar headline number and the interesting part is the storage. The 19 GWh battery, which Masdar calls the Al Azeezah system after the site it sits on, is the largest ever ordered for a power utility project, and it’s the piece that makes the round-the-clock claim possible. The array generates far more than 1 GW while the sun is up, sends a slice of that straight to the grid, and pours the rest into the battery. After sunset the battery takes over and holds the 1 GW steady until the panels wake up again.
Masdar says the plant will run on more than brute storage. It’s being built with grid-forming and black-start capability, which means it can help stabilize the grid and even restart it after a blackout instead of just leaning on it, plus a virtual power plant layer and AI-driven forecasting that decides when to bank power and when to release it. The panels themselves are reportedly coming from Jinko Solar and JA Solar, two of the largest module makers in the world, using TopCon cells. None of that is exotic hardware on its own. What’s new is the size of the order and the fact that all of it is wired to behave like a single dependable power station.
It’s the opposite of the approach you see almost everywhere else. China’s enormous “Solar Great Wall” in the Kubuqi Desert, for instance, still fires up coal plants when clouds roll in. Abu Dhabi is betting that a big enough battery makes that backup unnecessary.
Here’s where the marketing needs a small asterisk. You’ll see this project called the “world’s first” round-the-clock solar plant, and that’s true only if you read the fine print. Solar paired with storage that keeps running after dark already exists. Smaller hybrid plants in the US, Australia, Chile and elsewhere already store daytime sun and dispatch it at night. What nobody has done before is do it at this size. As the trade outlet Energy-Storage.news put it when the project was unveiled, it’s undoubtedly the largest such effort announced to date, but round-the-clock solar itself isn’t a brand-new trick.
The honest way to describe it, then, is a scale jump rather than a science breakthrough. A 19 GWh battery feeding a flat 1 GW is roughly an order of magnitude beyond the hybrid plants utilities have been quietly building for years. For comparison, the only bigger battery currently on the books is the 42 GWh system planned for SunCable’s Australia-Asia Power Link, according to Blackridge Research, and that one is a transmission-export megaproject built to pipe power to Singapore, not a baseload plant for the local grid. Australia has its own appetite for this kind of scale, as the country’s push for the world’s largest renewable network shows.
The reason every utility on Earth isn’t already copying this is money. Wood Mackenzie flagged the project in its “Global solar: Key things to look for in 2026” outlook, and the firm’s number is sobering: at current costs, the plant runs about six times the price of a new gas-fired combined-cycle plant for the same dependable output. Michelle Davis, Wood Mackenzie’s global head of solar, said the project is currently too expensive to replicate broadly, but that successful execution and continued cost declines could redefine baseload power.
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That “six times” figure is the whole story in one number. It’s why this is being built by a sovereign-backed developer in a country with deep pockets and cheap empty land, and not by a regional utility in Ohio. Battery prices have been falling fast, which is the only reason an order this size was thinkable at all, and if they keep sliding, the math that looks absurd in 2026 could look ordinary by the early 2030s. That’s the bet. It just happens to be a $6 billion one.
A petrostate sinking $6 billion into solar that costs six times what gas does sounds like a contradiction until you look at what it’s meant to power. Dr. Sultan Al Jaber, the UAE’s Minister of Industry and Advanced Technology and chairman of Masdar, tied the project directly to the energy demand coming from data centers and artificial intelligence, industries that need power that never blinks and increasingly want it clean. According to Masdar’s launch announcement, Al Jaber called it “a first step that could become a giant leap for the world.”
There’s a national strategy underneath the AI pitch, too. Abu Dhabi wants 60% of its power from renewable and clean sources by 2035 and net zero by 2050, and in May 2026 Masdar and EWEC signed a framework committing the emirate to 8 GW of battery storage, a sign the round-the-clock plant isn’t a one-off showpiece. The UAE has been pouring money into ambitious solar ideas for a while now; out in the same desert, researchers are even testing whether a big enough solar farm can make its own rain. When commissioned, this plant is expected to create more than 10,000 jobs and offset roughly 5.7 million tons of carbon a year.
Whether it redefines anything depends almost entirely on the price of batteries, not the price of panels. Solar got cheap years ago; storage is the part still coming down the curve. If it keeps falling, that line about solar stopping at night quietly stops being true, and the idea of a fossil plant idling in the background just to cover sunset starts to look dated. If it doesn’t, Abu Dhabi will have built a very expensive, very impressive monument to a good idea that showed up a decade early. Either way, it’s a $6 billion experiment with a 2027 deadline, and the rest of the industry will be running the same math right alongside it.
Agree or laugh out loud?
Luis Reyes · May 21, 2026
Luis Reyes · May 20, 2026
Luis Reyes · Jun 10, 2026
Dave McQuilling · May 24, 2026
Dave McQuilling · Jun 10, 2026
Olivia Richman · May 20, 2026
Olivia Richman · Jun 17, 2026
Luis Reyes · Jun 17, 2026
Luis Reyes · Jun 17, 2026
Luis Reyes · Jun 17, 2026
Luis Reyes · Jun 17, 2026
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Cloudy. Low 71F. Winds S at 10 to 15 mph..
Cloudy. Low 71F. Winds S at 10 to 15 mph.
Updated: June 17, 2026 @ 6:59 pm
Gov. Abigail Spanberger (seated) signs legislation June 17 defining agrivoltaics in state code. 
Solar panels and crops at the site of Piedmont Environmental Council’s agrivoltaics project. 
A view of Piedmont Environmental Council’s agrivoltaics project at the organization’s farm in Aldie, ahead of a ceremonial bill signing by Gov. Abigail Spanberger June 17.
Gov. Abigail Spanberger speaks at a bill signing June 17 at the Piedmont Environmental Council Farm in Aldie.
Members of the Democratic Socialists of America hold a banner criticizing data center tax exemptions outside Gov. Abigail Spanberger’s SUV after a bill signing in Aldie. 

