Wednesday, 26 August 2026

Utility regulators in Maine have selected an 800-megawatt wind farm proposal and a 1.2-gigawatt transmission line plan from bids received earlier, according to Canary Media.

The pairing of generation and transmission is the core of the selection. The 800 MW wind project would need the separately chosen 1.2 GW line to move its output, per Canary Media's account of the regulators' choice.

The decision lands after a long stretch of unsuccessful attempts. Maine has tried for nearly two decades to build utility-scale wind in the northern reaches of the state, Canary Media reported. Those northern areas carry the wind resource but sit far from the load centers that would buy the power, which is why the transmission component sits alongside the generation award in the same procurement.

The Albanese government is set on writing rules for new data centres that would oblige operators to source additional renewable energy, according to RenewEconomy.

RenewEconomy describes that requirement as a welcome shift for a sector that has struggled to secure power deals capable of making projects viable.

The question of who powers the data centre build-out lands in front of the states. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is due to sit down with state and territory leaders at a national cabinet meeting on Wednesday, RenewEconomy reported.

Not every jurisdiction is aligned with the additionality approach. Queensland and the Northern Territory are pushing to use data centre demand as a lever to bolster gas and coal power, according to RenewEconomy.

That split sets up the central tension for the meeting: whether new computing load is matched with newly built renewable generation, or used to underwrite fossil-fuelled capacity in the states arguing for it.

Energy storage is strengthening grid reliability in the United States, and five states lead that deployment, according to CleanTechnica.

The publication ties the buildout to rising consumption. Electricity demand is surging from data centers, advanced manufacturing, and extreme summer heat, CleanTechnica said.

Storage sits at the intersection of those three drivers. Data center load runs around the clock, manufacturing sites add firm industrial demand, and summer heat concentrates stress on the system during peak hours. CleanTechnica frames the reliability gains as an outcome of storage deployment rather than of any single state policy.

Australian inflation fell 0.3 percentage points in July to 3.5%, a decline IEEFA attributes largely to a smaller contribution from housing, but the specialist research group warns the relief will not carry into August as fuel excise relief ends.

Transport fuel worked against that easing even in July, adding 0.2 percentage points to the Consumer Price Index (CPI), according to IEEFA.

The excise arithmetic explains why. IEEFA reports the fuel excise cut ran at 26.3 cents per litre from April to June, was trimmed to 16 cents per litre in July, and was removed in August. Since the start of August, retail petrol has run about 21 cents per litre above average July prices and diesel about 34 cents per litre higher, IEEFA said.

International product markets are compounding the excise step-up. In the week of 19 August, IEEFA found diesel prices 82% above pre-crisis levels and petrol 53% higher, against a 29% rise in crude oil measured in Australian dollars. The gap between refined products and crude places the pressure on the fuels Australian road freight and passenger vehicles actually buy, rather than on the barrel itself.

The Reserve Bank of Australia estimated that oil accounts for 2-2.5% of domestic production and distribution costs, IEEFA noted, giving a channel through which pump prices feed into the broader basket beyond the direct transport component.

Exposure to that channel has widened over time. IEEFA found Australia's diesel intensity rose 33% between 2000 and 2024, while global diesel intensity fell 31% on average over the same period. A domestic economy using more diesel per unit of activity absorbs a given diesel price move more heavily than the global average.

The combination IEEFA describes leaves the August print facing three additive pressures at once: the full excise restored, refined product cracks running well ahead of crude, and a freight and logistics base that has grown more diesel-dependent for a quarter of a century.

Argentina's installed photovoltaic (PV) capacity is approaching 2.6 GW and demand is growing, according to pv magazine.

Growth is running against two structural limits. pv magazine identifies transmission capacity and access to finance as the constraints holding back the Argentine solar market.

The sector has been operating without its central procurement channel. Argentina's RenovAR renewable energy public procurement program was shuttered in 2025, forcing the domestic solar industry to adapt, pv magazine reported.

RenovAR launched in 2016 and ran four successful tenders before it closed, according to the same report.

Shell has sold home battery maker Sonnen to Tiven, a family office based in Munich, according to RenewEconomy. The disposal ends an ownership run that began with a takeover the oil major valued far more highly.

RenewEconomy, citing Dealroom, reported the sale price could be in the low triple-digit millions of euros, well below the EUR 500 million Shell reportedly paid for the business in 2019.

