The Paris-based body expects the world will have installed almost 160 GW of solar this year, a record number, but still not enough to keep the prospect of a net zero global economy by mid century in sight.

The United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26) took place between October 31 and November 12 in Glasgow, Scotland, and ended with the adoption of the Glasgow Climate Pact by bringing 200 countries closer to keeping global temperature rise under 1.5°C by 2100.

There’s a famous saying: “Never let a crisis go to waste.” The current energy crisis has had a terrible impact on many consumers, but it has also given the energy sector a golden opportunity to get in shape for the energy transition. Jon Slowe, the director of Delta-EE, examines the impacts and opportunities of the energy crisis currently playing out in Europe and what it could mean for the renewables sector.

While the adoption of large-format wafers has driven a wave of capacity expansion for PERC, existing manufacturers and new entrants continue to evaluate TOPCon and HJT. An increasing number of HJT pilot lines and gigawatt-scale capacity expansion projects are appearing, as manufacturers see the advantages of fewer process steps, higher efficiency ratings, and better yield rates. The localization of equipment is also a driving factor. PV InfoLink’s Derek Zhao offers an update on the latest developments and process routes for HJT.

Next year will set new records for the U.S. solar market, with 30.4 GW of installations expected. The utility-scale PV pipeline in 2022 is nearly 50% greater than 2021 and 2023, due to the combined effects of pandemic-related supply chain impacts, the solar Investment Tax Credit schedule, and other module procurement challenges. Over the next two years, solar installations will be concentrated in Texas, California, Ohio, Indiana, and Nevada, with large portions of the pipeline being developed by a few key players in each state. IHS Markit’s Eric Wright takes a closer look.

The latest edition of a clean power jobs survey produced by IRENA and the International Labour Organization has stressed the important role which will need to be played by the public sector if the energy transition’s employment benefits are to be shared equally.

The input costs of the two biggest contributors to solar plant development expense have gone through the roof since the world began to come out of Covid-19 lockdowns, to leave project developers with some difficult choices.

The latest, seven-year investment attracted offers worth more than €100 billion from investors and means the European Union has already generated €54 billion of the €80 billion of bond proceeds it is aiming for this year, as part of its five-year, €800 billion NextGenerationEU support package.

A note issued by Norwegian analyst Rystad has hinted it may be time to consider abandoning the 1.5-degree average global temperature rise ceiling agreed upon in Paris six years ago, because the world will never be able to pump out enough solar panels in time.

An independent third-party has approved the European Commission’s safeguards to ensure the projects in member states financed by €250 billion of green bonds over the next five years, will have genuine emission reduction credentials.

Mitrex Integrated Solar Technology has developed a new solar panel with 19.5% efficiency that measures 2,036 mm x 1,992 mm x 40 mm and weighs in at 42 kg. It can operate with a system voltage of 1,000 V and has a power temperature coefficient of -0.36% per degree Celsius.

The new provisions define clearly what hybrid power plants are and what kind of grid tariffs they should pay. The regulation may be particularly favorable for hybrid wind-solar plants, especially in North-Eastern Brazil, where the grid is not strong enough to support further renewable energy development.

Director Deepak Pandey is confident the company’s hybrid devices – which are lead-acid and lithium battery compatibility – will replace the existing market.

The Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate Policy is now reviewing 54,109 renewable energy projects totaling 5.17 GW in the first round of the SDE+ program for 2021. Solar accounts for around 80% of the total submitted capacity.

A surge of Italian PV project activity is soon expected if the local authorities get out of the way. With the market, financial and policy settings in place, the market is set to see a return to bustling PV project activity, with regulatory reforms clearing the way forward, reports Sergio Matalucci in Milan.

With a new system for floating photovoltaic power plants, engineers from Germany want to make the application cheaper, higher-yielding, and safer. The result is somewhat reminiscent of a pufferfish, which also gave the system its name.

Through the two procurement exercises, Bahrain’s Sustainable Energy Authority (SEA) wants to deploy solar plants at the Ministry of Labour & Social Development and the Ministry of Education.

Developed by scientists in Turkey, a system prototype has operated at lower PV module temperatures and removed most of the dust accumulation. The researchers are now planning to improve the device by applying MPPT converter topologies.

According to U.S.-based Grizzly Research LLC, many of the company’s European solar projects appear not to exist. Renesola has said it will review the report and address the key inaccuracies with detailed explanations on its upcoming earnings conference call.

Amazon has announced 5.6 GW of solar throughout the world. The first U.S. projects are planned for Arizona and Georgia.

In a new white paper, Chinese PV manufacturer JinkoSolar demonstrates how its latest ‘Tiger Neo’ module, featuring the 182mm n-type TOPCon cells, achieves lower energy costs. Based on total project costs for various scenarios in China, the Middle East and Europe, Jinko calculates advantages arising from both the cell technology and its chosen wafer format.

Meanwhile, on the Iberian Peninsula, H2 Green Steel (H2GS) and Iberdrola plan to establish a 1 GW green hydrogen production facility, and Acciona and Plug Power want to deploy green hydrogen facilities across Spain and Portugal.

A German-Italian research team has designed an inverted perovskite solar cell with a short-circuit current of 1.184 V and a remarkable fill factor of 85%. The device was built by modifying its interfaces with large organic cations.

Scientists in the United States turned to artificial intelligence to speed up their search for new materials for use in a flow battery. The group developed a machine learning algorithm that could search a dataset of potential materials and identify those with the ideal balance of different characteristics that make it suitable for use in a flow batteries. The group says its algorithm could be applied to other battery technologies, and even in other fields.

There is still much to debate over the benefits of moving a vehicle via solar, but the market has been getting creative and is evolving quickly.

The solar manufacturer has lowered the prices of its PV wafers by up to 12.5%. In other news, Haiyuan Material (HYM) has begun deploying production lines at its 5 GW heterojunction PV module factory.

The Taiwanese solar manufacturer has raised US$22 million through a private placement of shares and will use the funds to support its solar capacity expansion plans.

An above-average employee sickness absence is forcing the Switzerland-based solar panel manufacturer to slow down production until the end of January. Meyer Burger has also informed customers that the prices for its solar modules will rise in the coming year.

Taiwanese module manufacturer Inventec Solar has accumulated about $70.2 million of debt.

Reclaim PV has added another partner to its national solar panel recycling and recovery program with South Australian-based manufacturer Tindo Solar committing to a program that will see close to 100% of the solar PV panels that it handles recycled and re-used in the industry.

Swedish scientists have developed a structural battery that purportedly offers “massless” storage, as its weight vanishes when it becomes part of the load-bearing structure. The device has an energy density of 24 Wh/kg and is designed for easy integration into solar-powered vehicles.

Tata Power Solar has secured the engineering, procurement, and construction contract for a 100 MW solar field with a 120 MWh battery. The project, awarded by the Solar Energy Corporation of India, will be in the state of Chhattisgarh.

MIT researchers have created a semisolid flow battery that might be able to outperform lithium-ion and vanadium redox flow batteries. It features a new electrode made of dispersed manganese dioxide particles shot through with an electrically conductive additive, carbon black.

Australia’s Stanwell Energy and Spanish renewable energy company Acciona Energia have signed a deal that could use energy generated at the proposed 600 MWp Aldoga Solar Farm to power a 3 GW green hydrogen project being developed in Queensland.

Malta announced a partnership with Betchel to deploy electro-thermal energy storage systems that are capable of durations of 10-150+ hours.