Gov. Abigail Spanberger (seated) signs legislation June 17 defining agrivoltaics in state code. 
It’s a great day for solar power, Gov. Abigail Spanberger told the crowd sweating under the hot June sun, rows of solar panels behind her. 
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A view of Piedmont Environmental Council’s agrivoltaics project at the organization’s farm in Aldie, ahead of a ceremonial bill signing by Gov. Abigail Spanberger June 17.
Solar panels and crops at the site of Piedmont Environmental Council’s agrivoltaics project. 
Gov. Abigail Spanberger speaks at a bill signing June 17 at the Piedmont Environmental Council Farm in Aldie.
Members of the Democratic Socialists of America hold a banner criticizing data center tax exemptions outside Gov. Abigail Spanberger’s SUV after a bill signing in Aldie. 
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Tractor-Trailer Hauling 60,000 Pounds of Solar Panels Rolls Over in Compton, Requiring Rotator Crane Recovery  Yahoo
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In a series of developments across India’s solar sector, Waaree Energies and Gujarat Inject have both secured module supply orders, while Bondada Engineering has secured an INR13.38 billion engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contract from NTPC Renewable Energy for a 250MW solar-plus-storage project in Uttar Pradesh. 
Elsewhere, Navitas Solar outlined plans to invest INR15 billion (US$158 million) in a 3.6GW solar cell manufacturing facility in Gujarat alongside a pilot wafer and ingot line and SolarSquare raised US$53 million in a Series C funding round led by B Capital to expand its residential rooftop solar business.
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Indian solar giant Waaree Energies has secured an order to supply 800MW of solar modules to an unnamed domestic customer. 
The order is scheduled for execution during the 2026-27 financial year, according to a stock exchange filing. 
Waaree said the contract is a one-time order and does not involve any promoter or related-party interest. The financials of the order were not disclosed.  
On a consolidated basis, the company reported a 71.4% year-on-year jump in net profit to INR10.61 billion (US$112 million) in Q4 FY26, compared with INR6.18 billion (US$65.4 million) in the same quarter last year. Revenue from operations surged 111.8% year-on-year for the quarter ended 31 March 2026. 
Recently, Waaree’s EPC subsidiary Waaree Renewable Technologies (WRTL) secured a contract from Sunsational Power Private Limited (SPPL) to develop a 300MW/450MWp ground-mounted solar PV project in India. 
The award, received through a Letter of Award (LoA), covered EPC services as well as two years of operations and maintenance (O&M) support following commissioning. The project is scheduled for completion during the 2026-27 financial year.
Hyderabad-based EPC firm Bondada Engineering has secured an INR13.38 billion (US$141 million) EPC contract from NTPC Renewable Energy Limited (NTPC REL) for a 250MW solar PV project coupled with a 50MW/200MWh battery energy storage system (BESS) in Uttar Pradesh. 
The project, located in Sitapur district, was awarded through a Notification of Award (NOA) and is scheduled to be completed within 18 months. The solar-plus-storage facility forms part of NTPC REL’s efforts to expand utility-scale renewable energy capacity integrated with energy storage. 
The award increases Bondada Engineering’s solar EPC order book to approximately 5.5GWp and its BESS order book to around 1.1GWh. 
Solar-plus-storage projects are gaining momentum in India as developers and state utilities seek to improve grid stability and support dispatchable renewable energy generation. The combination of solar PV and battery storage is expected to play an increasingly important role in meeting the country’s growing clean energy and round-the-clock power requirements. 
Indian solar manufacturer Navitas Solar plans to invest around INR15 billion (US$158 million) in a 3.6GW solar cell manufacturing facility in Gujarat, alongside a pilot wafer and ingot production line. 
The project will be developed in phases, with the first phase expected to be commissioned in 2027. Additional capacity expansions will be based on market conditions and project readiness.  
Navitas said civil construction covering more than one million square feet is already underway. Work at the plant is expected to create nearly 1,000 jobs locally.    
“Our planned integrated manufacturing expansion in Gujarat is a strategic step towards building a future ready platform across modules, cells and deeper backward integration. With civil work underway, technology partnership in place, key government approvals secured and senior leadership appointed to drive the project, we are progressing with a clear focus on execution, quality, innovation and long-term competitiveness,” said Vineet Mittal, director, finance and strategy, Navitas Solar. 
The planned solar cell facility is being designed as a highly automated production plant capable of supporting future technology upgrades and next-generation cell technologies. The company also intends to establish a pilot wafer and ingot manufacturing line in 2027 to reduce dependence on imported upstream solar components. 
The announcement comes as India’s solar sector prepares for implementation of the Approved List of Models and Manufacturers (ALMM) List-II requirements for solar cells, which are expected to drive demand for domestically produced cells. 
Navitas currently operates 3GW of annual solar module manufacturing capacity, producing mono passivated emitter rear cell (PERC) and tunnel oxide passivated contact (TOPCon) modules, and also manufactures solar encapsulants through its subsidiary Navitas Alpha Renewables. 
Indian PV module supplier Gujarat Inject has secured an order worth approximately INR144.9 million (US$1.5 million) from Deon Energy for the supply of 16,129 solar PV modules rated at 620W. 
The Deon Energy order expands Gujarat Inject’s recent solar module contract portfolio, which includes supply agreements with Earthwave Technology, Perfect Renewtech and Surja Infra. 
“The order from Deon Energy Limited represents another significant step in strengthening our renewable energy business. It reflects the growing confidence of customers in our capabilities and reinforces our commitment to building a scalable solar solutions platform. We have been consistently expanding our presence in the Solar PV Module segment and this order further strengthens our execution pipeline,” said Deepak Diwan Bachwani, executive director, Gujarat Inject Kerala. 
Recently, the company secured a purchase order worth approximately INR10 million (US$104,836) to supply solar PV modules from Gujarat-based Ottire Lifestyle. The agreement covered the supply of 1,334 units of 600Wp solar PV modules. According to the company, the contract is scheduled to be executed by June 2026. 
Separately, Gujarat Inject said it has received approval to change its name to Regenova Renewtech Limited.
Indian residential solar company SolarSquare has raised US$53 million in a Series C funding round. 
The Series C round was led by B Capital, with participation from existing investors including Lightspeed, Elevation Capital, Lowercarbon Capital, Rainmatter by Zerodha and Good Capital. 
The funding brings the company’s total capital raised to more than US$100 million since its founding in 2015. 
SolarSquare said it will use the proceeds to expand into new cities across India, strengthen its technology and operations platform and scale capabilities in areas including battery storage and home energy management. 
Shreya Mishra, CEO of SolarSquare, said: “Five years ago, residential solar was still very nascent. Today, the category has inflected with 100,000 homes adopting solar every ten days in India. We want to build the operating system for this energy transition—with installation solutions, after-sales, financing, battery solutions and home energy management.”  
The Mumbai-headquartered company focuses on the residential rooftop solar segment and operates a vertically integrated business model covering system design, installation, financing support and maintenance services. According to the company, it has installed rooftop solar systems at approximately 50,000 homes across India. 
The funding comes amid rapid growth in India’s residential solar market following the launch of the PM Surya Ghar: Muft Bijli Yojana (PMSGY) in 2024. More than 3.3 million rooftop solar systems, representing over 12GW of capacity, have been installed under the scheme. 

