Friday, 21 August 2026

Farizon has launched a locally assembled electric van in Indonesia, the V8E, with PT Handal Indonesia Motor (HIM) building the cargo version, electrive reported. Farizon is the new energy commercial vehicle arm of Geely.

Assembly runs from imported knocked-down kits at a plant in Purwakarta, West Java, roughly 80 kilometres southeast of Jakarta, according to electrive.

Output starts small. HIM will initially turn out about 80 units of the V8E per month, electrive reported, against installed capacity of roughly 1,000 units covering all Farizon products at the site.

Pricing places the cargo model at 425 million Indonesian rupiah, per electrive. Arista Group also sells a 16-seat passenger variant at 550 million Indonesian rupiah.

Christoforus Ronny, Director at PT Arista Manufacturing Indonesia, put the localisation spend at 40 to 50 billion Indonesian rupiah, telling local media the figure covers one model with further common models being added, according to electrive.

The line will not stay single-model for long. Ronny said HIM will begin assembling Farizon's F3E light truck from September, electrive reported.

The UK opposition Conservatives say scrapping net-zero policies could save over GBP 320 billion, an argument the party bases on a report by the centre-right thinktank Onward. Carbon Brief published a factcheck identifying flaws in the report's modelling.

Iain Staffell, an associate professor of sustainable energy at Imperial College London, told Carbon Brief that the report "tells a good story" but that the modelling underpinning it "has more holes than a Swiss cheese".

The alternative policy pathway set out by Onward would result in an extra 524 megatonnes of carbon dioxide emitted between 2030 and 2050, according to Carbon Brief.

Carbon Brief also flagged the demand assumptions behind the cost figure. Overall electricity consumption is 7% lower under Onward's alternative pathway than under the current pathway.

The Tennessee Valley Authority has approved its 2026 Integrated Resource Plan, according to CleanTechnica.

CleanTechnica reported that the plan sets the stage to overbuild gas power plants to serve AI data center interests, describing the buildout as risky.

An Integrated Resource Plan is the long-range document a utility uses to set out how it intends to meet projected demand across generation types, and its approval fixes the reference case that subsequent procurement and capacity decisions are measured against.

Australia's Department of Industry, Science and Resources has engaged Zenith Energy Australia to run planning, engineering and regulatory work for the plugging and abandonment of the Laminaria and Corallina wells in the Timor Sea, according to Offshore Engineer OEDigital.

The scope covers nine wells across the two oil fields, Offshore Engineer OEDigital reported: six oil wells in Laminaria, and two oil wells plus one gas injection well in Corallina.

The work is split. Stage 1 covers detailed project planning, engineering design and securing regulatory approvals, with a decision on moving to stage 2 taken after that, according to Offshore Engineer OEDigital.

Zenith is described by Offshore Engineer OEDigital as an independent, engineer-led well engineering and project management company with approximately 10 years' experience in Australia's offshore energy sector.

Atomic Canyon has launched NIVA, the Nuclear Industry Virtual Assistant, an artificial intelligence platform built for the commercial nuclear energy sector and developed with EPRI, INPO and NEI, according to Neutron Bytes.

Constellation Energy, operator of the largest nuclear fleet in the United States, is already among the platform's users, Neutron Bytes reported.

The assistant runs on Atomic Canyon's Neutron platform and its FERMI AI models, which were trained on Oak Ridge National Laboratory's Frontier supercomputer to handle technical nuclear language, per the same report.

Funding behind the rollout comes from NVIDIA and Tim Buckley, the former chief executive of Vanguard Group, Neutron Bytes reported. The amounts committed by the new investors were not disclosed.

A renewables pilot in Australia is designed to deliver both electricity and financial returns to First Nations communities, according to RenewEconomy.

RenewEconomy identifies Lauren Mellor of Original Power at Marlinja Community in its reporting on the pilot.

The stated aim sets the project apart from conventional community solar or wind arrangements, where the local benefit is usually limited to supply rather than a revenue share. RenewEconomy frames the pilot around both outcomes.

Chile is pushing energy storage to salvage value from an oversized solar fleet, S&P Global Energy analyst Angel Cancino told pv magazine.

Solar capacity in Chile reached 12 GW by the end of 2025, the largest renewable technology in the country's electricity mix, according to pv magazine.

Cancino describes the storage build-out as a response to overbuilt photovoltaic capacity rather than a standalone expansion, per the same report.

