The Green Deal is due to be launched in October 2012 and, therefore, plans for the scheme are in their final stages. The first batch of Green Deal providers, who will arrange the finances for, and installation of, the energy saving devices, have been published. Qualifying energy saving devices have also been made public. However, there are still some key details
According to the French utility EDF, the French solar PV capacity reached in March 3,000 MW, with over 2,672 MW in mainland France and 339 MW in Corsica and overseas.
According to the data: the total capacity grew by 15 percent this semester in metropolitan France. An additional 1,581 MW are already installed but are waiting to be plugged to the grids.
Not all of this massive capacity may be linked to the grids as most of them have to be connected prior to June to benefit from the local feed-in tariffs. The industry is facing a darker future.
France has seen in recent years a spectacular rise of solar photovoltaic as the capacity grew from 40 MW in 2006 to 81 MW in 2008. Things accelerated afterwards as by the end of 2010 it reached 850 MW.
2011 was an impressive year for solar PV as Enerplan – the local French solar industrial organization – notes in its report. Local capacity in march 2011 was of 1,336 MW, in June it was of 1676 MW, in September 2232 MW.
At the end of the year it had reached 2643 MW. You read that right: the French solar capacity doubled in nine months.
In 2010 I noted in a previous article here that the 5,400 MW objective originally planned for 2020 could be reached in 2013. Given the impressive increase, this well could be the case. However the future for the industry is not that bright:
In 2011, half of the 25,000 jobs that had been created in this industry had been destroyed. The investment bubble created by the high feed in tariffs has boomed and busted as there have been several cuts in FIT since 2010.
What will François Hollande, the new President elected earlier this month, will do about it ? Will the industry be given a sustainable roadmap for the next five years?
Solar panel installations have fallen by almost 90% in the weeks since the government halved cut the subsidy available, according to Department of Energy and Climate Change figures.
The change in financial support for solar power has been highly controversial and has seen the
The United Kingdom seems to always be trailing the European renewable energy starting line-up of Germany, Denmark, Spain, Sweden, and any one of Holland/Finland/Portugal.
As we’ve observed in our offshore wind, small wind,
A recent report on African Jet said that British investors have proposed the creation of a solar power plant in Rjim Maatoug, Governorate of Kebili. The plant would have a capacity of 2,000 megawatts to be connected directly to the European power network.
The plan was presented during a recent meeting with
On March 5, the Palo Alto (California) City Council will vote on a proposed new solar program–a solar feed-in tariff for the city’s municipal utility.
Some relevant facts:
4 MW of total contract capacity available for wholesale power.
Vote Solar staff attended meetings last week with staff of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP), the nation’s largest publicly-owned utility, serving about 10% of California’s electrical load. California law now requires munis like LADWP to get 33% of their power mix from renewables by 2020,
The fastest growing solar market in the world is on pause as the Ontario government invites input from stakeholders on its two-year old Feed-in-Tariff (FIT) program. Half way through the six-week FIT Program Review initiated by the new Minister of Energy, Chris Bentley, Ontario Solar Network is bringing industry
The Japanese technology company announced last week that it will build a $580 million solar cell plant in Malaysia, according to Reuters report. The company has been attracted overseas by a strong yen, which has made domestic production more costly.
The numbers are quite impressive: the new plant will
Anyone vaguely interested in international news is probably aware of Greece’s economic crisis. But despite that, or perhaps because of that, the country’s Energy Minister has big plans for solar power.
According to a report on Bloomberg, Minister George Papaconstantinou said he expects that an
A 78 MW part of a 148 MW photovoltaic solar farm was completed on September 24. The project was developed by Saferay, which is based in Berlin, while the plant occupies a former open pit mining area near Senftenberg in Eastern Germany.
According to a Global Solar Technology magazine,
Suntech, the world’s largest producer of silicon solar modules, is looking to expand its manufacturing operations in Asia according to the Bangkok Post. Thailand is one of the key targets for Suntech, though expansion may largely depend on the Thai government’s clarification of its solar energy policy.
Yesterday morning Paula Mints from Navigant Consulting shared her insights on the latest global solar PV market trends with us – a timely webinar topic given the highly publicized fallout from those very global market dynamics. Paula put a firm kibosh on assertions that the aforementioned Solyndra failure
The Mitsubishi Group is a large Japanese conglomerate that contains a number of businesses sharing the Mitsubishi brand, legacy and trademark. Probably most well known are the Mitsubishi manufactured vehicles. Mitsubishi Motors Corporation is a multinational automobile manufacturer with