In the wake of the 2019 SNEC trade show in Shanghai, PV InfoLink chief analyst Corrine Lin delves into the new cell and module technologies that were exhibited at the show.

As uptake of electric vehicles (EVs) increases, the EV battery market represents an opportunity for European players. McKinsey assesses the potential and looks at factors guiding the location of production capacity.

In the last of a series of blogs, solar pioneer Philip Wolfe looks at areas where solar generating stations are clustered together, without the coordination afforded by organised solar parks.

We need to build solar parks only when there are no more square meters left on the rooftops, writes Mikhail Lifshitz, co-owner of Russia-based JSC Rotec.

In the third of a series of four blogs, solar pioneer Philip Wolfe lists the world’s largest solar power plants. In these articles, a ‘solar plant’ is defined as an individual generating station.

A report published by New Zealand’s state-owned transmission grid operator Transpower finds the widespread uptake of distributed battery storage could play an important role in supporting the power system as rooftop PV and electric vehicles are increasingly adopted.

Scatec Solar moved into the Malaysian Solar market in late-2016. The company sealed financing for 197 MW of capacity with the help of the country’s green bonds, the year after. Malaysia is continuing on its solar trajectory and will hold the third iteration of its tenders for the allocation of an addition 500 MW in generation capacity.

According to new statistics released by African Energy Live Data, solar represents more than half of total new power generation capacity for the first three months of this year.

Norwegian headquartered polysilicon manufacturer REC Silicon has announced that it will lay off another 100 workers at its Moses Lake facility in the western United States, as the factory heads into long term shutdown.

According to the new auction schedule approved by the Italian Ministry of Economic Development, three more renewables procurement exercises will be held each year in 2020 and 2021. Through the seven bidding rounds, the Italian authorities seek to allocate approximately 4.8 GW of new power generation capacity.

The Armenian solar market has been somewhat slow to take off, but it could be experiencing a serious push, following an announcement that Abu Dhabi-based energy company Masdar plans to deploy 500 MW of solar and wind capacity in the country.

The country’s government has decided to approve the four new projects, ranging in size from 20 MW to 60 MW, in response to rising energy demand. It further announced that the 60 MW project that it tendered at the beginning of the year is planned to start commercial operations in August.

The government of the African country has signed a memorandum of understanding with the International Finance Corporation for the development and construction of several solar parks. The projects are expected to be finalized over the next two years.

Through this procurement exercise, the Tunisian government hopes to build six solar plants with a capacity of 10 MW each and ten 1 MW small solar parks.

Despite a demanding ceiling price of €45/MWh the tender has received applications for projects with seven times the generation capacity it will allocate.

Scientists at Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah University of Science Technology have set a new efficiency record of 21.09% for a single crystal perovskite. The researchers say this highlights a place for the technology to develop alongside the multicrystalline versions which are progressing toward commercialization.

In pursuit of a lower levelized cost of energy for the next generation of inverters, some manufacturers have turned to acquiring considerably more expensive semiconductors. While this may sound like a misstep at first, the trick could be pulled off — though not easily, and not always — yet.

China’s National Energy Administration has given the greenlight to 3,921 ground-mounted and distributed generation projects. The approved energy price bids ranged from $0.0407 to $0.080, depending on system size, for an average price of $0.048.

Engineers at the University of Utah have developed a tiny device which they say could increase the performance of PV panels and other electronic devices by converting energy lost as heat back into electricity.

The car will be road tested at Toyota City in Japan. Solar charging technology for the vehicle will then be further optimized before the vehicle goes on sale.

After the bombshell new this week, the Italian inverter manufacturer’s CEO spoke to pv magazine about the future of ABB’s R&D hubs, manufacturing sites, hundreds of employees and of course Fimer’s outlook.

The manufacturer plans to add 350 MW of manufacturing capacity at its two sites in Tunisia by next year. The ramping up is due to new orders from India and other foreign markets.

With a glut of solar capacity having come online this year, cheaper financing would help keep some of that momentum but policymakers cannot be persuaded of the economic benefits of clean energy unless state-owned utility EVN opens up.

While the nation’s recent Union budget announced steps to create an electric vehicle market, the solar sector still has issues that have not been addressed.

First-quarter figures from German engineering association the VDMA showed that, while orders picked up after a slow end to last year, almost all PV production equipment produced in the country is shipped abroad, with China the leading destination.

While it is often stated only 5% of lithium-ion batteries are recycled, a review of research into the second life and recycling of lithium-ion batteries suggests that is a gross understatement. A new study found almost 100,000 tons of waste batteries were recycled last year – about half of what reached end-of-life.

A new report by the Energy Information Administration projects U.S. installed battery storage capacity will reach 2.5 GW by 2023. Florida and New York are set to pave the way as massive projects in each state will account for almost half the coming capacity.

The Moroccan agency for sustainable energy is pre-qualifying developers for the Noor Midelt II project, a solar complex incorporating CSP and PV elements.

Two corporate heavyweights have announced investments in the New York-based developer and operator of peer-to-peer energy platforms. The funding will allow LO3 to scale its blockchain-based community energy networks worldwide.

The head of Mercom Capital says solar has a long way to go before it can stand without policy support. Effective grid parity will only be achieved when the cost of PV electricity factors in the expense of grid upgrades and the storage systems its intermittent nature requires, says Raj Prabhu.