Batteries operating on Australia's main grid have compressed the gap between the low prices at which they charge and the high prices at which they dispatch by nearly 80%, according to RenewEconomy.

That spread is the core of the storage business model. Narrowing it cuts directly into returns, and RenewEconomy reports the fleet is crimping its own profit margins as a result.

The same behaviour has flattened the solar duck curve, the daily demand shape left behind when midday photovoltaic output displaces other generation. Charging through the solar-heavy middle of the day and discharging into the evening peak lifts the trough and shaves the peak, which is precisely what erodes the arbitrage the units were built to capture.

RenewEconomy attributes a significant fall in wholesale electricity prices on the main grid over the past year to the combination of new renewables and the growth of grid-scale and household batteries.

The outcome sets a limit on how far the current revenue model stretches. Each additional unit of storage competes with the units already dispatching into the same evening window, and household systems add to that volume without appearing on any developer's balance sheet.

Batteries in Australia's NEM now discharge 15-20 GWh on many days, up from 1-2 GWh in early 2024, RenewEconomy reported.

The outlet puts recent daily peaks above 20 GWh. Set against the 1-2 GWh recorded in early 2024, the peak figure is roughly ten times the earlier daily level.

RenewEconomy says batteries have moved past a supporting role. Solar output charged during the day is being pushed into evening periods that fetch higher prices, taking work away from gas peakers.

That dispatch pattern hits gas plant scheduled for the post-sunset window, since stored solar covers demand the peakers would otherwise serve.

RenewEconomy describes the NEM as increasingly operating as a renewables-and-storage system, with fossil fuels, and gas in particular, tied to the costly end of the market.

A white paper from Sustainable Source Studios alleges that most of what the United States labels solar module recycling ends in landfilling, downcycling or offshoring rather than closed-loop recovery, pv magazine reported. "Almost none of what the United States calls 'solar recycling' is closed-loop recovery," the paper states.

The cost gap between tipping fees and legitimate recycling drives the outcome, according to the analysis by S3 cited by pv magazine, which estimates roughly 90% of discarded U.S. panels go straight to landfills.

Volumes are set to climb. The report estimates the U.S. solar industry will face about one million tons of retired photovoltaic modules by 2030, rising to roughly ten million tons by 2050.

Where material does get processed, the report points abroad. Korea Zinc targets 120,000 tons per year of solar panel materials at its Onsan processing facility in South Korea by 2030, according to the report as summarized by pv magazine.

Domestic processing capacity for one of the metals involved disappeared more than a decade ago. The report says tightened National Ambient Air Quality Standards for lead led to the closure of the last operating lead smelting facility in the U.S. in 2013.

Bangladesh will make solar charging a registration condition for battery-powered auto-rickshaws, according to pv magazine. Operators must charge their batteries with solar power to obtain registration.

The rule reaches a fleet that pv magazine puts at an estimated 6 million auto-rickshaws currently running across the country.

Those vehicles already draw a measurable share of national supply. Their electricity consumption is equivalent to around 5% of Bangladesh's total power generation, pv magazine reported.

The livelihood exposure is wider than the vehicle count. Local estimates cited by pv magazine put the number of people earning income from the three-wheelers at at least 20 million.

A photovoltaic-thermal hydrogen rig cooled by injected air bubbles reached a peak thermal efficiency of 45.5% and produced hydrogen at 15.5 ml/min in outdoor testing in Tamil Nadu, according to pv magazine.

The design injects air bubbles into the water channel behind the panel to improve cooling, and researchers in India built it to raise thermal efficiency, electrical efficiency and hydrogen production together, pv magazine reported.

Electrical performance separates the bubble-cooled unit from a plain panel. At an air-injection rate of 0.011 kg/s, the photovoltaic-thermal water system hit a maximum electrical efficiency of around 11.1%, against 8.1% for the conventional photovoltaic system, according to pv magazine.

Testing was not confined to a laboratory bench. The team ran the system on the rooftop of a building in Tiruchengode, Tamil Nadu, in southern India, under real-world outdoor conditions, pv magazine reported.

Researchers from K.S.Rangasamy College of Technology and SRM Institute of Science and Technology took part in the work, which was published in Case Studies in Thermal Engineering, according to pv magazine.

The combination matters because a photovoltaic-thermal collector recovers heat that would otherwise degrade cell output, and here that recovered heat and the cooler cell temperature feed the same hydrogen-producing loop. The reported gap between 11.1% and 8.1% is the measured electrical payoff from that cooling step under field conditions.