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NZ solar farm gets green light from Contact and BP unit  NZ Herald
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To the editor,
On June 5. Congresswoman Julie Fedorchak posted on her Facebook page that “President Trump announced $425 million in funding to strengthen and expand America’s coal fleet, including $27.4 million for upgrades to the Antelope Valley Station in western North Dakota.”
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Fedorchak is right, but woefully missed the big picture. She is applauding Trump’s proposal when just about everyone else knows it is bad. This announcement marks the latest in a string of costly bailouts for a collapsing industry, and Trump is forcing everyday Americans to pay the price.
In 2024, by contrast, the Biden Administration gave $1.434 billion to struggling, aging electric companies in North Dakota to help them move forward to a clean, reliable future. That’s a serious investment in the health of our state’s economy. Biden’s “Empowering Rural America” program, a multibillion-dollar initiative, meant to modernize utilities’ resources by retiring aging, dirty coal plants and replacing them with cost effective wind and solar. Our electric cooperatives Basin Electric, Minnkota Energy and Great River Energy all applied for and received hundreds of millions of dollars to upgrade and strengthen their systems and services to customers across the Great Plains and Upper Midwest. Kudos to them for stepping up and planning for a better future. Communities across North Dakota deserve it.
Fast forward to today when the Trump Administration is giving millions to prop up an outdated coal plant just to help it limp along a few more years. This places an unnecessary strain on our electric grid, our wallets and our lungs by prolonging the burning of fossil fuels when renewables are clearly the better bets. Just last week, we learned that the United States got more power from solar panels than from coal plants in May. The coal industry doesn’t need more handouts; the American people need financial relief and smog-free skies.
It is time for Fedorchak and her congressional colleagues to understand that renewables are cheaper, faster to deploy and cleaner than any new fossil fuel plant and are a necessary resource to replace old, dirty and polluting coal. North Dakotans deserve energy solutions that address affordability, reliability and community health: solar, wind and storage do just that. And they can do it right now. We just need our leaders to take us seriously and act.
Sue Leake
Emerado, North Dakota

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Artificial intelligence (AI) use is exploding. More than 50 per cent of new internet content was generated by AI in 2025, according to an industry report. We even train AI on AI-generated content now and, although this can degrade performance, it continues at breakneck pace.
All this AI is consuming a lot of energy. It’s straining the electrical system, raising consumer electricity costs and breaking large-scale electrical grid planning. And the “AI energy crisis” is deepening. The International Energy Agency predicts that global electricity demand from data centres will double by 2030, to more than the electricity consumption of Japan today.
At the same time, solar photovoltaic technology — which uses the sun’s energy to generate electricity — offers the cheapest energy in the history of the planet. The sector is growing rapidly. However, both solar and AI projects threaten to take over valuable agricultural land, generating public protests.
A new study I co-authored reveals “agrivoltaics” — the use of land for both electricity generation and food production — to be a very promising solution.
In the first study of its kind, we found agrivoltaics to be a viable way to meet growing AI energy demands in the United States, while also increasing food production.
In Canada, agrivoltaics could produce enough electricity to eliminate the need for fossil fuels on the grid entirely, using less than one per cent of the country’s agriculture land.
Read more: The gift that keeps on giving: How solar panels on farms can help increase crop yields
Agrivoltaics allows farming communities to generate photovoltaic-based electricity while continuing to produce food, sometimes with even higher yields than before.
In our study, we looked at two types of agrivoltaic — vertical and single axis tracker solar — because both of them could be integrated into most farms without inconveniencing farmers.
Vertical agrivoltaics are essentially fences made out of solar panels. The solar fences are spaced far enough apart that farmers can drive tractors, combines and other equipment down field rows without hitting them.
Single axis tracker solar arrays use the same trick — you just space them out for agrivoltaics. The trackers, however, track the sun and thus produce more energy per panel. When farming, they park themselves vertically just like the fences. Both of these types of solar agrivoltaics barely impact the sunlight hitting the crops, so work well with most crops.
Several studies of a wide variety of food crops, including basil, broccoli, celery, chiltepin peppers, corn, maize, lettuce, pasture grass, potatoes, spinach, tomatoes and wheat, have demonstrated that agrivoltaics can increase crop yield. For example, we showed strawberry yield in Ontario increased by 18 per cent in a normal year.
This is because agrivoltaic solar panels can create a “shield effect,” generating a beneficial microclimate in which plants are somewhat sheltered from sun, heat and wind.
This shield effect depends on the weather. For example, agrivoltaics generally helps lettuce, but last year’s hot summer intensified its shield effect so that lettuce fresh weight increased by more than 400 per cent compared to unshaded control plants and by over 200 per cent relative to the national average yield.
Read more: To achieve ‘AI for all’ in agriculture, Canada’s farmers need regional, systems-level change
In our study, we used state-level data centre energy consumption and modelled agrivoltaic generation potential. We explored how much of the digital sector’s demand could realistically be met with agrivoltaics. We also looked at how much farmland would need solar energy investments to cover AI loads within the American states that have the largest data centres.
Our results showed vertical agrivoltaics required only between 0.003 to two per cent of farmland across the targeted states. This is almost nothing. Single axis trackers need even less, at 0.001 to 0.548 per cent.
America’s AI energy crisis could be averted by putting up some single axis trackers on at most 0.5 per cent of land in less agriculturally rich states.
Canada is even more blessed — using less than one per cent of agriculture land, the country could produce enough electricity to eliminate the need for fossil fuels. That would include energy for everything, not just AI.
Agrivoltaics maintains farming jobs, increases food supply and radically improves farming incomes because of the high value of solar electricity production.
It offers a dual revenue stream: one from the sale of agricultural produce, and the other from the sale of electricity or by offsetting a farm’s electrical needs.
Unsurprisingly, agrivoltaics is growing rapidly and the market has already reached over US$14 billion globally. Even the Vatican is now powered by agrivoltaics.

