Yingli to supply 300 MW Neoen PV plant in France

Yingli Green Energy agreed to supply 120 MW of solar panels to independent French power producer Neoen's 300 MW solar park in South West France.

Yingli will ship more than 393,000 YGE 72 Cell solar panels between December and June and comprise more than a third of the overall solar park, which will cover 250 hectares (618 acres) of land divided in 25 solar plants. The modules will be mounted in an east-west orientation to boost the system's overall power density given their layout, according to Yingli.

The installation is expected to be Europe's largest solar photovoltaic energy park when completed. Located in the town of Cestas, near Bordeaux, the project is budgeted at more than €360 million.

Neoen will own 120 MW while eight other investors will own the remaining 180 MW.

Construction of each power plant will be performed by a consortium that includes local companies Eiffage-Clemessy, Schneider Electric and Krinner, which will also be responsible for operation and maintenance activities.

The solar park, which will be connected directly to the high voltage grid, is expected to begin operation in October 2015. It will produce more than 350 gigawatt-hours annually -- the equivalent of the entire power consumption of the population of Bordeaux.

Praising Yingli's reliability, project director Patrick de Labrusse of Eiffage-Clemessy said, "One important step for a project of such immense proportions is to gain the trust of investors and banks, which involves choosing the right partners."

Cost of Cestas solar energy cheaper than Hinkley Point C nuclear energy

Yingli noted that Neoen had "worked hard on multiple system optimizations and plant design in order to increase the project's profitability and competitiveness." As a result, Yingli added, the plant will provide electricity at €105 ($130) per megawatt hour -- below the price of the electricity that will be generated by the United Kingdom's planned new nuclear power plant.

France's EDF, which is building Britain's new Hinkley Point C nuclear project in Somerset, England, has secured a guarantee from the British government for a minimum price of £92.50 pounds (€117/$145) per megawatt hour generated by the plant for a period of 35 years. The nuclear power plant is scheduled to be completed in 2023.

Both the European PV industry and leading environmental protection advocates have criticized the Hinkley project.

"By driving down the cost of solar electricity, the project clearly demonstrates the increasing competitiveness of solar PV against traditional energy sources," Yingli stressed.

Reaching grid parity is a reality now

Yingli Chairman and CEO Liansheng Miao added, "We are honored to be part of this milestone project in the European PV market, and to be delivering a promising model that is driven by profitability and cost-competitiveness rather than dependence on public incentives. Reaching grid parity is a reality now and we are pleased to partner with innovative European companies such as Neoen and Eiffage-Clemessy – they set a high standard and work hard every day to build a low-carbon economy across Europe."

Policy uncertainty paralyzes large-scale Down Under

New data from the renewable energy industry highlights just what impact policy certainty – or the lack of it – is having on small and large-scale markets.

Rooftop solar – largely funded by the balance sheets of Australian households and businesses – continues to surge ahead. That's helped by the fact that federal incentives – paid up front – are locked in by legislation.

The graph below shows the trend in small-scale rooftop solar systems, residential (below 10 kW and in green), and commercial-scale systems (between 10 kW and 100 kW and in blue) over the past year.

After sharp falls caused by the winding back of various state-based FITs, the deployment of solar inverter by homes and businesses has steadied and is now growing solidly.

According to Green Energy Markets, more than 155,000 small-scale solar systems have been added across Australia this year, an average of more than 15,000 per month.

Last month, 16,729 systems were added, for a total of 75 MW (the average size being 4.2 kW), taking the total for the year to 657 MW.

Large-scale solar at a standstill

Meanwhile, construction in the large-scale renewable energy market is at a virtual standstill, thanks to uncertainty about the future of the large-scale market, which has caused bank financing to dry up, and its share of generation is also going backwards.

This is partly due to lower wind speeds, and lower hydro production, as the incentive to generate more hydro is removed because of the dumping of the carbon price and the fall in the value of LGC certificates, due to policy uncertainty.

In October, the share of renewable generation, not including rooftop solar, was 13.1 per cent. That was down from 14.2 per cent in September and 18.3 per cent a year earlier.

In the past month, just four small solar power stations and a small hydro generator were approved.

So far this year, it has been a sorry story for new developments. As this graph shows, less than 200 MW of large-scale renewable plants have been accredited in 2014.

Of those, two plants – Boco Rock wind farm and the Portland wind farm extension – were committed last year, as was the 20 MW Royalla solar farm which makes up the bulk of the solar total.

The rest of the solar component include rooftop solar projects of more than 100 kW – too big to qualify for the small-scale scheme.

