Sunday, 9 August 2026

Latvia's installed solar capacity has reached 1,521 MW, according to figures from the Latvian Renewable Energy Alliance (LREA) reported by pv magazine.

About 601 MW of that total was added in the country so far this year, building on the 920 MW installed by the end of last year, pv magazine reported. That makes 2026 Latvia's strongest year for solar deployment on record, ahead of the previous calendar-year high of 319 MW set in 2024.

The build-out has changed the country's generation mix. Solar was the largest single source of Latvian electricity in both May and June, according to pv magazine. In June, solar produced 274 GWh, or 55% of total electricity generation of 495 GWh.

That June share was an EU record for solar within domestic electricity generation, according to separate analysis by Germany's Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems ISE cited by pv magazine.

Within the distribution network, solar now accounts for 78% of total installed generation capacity, pv magazine reported. Solar output rose 50% against the first six months of last year, with 441.3 GWh of solar electricity fed into the grid this year.

An ensemble forecasting approach improved solar output prediction accuracy by 11% and 13% across two utility data sets, according to Solar Builder.

The method was tested at seven sites using Imperial Irrigation District and Los Angeles Department of Water and Power data covering 2019 to 2022, Solar Builder reported. The 11% improvement came on the Imperial Irrigation District data set and the 13% improvement on the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power data set.

Solar Builder noted that as of August 2026 the methods have only been tested across California.

A fire at a photovoltaic plant in the municipality of Puertollano, central Spain, burned around 90 hectares and triggered a large firefighting operation, according to pv magazine.

The blaze started around 13:00 on Wednesday, July 22, pv magazine reported, with three workers on site attempting to contain it at the time.

One of them, a 51-year-old man, suffered burns, according to pv magazine. He was treated first by a mobile intensive care unit and then airlifted by helicopter to Getafe Hospital.

Eight aircraft and up to 24 ground vehicles took part in the response, mobilizing up to 129 people including forest firefighters, environmental agents and support personnel, pv magazine reported.

Mercedes Gómez, minister of sustainable development for the region of Castilla-La Mancha, said the fire was already contained and under control by Thursday morning, according to pv magazine.

The cause of the fire has not yet been reported.

New solar capacity in Serbia reached about 61 MW over the first six months of 2026, the Association Renewable Energy Sources of Serbia (RES Serbia) said in figures cited by pv magazine. Total installed solar now sits at roughly 379 MW.

The prosumer segment accounted for 125.9 MW and distribution-connected plants for 192.2 MW when Serbia closed 2025 with 318.3 MW in service, pv magazine reported.

Grid access is the constraint on what comes next. A government decision in May pushed new grid connection studies for variable renewable projects out to 2029-2030. Isailovic of RES Serbia said the delay "has proven to be a bottleneck for investors," holding back several projects and slowing capacity additions.

Large industrial users are still queuing for transmission-level access under active consumer status. Linglong filed for 39.9 MW, while HBIS is seeking to connect a 63 MW project, according to pv magazine.

Storage requests dwarf the operating solar fleet. Complete grid connection study applications now cover 4,530.6 MWh of approved capacity across 24 battery projects, pv magazine reported.

A floating wind turbine design developed by Australian researchers could cut construction costs by as much as 40 percent, but the concept does not extend to the largest offshore machines, RenewEconomy reported.

Wenhua Zhao, a professor at the University of Queensland, tested a scale model of the structure, about 2m tall, at the wave basin at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, according to RenewEconomy.

Zhao said the design worked in testing and could support a turbine as large as 3.6 MW with an 87m hub height. The model also showed it could survive a 1-in-100-year storm.

The size ceiling is the limiting factor the researchers themselves flag: the cost saving does not carry over to the biggest oceanic machines.

February 2030, when the current administration leaves office, is the deadline Uruguay has set for bringing 500 MW of new renewable capacity online, weighted toward photovoltaics, pv magazine reported.

Fernanda Cardona, Uruguay's Minister of Industry, Energy and Mining, set out the plan in Montevideo as the XII Latin American Renewable Energy Congress opened. The Uruguayan Renewable Energy Association ran the event on July 28 and 29, hosting it at the Technological Laboratory of Uruguay.

Four solar plants make up the 500 MW, and two of those have been identified so far. Hybridization work forms part of the same package, but no battery storage project has been put forward yet, according to pv magazine.

Melo Photovoltaic Solar Park in Cerro Largo is the larger of the two named projects. Its installed capacity is set at 100 MWp, and at the connection point it will run at a nominal 75 MW. Roughly 140,000 modules on trackers are planned, backed by investment above USD 75 million.

