Annual battery storage installations will exceed 10 GW/28 GWh in 2021, following a particularly strong year in 2020, despite the challenges created by the global pandemic, writes IHS Markit analyst Mike Longson. Combined solar and storage will be a core focus for new deployment in 2021, as the front-of-the-meter and behind-the-meter energy storage markets are both expected to grow significantly in the months ahead.

The seventh session of the Africa Regional Forum on Sustainable Development convened on the theme of “Building forward better towards a resilient and green Africa to achieve the 2030 & 2063 Agenda” and promote the economic, social and environmental dimensions of sustainable development.

A few years ago, fluctuations and complex storage solutions were the main factors hampering solar growth. Today, the sector is poised to leverage technologies to make a decisive leap. With a sustainable future around the corner, it will be innovative battery storage that will drive solar PV to become more powerful and efficient than ever before. But what are the latest developments in PV and energy storage, and which innovations are poised to transform the industry?

840 million people still don’t have access to electricity today, according to the World Bank. But the radical decrease in the cost of the green technologies of solar and battery storage provides an unparalleled opportunity to close this gap and achieve universal electricity access by 2030.

Spanish law firm Rödl & Partner provides an update on distressed solar power purchase agreements (PPAs) in Spain, focusing on the impact, and economic and legal consequences, of the Covid-19 pandemic.

West Africa hogged more than twice as much investment as the east in a year which saw stock market backing plunge an ‘alarming’ 46%, leaving donor grant funding and debt to pick up the slack during a Covid-hit year, according to off-grid industry body GOGLA.

Rising volumes of photovoltaic project capacity are increasing the incidence of negative price periods for electricity–and changing the times of day when they occur.

An ‘explosive’, ‘booming’ global solar market in the second half of a Covid-hit 2020 saw the previous glass manufacturing overcapacity reversed, as float and auto glass producers bent all their efforts on making material for PV modules.

A record number of defaults last year has spooked some lenders, according to Solargiga, but the solar manufacturer has announced ambitious plans to ramp production capacity this year and next.

The Greek government has published its plan for a post-Covid economic recovery. The strategy aims to mobilize at least €10 billion towards the green energy sector, with the prospect of further EU loans on top.

The speed at which manufacturers are introducing changes from one product generation to the next is accelerating – currently, formats are scarcely available for more than a few months before another revised product is launched. But occasionally new module dimensions also bring new problems, be it in handling, plant design, or logistics. Ever-shorter product cycles and hastily launched record-breaking modules with capacities of 500 W, 600 W, or even 700 W are not always welcomed with open arms – especially by those who have to work with them, writes Martin Schachinger of pvXchange.com.

Genex Power is set to begin building a 250 MW pumped hydro facility next to an existing 50 MW solar farm later this month, as it has secured the financing it needs to move forward.

Technology improvements and price declines have made solar and wind the lowest-cost options in most of the United States, according to the Institute for Energy Economic and Financial Analysis.

The European Union wants to provide €700 billion through its post-pandemic reconstruction program, but the European Solar Manufacturing Council says that €20 billion of the total should be used to shore up the European PV industry.

Private sector businesses will be offered concessional loans to install solar and other climate change related equipment.

BayWa r.e. recently installed a 30 MW solar array on a former military base in France. The project is designed so that farmers can also use the land to breed sheep.

The 200 MW solar park will be built in Sherabad, in southeastern Uzbekistan’s Surkhandarya region.

A consortium led by Abengoa and Acciona has commissioned a 110 MW concentrated solar power project, paired with 100 MW of PV, in Chile’s Atacama Desert.

New statistics from ACERA, the Chilean renewable energy association, show that solar covered around 12.9% of the country’s total electricity demand in March.

India’s Larsen & Toubro has announced plans to provide EPC services to support the deployment of 300 MW of solar in Saudi Arabia, under a contract with a consortium involving Masdar, EDF Renewables, and Saudi Arabia’s Nesma.

Researchers in Japan have built a PV-powered device to measure volumetric variations in blood circulation. The system, which is just a few microns thick, was built with an organic solar module, a polymer light-emitting diode (PLED), and an organic photodetector.

The purchase price should range between €73 million and €79 million. Azur Space produces triple-junction space solar cells with an average efficiency of up to 30% and is planning to develop ultra-thin solar cells with up to 35%.

Spanish manufacturer Aurinka has tested the degradation rate of its 20.76%-efficient solar cells made of 100% upgraded metallurgical grade (UMG) silicon and has found it shows the same values as conventional polysilicon. The company is currently building a UMG factory in northern Spain.

The cell showed open-circuit voltage values of up to 732 mV. It was fabricated with a back junction (BJ) design with a full-area p-n-junction at the back surface.

The proposed technique is said to be able to connect directly to the microscopic and medium scale defects in the solar cell materials. It is based on three kinds of noises that science has thus far been able to identify in PV devices.

Three Dutch political parties have brought the forced labor issue to Parliament and have asked the Minister for Foreign Trade and Development Cooperation, Sigrid Kaad, to report on the matter.

The Swiss technology group wants to officially present its heterojunction modules, which are produced in Freiberg, Germany, at the end of April. Meyer Burger concluded its first official sales partnership in Switzerland, with Solarmarkt.

U.S. company Group14 Technologies today announced the launch of a factory capable of producing 120 tons per year of its innovative silicon-carbon-based anode material for lithium-ion batteries. The factory is located at Group14’s headquarters in Woodinville, Washington and is the first of several planned by the company.

Axter, a French waterproofing specialist, has revealed a new mounting process for the installation of rigid solar modules on several types of buildings, including concrete, metal, and wood surfaces.

Greater dispatchability will be required from solar as it becomes increasingly mainstream worldwide, or investors could experience diminishing returns as a victim of the technology’s success at bearing down on electricity prices.

Australian Vanadium filed a patent application this week for its vanadium processing route, while rival TNG signed a deal to commercialize vanadium redox flow batteries.

The two companies are seeking proposals to provide power to Sasol’s synthetic fuel plant in Secunda, Mpumalanga.

Furthermore, Michelin said it wants to become a world leader in hydrogen fuel cell systems and ScottishPower aims to build a green hydrogen plant at a wind power complex. Moreover, a study led by scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory suggested new strategies to design perovskite materials to speed up the oxygen evolution reaction (OER), a process that frees up molecular oxygen from water and is key for hydrogen production.

With Cape Town-based solar crowdfunder The Sun Exchange having generated $1.4 million for a 510 kW solar-plus-storage facility for Zimbabwean food company Nhimbe Fresh, pv magazine has spoken to the heads of both businesses–Sun Exchange CEO and founder Abraham Cambridge and Nhimbe executive chairman Edwin Moyo–about the fundraising exercise. First up is The Sun Exchange founder…

Scientists in the U.S. claim to have successfully upcycled PET waste bottles into an electrochemical active-carbon material that functions as a double‐layer supercapacitor substance. They said that this achievement may lay the ground for the production of more sustainable batteries. Devices built with the proposed technique would not store as much energy as lithium-ion batteries but they could charge much faster.