US solar energy firm SunEdison has filed for bankruptcy protection after years of rapid-fire acquisitions. The company’s strategy of buying smaller firms to grow its market-share left it with large amounts of debt. SunEdison is also facing investigations by US regulators. Meanwhile, renewable energy firm Ecotricity said it had bought SunEdison’s UK rooftop solar business.
BBC 21st April 2016 read more »
FT 21st April 2016 read more »
Ecotricity, Britain’s leading green energy company, has swooped to acquire the home rooftop solar business of Sun Edison, which has gone bankrupt in the US. Before exiting the UK, Sun Edison had built a portfolio of nearly a thousand rooftop solar installations, a product known as the Energy Saver Plan. Dale Vince, Ecotricity founder, said: “This is an exciting and important step for Ecotricity. As a company, we want to help more people generate their own power at home.
Scottish Energy News 22nd April 2016 read more »
The San Francisco Board of Supervisors on Tuesday unanimously passed legislation that would require new construction that is shorter than 10 floors to install solar panels or solar water heaters on top of both new residential and commercial buildings. According to California law, all new buildings with 10 floors or less must have at least 15% of their rooftops designated as solar ready — meaning not in the shade. San Francisco now requires those buildings to actually use it for solar panels.
Business Insider 19th April 2016 read more »
Recent studies by the in-house research team at Solar Media’s Market Intelligence team can now exclusively reveal that Solarcentury has become the first company to install more than 500MW of solar PV capacity within the UK. While much of this growth has come in the past couple of years during the solar farm boom in the UK, Solarcentury is also the only major solar PV installer today that was around during the pre-FiT days before 2010. Others entered the market during 2010 and 2011, and have seen strong growth in the past few years, but the number of installers active in both pre and post FiT/ROC subsidy phases is likely to be very few, in particular those having installed capacity levels above 100MW.
Solar Portal 21st April 2016 read more »