Capital Dynamics has acquired a ready-to-build battery energy storage project of 170 MW / 680 MWh at Knockanure in County Kerry, Ireland, ESS News reported.

The site has secured a grid connection at the nearby 110 kV Knockanure substation, according to ESS News. Planning authorities cleared the project in Oct. 2025.

The four-hour system is classified as long duration by Ireland's grid operator EirGrid, ESS News reported.

The buyer runs USD 15 billion in assets under management and advisement across 14 offices, according to ESS News.

It is the investor's second battery position on the island. In March the firm announced a GBP 100 million (USD 136 million) joint venture with Northern Ireland developer Solo Renewables for a 150 MW project at Islandmagee in County Antrim, ESS News reported.

Mid and East Antrim Borough Council approved the Islandmagee scheme in February 2026, six months after submission, according to ESS News. Once operational the plant will provide up to eight hours of storage, equivalent to 1,200 MWh.

That pairs a four-hour asset in the south with an eight-hour asset in the north under the same owner.

Swedish renewables developer OX2 has started construction of a 100 MW / 200 MWh battery energy storage system (BESS) in the Hunter Valley, Australia, according to ESS News. The site sits about 250 kilometers from Sydney.

The development is a hybrid. ESS News reported that it also includes a 135 MW solar farm, which will connect to the Hunter-Central Coast Renewable Energy Zone (REZ). Combined construction costs for the Muswellbrook solar farm and BESS are estimated at USD 215 million, according to the same report.

The project occupies the site of a coal mine that shut down in 2022, near the town of Muswellbrook, and is co-developed with Idemitsu Australia. ESS News said the Muswellbrook BESS will supply enough electricity to power about 52,000 homes.

Financial close was reached in May 2026, with operation expected in 2028, per ESS News. The build is expected to support around 200 construction jobs.

Offtake is contracted. The Muswellbrook development is one of nine projects signed under long-term Amazon Australia power purchase agreements, part of a 430 MW, AUD 2.8 billion renewable energy buy-up by the technology company, according to ESS News.

Europe's solar panels generated 17 percent more power during the summer's heat waves than they normally do, steadying grids as afternoon cooling demand rose, according to the energy think tank Ember.

The demand surge was concentrated in the south. Extreme temperatures in late June lifted Italy's power demand by 28 percent against the previous week, Ember found, while France recorded a 14 percent increase over the same comparison.

Thermal plants moved the other way. Five gas plants in the United Kingdom cut output by a combined 2.5 GW after heat degraded the effectiveness of their cooling systems.

Nuclear was also exposed. France lost 18 percent of its nuclear capacity to what Ember described as "environmental factors" in mid-July.

Water-dependent generation fared no better: Europe's hydropower production hit its lowest July level in a decade. Wind offered little cover in the United Kingdom, where heat-induced low wind speeds halved typical wind farm generation in June.

The adaptation bill is already being written. France's state-owned utility plans to spend over USD 10 billion adapting its nuclear and hydropower plants to warmer temperatures and lower water availability over the next 15 years.

Quinbrook has selected GE Vernova for the third stage of the Supernode Battery Energy Storage System (BESS) project in Queensland, Australia, the equipment maker said in a press release.

Stage 3 adds 260 MW and 1,216 MWh of four-hour storage, according to GE Vernova. The order was booked in Q1 2026.

With all three stages in place, the Supernode campus is expected to hold 780 MW and 3,075 MWh of battery storage on a single strategic site, GE Vernova said. That makes the third tranche roughly a third of the campus by both power and energy.

The stage has cleared Generator Performance Standards (GPS) acceptance, and GE Vernova described it as its first grid-forming battery energy storage project in Australia. Grid-forming inverters set voltage and frequency references rather than following an existing grid signal, a function historically supplied by synchronous plant.

Headroom at the site remains. GE Vernova said Supernode has capacity for a further 520 MW of expansion, which could include battery storage, data centres or a combination of both. That optionality places the campus at the intersection of two demand streams competing for the same grid connection: storage capacity contracted to firm variable generation, and computing load seeking firm, co-located power.

Genesis has presented the GV90, a full-sized electric SUV, at an event in San Francisco, electrive reported. The model will be the first vehicle built at Hyundai's new EV-dedicated plant in Ulsan, South Korea.

