Republic of South Africa's Department of Energy has announced a list of preferred bidders for renewable energy development in this country. The list covers developers involved in wind and solar CSP and solar PV development. A total of 1.415 GW of the planned 3.725 GW of RE capacity has been allocated through this tender.
The Albanian government is planning to privatize four hydropower facilities, with hopes of raising between 100 and 150 million euros. The four projects are Ulza, Shkopet, Bistrica 1 and Bistrica 2, totalling in about 76.8 MW of installed capacity.
Google is downsizing its external operations, as the company's CEO Larray Page is steering the company back to its core business. Among the projects getting shut down or abandoned is RE<C (Renewable Energy Cheaper than Coal), a research program initiated by the company in order to find ways to reduce the cost of renewable energy and make it cheaper than coal. The research efforts were mostly concentrated on solar power technology.
GE announced the company's has opened its new renewable energy logistics center in Olive Branch, Mississippi (USA). The new facility represents one of the many steps the company is taking as part of a new strategy to improve customer response times throughout the North American market. The new logistics center will deal with both wind and solar energy projects.
E.ON is looking into options for storing excess wind energy in other of forms of potential energy. One of the options is to convert the produced electrical energy into hydrogen, which can then be stored in Germany's gas grid. E.ON is making a EUR 5 million investment in such a pilot plant, and more research in this new field of energy storage.
Trina Solar announced Singapore as the choice of location of the solar PV product manufacturer's regional headquarters. The new offices will serve as an administrative, sales, project development, R&D, logistics and purchasing operations center for the South East Asia and Australia regions (initially) including Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia, the Philippines, India, Japan, Australia, New Zealand and Korea. Additionally, the HQ will also cover the Middle East and South Africa.
China Ming Yang Wind Power (MY) has signed a development financing cooperation agreement and a planning agreement with China Development Bank (CDB), through the company's subsidiary Guangdong Ming Yang Wind Power Industry Group. CDB could support MY's strategic and financial planning with as much as USD 5 billion. This includes financing, loans and credit facilities until 2015.
The European Investment Bank has approved a EUR 200 million loan to Iberdrola for funding the company's research and development program. The loan will finance several projects in the fields of conventional power generation, power transmission and distribution, and renewable energy.
IBM has joined the collaborative consortium of participants in the EcoGrid EU project, which is to demonstrate the capabilities of a smart energy grid which will connect smart devices with renewable energy sources, altogether based on real-time pricing and power availability.
The UK Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) announced the appointments of members of the country's Offshore Wind Cost Reduction Task Force (OWCRTF), which is to deal with the problem of finding ways to reduce the cost of offshore wind power installations, in order to improve the industry's growth capability. The task force is part of the UK government's Renewable Energy Roadmap, which was announced in July this year. The members of the task force include high level officers from various top wind industry players, as well as financial and government institutions.
