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					</table><p><a href="https://www.meyerburger.com/en/solar-products-for-private-use" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Meyer Burger Technology</a>, a Europe-based solar cell and module manufacturer, has announced a strategic shift in its operations, focusing on its solar module production facility in Goodyear, Arizona, while halting plans for a new solar cell manufacturing plant in Colorado Springs, Colorado.</p>
<p>The decision is part of a broader restructuring effort to achieve sustainable profitability.</p>
<p>The company has deemed the construction of a solar cell production facility in Colorado Springs financially unviable, leading to the project&#8217;s discontinuation. This move also halts the planned collaboration with a U.S. technology group.</p>
<p>Meyer Burger is concentrating on ramping up its 1.4 GW nominal module production capacity at the Goodyear, Arizona plant. This facility is already largely installed and operational.</p>
<p>Contrary to previous plans, the existing cell production site in Thalheim, Germany, will continue to supply solar cells due to their cost-effectiveness under current market conditions.</p>
<p>The company has temporarily suspended plans to expand the Goodyear facility&#8217;s capacity by an additional 0.7 GW. The decision will be revisited based on the progress of ongoing customer discussions and the restructuring program&#8217;s outcomes.</p>
<p>Meyer Burger plans to continue pursuing debt financing by monetizing 45X tax credits, albeit on a reduced scale tailored to its U.S. module production.</p>
<p>This adjustment is expected to lower the company&#8217;s financing needs and reduce the financing gap anticipated after a capital increase in April 2024. Consequently, the medium-term EBITDA target and the group&#8217;s debt ratio are also projected to be lower than expected.</p>
<p>In response to these strategic changes, the Board of Directors has tasked management with developing a comprehensive restructuring and cost-cutting program to ensure long-term profitability.</p>
<p>Additionally, pending regulatory approval, the publication of the company&#8217;s half-year financial results has been postponed from September 16, 2024, to September 30, 2024, or possibly later.</p>
<p>In January, Meyer Burger <a href="https://www.mercomindia.com/meyer-burger-shut-german-module-facility" target="_blank" rel="noopener">shut</a> its manufacturing facility in Freiberg, Germany. The closure is a part of the company&#8217;s plan to cut its losses in Europe and move the manufacturing base to the U.S.</p>
<p>The company plans to explore the options under the 45X Advanced Solar Manufacturing Tax Credit <a href="https://www.mercomindia.com/us-guidance-45x-tax-credit" target="_blank" rel="noopener">regulation</a> to advance its expansion plans in the U.S.</p>


Meyer Burger Drops Colorado Cell Manufacturing Plans, Initiates Restructuring


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					</table><p>Renewable energy company <a href="https://enfinity.global/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Enfinity Global</a> has announced the acquisition of 546 MW of solar assets under development in Colorado, United States, from the engineering, procurement, and construction (EPC) firm <a href="https://csenergy.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">CS Energy</a>.</p>
<p>The acquisition encompasses three solar projects in Colorado, a region with a mandate to achieve 100% renewable energy by 2050.</p>
<p>The company said this portfolio complements Enfinity&#8217;s existing development presence in the Western Electricity Coordinating Council (<a href="https://www.wecc.org/Pages/home.aspx" target="_blank" rel="noopener">WECC</a>) region and will seamlessly integrate into the company&#8217;s in-house development processes and team.</p>
<p>Anticipated to generate recurrent an EBITDA of approximately $59 million per year, the acquired portfolio features investment-grade counterparties. Construction is expected to commence in the next two years, and once operational, it will generate 1,054 GWh of clean electricity annually.</p>
<p>Enfinity Global has a global portfolio of over 17 GW, including 7.3 GW of energy storage assets and 1 GW of operational assets. In the U.S., it manages a portfolio comprising 400 MW and 28 solar PV power projects across California, Idaho, and North Carolina, in addition to owning 6 GW of solar and storage assets in various stages of development across the country.</p>
<p>Over the past year, the company has secured $380 million in capital investment within the U.S.</p>
<p>Ricardo Díaz, CEO Americas of Enfinity Global, said, &#8220;We continue to acquire top-quality portfolios in some of the most promising markets in the U.S. to add and complement our 6 GW proprietary pipeline of projects. Our long-term ownership business model enables us to collaborate with significant investors, stakeholders, and customers, aligning our capabilities to create a zero-carbon future and benefit the communities in which we participate. We remain committed to developing additional projects in Colorado and across the nation.&#8221;</p>
<p>Eric Millard, Chief Commercial Officer of CS Energy, said,&#8221;We take great pride in developing high-quality utility-scale assets and are enthusiastic about our ongoing commitment to building a clean, sustainable future while nurturing valuable partnerships such as this one.&#8221;</p>
<p>Earlier in January, the company <a href="https://www.mercomindia.com/enfinity-global-acquires-400-mw-of-projects-in-the-us" target="_blank" rel="noopener">acquired</a> a 400 MW operational utility-scale solar portfolio to expand the company’s reach in the U.S.</p>
<p>Last November, Enfinity Global <a href="https://mercomindia.com/daily-news-wrap-up-enfinity-adds-solar-capacity-india/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">added</a> 205 MW of solar capacity in India with the interconnection of 135 MW projects in Maharashtra. The company acquired six projects from Rays Power Infra in Telangana and Karnataka.</p>
<p>The company also <a href="https://mercomindia.com/project-finance-brief-enfinity-global-solar-projects-japan/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">raised</a> $242 million in long-term financing for three solar projects in Japan totaling 70 MW last year.</p>


