Friday, 28 August 2026

Voltage Energy owes Shoals more than USD 96.38 million after a jury verdict in a federal court in North Carolina, pv magazine reported.

Jurors concluded that the infringement was willful. Two Shoals patents on Big Lead Assembly trunk bus technology were infringed when Voltage brought its LYNX trunk bus products into the United States, according to pv magazine.

The money is only part of the exposure. Shoals says the court signalled it will issue a preliminary injunction barring Voltage from making, distributing or selling LYNX products in the United States, pv magazine reported.

Voltage Energy is fighting the result and said it will ask for a new trial and a review of the verdict. The company "strongly disagrees with the jury's verdict and believes the judgment is not supported by legally sufficient evidence or the law".

The same product family already faced a border restriction. In June, the U.S. International Trade Commission issued a limited exclusion order blocking imports of certain Voltage photovoltaic trunk bus cable assemblies that were found to infringe Shoals patents, pv magazine reported.

The two rulings hit different channels. The trade commission order stops shipments arriving in the country, while the district court case attaches a damages figure and, per Shoals, would reach domestic manufacture, distribution and sale of the same LYNX line.

Dolphin Drilling has turned down the terms of a non-binding offer from General Hydrocarbons Limited (GHL) that would settle part of an arbitration award of roughly USD 105 million in cash, with the remainder covered by putting the Blackford Dolphin rig to work in Nigeria, Offshore Engineer OEDigital reported.

The drilling contractor called GHL's move to open contact positive, yet said the package as drafted falls short of what it needs. Dolphin added it would engage constructively on terms capable of producing a commercially sound result, according to Offshore Engineer OEDigital.

The underlying quarrel dates to April 2024, when Dolphin ended the Blackford Dolphin contract with GHL. Payment problems drove that decision.

Dolphin secured judicial backing in July 2025, when the Federal High Court of Lagos gave it leave to enforce the arbitration award against GHL, Offshore Engineer OEDigital reported.

Control of GHL then changed hands. Nigeria's Asset Management Corporation of Nigeria installed a receiver/manager over the company in November 2025, and creditors received instructions to file claims.

The rig itself is contracted elsewhere. On August 20, Dolphin said the Blackford Dolphin will stay with Oil India Limited until October 15, 2026, finishing drilling, testing and abandonment scopes at sites east of India, with the terms and scope of the existing contract carried over. Any Nigerian work under the GHL proposal would depend on that commitment.

Co-located solar-plus-storage projects pulled in a record USD 25 billion of investment during the first half of 2026, according to BloombergNEF data reported by pv magazine.

That figure sits inside a wider renewables total of USD 327.5 billion committed globally over the same six months, pv magazine reported.

The United States ranked as the second-largest market for renewable energy investment, behind China and ahead of the European Union, with 54% year-on-year growth, according to pv magazine. Developers accelerated project financing to meet tax credit deadlines and to respond to surging electricity demand, driven in part by data centers.

US solar investment specifically rose 41% to a record USD 45.8 billion, pv magazine reported.

The capital numbers run against the build numbers. BloombergNEF expects new renewable energy installations in 2026 to fall below 2025 levels, which would mark the first year-on-year decline in more than a decade.

Roughly 200,000 gal/day of LNG liquefaction capacity has moved into Sapphire Gas Solutions' distributed natural gas business through its purchase of EDGE LNG, bought from affiliates of Blue Water Energy, World Oil reported.

EDGE is headquartered in Texas and runs on modular and mobile equipment, offering three linked services: turning gas to liquid, hauling it, and returning it to gas at the customer end. Its liquefaction fleet supplies buyers spread across the southern U.S..

Neither side put a price on the transaction.

Sam Thigpen, CEO of Sapphire Gas Solutions, tied the purchase to a broader plan: it "progresses Sapphire's strategy to be a fully integrated LNG supplier for our customers," he said.

Sapphire came into the deal shortly after announcing a strategic partnership with private equity firm Antin Infrastructure Partners, according to World Oil.