Western Europe

The microinverter maker reported its second consecutive quarter of profit and is sold out into the second half of the year, as it continues to battle tariffs and component shortages.

SUSI Partners has purchased a 50% stake in Macquarie Capital’s 63 MW / 340 MWh distributed energy storage portfolio located in Southern California. Included as part of this purchase is the world’s largest virtual power plant.

An investment firm owned by the family behind Lego has bought a majority stake in solar asset owner Enerparc’s U.S. business. Enerparc’s management team will maintain a minority interest.

Hello, and welcome to your Thursday pvMB. The weekend is almost here. Today we’ll be looking at BlueCross BlueShield installing 10,000 solar panels at its Chattanooga HQ, Hawaii’s solar trash cans, futuristic Dutch solar houseboats and everything else that matters today.

Things are hotting up in the tracker world as the desire to squeeze down the price per Watt of solar power intensifies. And the rise of the trackers is attracting some well-known businesses to buy their way into the field.

California utility Pacific Gas & Electric’s bankruptcy points to a crisis not only at the company, but in the business model for utilities in the United States. And it is far from clear what will come next.

All three companies say the patent infringement claim is without merit, and LONGi has provided technical details as to why its PERC isn’t based on Hanwha Q-Cells’ patent.

The Korean/German solar manufacturer has filed patent infringement lawsuits against the three companies in the United States, and is seeking to bar them from importing solar products for the U.S. market. Hanwha Q Cells claims its three rivals have used its patented solar cell passivation technology to increase the performance of their products.

After announcing its entry into residential storage a week ago, the Munich-based multinational has now unveiled a plan to acquire inverter manufacturer Kaco. Siemens has not provided details about the value of the transaction.

The French inverter maker is pulling out of the utility-scale segment to strengthen its profile in the residential and C&I space.