In some jurisdictions, however, antiquated regulations effectively prevent new agrivoltaic developments. In Canada, Ontario provides an example.
Agrivoltaics has been economically successful in Ontario when integrated into lamb and sheep grazing to provide vegetation management on conventional solar farms. Unfortunately, this is the only widespread agrivoltaics in the province due to restrictions on large-scale solar deployment on farmlands.
To fix this impediment to job creation, food security and economic development, Ontario can update regulatory guidance to exempt agrivoltaics from the current restrictions. This would attract large-scale capital investments and enable crop-based agrivoltaics.
Specifically, the Ontario government can include agrivoltaics as “agricultural related use” in the provincial policy statement to circumvent the “on farm diversified use” restrictions.
That way, we would all get to produce more food and more solar energy to meet rising demands.
John M. Thompson Chair in Information Technology and Innovation and Professor, Western University
Joshua M. Pearce has received funding for research from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, the Canada Foundation for Innovation, Mitacs, the U.S. Department of Energy and the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy, the U.S. Department of Defense, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), and the National Science Foundation (NSF). In addition, his past and present consulting work and research are funded by the United Nations, the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine, many non-profits and for-profit companies in the energy and solar photovoltaic fields. He is a founding member of Agrivoltaics Canada. He does not directly work for any solar manufacturer and has no direct conflicts of interest.

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He covers Hazaribag and Chatra districts, focusing on crime, politics and human interest stories. He covered the programs of prominent national and regional leaders including Prime Minister Narendra Modi during their visits to Hazaribag/Chatra. Covered the NEET-UG 2024 paper leak case in depth with a focus on Hazaribag as a key epicenter.Read More