Both Portland and Royalla have been supported by other schemes such as the Clean Energy Finance Corporation and the ACT (Australian Capital Territory) government's solar auction.

Walmart to install up to 400 more solar PV systems over the next four years

Projects built under this latest announcement build on Walmart's installation of 105 MW of solar PV to date in 260 locations. SunEdison and SolarCity will install the systems.

On Friday, Walmart announced that is has concluded a request for proposals and has accepted bids from SunEdison and SolarCity to install as many as 400 new solar PV systems on its facilities over the next four years.

The company did not say what capacity this will represent, but estimates that the PV systems will meet 10-30% of the energy needs of the facilities where they will be installed.

If 400 are built and they average the same size as Walmart's existing fleet of PV, the new installations will total around 160 MW. Walmart currently has 260 operational PV plants at its stores, representing 105 MW of installed PV capacity.

solar PV systems

This makes Walmart, the world's largest retailer, also the largest corporate user of PV in the United States. The company boasts more than double the installed PV versus its closest competitor.

SolarCity has installed more than 200 of those PV systems, in less than four years. 13 of these systems also feature energy storage, and SolarCity will be installing another 10 energy storage projects in this new round, which will feature 200 kW/400 kWh battery systems.

Walmart has been praised for its leading role in PV adoption by the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA). However, the family which owns a majority share in Walmart has come under fire for donating large sums to organizations that are trying to repeal renewable energy policies.

A report by the Institute for Local Self Reliance published in October found that the Walton Family, which also owns 30% of First Solar, has donated more than $4.5 million to organizations that have led and/or initiated attempts to roll back state renewable energy mandates since 2010.

Home-grown UK solar to be cheaper than gas

The United Kingdom's Solar Trade Association (STA) on Wednesday published a new analysis showing that the cost of generating electricity from a typical 10 MW solar farm in the U.K. is set to fall faster than previously expected over the next 15 years.

The report, Cost Reduction Potential of Large-scale Solar PV, is based on a survey of the STA's member companies and their cost forecasts between now and 2030.

UK solar soon to be cheaper than gas

The report finds that as long as the government provides stable policy support, it will be cheaper to generate electricity from solar than by burning gas as soon as 2018.

"A lot of people still don't realize just how close solar is to being competitive with gas-fired power generation," said STA CEO Paul Barwell. "U.K. solar is on its way to becoming subsidy-free, but it is critical we maintain stable government policy that supports grid connected utility-scale solar as opposed to fossil fuel power stations."

In addition, the study shows that solar will be cheaper than the wholesale price of electricity at some point between 2025 and 2028. The cost of generating electricity from gas, on the other hand, is forecast to increase in real terms over the next 15 years, and will always be more expensive than wholesale power, the STA points out.

The results show that the cost of building a large-scale solar farm is set to go down faster than currently estimated by the government due to a growing solar supply chain in Britain as well as falling global prices for solar panels and inverters.

Greater ambitions supported by lower costs

The analysis follows a recent report from the London-based Centre for Economics and Business Research (Cebr) on the macroeconomic benefits for the U.K. from investing in solar, which showed that the country could provide enough electricity to supply 15% of its electricity demand by 2030, supporting almost 50,000 jobs. Big solar arrays alone could add more than £25 billion to U.K. economic output, according to the report.

The global solar market is forecast to be worth over £78 billion ($134 billion) by 2020, making it a key emerging technology market.

The STA stresses, however, that the U.K. government intends to close the country's current Renewables Obligation subsidy scheme for solar farms bigger than 5 MW (about 25 acres), which will slow the falling cost of generating solar electricity on a large scale.

"It is clear that it makes political and economic sense for the government to back large-scale solar, with the sector's track record in creating jobs, and producing ever cheaper zero carbon power," Barwell added. "This report makes that case even more strongly – our updated costs forecast shows that solar is even cheaper than we thought. We just need one final push from government to get solar to being subsidy-free. A home grown solution to Britain's energy crisis.

"It is in the interests of both energy bill payers and the planet to maintain stable support for good quality large-scale solar farms. If we invest now – and make sure the new Contracts for Difference support scheme works for solar – this technology could in ten years' time be bringing down energy bills."

SolarWorld and Enphase as global micro inverter supplier agree technology partnership

Global module manufacturer, SolarWorld, and micro inverter manufacturer,Germany's SolarWorld has formalized Enphase Energy as the supplier of micro inverter systems for its custom-engineered system solutions in the United States and across both companies' worldwide distribution networks.

The two companies will also be looking at providing bespoke solutions for each others’ products, to be made available across the world, sharing market knowledge and experience, according to a statement released by the pair.

