SOHAR deep-sea port and free-zone has signed a 600-hectare lease agreement with Shell Development Oman (SDO) for land to set up industrial and commercial solar panels. The port is managed in a joint-venture between the Port of Rotterdam and the Sultanate of Oman.

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. sees an end to the gloom for solar manufacturers as demand in China stabilizes and free-falling panel prices bottom out.

Community Solar in New York has a messaging problem. It is confusing, and even some industry professionals have given up in disgust because of aggressive marketing and a lack of clarity.

New Energy Equity, Region Five Development Commission (R5DC) and Rural Renewable Energy Alliance (RREAL) last week announced a partnership to develop six solar arrays, totaling 1.5 MW, for Pine River-Backus and Pequot Lakes school districts and Central Lakes College.

Today, IREC proudly joins the collective voice of advocates and industry celebrating a milestone we have worked for 37 years to witness: two million solar installations now in the U.S. What better timing than in a year when children and governors, presidential candidates and corporate CEOs are all making headlines about the urgency of climate change action.

Incredibly, 1.1 billion people – 14% of the world’s population – still live without access to electricity. In rural, remote communities, many people simply have no light after sunset. That makes being productive at night—such as working and learning--extremely difficult. Limiting useful hours of the day by access to daylight holds back personal and economic development and wastes human potential.

Ameren is preparing to test a Canadian company’s software that could someday help usher in a radically different business model for the utility.

Renewables firm Pangea Energy and vanadium battery producer CellCube have signed on to build a 50MW storage system alongside a solar farm in South Australia.

CleanChoice Energy on Thursday said it was opening an additional 20.51 MW of community solar capacity for residential customers of Xcel. The new capacity is being supplied by fifteen solar farms owned and operated by AltusPower America in various locations in Minnesota. CleanChoice Energy is the largest community solar provider in Minnesota with more than 85 megawatts of solar capacity.

Today, Alabama Municipal Electric Authority (AMEA) and Lightsource BP announced the development of a 100-MW (AC) solar energy project in Montgomery County, Alabama. Lightsource BP will finance, develop, build, own, and operate the solar facility and will deliver energy to AMEA under a 20-year power purchase agreement (PPA). The project, situated 15 miles from AMEA’s headquarters in Montgomery, will supply clean energy to AMEA’s 11 Member utilities located across the state and will generate enough electricity to power more than 20,000 homes.

LONGi Solar this week said that it has invented a new “seamless soldering” technique that could help it produce a more efficient solar module. As a reminder, the more solar cells you can pack into a module, the more efficient it is. And the more efficient your modules, the fewer you need to achieve the wattage you seek in an array. By using less modules, you reduce the overall installed cost of solar.

Brazil is the second-largest producer of hydroelectric power in the world, after only China, and hydropower accounted for more than 70% of the country’s electricity generation in 2018. Brazil’s latest 10-year energy plan seeks to maintain this level of hydro generation while increasing the share of nonhydro renewables, particularly solar.

Jeff Carpoff had a lot to celebrate as friends and business associates gathered at his company’s Christmas party last year.

JinkoSolar Holding Co., the world’s biggest solar panel maker, sees China’s photovoltaic power additions slumping this year and a greater share of its revenue coming from overseas amid uncertainties over Beijing’s new policies.

In an announcement that was celebrated by the solar industry, yesterday U.S. trade officials said that bi-facial solar modules, which are solar modules that produce energy on both sides of the panel, would be exempt from import tariffs.

On June 12, Target corporation said it was increasing its renewable energy goals by committing to source 100 percent of its electricity from renewable sources by 2030. The goal applies to all of Target’s domestic operations.

Today, solar power has become cheaper than the production cost of any other existing conventional power generation technology. The arrival of grid parity heralds a milestone in the history of energy production. It means solar energy being commercially viable without any subsidies or state support; producing energy with the lowest possible environmental impact.

In the first three months of the year, the U.S. installed 2.7 gigawatts of solar photovoltaics (PV), making it the most solar ever installed in the first quarter of a year. With the strong first quarter, Wood Mackenzie Power & Renewables forecasts 25% growth in 2019 compared to 2018, and it expects more than 13 GWdc of installations this year.

Wind or solar now represent the least expensive option for adding new power generation capacity in approximately two-thirds of the world.

8minute Solar Energy, NV Energy and the Moapa Band of Paiutes announced that NV Energy selected 8minute to develop the largest solar plus storage project ever built in Nevada and one of the largest in the world.

A series of U.S. renewable energy incentives violated international trade rules, according to the World Trade Organization, threatening to stoke tensions between the two countries as President Donald Trump prepares to meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday.

On July 1, Public Service of New Mexico filed a plan with regulators in the state for how it plans to get to a 100 percent emission-free power by 2040. The utility reviewed four scenarios, all of which involved the early retirement of the San Juan Coal Plant, to arrive at its recommended path forward.

Chinese solar company Hanergy Thin Film Power Group has won a deal to build the first solar PV plants in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Arlington, VA based Summit Ridge Energy (SRE) announced that it will acquire 11 projects from Pivot Energy in Illinois totaling 29 MWs, increasing SRE’s portfolio of community solar projects in the state to more than 20.

Installed solar capacity in the United States exceeded 10 GW for the third year in a row in 2018, and the pace of growth is expected to continue. The first quarter of 2019 was the strongest in the history of the U.S. solar market, according to a recent report from Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) and Wood Mackenzie Power & Renewables. Yet inefficient and costly project financing inhibits many solar developers from tapping into the market’s true potential.