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India needs 10 GWh battery storage to curb renewable curtailment: Ember  Business Standard
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Developers from South Korea are planning to build a 500 MW solar project in Zambia.
According to an update shared by Zambia’s Ministry of Information and Media, a delegation from Korea, including Seoul-headquartered energy and infrastructure firm KS Eco Solutions Holding Limited, recently met with Zambian stakeholders and the government of Zambia to discuss a strategic partnership that would see a 500 MW solar project developed in ten phases, each consisting of a 50 MW generation unit.
Installation would be carried out by technical teams from both South Korea and Zambia, the ministry says, while the government would provide the required land. The project would benefit from a long-term power purchase agreement with Zambia’s national power utility ZESCO. At 500 MW, the project is forecast to close a third of Zambia’s current energy deficit once operational.
The ministry has identified the Export-Import Bank of Korea and the Korea Development Bank as potential financing partners. Its update adds that investor confidence is growing in Zambia thanks to more favourable conditions, including a stable and strengthening currency and restored credit ratings.
“These are not claims, they are the basis of which Korean investors have chosen to bring a structured proposal of between $700-$900 million,” the ministry said. “This is a proposal at this stage. The work of converting it into a signed agreement, a financial close and a construction program now begins. But the fact that it exists, structured and presented to the government, is itself significant.”
Zambia’s solar market is growing rapidly. Its first 100 MW project was completed in May 2025 and work began on a separate 100 MW array three months later, with both projects forming part of the government’s plan to deploy 1 GW of utility-scale solar. The country’s largest operational solar asset to date is the 136 MW Itimpi II solar plant, which was switched on in May.
Earlier this year, the Zambian government unveiled a new financing mechanism that plans to procure 300 MW of new solar projects connected to battery storage systems. Construction of the country’s latest solar-plus-storage project to date, a 250 MW solar site tied to 150 MW/600 MWh of storage, began in April.
The Africa Solar Industry Association (AFSIA) has tracked 1.15 GW of operational solar in Zambia, according to figures available in its project database. It adds a further 1.64 GW are currently under construction.
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Americans are seeking out solar, batteries, and electric vehicles at a pace unlike anything the clean energy movement has seen in fifty years. In the 23 days after the Iran war began and the Strait of Hormuz closed, requests for home solar systems paired with battery storage jumped 21%. Used EV sales reversed course sharply, rising 17% in a single quarter after hitting their lowest point since 2022.  
This moment demands attention. Across the U.S. and globally, interest in clean energy is accelerating faster than at any point in history, and not necessarily because of anything the clean energy movement achieved on its own. Understanding why is critical. 
I watched two previous attempts to move the U.S. toward adopting clean energy fall short. In hindsight, both were predictable. The first era, roughly 1970 to 2005, was driven by values: a belief that protecting the environment was simply the right thing to do. Twenty million people turned out for the first Earth Day in 1970. Congress passed the Energy Tax Act in 1978. The environmental conviction was real, and it moved a committed minority. By 2010, after four decades of moral-based advocacy, solar still represented less than 0.1% of U.S. electricity generation.
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The second era was driven by economics. The challenge was no longer about inspiring moral conviction but making clean energy adoption cheap enough for the market to embrace it. The investment tax credit, introduced in 2006, was one of the most significant drivers of solar power growth, helping the solar industry grow by more than 10,000% over the following decade and a half. The Inflation Reduction Act, enacted in 2022, drove record solar deployment: by 2024, solar accounted for more than 80% of all new electric generating capacity added to the grid. Going solar requires real upfront investment—more so now that the federal residential tax credit expired at the end of 2025. But over a system's lifetime, today, solar generates electricity at costs comparable to or less than what utilities charge in most parts of the country.
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Now, we are entering a third era, one defined not by values or economics, but by a drive for control. Psychologists have long documented that when people feel external forces are governing their lives, they seek out whatever domains they can control. Energy has now become one of those domains. Gas prices set by an unpredictable war. Blackouts from an aging grid. Energy bills that keep climbing. Rooftop solar, a home battery, an electric vehicle offer something the grid, the gas station, and the utility bill cannot: certainty. They are no longer just products. They are acts of self-determination. These solutions meet people where they already are—anxious, exhausted, and done feeling exposed—and offer them what they have been missing: stability.
The data confirms the shift is already underway. Even before the war began, nearly 78% of U.S. homeowners expressed concern about power grid reliability. Sixty-four percent say recurring blackouts would make them more likely to go solar within five years. Since the war began, nearly half say they are extremely or very concerned about affording fuel in the coming months. The conversation has shifted from "how much will I save?" to "how do I protect my family from the next crisis?"—whether that crisis arrives as a blackout, a gas price spike, or an economic shock. Americans want control. A growing number want to generate their own power, store it, and insulate themselves from volatile energy prices and an unreliable grid. And solar delivers exactly that.   
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To be sure, the uncertainty driving demand for renewables is also making them more expensive to build. Supply chain pressures and tariffs on imported solar equipment are real headwinds. The expiration of federal tax credits for residential solar has raised upfront costs, although financing arrangements (like power purchase agreements) that require no money down have kept solar within reach for many homeowners. The long-term economics still hold: once panels are up, the energy is free. Every dollar invested in clean energy infrastructure today is a hedge against tomorrow's uncertainty.
For 50 years, the clean energy movement tried to change how Americans think about power. In the end, it may be global turbulence that ultimately moves what decades of advocacy could not. While the motivation may seem misaligned with the original mission, the outcome is what matters. 
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An application for a solar farm likened to the size of Heathrow Airport by campaigners has been withdrawn.
Kingsway Solar Farm was set to cover more than 3,000 acres of farmland in East and South Cambridgeshire, and hoped to power up to 175,000 homes.
But residents feared it could "envelop" the villages of Balsham, West Wratting, Weston Colville and Weston Green, while local councils were concerned about the consultation, with one stating engagement had "been largely procedural and one-directional".
Kingsway Solar Farm Limited sent a letter to the Planning Inspectorate giving it formal notification it was withdrawing the application, but in a statement said it intended to resubmit it.
The statement said: "Kingsway Solar Farm Limited remains determined to deliver the best possible project which considers all the potential impacts as effectively as possible.
"We intend to work with the Planning Inspectorate and key stakeholders to understand and address key issues and information requirements, in order to bring forward the strongest possible proposals for this critical national project."
It had been classed as a Nationally Significant Infrastructure Project (NSIP), meaning Energy Secretary Ed Miliband would have had the final say.
But Stephen Kelly, planning director at South Cambridgeshire, had told the Planning Inspectorate the authority said consultation documentation "made it difficult to develop a clear and comprehensive understanding of the likely significant effects".
He claimed agendas and meeting notes were "often provided at very short notice or retrospectively", and that environmental and technical information "was not shared at key stages".
Nick Acklam, a parish councillor in Reach, where the concern was about pylons as well as the impact on two Anglo Saxon dykes, previously told the BBC there has been a "fundamental failure to listen to or respond to our concerns".
"We raised concerns, we raised questions, we offered alternatives and we offered to participate in coming up with a better way of going forward," he said.
"We didn't even have an acknowledgement to our letter."
David Vernon, from Kingsway Solar Farm Ltd, said it was a project "designed to address national need for home grown, affordable, clean and reliable energy".
He said it was "committed to addressing any outstanding issues and strengthen our proposals".
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Solar generation in CAISO increased 21% from January through May compared with the same period in 2024, the Energy Information Administration said.
Utility-scale solar generation overtook natural gas generation in the California Independent System Operator’s footprint over the first five months of 2026, according to a Tuesday report from the Energy Information Administration.
From January through May, solar generation in CAISO increased 21% compared with the same period in 2024, while natural gas generation decreased 60%, EIA found.
“In CAISO, utility-scale solar generated more electricity than natural gas on a daily basis on 82% of days in the first five months of 2026, up from 21% in 2024 and 2025,” the agency said.
EIA found that between April 2024 and April 2026, utility-scale solar generating capacity grew 19%, to 25 GW, and battery storage capacity grew 79%, to 16 GW.
At the same time, natural gas capacity remained “nearly unchanged” at 29 GW, EIA said. “Total net capacity increased by 14% (11 GW) over this period.”
However, despite this increasing generation from solar and batteries — and a 7% increase in demand — “there was a 19% decrease in net generation as electricity imports from nearby systems doubled in CAISO,” EIA said. “The increase in imports was driven by relatively inexpensive electricity generation coming online and available for import.”
Much of the imported energy comes from renewables. “Hydroelectric power imports from the Pacific Northwest increased as the drought there subsided, and CAISO began importing from the new SunZia wind project in New Mexico starting April of this year,” EIA added. 
The 3.65 GW SunZia project is the largest wind farm in the U.S. It began delivering electricity in a testing phase in April but is set to begin commercial operations this month. 
“Most of the electricity generated at SunZia will be exported to Arizona and to Southern California,” EIA said in a Friday report about the project. Its initial exports to CAISO have begun showing up in the ISO’s generation mix: “On May 15, 2026, CAISO reported 7,122 MW of hourly wind generation, which is 20% higher than the previous annual record of 5,922 MW in 2024,” EIA said.
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Physics, policy and politics are beginning to constrain some of the electric utility industry’s highest aspirations for data center-driven growth, Utility Dive learned in first quarter earnings calls.
Analysts said the deal, which could create the largest regulated electric utility in the world, marks a shift back toward an integrated utility model. The combined business would be “anchored by a more than 80% regulated business mix,” the companies said.
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Physics, policy and politics are beginning to constrain some of the electric utility industry’s highest aspirations for data center-driven growth, Utility Dive learned in first quarter earnings calls.
Analysts said the deal, which could create the largest regulated electric utility in the world, marks a shift back toward an integrated utility model. The combined business would be “anchored by a more than 80% regulated business mix,” the companies said.
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Some of Britain’s largest retailers are in discussions with the government over plans to sell plug-in solar panels. This move could help millions of households generate their own electricity and reduce energy bills.
Retail giants, including Asda, Amazon, B&Q, Currys, Screwfix, and Wickes, are exploring how these compact solar systems could be brought to the UK market as part of a broader effort to expand access to renewable energy beyond traditional rooftop installations.