The gap widens against the company's own earlier expectations. When Shell put Sonnen on the market in 2023, the business was tipped to fetch EUR 2 billion, RenewEconomy reported. The oil major announced that year that it wanted out of the battery company.

Tiven is owned by Gert Purkert, founder of Aurelius, according to RenewEconomy, which said Shell confirmed the sale.

Sonnen was founded in Germany in 2010. Following the 2019 takeover, Shell said it would "scale up Sonnen's production five to 10 fold in the next 24 months".

The transaction removes another clean energy holding from Shell's portfolio, RenewEconomy reported.

Australia's federal Capacity Investment Scheme (CIS) has moved to its eleventh round, targeting roughly 1.8 GW of renewable generation in Western Australia, pv magazine reported. Winning projects should be running by 2030.

Registration has already begun. The bid window opens 27 August, timed with publication of the guidelines that govern the round.

Within the 1.8 GW target sits a 180 MW carve-out labelled the First Nations Equity and Revenue Sharing Set Aside. To compete for it, a developer must offer First Nations equity participation of at least 5%, or an equivalent revenue-sharing structure.

Australian Energy Minister Chris Bowen said this is the first tender requiring bidders to take part in the government's new Developer Rating Scheme (DRS), which rates the record and conduct of renewable developers and transmission companies for landholders and communities.

Western Australia has already run CIS rounds this year. Those awards covered 10 projects, totalling 1.9 GW of renewable generation plus 482 MW of battery storage, according to pv magazine.

On the government's own account, Tender 11 is likely the last CIS round it runs in the Wholesale Electricity Market (WEM), conditional on generation and dispatchable capacity targets being reached.

The UK Prime Minister cut taxes on electricity bills in July 2026, according to UK DESNZ.

The VAT cut has been funded for the 2026 to 2027 financial year through the cancellation of the digital ID programme, UK DESNZ said. That ties the relief to a single budget year and to a specific offsetting decision rather than to new borrowing.

A second measure runs alongside it. Around 6 million households are eligible for the Warm Home Discount this winter, according to UK DESNZ. The discount provides a further GBP 150 off electricity bills for eligible households.

The two measures work through different channels. The tax reduction applies to bills broadly, while the Warm Home Discount is targeted at the eligible group identified by UK DESNZ.

Solmech has finished a hybrid retrofit at the 4.1 MW Warnertown Solar Farm in South Australia, bolting DC-coupled battery storage onto an operating PV plant, according to ESS News.

The contractor swapped out six of the site's Sungrow PV inverters for hybrid units, pairing each with a 200 kWh Powerkeeper battery. ESS News reported the work added 1.2 MWh of storage capacity in total.

Warnertown sits roughly 215 kilometers north of Adelaide and dates back further than most operating solar assets in the state. Per ESS News, the plant was built in 2001 with a 2.5 MW ground-mounted PV system, and a second stage of 1.6 MW followed in 2023.

The DC-side approach is what Sungrow points to as the commercial case. Coupling the batteries directly on the DC side avoided transformer modifications, cut project complexity and significantly lowered investment costs, Sungrow said.

Retrofits of this shape matter for older PV sites whose grid connection agreements and balance-of-plant equipment were specified for solar alone. Sungrow said the configuration enabled faster deployment and stronger commercial returns. At Warnertown, the six inverter replacements carried the entire storage addition without touching the transformer stage.

BP has finished a planned maintenance program on the Central Azeri platform in Azerbaijan's Azeri-Chirag-Deepwater Gunashli (ACG) field ahead of schedule, according to Offshore Engineer OEDigital.

The turnaround started on August 19 and had been set to run 11 days, Offshore Engineer OEDigital reported.

BP said all planned work was completed safely and that output was being ramped back toward its pre-maintenance level.

Central Azeri contributed about 88,000 barrels per day of the roughly 323,000 b/d that ACG averaged in the first half of 2026, per Offshore Engineer OEDigital. That makes the platform slightly more than a quarter of the field's reported first-half output, so the duration of any shutdown there carries directly into consortium-level volumes.

Part of the scope served the Central Azeri Gas Expansion project, which is designed to raise gas reinjection capacity on the platform, according to the same report. Reinjection supports pressure in producing reservoirs, tying the maintenance window to recovery from wells already drilled rather than to new drilling.

