Monday, 20 July 2026

A six-week course that certifies oil and gas technicians for offshore wind maintenance is now available through ECITB-approved training providers, following two pilots, according to World Oil.

The Wind Turbine Maintenance Technician Cross Skill Programme was built by the Engineering Construction Industry Training Board (ECITB) with the Global Wind Organisation (GWO) and Offshore Renewable Energy (ORE) Catapult. It admits qualified Instrument and Controls, Mechanical and Electrical technicians, adding the credentials they need to work across offshore oil and gas facilities and wind sites as demand moves between the two, World Oil reported.

Andrew Hockey, chief executive officer of the ECITB, described the course as a way to move qualified oil and gas technicians into wind and back again when maintenance work calls for it.

Training maps to GWO safety and technical standards, which cuts duplicate assessments for experienced offshore staff, and hands-on sessions run at ORE Catapult's Levenmouth offshore wind demonstration facility, according to World Oil.

Funding comes jointly from the UK Department for Energy Security and Net Zero and the Scottish Government through the Transition Training Fund.

TÜV Rheinland has certified Qcells' perovskite-silicon tandem solar technology as meeting reliability and safety standards from the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) and UL Standards & Engagement (UL), according to pv magazine.

Qcells says the certification is the first to cover perovskite-silicon tandem technology under both IEC 61215 and UL 61215, pv magazine reported.

Production of the certified cells and modules ran on Qcells' tandem research pilot line in Bitterfeld-Wolfen, Germany, which used full-area M10 substrates, according to pv magazine.

A tandem cell of the same build hit 28.6% power conversion efficiency in December 2024, pv magazine reported. The result was independently verified by the CalLab at the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems (ISE).

Modules made with the tandem technology cleared a series of IEC stress tests in May 2025, according to pv magazine. Those tests covered UV preconditioning at 15 kWh/m², 200 thermal cycles, 10 humidity-freeze cycles, and 1,000 hours of damp heat.

Qcells first set out its tandem plans in 2022, opening the R&D line in Thalheim with Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin (HZB), pv magazine reported.

Malaysia's Ministry of Energy Transition and Water Transformation opened the sixth round of its large-scale solar program, seeking 2.5 GW of solar paired with 1.25 GW of battery energy storage, according to ESS News.

The tender is split into two lots. ESS News reported that the first lot covers 2.2 GW of solar and 1.1 GW of battery energy storage (BESS) and is open to all developers. The second lot covers 300 MW of solar and 150 MW of BESS and is reserved for companies owned and controlled by indigenous people in the Malaysian peninsular, known as Bumiputera companies, according to ESS News.

The program is expected to draw private investment of up to MYR 15 billion (USD 3.6 billion) and create up to 20,000 jobs during project development and construction, ESS News reported. Projects awarded under the tender are expected to enter commercial operations no later than December 31, 2029.

Malaysia first introduced its large-scale solar tenders in 2016, and they have approved over 6 GW of solar to date, according to ESS News. That total includes almost 2 GW from the latest round last September.

The country's solar capacity surpassed 5.7 GW in 2025, with over 1.4 GW added that year, ESS News reported.

Xpanner has released the X1 Panel Lift, an excavator-based panel installation system built to address the shortage of skilled solar installation labor, according to pv magazine.

The system runs on a single excavator and removes the need for separate feeder equipment such as a compact track loader or forklift, pv magazine reported.

The X1 is powered by Mango, Xpanner's proprietary automation controller, and fuses data from LIDAR, vision, and GNSS sensors to build a live 3D model of the jobsite, according to pv magazine.

Rather than requiring heavy upfront capital expenditure, Xpanner is offering the X1 Panel Lift under an all-inclusive subscription that covers hardware, the X1 kit and license, Xpanner Connect software, and on-site field operations support, pv magazine reported.

Xpanner has opened a new demo yard in Aledo, Texas, and will exhibit at BuiltWorld's 2026 Construction Tech Conference, according to pv magazine.

CPH2 suffered a destructive test failure of an experimental electrolyzer, according to CleanTechnica.

CleanTechnica reported that the failure exposed a mismatch between the product the company promoted and the business it was actually trying to operate.

The company had more than a decade of development, a public listing, and roughly GBP 50 million in disclosed financing before its 2026 failure, according to CleanTechnica.

Australia's flagship solar PV recycling pilot was quietly suspended in May, with no indication of when it might restart, according to RenewEconomy.