Micro Inverter

Enphase, the world's largest provider of micro inverters (which convert direct electrical current to alternating current to enable most applications of solar electric power), and SolarWorld have also agreed to engage in close collaboration in developing new solar technologies and products.

"Enphase has worked closely with SolarWorld for several years, and the companies have built a strong, growing business together in collaboration with SolarWorld's extensive U.S. channels," said Jeff Loebbaka, Enphase senior vice president of global sales, marketing and support. "This new agreement promises to open new regional market and product opportunities around the world for both companies."

Enphase last 发month launched an integrated energy management system and an AC storage solution at the Solar Power International trade show in Las Vegas. The products will be available for residential and commercial PV systems next year.

SolarWorld, meanwhile, announced in October that it was investing $10 million to expand PV cell and module capacities at its factory in the U.S. state of Oregon, including the addition of a PV module line to increase its capacity from 380 MW to 530 MW, as well as converting 100 MW of its PV cell production to passivated emitter rear contact (PERC) technology.

The British did not welcome the solar farm

UK Minister for Energy and Climate Amber Rudd recently publicly admitted that the British did not welcome the solar farm. Prior to this, the British environmental protection bureau ElizabethTruss also publicly stated that she does not want Britain's farm is wasted solar farm, solar farm will become barren British farms.




Rudd is not optimistic about the reason why is because the solar farm, she hopes to install rooftop solar power plant to serve the British way, she said: "The British are not welcome solar farms, in our opinion, solar power equipment should be installed in the building and residential roofs, rather than the scenic countryside. the vast bucolic is the pride of the British, we should protect the UK environment. "Rudd's view is not something new, but she is the first openly British politician to express this point of view.

As early as 2013, the British government announced priority rooftop solar installation rather than terrestrial solar farm. Although the government has recently begun to shift support measures relatively large-scale solar power projects, but only those generating capacity of less than 5MW of renewable energy programs enough grid.

Distributed Energy China needs all the roof armed

This year, the introduction of national photovoltaic New Deal, the distributed funds that existed before the financial support is not in place, the subsidy mechanism is imperfect, weak management industry, application urgent need to improve the market environment and other issues one by one to give to relieve effectively resolve the construction of distributed PV difficulties roof, financing, grid access, management and electricity trading experience for domestic photovoltaic applications development to create a good environment for development.

Notification made use of waste land, barren hills and slopes, agricultural greenhouses, beaches, ponds, lakes and other land resource construction of photovoltaic power generation projects in the 35 kV and below voltage connected to the grid (project capacity not exceeding 20MW) and the electricity transformer stations and outlets in the area consumptive, perform local PV power plant benchmark price policy, referring to distributed power grid enterprises through the 'green channel' to provide efficient and convenient access.

Implementation of the measure will promote the construction of China's agricultural distributed photovoltaic greenhouses, aquaculture, beaches and other projects, because the scale agricultural projects basically in between the roof and the floor of photovoltaic power plants, investors are mostly concerned about electricity prices, electricity sales, and the size of the problem (can use a large area, the capacity is too small is not conducive to project benefits). The new policy in the voltage levels of access, electricity sales, electricity and capacity and other aspects of a new breakthrough will help improve investor enthusiasm.

Deal of distributed PV, is the national introduction of a quite pragmatic and can effectively solve the problem of good policy. This time the intention notice promulgated by the state, not only showed firm determination to vigorously promote the development of distributed PV, but also an important measure to solve the problem of promoting development.

Distributed PV roof is a major frontier for China to develop solar PV to implement the New Deal, it must be "armed all the roof."

Development of solar energy for China to "armed all the roof."

As the world's largest solar market, China is promoting the more factories, schools, and even the greenhouse roof-mounted solar panels, in order to achieve a historic climate agreement reached with the United States in its objectives.

China hopes this year to install up to 8 GW of small-scale photovoltaic systems, more than 10 times its total installed capacity last year. By the end of 2013, China has the capacity of 20 GW of solar power, the equivalent of 20 nuclear reactors. Most of them are from remote areas of the construction of large-scale solar power plants.

But now policymakers are promoting the use of small-scale power generation system, built on the side away from the electricity closer places. Traditionally, resulting in a remote area power grid bottlenecks would consume a large amount of transmission resources, and small power generation system area does not have this problem. This will help China from polluting thermal power as soon as possible.


This also means that the solar roof system will be more commonly used. China National Energy Board in September introduced a policy to promote small-scale solar energy, they also have the potential to request local governments looking to install rooftop power plants and small ground station address. This would include those with large commercial and industrial building roof, as well as public buildings, such as railway stations, airport terminals, and so on.