Wednesday, 2 September 2026

Rooftop solar met 99.9% of South Australia's total electricity demand at 1.30pm on 31 August, cutting demand on grid-scale generation to 2 MW, according to pv magazine. The 2 MW reading was a new winter record for the state.

The same half-hour produced a record across the National Electricity Market. AEMO reported minimum operational demand of 11,992 MW at 1.30pm on Monday, below the previous winter low of 12,144 MW set in August 2024, pv magazine reported. Mild temperatures and clear skies across the southeast of the country drove the drop.

At that low point, rooftop solar was contributing close to 54% of underlying demand, according to pv magazine. Renewables, counting rooftop solar together with grid-scale solar and wind, supplied 71% of generation.

The South Australian result rests on a household fleet with few parallels. Solar arrays sit on 57% of the state's rooftops, pv magazine reported, equivalent to 2.92 GW of generation capacity.

Across Australia, rooftop PV systems deliver a combined 28.3 GW of generation capacity, according to pv magazine.

A new world-record power-conversion efficiency has been claimed for a perovskite-CIGS tandem solar cell, according to pv magazine.

The record covers perovskite-CIGS tandem cells with an area of less than 1 cm2. That size class is where certified laboratory device results are compared.

The mark it displaces stood at 26.3%, reported by pv magazine as the previous world record in the same size category. That earlier result came from South Korea's Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST) in July 2025.

Doosan Fuel Cell has signed a KRW 501.4 billion contract with its U.S. subsidiary HyAxiom to supply phosphoric acid fuel cell (PAFC) systems for artificial intelligence data centers in the United States, according to Hydrogen Fuel News.

Hydrogen Fuel News reported the award is worth around USD 360 million.

Under the agreement, HyAxiom will install the PAFC units as behind-the-meter power at AI facilities across the United States, with deliveries staged between the second half of 2026 and the first half of 2028, per Hydrogen Fuel News.

The deal is Doosan Fuel Cell's first major entry into the U.S. data center power market, according to the same report.

Behind-the-meter siting places the fuel cells on the customer side of the utility connection, supplying the load directly rather than through the grid. The staged delivery window described by Hydrogen Fuel News spans four consecutive half-years, from the second half of 2026 through the first half of 2028.

A 199-meter bulk carrier operated by Lomar Shipping completed an 8,500-nautical-mile voyage from Singapore to Ghana running a hydrogen-diesel retrofit supplied by Newlight, according to Hydrogen Fuel News.

The system cut fuel use by 24% and CO2 emissions by 28% over the run, Hydrogen Fuel News reported.

Those reductions came without altering the vessel's size, speed, or cargo capacity, according to the same report. That distinction matters for retrofit economics on existing tonnage: a fuel-saving package that trims deadweight or service speed changes the commercial terms of a charter, while one that leaves the operating envelope intact does not.

The pilot installation was backed by lomarlabs and passed Factory Acceptance Testing supervised by RINA, Hydrogen Fuel News reported. Classification-society oversight of the acceptance testing is the step that separates a bench demonstration from equipment a shipowner can put on a commercial trading route.

The Singapore-to-Ghana leg is a long-haul deep-sea run rather than a short coastal shuttle, which puts the retrofit under sustained load across a full ocean crossing.

California's Victor Valley Transit Authority (VVTA) has begun operating 13 New Flyer Xcelsior CHARGE FC hydrogen fuel cell buses, according to Hydrogen Fuel News, with the vehicles assigned to urban, rural and long-distance High Desert routes.

Each bus runs on a Ballard FCmove-HD+ engine, Hydrogen Fuel News reported. The mix of route types puts the same drivetrain against short urban stop-and-go duty cycles and extended intercity runs, rather than confining the vehicles to a single test corridor.

The deployment is phased and forms part of the agency's plan for a 100% zero-emission fleet by 2035, per Hydrogen Fuel News.

The rollout follows an earlier event where the operator displayed the New Flyer fuel cell models with new branding alongside a mobile fueling unit supplied by Linde, according to Hydrogen Fuel News. Mobile fueling matters for hydrogen bus programs because refueling infrastructure, not vehicle availability, typically sets the pace at which units can enter revenue service.

Maine regulators selected Clearway Energy to build an 800 MW wind farm in the north of the state, a project that would lift Maine's onshore wind capacity by about 66%, Electrek reported.

The state counted 1,214 MW of onshore wind-powered generating capacity as of October 2025, according to Electrek, making the Clearway project the largest wind farm in Maine once built.

In the same procurement, the Maine Public Utilities Commission (PUC) picked Avangrid Networks to develop the high-voltage transmission line required to move the output from northern Maine to the New England grid. Avangrid's proposed line would carry 1,200 MW and terminate at Haynesville, where it connects to the regional system.

Maine plans to purchase roughly 600 MW of the wind farm's output, with the remaining 200 MW allocated to other New England states, per Electrek.

Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island and Vermont are participating in the procurement, which leaves Maine carrying less than 11% of the transmission costs.

The state estimates the wind and transmission projects together will deliver between USD 387 million and USD 425 million in net benefits to Maine electricity customers over their operating life.

The PUC estimates the two projects will create more than 2,500 full-time construction jobs over four years and generate more than USD 2.4 billion in economic output in Maine.