Ownership of ACG is split among seven parties: SOCAR holds 35.3%, BP 30.37%, MOL 9.57%, INPEX 9.31%, ExxonMobil 6.79%, TPAO 5.73% and ONGC Videsh 2.92%, Offshore Engineer OEDigital reported. BP is the largest holder after the state company, and the shortened outage feeds through to each partner's entitlement barrels in proportion to those stakes.

GE Vernova Inc. announced the launch of the GL316c, a 420 kV, 63 kA sulfur hexafluoride (SF6)-free Live Tank Circuit Breaker, at CIGRE Paris 2026.

The breaker replaces SF6 with a carbon dioxide and oxygen (CO2/O2) gas mixture. According to GE Vernova, the mixture delivers the performance and reliability required by modern transmission networks.

The design did not start at the launched rating. GE Vernova said the GL316c was originally developed for 420 kV, 50 kA applications under its "LIFE SF6-free HV Breaker" project, co-funded by the European Union's LIFE Programme.

Production is earmarked for Europe. The company said the new 420 kV, 63 kA circuit breaker is planned to be manufactured at its facility in Villeurbanne, France.

Live tank circuit breakers sit at the interruption points of high-voltage transmission substations, where SF6 has long been the standard insulating and arc-quenching medium. Moving a 63 kA short-circuit breaking duty onto a CO2/O2 mixture puts the alternative gas at the upper end of transmission-class switching requirements rather than in lower-rated niches.

The EU co-funding link ties the product to a public decarbonisation instrument, and the step from the 50 kA project rating to the 63 kA commercial rating is the change GE Vernova is taking to market.

York Timber Holdings signed a 10-year renewable electricity agreement with electricity trader Discovery Green in June 2026 to supply its Jessievale sawmill, according to Mongabay.

The contract is structured as a wheeling arrangement. Mongabay reported that Discovery Green will coordinate an equivalent amount of power fed into South Africa's national grid by a range of solar and wind producers across the country.

The sawmill already draws on generation of its own. York Timber operates a 700 kW solar farm at the Jessievale mill, Mongabay reported.

South Africa's Carbon Tax on greenhouse gas emissions was introduced in 2019, according to Mongabay.

GE Vernova has signed an agreement with LS Electric to set up a joint venture in voltage-sourced converter high-voltage direct current (VSC-HVDC), according to a GE Vernova press release.

The company said the venture is intended to strengthen its competitiveness in the VSC-HVDC business.

GE Vernova described VSC-HVDC as a core component of Korea's next-generation power grid. The converter technology sits at the heart of long-distance direct-current transmission links, converting between AC and DC at each end of a line.

GE Vernova did not disclose further terms of the agreement in the announcement.

A research team led by scientists at South Korea's Chonnam National University has built a tri-layer composite solid electrolyte for next-generation rechargeable lithium metal batteries, ESS News reported.

The best-performing version, designated CSE-30, reached an ionic conductivity of 5.60 × 10−3 S.cm−1 at 60 C, according to ESS News. The same sample recorded a lithium transference number of 0.81, with the publication describing mechanical strength and elongation as exceptional.

In full-cell testing, LiFePO4|Li cells built with the electrolyte held a stable discharge capacity of 133.6 mAh g−1 at 0.5C, ESS News said.

The work was published in Advanced Materials under the title "Surface-Functionalized LLZO-Incorporated Multilayer Composite Solid Electrolytes for Dendrite Suppression and Efficient Ionic Conduction in Lithium-Metal Batteries". Researchers from Chonnam National University and the Korea Institute of Industrial Technology contributed to the study, according to ESS News.

A group of Chicago business leaders has announced the O'Hare Flyer, a fully electric non-stop express train linking downtown Chicago with O'Hare airport, according to Electrek.

The route was assembled from freight rail right-of-way held by three Class I railroads, Electrek reported: CSX, Canadian National, and Union Pacific. The group has signed a Letter of Intent with CSX and says it is moving forward with the other two carriers.

Backers describe the project as a private commercial endeavor and say they are not currently seeking government subsidies or funding, per Electrek.

A Chicago Tribune editorial published alongside the announcement projects a per-passenger fare of USD 25 to USD 35 on the proposed service.

The team plans to have the first trains running around 2030, according to Electrek.