Enfinity Boosts Renewable Portfolio with 546 MW Solar Asset Acquisition in US


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					</table><p>Colorado State University (<a href="https://www.colostate.edu/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">CSU</a>) researchers said introducing molybdenum disulfide (MoS2) in solar cells can help capture excess solar energy, which is generally lost as heat, thereby improving light-to-energy efficiency conversion.</p>
<p>They performed a series of experiments using laser spectroscopy while capturing the hot carriers or highly charged electrons.</p>
<p>The team claimed that conventionally used silicon solar cells do not provide ways for such hot carrier extraction phenomenon, which proves to be an efficient method to increase the overall efficiency of the solar cells.</p>
<p>The improved crystalline structure of MoS2 enables the material to extract and exploit the energy of so-called hot carriers, which are highly energetic electrons. The researchers briefly excite these hot carriers from their ground states by hitting them with sufficient light.</p>
<p>Rather than losing the highly charged electrons as heat, the team could successfully convert the energy from those hot carriers into photocurrent by exciting the electrons in the material.</p>
<p>The experiments replaced the broadly used silicon with 2-dimensional ultrathin films of molybdenum disulfide using ultrafast laser spectroscopy and ultrafast pump-probe transient absorption spectrometer.</p>
<p>The study titled ‘Hot carrier extraction from 2D semiconductor photoelectrodes’ was published in the <a href="https://www.pnas.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences</a>.</p>
<p>Given the improved light absorption capabilities, the researchers observed that MoS2 could be a possible alternative to silicon in solar cells.</p>
<p>The scientists used a pump-probe spectrometer to further study the energy state of each electron when excited with a laser pulse.</p>
<p>The pump-probe transient absorption spectrometer allowed them to capture snapshots of charge flow in their device.</p>
<p>The team created a photoelectrochemical cell using a single atomic layer of MoS2 and used the pump-probe technique to track the cooling of electrons as they moved through the material.</p>
<p>In another research, scientists at the U.S. National Renewable Energy Laboratory <a href="https://www.mercomindia.com/2d-cations-tin-lead-perovskite-solar-cells" target="_blank" rel="noopener">developed</a> a new tin-lead perovskite tandem cell merging different layers of two chemical compounds achieving a power conversion efficiency (PCE) of 25.5%.</p>
<p>Last year, a group of researchers <a href="https://www.mercomindia.com/scientists-announce-record-efficiency-for-ultra-thin-solar-panels" target="_blank" rel="noopener">developed</a> a method to help achieve a 25% increase in energy levels absorbed by wafer-thin solar photovoltaic panels. They claimed that their solar panels, just one micrometer thick (1μm), convert light into electricity more efficiently than others as thin and pave the way to make it easier to generate more clean, green energy.</p>


