Thursday, 10 September 2026

Chile curtailed a record 2,680 GWh of solar and wind generation in the first seven months of 2026, according to pv magazine.

The full-year comparison is larger. Renewable curtailment reached 6,084 GWh in 2025, up 7.8% from the prior year, on annual figures from Acera cited by pv magazine.

That lost output moved the generation mix. Acera said wind and solar would have supplied 49.4% of Chilean electricity in 2025 without curtailment, against the 42.4% actually recorded.

Acera attributes the increase to transmission constraints, electricity demand that is insufficient during periods of high renewable output, and the need for greater flexibility in Chile's national electricity system.

Storage capacity is being added against that backdrop. Chile had 2,655 MW/11,250 MWh of battery energy storage systems in operation at the end of July, pv magazine reported.

Wind and solar produced 3,058 GWh in July, or 38.6% of Chilean electricity generation for the month, according to pv magazine.

Solar developers connected 11.4 GWdc of new generating capacity in Q2 2026, according to Solar Builder. That is a 45% increase over the same quarter a year earlier and 43% above Q1, Solar Builder reported.

Utility-scale projects carried the quarter, with 9.6 GWdc installed and growth of 61% year over year, according to Solar Builder.

Solar Builder attributed the strong quarter to developers moving quickly to bring projects online ahead of the July 2026 safe harbor deadline for tax credit eligibility.

Across the first half of 2026, solar and storage together made up 70% of all capacity added to the grid, Solar Builder reported. States won by President Trump in 2024 accounted for 71% of solar capacity installed over that period, according to the same report.

Environmental and environmental justice groups have sued the City of Los Angeles over the CEQA review of a USD 800 million hydrogen-ready retrofit at the Scattergood plant, according to Hydrogen Fuel News.

The litigation cites health, NOx and water risks tied to the project, Hydrogen Fuel News reported.

The retrofit is part of a Los Angeles Department of Water and Power plan to convert the Scattergood Generating Station into a hydrogen-ready combined-cycle plant.

Five organizations are named in the coalition challenging the plan: Food & Water Watch, Physicians for Social Responsibility - Los Angeles, the Sierra Club, Communities for a Better Environment, and Los Angeles Waterkeeper, according to Hydrogen Fuel News.

Array Technologies has opened a 216,000-square-foot manufacturing facility in Albuquerque, New Mexico, according to Solar Builder. The company marked the opening of the plant, which cost more than USD 50 million, on Sept. 9.

Solar Builder reported that the site is roughly three times the size of Array's previous Albuquerque location and supports approximately 300 jobs across production, assembly, design, engineering, customer service and other functions.

Array has more than 100 GW of tracker deployments worldwide, according to Solar Builder.

Valencian authorities have approved EUR 76 million for a green hydrogen demonstrator and a sustainable fuel pre-treatment plant at bp's Castellón refinery, according to Hydrogen Fuel News.

The larger share goes to the hydrogen side. Hydrogen Fuel News reported that around EUR 66.3 million is set aside for the demonstrator under the FEDER Comunitat Valenciana 2021-2027 program, which is managed by Ivace+i.

That project is being developed through Castellón Green Hydrogen Phase 2 S.L., per the same report.

The balance of the package, EUR 9.7 million, backs the pre-treatment facility for sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) and hydrotreated vegetable oil (HVO), according to Hydrogen Fuel News.

Swedish thin-film solar equipment maker Midsummer AB and Indonesian industrial group PT Metalogika Rekayasa Sistem have signed a binding investment and industrialization agreement to establish flexible CIGS solar cell and module manufacturing in Indonesia, according to pv magazine.

Metalogika plans to build the production facility with initial capacity of 20 MW per year and potential expansion to as much as 200 MW annually, pv magazine reported, with output aimed at the Indonesian market and at export.

Midsummer's role is equipment and services, including its proprietary DUO thin-film production system, alongside a minority equity stake in the joint venture, according to pv magazine. That splits the capital burden: the Indonesian partner builds and owns the plant, the Swedish supplier books the machinery order.