Standalone battery revenues from continuous intraday trading in Germany dropped to EUR 14,300 per MW/month in July from EUR 17,700 per MW/month in June, a decline of about 19%, according to ESS News, which modelled a representative 10 MW/20 MWh system.

The fall came in a month when renewables covered 71.5% of German electricity generation, the highest monthly share recorded so far in the year, ESS News reported.

Continuous intraday remained the strongest single-market strategy for standalone assets even after the drop. Batteries combining markets did better: forecast-based cross-market optimization brought in EUR 23,100 per MW/month, around 8% below June but roughly 33% above the combined wholesale strategy, per ESS News.

Capacity payments held flat. Frequency containment reserve revenues stayed unchanged at EUR 14,900 per MW/month, according to the same report.

The wider price picture explains part of the squeeze on trading margins. ESS News put the average German day-ahead spot price at around EUR 104/MWh in July, roughly EUR 6/MWh below June. Negative day-ahead prices, which reward batteries for charging, became more frequent: 79 hours were recorded in July against 52 in June.

That combination - more hours below zero but a lower average price level - left arbitrage spreads thinner than the headline count of negative-price hours suggests, with intraday and cross-market revenues both moving down month on month.

FCR was the only revenue stream in the ESS News breakdown that did not move, leaving capacity-market income as the stable floor beneath a weaker trading month.

Spain's Council of Ministers cleared urgent administrative processing of a draft royal decree on August 25 that would tie data center expansion to energy sustainability, water efficiency, resilience and digital sovereignty requirements, according to pv magazine.

Under the proposal, operators would have to cover at least 80% of their electricity consumption with additional renewable generation, matched hour by hour against supply, pv magazine reported.

The threshold is not permanent. Per pv magazine, the 80% obligation would hold until renewables exceed 90% of Spain's electricity mix, at which point the requirement could be revised.

The scale of the pipeline explains the urgency. The Spanish government said more than 12 GW of grid access and connection rights have gone to data centers since 2021, according to pv magazine.

Compliance deadlines differ by project stage. Facilities already inside the permitting process would get six months to meet the new requirements, while those waiting on a grid access tender would get three, pv magazine reported.

Hourly matching is the demanding part of the design. It requires generation to line up with consumption in each hour rather than over a year, and the additionality condition means the renewable supply must be new rather than drawn from existing plants.

Hyundai Motor Company will introduce its first range-extender electric vehicle next year, with EREV models scheduled to reach customers in the first half of 2027 offering more than 600 miles (965 kilometres) of range, according to electrive.

The launch sits inside a wider product push. Hyundai announced plans to launch or revise more than 100 vehicle models worldwide by 2030, electrive reported.

Electrified vehicles accounted for 23% of Hyundai's sales mix in 2025, and the carmaker is targeting a 60% share by 2030, according to electrive.

In Europe, the company aims to sell more than 420,000 battery-electric cars by 2030, up from 116,000 in 2025, per electrive. Hitting that figure would require roughly a fourfold increase over the 2025 base.

On cell chemistry, Hyundai plans to use NCM cells with a medium nickel content, which electrive reported are expected to cut battery costs by around 30%. Nickel-cobalt-manganese formulations with lower nickel loadings trade some energy density for cheaper input materials, a lever carmakers have pulled to defend margins on mass-market battery-electric models.

Manufacturing capacity is being scaled alongside the model count. Hyundai plans to add 1.27 million units of global production capacity by 2030, according to electrive.

Range-extender powertrains pair a battery-electric drivetrain with a combustion engine that acts only as a generator, never driving the wheels directly. The configuration lets a carmaker advertise long total range without the fast-charging dependency of a pure battery-electric vehicle, and Hyundai's stated figure of more than 600 miles is the number it is putting behind that pitch.

The electrified share target and the European battery-electric volume goal work on different denominators: the 60% mix figure spans electrified vehicles broadly, while the 420,000-unit number is specific to battery-electric cars in Europe. Both sit on the same 2030 horizon as the model programme and the capacity build-out.

Public Service Electric and Gas Co. (PSE&G) has opened its GridSmart Battery Program as a pilot for residential electric customers in New Jersey, pairing a USD 5,000 incentive with interest-free on-bill financing for home battery installations, according to Solar Builder.

The incentive covers purchase and installation of a residential battery energy storage system (BESS), Solar Builder reported. Customers can also take up to USD 25,000 in interest-free repayments spread across their utility bill, removing the upfront capital barrier that keeps most households out of the storage market.