The talks took place during a meeting between retail executives and Energy Consumers Minister Martin McCluskey, where discussions focused on guidelines for the sale of so-called balcony solar panels. Ministers hope the technology will make solar power accessible to people who have traditionally been excluded from the market, particularly those living in flats, apartments, or rented accommodation without access to suitable rooftops.

Unlike conventional rooftop solar systems, plug-in solar panels can be installed in a range of outdoor locations, including balconies, terraces, garden spaces, and shed roofs. Once connected to a standard household socket, the panels feed electricity directly into the home’s electrical circuit.

When appliances are switched on, they draw power generated by the solar panels first, reducing the amount of electricity that needs to be purchased from the national grid. Although these systems are relatively small, typically producing around 800 watts of power, they can still make a noticeable difference to household energy consumption.
Government research suggests that households using plug-in solar panels could save between £70 and £110 annually on electricity bills. With systems expected to cost from around £400, many homeowners could recover their initial investment within four to seven years.

The government first outlined plans last year to legalize and promote plug-in solar technology, aiming to bring Britain into line with several European countries where such systems have become increasingly popular. Officials now expect the products to begin appearing in stores within the coming months.

Across mainland Europe, plug-in solar has already gained significant traction. Germany, in particular, has embraced the technology, with an estimated 1.5 million households using so-called balcony power plants. Spain has also seen growing adoption as consumers seek simple, affordable ways to generate clean electricity without major installation work.

Interest in home energy technologies has surged across the UK in recent years as households seek protection from volatile energy prices and greater control over their energy use. The trend has been especially pronounced for rooftop solar systems.

Last year alone, a record 269,000 solar installations were completed across the country, representing an increase of more than one-third compared with the previous year. At that pace, a new rooftop solar system was being installed somewhere in the UK roughly every two minutes.

Recent geopolitical tensions and rising energy costs have further accelerated demand for technologies that can reduce reliance on imported fossil fuels. Solar panels, electric vehicle chargers, and heat pumps have all seen increased consumer interest as households seek ways to reduce long-term energy costs.

The push for plug-in solar forms part of the government’s wider ambition to transform Britain’s electricity system. Energy Secretary Ed Miliband has set out plans to dramatically expand renewable power generation and move the country towards an almost carbon-free electricity network by the end of the decade.

A key component of that strategy is a substantial increase in solar capacity. The government aims to expand the UK’s solar generation from its current level of around 18 gigawatts to between 45 and 47 gigawatts by 2030. Such an expansion would generate enough electricity to supply the equivalent of approximately 12 million typical British homes.
Alongside household installations, ministers are examining opportunities to increase solar deployment on large commercial buildings and infrastructure. Warehouse rooftops, factory buildings, and extensive car park canopies are all being considered as potential sites for large-scale solar generation.

According to government estimates, using just one-fifth of the UK’s largest warehouses for solar installations could deliver up to 15 gigawatts of additional capacity. That figure alone would account for roughly half of the solar growth required to meet the government’s clean power objectives for the decade ahead.

As policymakers seek new ways to accelerate the energy transition, plug-in solar panels are emerging as a simple yet potentially transformative tool, offering households a practical route into renewable energy while helping Britain move closer to its long-term clean power goals.

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We also wouldn’t want you to miss our completely original articles on a variety of topics. If you missed them, be sure to also see:
 