That capacity lands on a system already close to fully decarbonized: pv magazine puts Uruguay's renewable share at around 97% of electricity generation, with hydro and wind supplying most of it.

Solar met 49% of Latvia's electricity demand in June, a record for the EU, according to pv magazine, citing figures compiled by the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems ISE from the Energy-Charts platform.

The two other Baltic states posted comparable figures. Lithuania's solar share of electricity demand hit 44.7% in June and Estonia's reached 35.8%, pv magazine reported.

Germany held above 30% for three months running. Fraunhofer researchers recorded shares of 30.3% in May and 30.4% in June, with a preliminary reading of 31.6% in July, per pv magazine.

Spain's monthly high came in June at 36.9% of electricity demand, more than five percentage points above the same period a year earlier, according to pv magazine.

France set its own national record in July at 14.6%, its highest solar share of electricity demand to date, though the country stayed below the EU average, pv magazine reported.

The Energy-Charts dataset behind these national figures is maintained by Fraunhofer ISE, which compiles solar shares of electricity demand across EU member states.

UK solar capacity rose by 2.2 GW in the 12 months to the end of June 2026, a 10.9% increase, according to pv magazine.

June alone brought 27,391 new solar installations across the UK, adding 132 MW, pv magazine reported.

The distributed segment faces a lower entry barrier from August 27, when new plug-in solar regulations take effect. Per pv magazine, the updated rules let households self-install systems up to an 800 W limit per electrical circuit, potentially opening opportunities in the rental sector.

At utility scale, the UK government secured 4.9 GW of solar capacity in its seventh (AR7) allocation round, pv magazine reported. Of that, 1.87 GW is expected online by 2028 and 3 GW in 2029.

The largest operational UK solar farm to date is Cleve Hill, at 373 MW, according to pv magazine.

The first phase of the Ummbila Emoyeni wind farm on South Africa's Mpumalanga Highveld comprises 25 turbines with a combined generation capacity of 155MW, according to SAnews. The developer is Seriti Green, a subsidiary of mining company Seriti Resources.

Output will be wheeled through Eskom's transmission network to supply Seriti's coal mining operations, SAnews reported. The wind farm sits between Bethal, Davel and Morgenzon, and the first phase alone accounts for the 25 machines and 155MW figure cited by the agency.

The project is expected to form part of a 900MW hybrid cluster combining wind, solar and battery storage, which SAnews said would be the largest hybrid energy facility in South Africa once completed.

On the national picture, SAnews put installed renewable capacity at close to 16GW, with a further 32GW of projects in the grid connection process and expected to connect by 2030.

The share of locally generated electricity from renewables stood at 2% in 2016, rose to 6% in 2021 and reached 9% in 2024, according to the agency.

Behind-the-meter uptake has moved faster. The number of households with solar panels climbed 86% over a three-year period to 675,000 in 2025, SAnews said.

More than R50 billion in green energy investment commitments were announced at this year's South Africa Investment Conference, according to the same report.

The Iberia Parish Council adopted an ordinance requiring utility-scale solar projects to sit at least half a mile back from the nearest residential property line, according to Grist.

Grist reported that the setback rule appears to have effectively killed the Acadiana Solar project in Iberia Parish, Louisiana. The outlet said the project could have brought millions in local tax revenue to the parish.

The measure applies specifically to utility-scale solar, and the distance is fixed to the nearest residential property line rather than to a dwelling. Setback ordinances of that scale narrow the pool of parcels large enough to host a project once buffers are subtracted from developable acreage.

Three offshore wind leases in U.S. waters will be cancelled under a USD 1.22 billion settlement between RWE and the Trump administration, with the proceeds routed into LNG and gas-fired power projects, Offshore Engineer OEDigital reported.

Four comparable arrangements preceded it this year under the administration's campaign against U.S. offshore wind development. None was larger, the outlet said.

Work on RWE's U.S. projects had already halted last year, a stoppage the outlet attributed to the administration's moves against the industry.

Most of the money traces to a single seabed tract. An auction run by the Biden administration drew USD 1.1 billion from RWE for acreage off New York; the two other leases together cost USD 163 million, according to the same report.

A 16% stake in a Louisiana LNG project accounts for USD 900 million of the redirected spending. RWE also placed a USD 300 million turbine order covering 15 gas peaker plants it has queued across the U.S.

"Americans deserve an energy system built on common sense," Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said, adding that it should not depend on costly subsidies or on technologies unable to meet current demand.

Set aside the RWE deal and the administration has agreed this year to hand back roughly USD 2.7 billion to TotalEnergies, Ocean Winds, Invenergy and Duke Energy, alongside the cancellation of nine federal leases, Offshore Engineer OEDigital reported.