According to electrive, the GV90 sits on the new eMP platform, short for Electric Mobility Prime, which was developed exclusively for Genesis flagship models.

The drivetrain pairs two motors in an all-wheel-drive configuration rated at a combined 490 kW and 800 Nm of torque, according to electrive. Energy comes from a pack with 123.5 kWh gross capacity, of which 115 kWh is usable.

Genesis puts charging from 10% to 80% state of charge at 22 minutes on a 350-kW charger, according to the datasheet cited by electrive.

Two variants are planned. Genesis said the GV90 will be sold as a standard model and as the Neolun.

Researchers at TU Graz increased the ionic conductivity of lithium titanate by deliberately introducing defects into the crystal lattice of the anode material, according to electrive. The team said the modification "activated a previously block pathway" for lithium ions.

The defects were oxygen vacancies. To create them, the researchers heated the lithium titanate in a low-oxygen atmosphere to 300 degrees Celsius, electrive reported.

Evidence for the faster ion movement came from two measurement techniques used in combination: conductivity spectroscopy and nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy.

The experimental work, by Bernhard Gadermaier and Martin Wilkening, was published in the journal Science Advances.

Lithium titanate is used as a battery anode material, and electrive reported that the conductivity result potentially opens up new possibilities for it.

N-type G10L mono wafers changed hands at an average CNY 1.12 per piece, a weekly gain of 40%, pv magazine reported, citing the Silicon Industry Branch of the China Nonferrous Metals Industry Association (CNMIA).

That move came as polysilicon trading in China restarted. On Aug. 19, the CNMIA branch described a slight recovery in the market, which had gone through early August with almost no transactions and no public quotations. Even so, the association put domestic polysilicon output above 110,000 metric tons for the month.

Buyers drove the wafer repricing. Cell manufacturers outside China pulled forward wafer orders during a policy window because of trade risk tied to US Section 232 tariffs, and India's installation season opened, lifting export demand, the CNMIA said. The association identified that demand jump as the main cause of the price surge.

Among producers, Daqo New Energy booked USD 62.7 million in second-quarter 2026 revenue, against USD 26.7 million three months earlier, according to pv magazine. Its third-quarter polysilicon output guidance runs from 40,000 MT to 45,000 MT, with the full-year 2026 target unchanged at 160,000 MT to 180,000 MT.

DR Laser expects demand from new back-contact capacity plus upgrades or expansions of existing production lines to total 40 GW to 50 GW in 2026, pv magazine reported.

Xiaomi's Smart EV, AI and Other New Initiatives segment lost 2.6 billion yuan at the operating level in Q2 2026, according to electrive. Revenue for the same division reached 24.9 billion yuan over the quarter.

Deliveries kept climbing while profitability slipped. Xiaomi handed over 104,199 battery-electric vehicles between April and June, up 28.2 per cent against the same three months a year earlier, electrive reported.

The margin trend runs the other way. Gross margin at the EV and AI division fell to 19.2 per cent in Q2 2026 from 26.4 per cent in Q2 2025, according to electrive. That is a drop of more than seven percentage points on a delivery base that grew by more than a quarter.

In a separate announcement covered by electrive, Czech commercial vehicle manufacturer Tatra Trucks unveiled its first all-electric truck, the Force e-Drive BEV.

The specification points at heavy-duty off-road duty cycles rather than long-haul road freight. The Force e-Drive BEV pairs a 480 kWh battery with all-wheel drive and up to 550 kW of power, electrive reported.

Tatra puts the range at 300 to 400 km depending on the application.

Tesla is recalling 2,975,910 vehicles in China after the country's market regulator found the emergency door release too hard to locate and operate in a crash, according to Electrek. It is the automaker's largest recall in China to date.

The action takes effect September 25, 2026.

Electrek reports the recall covers 973,156 domestically built Model 3s and 1,956,713 domestically built Model Ys, alongside 35,590 imported Model 3s, 8,328 imported Model Xs and 2,123 imported Model Ss.

SAMR says the interior release is difficult to identify and operate because it closely matches the color of the surrounding trim.

Tesla is not changing the door mechanism. Per Electrek, the remedy consists of added warning labels and an over-the-air software update altering how the windows lower to aid escape.

The filing was not isolated. Eight other automakers submitted recalls to the regulator on the same day for the same interior-release problem, among them Xiaomi, Leapmotor, Xpeng, Geely, Chery, Dongfeng, BAIC BluePark and FAW, according to Electrek.