PSE&G says the pilot will test how residential batteries can support virtual power plant (VPP) programs in the state, according to Solar Builder. That framing puts the utility's device-level incentive alongside a regulatory track already underway: the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities (NJBPU) opened a stakeholder process earlier in 2026 to develop a statewide VPP network.

The sequencing matters for how aggregated residential storage gets valued in New Jersey. A VPP requires enrolled devices before it can dispatch anything, and household batteries are the slowest asset class to build out because the cost lands on the customer, not the utility balance sheet. Splitting the subsidy into a fixed grant plus zero-interest amortization addresses both halves of that problem, and it gives PSE&G an installed base to study while the NJBPU rulemaking is still open.

What PSE&G learns from the pilot on enrollment rates, install economics, and dispatch behavior will land in a policy environment where the statewide framework has not yet been settled.

Japanese chemical producer Tokuyama has inaugurated a polysilicon factory in Vietnam, pv magazine reported.

The plant sits inside the Phu My 3 Special Industrial Park in Ho Chi Minh City, and according to pv magazine it will manufacture and distribute polysilicon for semiconductors.

Capital committed to the project reached VND 580 billion, or USD 22.2 million, per pv magazine.

The company first announced plans for the Vietnamese site in 2024, according to the same report.

Asahi Kasei has started up a coating line for its Hipore wet-process battery separators in Charlotte, North Carolina, according to electrive.

The line sits on the grounds of the existing Celgard plant, electrive reported, with commercial output scheduled for the second half of fiscal 2026.

The Japanese chemical company is pairing the Charlotte investment with a separator factory under development in Canada, a combination it says will substantially widen its local supply chain across North America, per electrive.

Ryu Taniguchi, President of Asahi Kasei Battery Separator Corporation, described the Charlotte opening as a key milestone in building the company's North American supply platform for battery separators.

Separators are the thin porous membranes that keep the anode and cathode of a lithium-ion cell apart while allowing ions to pass, and wet-process grades are used in higher energy-density cells. Coating capacity placed alongside an operating separator plant shortens the step between base film and finished product for customers on the continent.

A Saudi-US civil nuclear cooperation agreement is now before Congress, and the text leaves enrichment unsettled, according to Neutron Bytes.

U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright and Saudi Energy Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman signed the pact on July 22, 2026. Its formal title is the "Saudi Arabia-United States Agreement for Cooperation on the Peaceful Uses of Nuclear Energy".

Section 123 of the Atomic Energy Act governs what happens next. Two committees, Senate Foreign Relations and House Foreign Affairs, work through the text across 90 days of continuous congressional session. Neither chamber has to vote yes for the accord to enter force; only a joint resolution of rejection, passed inside that window, would stop it.

Enrichment remains unresolved in the agreement. Rather than settling it, the two governments have set up a joint study running 2 years on whether indigenous fuel enrichment is feasible, Neutron Bytes reported, deferring the final call.

Solaris has signed a contract to supply 20 electric buses to the public transport operator in the Czech city of Olomouc, according to electrive. Delivery is scheduled for 2028, and the contract carries an option to double the order.

The firm portion splits evenly between vehicle types: ten Urbino 12 electric solo buses and ten Urbino 18 electric articulated buses, electrive reported.

The manufacturer is not new to the operator. Solaris has delivered 96 buses to Olomouc to date, but the vehicles under this contract will be the first battery-electric Solaris buses to enter the transport company's fleet, according to electrive.

A consortium led by newcleo has been selected under the call-for-projects "Supporting the decarbonisation of the French maritime sector" managed by Bpifrance, according to a GlobeNewswire release. The award covers n-Floating, a design study for floating nuclear generation.

Funding under the programme comes to almost EUR 1 million, per the release. Work has already started and is expected to run for roughly 18 months.

The design centres on a non-self-propelled floating unit housing multiple LFR-AS-200 reactors, each offering an electrical output of 200 MWe.

Alongside newcleo, the consortium includes Bureau Veritas Marine & Offshore and ABMI Groupe.

The study sets out a subsequent development programme and a roadmap towards potential industrial deployment by 2036, with the stated ambition of designing and building the solution in France.

Three fields in the Norwegian Sea, Alve Nord, Idun Nord and Ørn, are now producing for Aker BP, adding around 120 MMboe of recoverable resources a year earlier than the original plan set out, World Oil reported.

