China

Solaria CEO Suvi Sharma. “When foreign companies such as Canadian Solar ignore American patents and violate our core IP, we will take action to enforce and protect the technology that took so much effort and investment to develop.”

The solar plant was built with fixed structures on a 400-hectare water surface at a fishery in Anhui province. The project was the first unsubsidized plant approved by the National Development and Reform Commission in 2019 and is selling power at a price of $0.054 per kWh.

Also In the brief: Iowa passes net metering right before suspending the session amid the Covid-19 pandemic, an international research team has developed a new type of solar cell that is 26.7% efficient in power conversion, Powerhome is hiring and more.

GCL System Integration plans to build a 60 GW solar module factory in China’s Anhui province, with a total investment of approximately $2.5 billion.

Also in the roundup: Preliminary permit for pumped hydro in Nevada, solid-state batteries and a China battery slowdown.

Executive and boardroom moves in solar, storage, cleantech, utilities and energy finance.

Rocky Mountain Power must respond to a natural disaster while social distancing. Plus, New York is good, but NIMBY about solar.

Analyst Wood Mackenzie expects solar demand to decline but predicts the market will recover, with the prospects for the energy transition remaining intact.

The Carbon Tracker Initiative crunched some numbers and discovered that more than half a trillion dollars worth of coal investments are at serious risk due to the declining cost of renewables.

Many solar factories in China are starting to resume production, suggesting that concerns about supplies of PV components could soon begin to ease. Nevertheless, the temporary standstill will have an impact on the global solar market, as the implementation of some projects will probably be postponed until next year.