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Naturgy, through its international generation subsidiary Global Power Generation (GPG), has finalised the commissioning of the 260 MW Glenellen and the 96 MW Bundaberg solar farms in New South Wales (NSW) and Queensland, respectively.
The 200 MW Glenellen Solar Farm is Naturgy’s largest PV plant to date in Australia and features about 375,000 modules installed across a 300-hectare site near Albury in southern NSW. The project also integrates sheep grazing to preserve agricultural land use.
The Bundaberg Solar Farm, near the town of the same name on the central Queensland coast, has an installed capacity of 96 MW and includes more than 162,000 solar modules.
The Bundaberg power plant is expected to generate about 200 GWh of renewable energy per year while the Glenellen Solar Farm is forecast to supply 450 GWh of energy annually.
Long-term power purchase agreements (PPAs) have already been locked in for the output from both projects with Australian telecommunications giant Telstra having committed to purchasing 100% of the capacity from the Bundaberg plant and 50% of the electricity generated by the Glenellen facility.
Nuturgy said the PPAs “reinforce revenue visibility and business stability” while both projects strengthen its presence in the Australian energy market, one it rates as attractive market for the development of renewables at an international level thanks to its “regulatory stability, its high growth potential and its commitment to the energy transition.” 
The commissioning of the Glenellen and Bundaberg solar farms increases Naturgy’s combined capacity in operation in Australia to 1.3 GW, including the country’s first large-scale solar-hybrid power plant at Cunderdin in Western Australia.
The company also has a further 500 MW under construction and a 2 GW pipeline of projects in development across the country, including a 290 MW solar farm and 180 MW / 360 MWh battery energy storage project planned for Queensland’s Fraser Coast region.
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Experts would likely conclude that Enphase's AI-powered ecosystem represents a significant leap in residential energy management, combining cutting-edge hardware with intelligent software to enhance energy independence, efficiency, and financial savings for European homeowners.
FREMONT, CA – June 17, 2026 – As Europe accelerates its ambitious green transition, the focus is increasingly shifting from large-scale power plants to the individual home. In a move that signals a profound transformation in residential energy management, California-based Enphase Energy has unveiled a suite of new products poised to create a truly integrated and intelligent home energy ecosystem. The announcement, coming just ahead of the prestigious Intersolar Europe conference in Munich, goes far beyond a simple hardware refresh. It represents a strategic play to unify solar generation, battery storage, and electric vehicle charging under a single, AI-driven platform, effectively turning passive energy consumers into active managers of their own power.
This isn't just about adding solar panels to a roof anymore. The 2026 lineup, featuring a high-density battery, a hyper-efficient microinverter, and groundbreaking bidirectional EV chargers, is designed to function as a cohesive whole. It’s a vision where a home not only generates and stores its own clean energy but also intelligently optimizes its use, provides backup during grid outages, and even sells power back to the grid, all orchestrated by sophisticated software. For the European homeowner, this promises a new level of energy independence, resilience, and financial control.
At the core of Enphase’s new ecosystem are fundamental advancements in its cornerstone technologies. The new IQ9N Microinverter represents a significant milestone in solar energy conversion. By leveraging Gallium Nitride (GaN) technology, the device achieves a formidable 97.4% EU weighted efficiency. This technical jargon translates into a tangible benefit: more of the sun’s energy captured by high-power solar panels is converted into usable electricity for the home. GaN semiconductors run cooler and lose less energy to heat compared to traditional silicon, a breakthrough that not only boosts performance but also enhances long-term reliability—a key factor underpinning the product's industry-leading 25-year warranty.
Complementing this generation prowess is the IQ Battery G5, the company's fifth-generation storage solution. Its most notable feature is a 1.9x increase in energy density over the previous model available in Europe. This allows homeowners to store more energy in a smaller, more aesthetically pleasing footprint. The system is modular, scaling in 5 kWh blocks from a 5 kWh starting point up to 30 kWh, allowing for a tailored fit to any household's needs and budget. Critically, the battery uses Lithium Iron Phosphate (LFP) chemistry, which is widely recognized for its superior safety profile and longer lifespan compared to other lithium-ion variants. With a robust 15-year warranty and each module containing its own grid-forming microinverter, the IQ Battery G5 is engineered not just as a power reserve, but as a resilient backbone for the entire home energy system, capable of providing seamless backup power.
While the hardware is impressive, the true paradigm shift lies in the software that binds it together. The IQ Energy Management platform acts as the central nervous system, using artificial intelligence to elevate the system from a collection of components into a predictive, self-optimizing organism. The platform goes beyond simple timers, using AI to forecast solar production based on weather data, anticipate household energy consumption patterns, and even monitor fluctuating utility electricity prices.
With this intelligence, the system makes thousands of micro-decisions every day to maximize value for the homeowner. It can prioritize charging the battery with free solar energy during the day to avoid expensive grid power in the evening, or pre-charge an EV before a scheduled trip using the cheapest available power. Enphase claims the system can help cover up to 50% of a household's EV charging needs with solar and cut water-heating costs by up to 35%. Furthermore, its ability to integrate with select third-party devices like heat pumps and hot water heaters demonstrates a commitment to an open and expandable ecosystem, a crucial factor for long-term relevance in the rapidly evolving smart home market. This AI-driven optimization is the key that unlocks the full potential of home energy assets, shifting the value proposition from simple energy generation to sophisticated financial and carbon savings.
Perhaps the most forward-looking component of Enphase's announcement is its deep dive into bidirectional EV charging. The company is launching two distinct but complementary products. The new IQ EV Charger 2 is an AC charger that is ready for the future, designed to support AC bidirectional charging once automakers enable the capability. More immediately transformative is the IQ Bidirectional EV Charger, a DC-based unit that unlocks the ability for a compatible EV to power the home (Vehicle-to-Home, or V2H) and export power to the grid (Vehicle-to-Grid, or V2G).
This technology effectively turns an electric vehicle—which often sits idle for over 90% of the day—into a large, mobile battery for the home. During a power outage, the EV can power the entire house, providing a far greater reserve of energy than most stationary batteries. On a daily basis, it can discharge power to the home during peak-price evening hours, dramatically reducing electricity bills. Looking ahead, V2G capabilities will allow homeowners to participate in grid services, selling power back to utilities during times of high demand and creating a new revenue stream. By engineering this charger to comply with emerging European standards like the Alternative Fuels Infrastructure Regulation (AFIR) and key communication protocols (ISO 15118-20), Enphase is positioning its customers at the forefront of this energy revolution.
“Europe is at the center of the home energy transition, and Intersolar is where we show how Enphase is helping define what comes next,” said Sabbas Daniel, senior vice president of sales at Enphase Energy. His statement underscores the strategic importance of this integrated launch. By combining higher-performance hardware with an intelligent, predictive software layer and revolutionary bidirectional charging, the Fremont-based firm is offering a compelling vision for the future of residential energy in Europe. It’s a future where the home is not merely a destination for power, but a dynamic, resilient, and valuable hub within a smarter, cleaner energy grid.
Are you a relevant expert who could contribute your opinion or insights to this article? We’d love to hear from you. We will give you full credit for your contribution.
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Location is one of the most important factors in solar panel installation. Water that drips off these devices can improve certain environments — one of China’s largest solar farms is greenifying the Qinghai desert, for example — but shade is the nemesis of solar panels. You aren’t supposed to install photovoltaics near tall objects like towers since they can potentially block the panels, but what about transmission lines? The answer might be yes.
The energy company ISA Energia Brasil conducted a test in São Paulo, Brazil, to determine whether it could install solar panels near electrical power lines. Of course, the study was designed to determine the impact of shade cast by the transmission cables, as well as whether placing the components near each other caused electromagnetic field interference or affected operational compatibility.
Surprisingly, the study’s data showed that the solar panel installation experienced little interference, and that the shade cast by the power lines barely affected the panel’s performance. To be fair, though, ISA Energia Brasil didn’t use run-of-the-mill solar panels (the solar panels you install on your home). The company built a “prototype solar panel plant” that used high-efficiency panels. These photovoltaics could even absorb radiation reflected off nearby objects, but since the study was conducted in the real world rather than in a laboratory environment, it’s hard to argue with the results.
According to ISA Energia Brasil’s computer calculations, a solar panel plant similar to the prototype used in the experiment could generate 1.746 MWh of power annually (Now imagine how much more energy such a plant could provide if fossil fuels weren’t ruining solar power). The main takeaway of this study is that the ground beneath power lines is an untapped resource that could solve many energy problems.
ISA Energia Brasil maintains around 23 kilometers (14.3 miles) of power lines — São Paulo alone occupies 16.2 million square meters (6.25 square miles) of associated safety zones ripe for solar power plants. The company believes it could install photovoltaic plants on these lands with minimal issues, thereby supplementing the electricity already flowing through the transmission lines with renewable energy.
Admittedly, many electrical grids already transfer energy from solar power plants to users, but they all share an issue: These existing systems must shuttle the electricity through limited-capacity long-distance transmission cables. ISA Energia Brasil’s study demonstrates that electric companies can potentially install miniature solar farms in the front yards of many customers (figuratively if not literally), quickly delivering the maximum amount of renewable energy. Plus, such installations would help decarbonize Brazil’s electricity sector and potentially do the same in other countries that adopt them.