Work on the trio ran as three distinct subsea projects grouped under the Skarv Satellite Project umbrella. Each field has one subsea template plus two wells, all routed back to the Skarv FPSO already in place.

"Through a single integrated project, we have brought three new fields on stream, one year ahead of the original schedule," said Aker BP CEO Karl Johnny Hersvik.

Operatorship sits with Aker BP across all three, where its stakes span 23.8% to 58.1%. Equinor, Harbour Energy, ORLEN Upstream Norway and JAPEX Norge hold licence interests alongside it, according to World Oil.

OneSubsea, Subsea7, Aker Solutions and Halliburton carried out the work under Aker BP's alliance model, and Saipem joined for drilling. Norwegian suppliers accounted for roughly 60% of deliveries into the project.

Estimated CO2 intensity across the three developments comes to approximately 4.5 kg per boe, World Oil reported.

Four governments want the shipping emissions package that carried a 63-13 vote at the April 2025 talks put back on the table for adoption: the UK, Australia, Canada and South Africa, Climate Home News reported.

That package, the Net-Zero Framework (NZF), reached provisional agreement in April 2025. It pairs emissions reduction targets for shipowners with payments to those that meet them and fees on those that do not.

Adoption stalled instead. Climate Home News reported that the US, in October 2025, persuaded a majority of voting nations to hold off on adopting the NZF for a year, following an intervention by US President Donald Trump and threats of sanctions and visa restrictions.

The targets behind the framework date to 2023: a 20% cut between 2008 and 2030, 70% by 2040, and net zero by or around 2050. Shipping accounts for 3% of global emissions, according to Climate Home News.

A rival route is on the table. Climate Home News reported that governments favouring a softer system are likely to back a Liberian proposal, which expert analysis suggests would cut emissions by only half at most by 2050, short of the sector's agreed climate goals.

Brazil has aimed at the finances rather than the targets. Its proposal shifts the raising and spending of Net Zero Fund monies back two years, from 2029 to 2031. Delaying the fund defers both sides of the NZF's core mechanism: the fees collected from ships that miss their targets and the rewards paid to those that beat them.

The April 2025 tally is what the four sponsors are asking governments to convert into a formal decision. Sixty-three votes in favour against 13 opposed gave the framework a majority among governments present.

The UK government has confirmed that waste incineration will not enter the UK Emissions Trading Scheme (UK ETS) in 2028 as originally intended, according to a policy overview published by UK DESNZ.

The scheme applies to heavy industry, power and aviation. UK DESNZ puts that coverage at approximately 25% of UK territorial emissions. Adding incineration would have pulled a new set of operators into that compliance perimeter.

Separately, the floor price at UK ETS allowance auctions is going up. The Auction Reserve Price has been adjusted from GBP 22 to GBP 28 to reflect inflation, UK DESNZ said.

Legislation for the new floor has been laid, and the GBP 28.00 level takes effect for the auction on 8 April 2026, according to the same policy overview.

The reserve price sets the minimum bid at which allowances clear at auction, so the revision lifts the administrative floor beneath the market rather than the traded price itself.

Data center developers are being asked to document their financing, capacity and stress-hour behavior before they can secure power, according to Power Magazine, which describes recent state and federal action as a pivot away from treating data center growth purely as a grid-planning problem.

The emerging requirements put three questions to large-load customers: who pays for the grid upgrades the load triggers, what capacity actually supports it, and how the project will operate when the system is under stress.

Morgan Lewis partner Arjun P. Ramadevanahalli discussed the shift in an interview with POWER, addressing how rising scrutiny is changing the way data centers secure power.

California's state Assembly has passed SB 868, the Plug and Play Solar Act, according to pv magazine. The measure now returns to the Senate for concurrence on the amendments the Assembly attached.

The bill was introduced in January by Senator Scott Wiener, pv magazine reported. Should the governor sign it, the statute would take effect on January 1, 2027.

The Assembly's amendments carry a sunset built into the text. As of January 1, 2030, the interconnection exemption and the right of users to install the devices without utility permission are removed, according to pv magazine. That leaves the permissive regime operating for a defined window rather than indefinitely, with the utility approval requirement returning at the end of it.

Per pv magazine, enactment would make California the eleventh state in the nation to put a plug-in solar law on the books.

