ENERGY bills are set to continue to rise as the nation's largest electricity retailer's boss says the industry can no longer afford the widespread discounting of recent years. Origin Energy chief executive Grant King said customers had done well out of the discounting, despite the fact electricity bills have already grown. Rising bills have not benefitted the energy providers, with Origin's underlying profi ...

Argentina's government on Wednesday awarded a contract worth billions of dollars for the construction of two hydroelectric dams to a consortium led by China Gezhouba Co. Ltd. The group, which also includes Argentine firms Electroingenieria SA and Hidrocuyo SA, will construct a $4 billion hydroelectric project capable of generating 1,740 megawatts of electricity in the sparsely populated province of Santa Cr ...

The World Bank has agreed to provide US$14 billion for the construction of Pakistan's 4,500-MW Diamer-Bhasha hydropower project, the Kuwait News Agency has reported. Pakistani Minster of Finance Ishaq Dar said in a statement that the country was able to secure the financing after convincing the bank that it is not legally necessary to seek a no-obligation certificate from neighboring India. The World Bank h ...

Papua New Guinea plans to buy electricity from Indonesia`s province of Papua to cover shortage in power supply in PNG province of Vanimo across the border. Vanimo will buy 2 megawatts of electricity from a power plant to be built with a capacity of 2x10 MW in Papua, Indonesian Consul in Vanimo, Jahar Gultom said. “The two countries, PNG and Indonesia have signed a cooperation agreement on the purchase of po ...

Following a restructure of its Australian business, Investec Ltd. is seeking buyers for a wind farm estimated to cost 900 million Australian dollars (US$813 million) to build. “If I could divest it at a reasonable price, I would immediately,” Investec Australia’s Acting Chief Executive Ciaran Whelan said, referring to the bank’s ownership of development rights to the Hornsdale wind project in South Australi ...

Lignol Energy Corporation (LEC), a specialist in advanced biofuels and renewable chemicals, plans to invest up to a further A$1,000,000 in Territory Biofuels Limited (TBF), the owner of the largest biodiesel plant in Australia. Upon completion, LEC will increase its majority holding to up to approximately 66% of the issued and outstanding shares of TBF and up to approximately 68% on a fully diluted basis. " ...

US thin-film module manufacturer First Solar and Australian PV developer and installer Ingenero have formed a partnership agreement aimed at serving the market in Australia and the Asia-Pacific region. The two companies will target the commercial and off-grid markets. Ingenero has experience of building small to medium-scale projects, while First Solar is more commonly associated with utility-scale projects ...

Welspun Energy has commissioned its 55 mw solar photovotaic (PV) power plant in Rajasthan. This project was a part of the first phase of the National Solar Mission and is Asia's largest single location solar power plant. This solar project, located near Phalodi in Jodhpur district, has been developed in three phases of 15, 15 and 20 mw. Welspun stated that it completed the project in five months. This solar ...

The amount of water consumption on the single day of July 30 reached 2.94 million cubic meters in urban Beijing, the highest recorded in the past century, The Beijing News reports. As a megacity that has continuously suffered from rainfall shortage since 1999, Beijing has no more than 100 cubic meters of water for each of its 20 million inhabitants a year, only one tenth of the national average, notes Dai Y ...

Three major solar manufacturers are producing panels at full speed and contemplating plans to expand capacity to meet surging demand in Asia. Trina Solar Ltd., the third-largest panel producer, increased its forecast for panel shipments this year to as much as 2.4 gigawatts from an earlier range of 2 gigawatts to 2.1 gigawatts, according to a statement yesterday. That matches the Changzhou, China-based comp ...