Metalogika president director Firrisky Nurtomo tied the project to Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto's program targeting 100 GW of solar capacity nationwide and electrification of 80,000 rural areas, pv magazine reported.

The structure repeats one Midsummer has already used in Colombia, where it is supplying equipment for a CIGS factory rated at least 100 MW per year. Cumulative machinery orders for that project were reported at about SEK 380 million, according to pv magazine.

The licensing-and-equipment route replaced an earlier plan to manufacture at home. Midsummer said it would abandon plans for a 200 MW factory of its own in Sweden and decline an available EU grant, pv magazine reported.

Boskalis has put its newly commissioned subsea rock installation vessel Windpiper to work for the first time, laying rock to protect export cables at the Bałtyk 2 and Bałtyk 3 offshore wind farms in the Baltic Sea, according to Offshore Engineer OEDigital.

The vessel loaded nearly 45,000 tons of rock in Norway before sailing to the installation campaign, and Boskalis said that cargo is a record, with no single subsea rock installation vessel previously carrying such a volume for one installation project, OEDigital reported.

Equinor and Polenergia are developing Bałtyk 2 and Bałtyk 3, with Boskalis working alongside Van Oord on the projects, according to OEDigital.

Windpiper was christened on July 3 after an 18-month conversion carried out under Boskalis' supervision.

The ship measures 227 meters long and 40 meters wide, and carries a total rock cargo capacity of 45,500 tons split across two holds, per OEDigital. It has more than 31,000 kW of installed power, seven thrusters and DP2 certification, and Boskalis describes it as the world's largest subsea rock installation vessel.

Japanese petroleum company Idemitsu Kosan Co., Ltd. has set up a development laboratory in the United States for space-grade copper indium gallium-selenide (CIGS) solar cells, according to pv magazine.

The lab sits at the University of California, Santa Barbara's Oasis facility, and pv magazine reports Idemitsu describes it as the first of its kind.

Work on manufacturing is running in parallel at home. Idemitsu is advancing a bench manufacturing plant in Japan with the aim of establishing mass production technologies by 2027, according to pv magazine.

The laboratory follows a partnership announced late last year with U.S.-based Source Energy Company covering the development of CIGS solar modules for satellite and space applications, pv magazine reported.

Suriname's national public utility EnergieBedrijven Suriname (EBS) has opened a tender for the design, supply and installation of solar-storage minigrids and water infrastructure serving rural communities, according to pv magazine. Bids are due by October 30.

The tender is split into two lots. The first covers minigrids combining solar PV with battery energy storage systems (BESS) in ten indigenous communities, together with eleven energy and water systems, and is expected to take 30 months to complete, pv magazine reported. The second lot groups solar-BESS minigrids and water infrastructure into five clusters spanning 16 Matawai communities, with a shorter expected build period of 24 months.

The work sits under the Bio-Sweet project, jointly managed by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and the government of Suriname, with the IDB partly financing project costs, per pv magazine.

Solar capacity in the country remains small. Cumulative installations reached 16 MW by the end of last year, up from 13 MW at the end of 2024, according to International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) figures cited by pv magazine.

Eight of the ten fastest solar-building states in the United States in the first half of the year were states that voted for Donald Trump in the last presidential election, according to a Solar Energy Industries Association report cited by Grist.

The country added more than 11 GW of solar in the second quarter of 2026, Grist reported, an increase of 45% against the same quarter of 2025. States that backed Trump accounted for close to three-fourths of that growth.

Federal solar tax credits expired for most uninitiated solar farms on July 4, 2026, after passage of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, per Grist.

Texas held the top spot in solar development in 2024, in 2025, and again in the first half of 2026.

Michigan moved up the ranking faster, from 23rd place in 2024 to fourth in the first half of 2026. State law there requires utilities to generate 50% of their power from renewables by 2030.