Electrek notes the recall lands as Tesla's door design faces mounting legal and regulatory pressure on two continents.

Austria's Ministry of Economy set out a new subsidy focus on storage, redirecting new solar funding toward batteries, according to pv magazine.

Broad funding for small, standard photovoltaic systems will be phased out. The ministry detailed the plans on Thursday.

The first come, first served allocation model is being scrapped. In the last funding round, the budget ran out in 33 seconds and thousands of applications for photovoltaic and battery storage investment grants went unfunded. That round intensified the debate over how the subsidy framework should be designed.

A storage study commissioned by the ministry indicates that up to 8 GW of market-oriented storage capacity by 2030 would be economically beneficial for Austria. The same study says the additional battery storage could cut wholesale power prices by up to EUR 2 per MWh in 2030.

The study describes the 8 GW as market-oriented capacity, meaning units dispatched on price signals rather than sized to a single household's consumption.

Households installing a standard rooftop array alone lose access to the blanket grant they previously qualified for. Applicants pairing panels with a battery are the ones the redirected budget is aimed at.

A queue that clears in 33 seconds rewards application speed. Removing it changes which projects can reach public money. The ministry did not set out the replacement allocation method in Thursday's announcement.

For installers and battery suppliers working in Austria, the change moves grant volume rather than cutting it, with storage taking the share that had gone to standard photovoltaic installations. Both headline figures, the 8 GW capacity level and the EUR 2 per MWh price effect, come from the study the ministry itself commissioned.

TenneT has finished directional drilling under the beach and part of the seabed at Maasvlakte and installed nine plastic protective conduits in the boreholes, creating a protected passage for offshore wind farm cables, Offshore Engineer OEDigital reported.

The landing point serves three projects: IJmuiden Ver Beta, IJmuiden Ver Gamma and Nederwiek 2. According to Offshore Engineer OEDigital, each wind farm gets a connection rated at 2 GW, adding up to 6 GW routed through the Maasvlakte crossing.

Cable pulling comes next. The electricity cables will be drawn from the sea through the conduit pipes to land starting in the spring of 2027, per the same report.

First power is set for later in the decade. Offshore Engineer OEDigital reported that the first sustainable electricity from IJmuiden Ver Beta is expected to come ashore via the Maasvlakte in 2029.

The drilling method keeps the cable route below the beach and the nearshore seabed rather than trenching through it, with the conduits acting as the permanent sleeve for the circuits that follow. Sequencing the boreholes years ahead of cable pull separates the civil works from the offshore installation campaign, so the shore crossing is finished before the cables arrive.

Arevon Energy has begun operating the 300-MW Nighthawk Energy Storage Project in Poway, California, according to Power Magazine.

The company announced on August 13 that the project had come online, describing it as its largest standalone battery energy storage project, Power Magazine reported.

Nighthawk is a standalone battery installation rather than a storage system paired with a generating asset, per the same account. At 300 MW, it is the biggest such facility in Arevon Energy's operating fleet on a standalone basis.

Hyundai has opened pre-sale orders in China for the Ioniq V, with the entry trim priced at roughly USD 17,700, or 119,900 yuan, according to Electrek.

Electrek reported the model is offered with either a 53.5 kWh or a 66.8 kWh battery. Lower trims deliver 140 kW, equivalent to 188 hp, while the upper trim delivers 168 kW, or 225 hp, per the same report.

The car sits on Hyundai's E-GMP platform and uses 800V charging, Electrek said.

Production is set for Beijing, at a plant Hyundai operates as a joint venture with BAIC Motor.

The Ioniq V opens a planned 20-model push by Hyundai into the Chinese EV market, according to Electrek.

Petrobras has opened direct negotiations for exploration contracts covering four offshore blocks in Ghana, according to World Oil. The acreage sits in the offshore Keta basin, and Ghana's Ministry of Energy and Green Transition cleared the company's application to negotiate for the four blocks, World Oil reported.

The terms remain thin. World Oil reported that Petrobras has not identified which specific blocks are involved, nor disclosed potential ownership interests or planned exploration commitments.

Petrobras framed the step as consistent with its aim of replenishing oil and gas reserves by exploring new frontier areas both in Brazil and outside it, according to World Oil.

Direct negotiation, rather than a competitive licensing round, is the route being used here for the Keta basin acreage. The ministerial approval covers the negotiation stage only; a contract award is a separate step.