General Electric Co. agreed to sell a majority stake in a solar-energy business to BlackRock Inc., giving the investment giant footing in a growing market as the ailing manufacturer shifts its focus elsewhere.

Missouri’s smallest investor-owned utility is charting a dramatically different course two years after being acquired by new owners.

Last week, California’s Glendale Water & Power (GWP) received approval from the Glendale City Council to move forward with a plan to repower the aging Grayson Power Plant with a combination of renewable energy resources, energy storage and a limited amount of thermal generation.

The Skeleton Creek project will be located in three Oklahoma counties

New textile-based solar cells developed by Fraunhofer researchers, semitrailers could soon be producing the electricity needed to power cooling systems or other onboard equipment. In short, textile-based solar cells could soon be adding a whole new dimension to photovoltaics, complementing the use of conventional silicon-based solar cells.

From the way we shop to the way we socialize, the internet affects nearly everything we do these days. This dramatic change in our way of life has been fueled by a handful of large tech companies, companies that are increasingly going all in on solar.

The round was led by Ecosystem Integrity Fund with participation from Equinor Energy Ventures and Evergy Ventures

Ameren Missouri, a unit of Ameren Corp., filed plans with the Missouri Public Service Commission to build three solar + storage facilities across Missouri

2020 Honda Pilot vs. 2020 Ford Explorer: Compare Crossover SUVs Two of the bestselling three-row SUVs, the 2020 Honda Pilot and 2020 Ford Explorer, go about their family business a bit differently. Pickup trucks outsell cars for the first time, and it may not be temporary The Ford F-150, Ram 1500, and Chevy Silverado have been the best-selling...

Three-row crossover SUVs are having their day in the sun. These family haulers provide the spaciousness and safety of a minivan with the style and performance of something less...egg-shaped. Two of the bestselling three-row SUVs, the 2020 Honda Pilot and 2020 Ford Explorer, go about their family business a bit differently. What the Pilot lacks in...

Supercars may push automotive design and engineering to the extreme, but they still need to follow the same regulations as ordinary sedans and crossovers. Making a supercar street legal is the hardest part of the development process, Christian von Koenigsegg said in a recent interview with Apex One. Here's why that is so hard. While regulations...

Although midsize sedans might no longer be the heart of the American market, Hyundai is showing with the redesigned 2020 Sonata that it can put its heart into one. The 2020 Hyundai Sonata has a dramatic new design language that finally brings the exterior look of this sedan up to the higher standard for its cabin that it introduced with the...

Sales of which electric car plunged the steepest leading into the U.S. pandemic slowdown? Which automaker reaffirmed its commitment to hydrogen fuel cells? This is our look back at the Week In Reverse—right here at Green Car Reports—for the week ending May 8, 2020. Our biggest combination of stories this week related to the most...

DBL Partners, the same venture capital fund that supported SolarCity for many years, has led the largest venture capital funding for distributed energy in Africa. Off Grid Electric announced today that it raised $25 million in a Series C investment.

Off Grid Electric, based in California and Tanzania, is installing solar in over 10,000 homes and businesses per month with what it calls “its radically affordable solar leasing platform.” The company designs, manufactures, sells, installs and services solar home units in Tanzania and is announcing today that it will be entering

A recent report by the Energy Futures Initiative (EFI), established by former Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz, and the National Association of State Energy Officials confirms that the energy sector as a whole grew 2 percent last year, which is .3 percent more than the national job growth percentage of 1.7 percent.

Today’s topics include the impact of section 201 tariffs on module supply and prices. Will they go up? We’ll also talk about developing the next generation solar workforce based on a new report about energy jobs in the U.S.

A new LBNL report offers concrete suggestions about what investments today will be most beneficial in tomorrow’s renewable energy future.

Clean energy advocates rejoiced as legislation was passed today in New Jersey that will support the development of a massive amount of renewable energy, specifically community solar, energy storage, offshore wind and energy efficiency. The bill also props up nuclear power in the state with the establishment of zero-emission certificates.

Earlier this week SIMEC ZEN Energy announced details of the first of many planned renewable energy projects for South Australia. The Cultana Solar Farm, a 280-MW solar power plant expected to generate 600 GW-hours of energy annually in Australia’s sunny climate is expected to begin construction in early 2019 according to details in a press release.

Utilities are — and have been for a long time — seeking better ways through which they can engage with their customers. According to Jeff Hamel, director of energy and housing partnerships at Google, the Nest smart thermostat, which is part of the hardware product line that Google provides, is a good example of a simple way that utilities are partnering with their customers.

The Gentleman coal plant was once the linchpin of Nebraska’s electricity grid, its twin smokestacks visible for miles across the prairie. Now, the state’s biggest power source is routinely pushed aside to make room for more wind and solar energy.

Excitement over storing electricity, and expectations for new market rules in the U.S. promise great changes in energy. Instead of hype and speculation, this blog offers a preview of those market changes. For those who are waiting for FERC Order 841 to sort things out, ISO-New England has published something you might want to see.

For most of their history, in North America, electrical utilities have been centralized distribution networks. Utility operated generation resources are the hub of the network and electricity flows one-way via distribution networks largely controlled by the same utilities. In this model, there has been little reason for utilities to share anything but a small slice of data about their operations with anyone else other than themselves.