Thursday, 1 October 2026

Four Olkaria geothermal plants draw their cooling water from Lake Naivasha in Nakuru County, Kenya, and together they hold nearly half of the country's geothermal capacity, according to the IEA's National Climate Resilience Assessment for Kenya.

Geothermal supplied 43% of Kenya's electricity in 2024, the IEA reports.

Most Kenyan geothermal plants cool with wet towers, according to the IEA, a design that holds output steady when air temperatures swing but ties generation to water supply.

Vestas announced a new wind turbine order in Japan as part of its third-quarter order intake, according to Windkraft-Journal.

The company booked 7.85 GW in the first half of 2026 and had announced approximately 1.3 GW of third-quarter orders by September 29, according to GreentechLead.

Among the three major Western wind turbine manufacturers, Vestas had the strongest publicly disclosed order momentum in 2026, GreentechLead reported.

Maruti Suzuki has commissioned a 300 kW green hydrogen electrolyser at its Manesar plant in Haryana.

The pilot converts spare solar power into hydrogen, which is blended with natural gas as a process fuel. The unit draws on solar output generated during factory holidays that would otherwise go unused, and stores the hydrogen until it is needed.

Maruti Suzuki said the project will serve as a learning platform for wider deployment of green hydrogen technology across its manufacturing facilities in Haryana and Gujarat.

DEME has placed the 68th and final monopile at Vattenfall's 980 MW Nordlicht I offshore wind farm in the German North Sea, closing out the foundation campaign, Offshore Engineer OEDigital reported.

Offshore Engineer OEDigital also reports that Siemens Energy picked EST-Floattech to deliver a battery system rated at more than 1 MWh for Marco Polo Marine's new CSOV Plus.

Researchers in Russia have built a two-stage route that pulls silicon carbide out of end-of-life solar panels, according to pv magazine.

The first stage runs pyrolysis at 500 C, pv magazine reported, followed by electric arc treatment pushed above 1,800 C. Under those conditions the solid output reached as much as 61% silicon carbide, a feedstock for power electronics and refractory ceramics.

Carbon loading drove the yield. Lifting the carbon share of the input mixture from 0% to 30% pushed the silicon carbide fraction in the solid from 46% to 61%, according to pv magazine.

Vermont Gas (VGS) and Dandelion Energy are installing geothermal heating and cooling at the Riggs Meadow development in Hinesburg, Vermont, according to Electrek.

The utility will pay the upfront cost for the underground ground loops and retain ownership of them, Electrek reported.

Riggs Meadow will include 44 townhomes and apartments for low- and moderate-income renters and owners, according to Electrek.

Geothermal will serve four multifamily buildings containing 36 of the homes, with each building given its own ground loop, VGS said in its April announcement, as reported by Electrek.

The first solar farm built under the Irish government's Small-Scale Renewable Energy Support Scheme (SRESS) has been energized in County Cork, according to pv magazine.

The Meadhill Solar farm has a capacity of 650 kW and was developed by Cork farmer Sean Keating, pv magazine reported.

The project generates enough energy to power around 150 homes in the area, according to pv magazine.

Keating has signed a 15-year power purchase agreement with Flogas, pv magazine reported.

A coalition of 170 European energy-sector companies has asked the European Commission to maintain binding Renewable Fuels of Non-Biological Origin (RFNBO) hydrogen mandates for transport and industry beyond 2030, according to Hydrogen Fuel News.

The companies warned that rolling back the mandates would undermine investment and risk stalling hydrogen infrastructure and production plans, Hydrogen Fuel News reported.

The effort was led by Hydrogen Europe, a Brussels-based association that represents more than 600 participants in the hydrogen and fuel-cell value chain, according to Hydrogen Fuel News.

California Governor Gavin Newsom signed a bill opening the door to small plug-in solar, known as balcony solar, on September 30, according to Electrek. He signed it alongside two laws aimed at getting more from home energy devices and the existing grid.

The balcony solar law covers systems with a combined output of up to 1,200 W AC per household, Electrek reported.

Qualifying devices must comply with electrical codes and carry certification from Underwriters Laboratories or an equivalent testing lab. They must also include protection to stop them from feeding electricity into the grid during an outage.

California Governor Gavin Newsom signed a bill allowing state residents to adopt balcony solar technology, according to Grist.

State Senator Scott Wiener said the measure eliminates the requirement for plug-in solar users to negotiate an interconnection agreement with their utility, including Pacific Gas and Electric Company. Wiener described that negotiation as the main barrier to using plug-in solar.

Active cooling for solar arrays remains difficult to implement economically, even after record-breaking heat waves this summer caused performance losses at PV plants across the northern hemisphere, according to PV Magazine.

Crystalline-silicon modules typically lose about 0.4% to 0.65% of their performance for each 1 C temperature increase above 25 C, PV Magazine reported.

Developers may be more interested in preventing temperature-related losses, but in most cases the numbers still do not add up for active cooling, according to PV Magazine.

Aurora Solar launched Trust Signal, a quarterly benchmark tracking U.S. homeowners' experiences with solar energy firms.

The share of U.S. homeowners reporting no negative experience with a solar professional rose from 20.2% in Q2 2025 to 37.5% in Q2 2026, drawn from the four most recent quarterly surveys conducted with market research platform Dynata.

The share of survey responses citing solar-company trustworthiness as a concern fell from 41% in 2025 to 36% in 2026, according to PV Magazine.

The U.S. distributed solar market added almost 1.6 GW of new capacity in the second quarter of 2026, according to pv magazine. The installations kept a steady buildout rate across behind-the-meter systems.

Total solar, combining large-scale and small-scale assets, accounted for 55% of all new U.S. electric generating capacity added to the national grid in the quarter, pv magazine reported, citing the Institute for Local Self-Reliance (ILSR) and its quarterly Big Impact of Small Solar report.

Solar held its position as the primary source of new U.S. electricity capacity, but its relative market share contracted compared with prior quarters. ILSR attributed the dilution to a sharp rise in fossil power coming online, with second-quarter thermal capacity additions exceeding those of any single quarter over the past two years.