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For businesses today, sustainability is no longer a peripheral consideration. Rising energy costs, evolving policy frameworks, and increasing expectations from customers, investors, and regulators are steadily pushing clean energy higher up the corporate agenda.
At the same time, businesses are becoming more conscious of the risks associated with energy decisions – from cost volatility and operational reliability to long-term performance and maintenance accountability. As a result, going green is increasingly treated not just as an environmental choice but as a business decision that must balance savings, risk, and operational certainty.
This is particularly evident among India’s small and medium enterprises, which collectively account for more than 65 million businesses. While intent to adopt clean energy is strong, execution often feels complex, driven by upfront cost, financing choices, and questions around long-term performance.
The cost lever many businesses underestimate
Across manufacturing, logistics, education, food processing, and e-commerce, leadership teams typically focus on growth and delivery. Electricity, cooling, lighting, and pumping are often treated as fixed overheads, even though they directly influence margins.
For many commercial and industrial consumers, grid electricity remains one of the largest recurring expenses. A rooftop solar installation, for example, can require INR 35-50 lakh for a 100-kilowatt system, with a payback period of around seven years. Yet the long-term advantage is clear: commercial tariffs often range between INR 8-INR 12 per kWh, while well-structured rooftop OPEX tariffs can fall in the INR 3.5-INR 5 per kWh range.
Solar, therefore, offers a structural opportunity to reduce long-term energy costs and introduce greater predictability into power spend. The challenge lies less in the economics and more in how risk is allocated through financing and accountability.
Why financing shapes adoption outcomes
The way a solar project is financed determines who carries the downside.
Ownership-based models financed through bank loans or NBFC-led green financing can improve early-year economics through mechanisms such as accelerated depreciation and GST input credit. However, they also place performance responsibility on the business, meaning repayments continue even if generation drops or downtime occurs.
To reduce this exposure, many MSMEs consider power purchase agreements (PPAs). Under a PPA, a developer installs and operates the system, and the business pays only for the electricity consumed, typically at a tariff below prevailing grid rates. The trade-off is that ownership and associated tax benefits remain with the developer.
Increasingly, businesses are looking for models that sit between these two.
Aligning payments with performance
A growing trend in business solar is linking payments to how much electricity a system actually generates. In these structures, repayments are tied to energy output rather than the fixed monthly payments.
This reduces the burden of fixed monthly payments during periods of underperformance and strengthens accountability across the system’s operation. At the same time, it allows businesses to retain long-term ownership and associated tax benefits such as accelerated depreciation and GST input credits – combining the advantages of ownership with stronger risk protection.
A separate option for businesses that already have solar
For businesses with existing solar systems, solar refinancing has emerged as a way to unlock capital while transferring ongoing maintenance and performance responsibility to specialised partners. This allows businesses to continue benefiting from solar generation while transferring operational responsibility – and, where chosen, asset ownership – to the developer.
Policy adds another layer of consideration
India’s renewable energy framework continues to evolve, with central policies implemented differently across states. Differences in net metering rules, open-access regulations, tariff structures, and grid permissions can materially affect project outcomes.
This variability reinforces the importance of choosing financing and operating models that can absorb policy-related uncertainty. Solar decisions, therefore, consider not only cost and sustainability goals, but also long-term regulatory standards.
Beyond sustainability: a strategic business decision
For India’s MSMEs, the question is no longer whether to go solar, but how to do it in a way that delivers savings without introducing new risks.
With the right financing structure, clear performance accountability, and an understanding of state-level policy dynamics, solar moves beyond a sustainability initiative. It becomes a stable, cost-efficient component of business infrastructure -strengthening resilience, improving efficiency, and supporting long-term growth.
The views and opinions expressed in this article are the author’s own, and do not necessarily reflect those held by pv magazine.
This content is protected by copyright and may not be reused. If you want to cooperate with us and would like to reuse some of our content, please contact: [email protected].
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