Concurrence is the remaining legislative hurdle. Because the Assembly altered the version the Senate originally sent over, the upper chamber must sign off on those changes before the bill can reach the governor.

The U.S. Army has mobilized up to USD 2.2 billion for a five-year effort to build and operate more than 20 commercial nuclear microreactors across military installations, according to Power Magazine.

The service has picked five reactor developers and five initial sites under the Janus program, Power Magazine reported.

Janus is designed to push advanced nuclear systems beyond federal test programs and into sustained operation, per the same reporting. That framing separates the effort from demonstration work: the target is generation on installations rather than a single validated prototype.

The funding ceiling of USD 2.2 billion covers both construction and operation over the five-year window, according to Power Magazine. Spread against a fleet target of more than 20 units, the program sets its ambition at fleet scale rather than a one-off build.

The five initial sites represent a fraction of the eventual buildout implied by the reactor count, and the five selected developers will supply the systems.

Consumers in Great Britain can buy and install plug-in solar kits rated up to 800 W from Aug. 27, according to pv magazine. The UK government said the regulation change could save families up to GBP 110 per year.

An 800 W output can cover up to 20% of an average home's electricity use, according to the UK government as cited by pv magazine. That figure sets the practical ceiling on what a single plug-in kit displaces from a household's metered consumption.

The scope of the change is narrower than the headline capacity suggests. Households in Northern Ireland are not covered by the regulation change, pv magazine reported.

Storage sits outside the reform. Plug-in battery storage devices are not covered by the regulatory changes, according to pv magazine. Buyers pairing a kit with a battery therefore fall back on the rules that applied before, and the savings figure quoted by the UK government attaches to the solar kit alone.

The 800 W threshold defines the product class rather than a per-household allowance in the reporting, and the Aug. 27 start date is the point from which purchase and installation are permitted.

Plug-in solar panels are coming to market in the United Kingdom, with households able to save up to GBP 110 a year, according to UK DESNZ.

The kits supply up to 20% of average home electricity use, UK DESNZ said. Each unit produces up to 800W of power.

Retailers including Currys, B&Q, Screwfix and Amazon have worked with the government on the rollout and will soon stock the kits in stores and online, according to UK DESNZ.

Energy Secretary Miatta Fahnbulleh described plug-in solar as "a simple, affordable way for households to take control of their energy bills and start saving straight away".

The format is established elsewhere. In Germany, where the technology is already widely used, around half a million new devices were plugged in last year, UK DESNZ said.

Duke Energy told Florida environmental regulators on August 20 that a chemical spill had occurred at its Anclote Power Plant, according to CleanTechnica.

Roughly 3,200 gallons of sodium bisulfite reached soil and asphalt around the plant, CleanTechnica reported. The publication described the substance as a potentially strong irritant to skin and tissue.

The notification went to state environmental regulators in Florida, where the plant is located.

Eco (Atlantic) Oil & Gas and Navitas Petroleum estimate that Block 1 CBK offshore South Africa holds more than 3.6 billion barrels of unrisked prospective oil resources, according to World Oil.

The same assessment puts prospective natural gas resources on the block at approximately 4.5 Tcf, World Oil reported.

Block 1 CBK sits in South Africa's Orange basin, an area drawing increased exploration interest after a series of discoveries elsewhere in the basin, according to World Oil.

The numbers rest on existing seismic data. Further interpretation is planned as the two partners continue evaluating the acreage and potential development options, World Oil reported.

The resource update follows Navitas Petroleum's May 2026 agreement to farm into Block 1 CBK, part of a wider strategic relationship with Eco (Atlantic) Oil & Gas covering several Atlantic Margin exploration opportunities, according to World Oil.

Technip Energies has won a detailed engineering contract from Larsen & Toubro Energy Hydrocarbon for a major ADNOC Offshore project in the United Arab Emirates, according to World Oil.

World Oil reports the contract is classified by Technip Energies as "significant," a category the company defines as representing between EUR 50 million and EUR 250 million in revenue.

The scope runs across engineering, procurement, construction, installation and commissioning of new offshore facilities, according to World Oil. The same work package also takes in modifications and upgrades to existing infrastructure.

The award was booked in the third quarter of 2026 and sits within Technip Energies' Technology, Products & Services segment, per World Oil. Larsen & Toubro Energy Hydrocarbon is the awarding counterparty rather than the offshore operator itself.