Mercom Capital Group says that total corporate solar funding, global venture capital funding, public market financing, and PV mergers and acquisitions all fell year on year in the first quarter of 2024. The sector is still grappling with high interest rates, which Wood Mackenzie says is disproportionately affecting renewables projects.

The International Energy Agency (IEA) Photovoltaic Power Systems Programme (PVPS) has published a wide-reaching snapshot of the global PV market, covering installations, manufacturing, policy trends, and grid integration.

Enphase Energy, a California-based microinverter specialist, says its new power control system will give North American customers that use its energy systems more flexibility to build larger projects.

The US Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) has released a cost-estimation tool for new closed-loop pumped storage hydropower (PSH) plants in the United States. The tool allows operators to select from a range of system characteristics and account for factors such as local geology, labor rates and inflation.

The International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) says developers installed 345.5 GW of solar throughout the world in 2023. China mainly drove the surge, accounting for nearly three-quarters of all new renewable energy, but IRENA says more equitable growth will be needed to hit 2030 deployment targets.

The government of the Canadian province of Quebec aims to deploy 300 MW of solar through tenders under utility Hydro-Quebec, in a bid to diversify the supply of renewables.

The government of the Canadian province of Alberta has announced plans to ban new renewables projects on high-quality agricultural land and within a 35 km radius of areas with pristine views, following a nearly seven-month pause on approvals for such installations.

Merida Aerospace, a U.S. aerospace company, is developing perovskite solar cells for low-Earth-orbit satellites. It says perovskite solar cells could be a more cost-effective and efficient option than traditional cells.

BloombergNEF says in a new report that corporations publicly announced 46 GW of solar and wind power purchase agreements (PPAs) in 2023, up 12% year on year. It says the increase was driven by a surge of activity in Europe.

The short-term impact of extreme weather, such as flooding, high winds, hail, wildfire and lightning, was minimal in most PV systems studied.