New Abundant Material Raises Solar Cell Efficiency by Capturing Heat Loss

<p>The United States Bureau of Land Management (<a href="https://www.blm.gov/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">BLM</a>) has invited expressions of interest to lease 89,589 acres of public land in solar energy zones (SEZs) to develop solar projects in Colorado, New Mexico, and Nevada.</p>
<p>The last date to submit expressions of interest is January 20, 2022.</p>
<p>In Colorado, the agency is expected to lease 9,712 acres in Antonio Southeast SEZ, 1,064 acres in DeTilla Gulch SEZ, and 2,650 acres in Los Mogotes East SEZ. In Nevada, it would lease 25,069 acres in Dry Lake Valley North SEZ, 4,569 acres in Gold Point SEZ, and 16,534 acres in Millers SEZ. Afton SEZ’s 29,964 acres is expected to be leased for solar energy projects in New Mexico.</p>
<p>According to the BLM, around 870,000 acres of land have been prioritized for solar energy development out of 245 million acres of public land it manages. The allocated land for projects could support over 100 GW of solar capacity if 8.5 acres of land is needed to develop a 1 MW solar project. The generated power from these solar projects could meet the power needs of over 29 million households. In addition to the prioritized land for solar, the agency maintained 19 million additional acres as open for potential solar development.</p>
<p>Earlier this month, Platte River Power Authority, a U.S.-based power utility company, <a href="https://mercomindia.com/us-based-utility-issues-solar-plus-storage/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">issued</a> a request for proposals (RfP) to acquire 250 MW of solar and/or co-located battery storage projects. The power utility would acquire projects expected to start power delivery on January 1, 2025, with guaranteed commercial operation dates no later than June 1, 2025.</p>
<p>The U.S. <a href="https://mercomindia.com/us-adds-5-7-gw-solar-capacity-q2-2021/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">installed</a> a record 5.7 GW of solar capacity in Q2 2021, a 45% year-over-year increase compared to the same period last year, Solar Energy Industries Association and Wood Mackenzie said in a joint report.</p>
<p>According to a report by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), the pipeline of solar capacity in the U.S. at the end of 2020 <a href="https://mercomindia.com/us-pipeline-solar-projects-battery-storage/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">was</a> around 460 GW. Of this, 160 GW or 34% of projects include battery storage facilities.</p>


Bids Invited to Lease 89,589 Acres of Land to Develop Solar Projects in the US

<p><a href="https://www.prpa.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Platte River Power Authority</a>, a U.S.-based power utility company, has issued a request for proposals (RfP) to acquire 250 MW of solar and/or co-located battery storage projects.</p>
<p>The last date to submit bids is February 18, 2022.</p>
<p>The company said it prefers utility-scale project sizes in the 100 MW range and distribution projects up to 25 MW. It prefers up to 125 MW of projects on the Western Slope of the Rocky Mountains in northern Colorado and 125 MW of projects on the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains in Colorado. The distribution projects up to 25 MW should be located in the community.</p>
<p>The power utility will acquire projects that are expected to start power delivery on January 1, 2025, with guaranteed commercial operation dates no later than June 1, 2025. If the pricing is favorable, it would consider power delivery dates earlier than January 1, 2025.</p>
<p>For power purchase agreements (PPAs), the company will accept a minimum of 15 years and a maximum of 25 years. The PPAs are expected to be signed by November 18, 2022.</p>
<p>To participate in the competitive bidding process, bidders must specify their experience in developing solar and solar plus battery storage projects. They must provide the list of their completed solar and solar plus battery storage in the U.S. and the Rocky Mountains region in the past five years.</p>
<p>According to the RfP, bidders should include a detailed schedule and phasing of the project facility, including engineering, material procurement, construction, installation, interconnection, commissioning, and project testing.</p>
<p>The company seeks a maximum of 550,000 MWh of solar energy deliveries annually, equivalent to the output of 250 MW of solar power projects assuming an annual capacity factor of 25%.</p>
<p>According to a report by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), the pipeline of solar capacity in the U.S. at the end of 2020 <a href="https://mercomindia.com/us-pipeline-solar-projects-battery-storage/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">was</a> around 460 GW. Of this, 160 GW or 34% of projects include battery storage facilities.</p>
<p>The U.S. solar market <a href="https://mercomindia.com/us-adds-5-7-gw-solar-capacity-q2-2021/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">installed</a> a record 5.7 GW of solar capacity in Q2 2021, a 45% year-over-year (YoY) increase compared to the same period last year, Solar Energy Industries Association and Wood Mackenzie said in a joint report.</p>


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