The Department of Climate Change, Energy, Environment and Water (DCCEEW) paused the first stage after receiving a complaint about the pilot administrator procurement process, RenewEconomy reported.

The tender to find the pilot administrator closed on April 26, and three weeks later DCCEEW stopped the process, according to RenewEconomy.

The pilot carries funding of AUD 24.7 million and was announced in January alongside a Productivity Commission report on end-of-life solar panels, RenewEconomy reported.

Data from the pilot will be used to design a mandatory stewardship scheme, according to RenewEconomy.

Solar and storage broke six records in the first half of 2026, according to a CleanTechnica article published on the industry's performance across the United States.

Electricity demand is rising and prices are climbing in the United States, CleanTechnica said, adding that the country needs more power quickly.

The outlet reported that the solar and storage industry is breaking records across the country, from California to Texas to the Midwest, at a pace CleanTechnica described as unimaginable a few years ago.

pv magazine spoke with Jake Morin, chief product officer at Nextpower, about the state of the art in agrivoltaics.

Across many regions, interest is growing in integrating solar installations into land already used for agriculture, according to pv magazine.

Lessons from early agrivoltaic projects in both livestock and crop farming are accumulating, pv magazine reported. Best practices are emerging, but each project requires an individual approach.

Three firms have agreed to work together on balance of plant operations and maintenance for South Korea's offshore wind sector, according to Offshore Engineer OEDigital. OWC, Korea Leading Energy Management (KLEM) and OEG set out the arrangement in a memorandum of understanding.

KLEM is expected to act as main contractor for the balance of plant operations and maintenance work under the deal, Offshore Engineer OEDigital reported. OWC takes on technical assurance and asset management, and OEG covers marine, subsea and offshore operational services, the same report said.

Solar module prices across Europe steadied in July 2026, and availability improved in most segments, according to pv magazine. The one hold-out was back-contact modules, which stayed short of the market.

For back-contact modules rated above 24% efficiency, buyers outpaced sellers and left gaps in the higher power classes, pv magazine reported. Volume production of these modules sits with just three Chinese suppliers, named by the outlet as AIKO, Longi and TCL.

pv magazine reported that TOPCon module prices have leveled and edged slightly lower, making another rise this year improbable.

Oxford PV's tandem modules run at efficiencies a little over 25% and aim for 27% next year, pv magazine reported. The outlet expects the first mass-market perovskite products to reach buyers by late 2027 or early 2028 at the latest.

Developers of the MTerra Solar project on Luzon have brought 1,373 MW of solar and 825 MW of battery storage online in its first phase, holding 3.3 GWh of capacity, according to pv magazine.

Operators fully energized 741 battery units during this stage, pv magazine reported. Export to the Luzon grid stays capped at 750 MW while works with the grid operator continue, according to Meralco PowerGen Corporation.

When finished, the plant will run 3.5 GW of solar paired with 4.5 GWh of storage across Nueva Ecija and Bulacan provinces on Luzon.

Ajay Mullangi, principal at Actis, attributed the pace of construction to how the project was structured and to a workforce that peaked above 10,000, according to pv magazine.

President Marcos said coal supplied 57% of the Philippines' power generation mix last year, against roughly 25% from renewables.

The energized solar already sits well above the 750 MW export limit, with 1,373 MW connected in the first phase alone. Meralco PowerGen Corporation said lifting that cap depends on outstanding grid works.

The 825 MW of storage brought online in the first phase covers 3.3 GWh, part of the 4.5 GWh the finished plant is designed to hold.

South Korea's Ministry of Climate, Energy and Environment has launched a tender covering approximately 1 GW of new solar capacity, according to pv magazine.

The tender offers winning bidders a fixed-price contract with a bid ceiling of KRW 147,686 per kWh, pv magazine reported. That ceiling is around 5% lower than last year's 1 GW solar tender.

Per pv magazine, this is the final year of bidding before a reform of the Renewable Energy Supply Obligation (RPS) system, which the solar tenders fall under, to replace it with capacity-based government auctions.

Since launching in 2017, South Korea's fixed-price tender system has selected over 10 GW of solar capacity, according to pv magazine.

South Korea's cumulative solar capacity reached 30,346 MW by the end of 2025, according to figures from the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) cited by pv magazine, a 3.6 GW increase on the figure reported at the end of 2024.

The ministry and the Korea Energy Agency plan to hold an online video briefing session on the tender on July 21, pv magazine reported.