The virtual 7th Asia-Pacific Climate Change Adaptation Forum was hosted in March by Japan’s Ministry of the Environment, together with the Asia Pacific Adaptation Network (APAN) Secretariat. The theme was “Enabling Resilience for All: The Critical Decade to Scale-up Action” with the goal of formulating National Adaptation Planning for science and technology, and energy and fiscal policies that consider the interlinkages between climate change, health, and biodiversity. These nature- and ecosystem-based policies will serve as the basis for the Asia-Pacific region’s contributions to the “Leaders’ Summit on Climate” in the United States; the United Nations Biodiversity Conference (COP 15) in Kunming, China; and the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP 26) in Glasgow, United Kingdom.

Owners and operators of energy storage systems, as well as investors, need transparent ways to evaluate battery performance. They need certainty that the selected batteries for their ESS projects will perform reliably, have predictable life expectancies, and meet projected revenue and contractual obligations over their lifetimes. The economic viability of entire projects depend on this confidence, writes Michael Kleinberg of DNV.

This year will witness the end of the French program for PV tenders known as “CRE4”, which began in 2016. To date, they have enabled over 7.2 GW of solar capacity to benefit from a subsidized tariff (feed-in tariff or feed-in premium). A few months before the last CRE4 tenders and the launch of the PPE2 (or CRE5), Finergreen evaluates their impact on the French solar industry.

The performance ratio test is at the core of the handover from EPC to owner. Yet sometimes, even when best practice is applied – and without particularly demanding guaranteed values to be achieved – these tests fail good projects. This can lead to costly delays and wasted effort spent trying to find issues that might not exist. Everoze Partner Dario Brivio reviews the likelihood of this happening and considers ways to increase confidence in the precision of such tests, based on recent independent analysis of real-world projects.

The PV industry has experienced several rounds of price increases since the second half of 2020, from polysilicon to materials such as PV glass and films. Between July 2020 and February 2021, prices quoted for 3.2 mm and 2 mm glass surged by more than 60% per square meter. Prices for EVA and POE encapsulant films skyrocketed by more than 40% and 10%, respectively. Prices for silver paste also rose 7%, and have since remained stubbornly high. PV InfoLink Chief Analyst Corrine Lin examines the impact of silver’s recent price turbulence on PV cell manufacturing.

With Chinese manufacturers having warned they will pass on escalating component costs, and shipping expenses soaring since last summer, the rising price of solar is forcing some installers to redraft quotes, pv magazine has discovered.

Covid-19 disruption has been cited as the chief culprit as imports from China, Thailand and Vietnam slumped from April to January, but safeguarding duty also appears to have had an impact, with unaffected imports from nations such as Myanmar, Chad and Russia on the rise and Malaysian trade keeping steady.

But new ventures into coal-fired steam and petrochemicals products helped state-owned China Shuifa Singyes towards a significantly healthier balance sheet in 2020.

The polysilicon maker lurched from a $17m profit in 2019 to a $960 million loss last year, according to an unaudited extract from its overdue annual figures. Publication is being held up by an auditor enquiry relating to a $71m abandoned-production-project pre-payment which appears to be either owed by, or to, a GCL subsidiary.

More than 7% of the U.K.’s solar generation capacity is now unsubsidized, according to trade body Solar Energy UK, with the nation reaching more than 14 GW of photovoltaic projects during the first three months of the year.

IHS Markit has released its latest Global Renewables Markets Attractiveness Rankings, based on measures related to investment confidence and ease of development.

Scientists in the U.S. demonstrated a sodium-ion battery with no anode, that retained 99.93% of its initial capacity per cycle. Their design was able to overcome many of the stability issues associated with using ‘pure’ alkali metals in batteries, thanks to carefully minimizing water content in the liquid electrolyte.

The National Renewable Energy Laboratory and UL have joined forces to develop Solar Automated Permit Processing Plus software. NREL has committed to adding new features to SolarAPP+ until March 2023.

Taiwanese module maker URE Corp is planning to link a 150 MW solar plant to a 15 MW/15 MWh storage facility.

Lithuanian-owned solar developer Modus Energy International is reportedly seeking €11.5 million from the Ukrainian government after it retroactively reduced feed-in tariff payments from August. Modus claims Kiev breached the Energy Charter Treaty with its reduced-payment legislation.

German solar association BSW and environmental association Naturschutzbund have published a joint paper that defines criteria that can be used to establish whether a ground-mounted solar plant is able to protect nature and species, as well as to add ecological value to the area it occupies.

The Danish Energy Agency has granted permission, to two power-to-X specialists, for the development of innovative projects without having to comply with the country’s energy legislation. This exemption is part of an upcoming pilot scheme to support new clean energy technologies, including green hydrogen.

The Ingecon Sun String Station reaches 6.4 MW of medium voltage output and is supplied as a “turnkey” solution. It was already installed in solar plants located in Toledo and Huesca.

The “Global PV Installer Monitor 2020/2021” reports shows that nearly two-thirds of French PV installers now integrate storage solutions into their product portfolios. EUPD Research said this is a clear sign that rising electricity prices and demand for electric vehicles are creating new business models.

A unit of Tata Power has secured the rights to develop a 250 MW grid-connected solar project in the Indian state of Maharashtra.

Scientists in China have developed a large-area perovskite solar panel by utilizing diphenyl sulfoxide (DPSO) as an electron acceptor. The device was fabricated via slot-die coating, and featured a parallel-interconnection architecture.

Scientists in China took a closer look at the role of defects in limiting the performance of perovskite solar cells, demonstrating a screening effect that could be tuned to make material defects “invisible” to charge carriers, greatly improving cell performance. Using this approach they demonstrate a 22% efficient inverted perovskite solar cell, and theorize several new pathways to even higher performance.

A Danish consortium is seeking to store electricity from large scale renewable energy plants in the form of thermal energy in big tanks containing crushed, pea-sized stones made of basalt. The first 10 MWh demonstrator is planned to be developed in Denmark and to be powered by a wind facility. Another project is also under development in the United States and is planned to be linked to a solar plant.

Called Solar Mountain, the permanent installation should be built in Nevada with modular design elements of recycled wood and other environmentally friendly materials.

Scientists investigating the aging mechanisms affecting today’s lithium-ion batteries observed that the loss of lithium over time is one of the main causes of performance loss. With this in mind, they developed and tested a “relithiation” process that promises to eliminate much of the cost and complexity from recycling battery components and materials.

Furthermore, Luoyang Glass reported first-quarter net profits of RMB136 million (US$21 million) and TBEA Xinjiang New Energy announced the settlement of a dispute over a 99 MW wind farm.

The manufacturer says it shipped 1.69 GW of its inverters in the first three months of the year and predicted a further quarter-on-quarter rise in revenue from the current window.

Researchers at the Norwegian institute Sintef are testing a special floating structure that Equinor wants to deploy in offshore waters. The structure is built with an anchoring system that is claimed to give the installation enough freedom to cope with the waves.

The Chinese poly maker expects to sign off a debt reorganization plan in Bermuda next month and has announced its latest $102 million solar project sell-off.

Gautam Mohanka, managing director of New Delhi-headquartered Gautam Solar, told pv magazine its Haridwar module factory, now scaled up to 250 MW, is producing panels with a power output of up to 400 W, using mono PERC and polycrystalline cells.

Amp Energy, a Canadian clean energy investor with a growing Australia portfolio, has unveiled a new 1.3 GW renewables expansion strategy. Its plan includes at least three massive PV projects, two of which could support South Australia’s green hydrogen aims.

The 420 MW/40 MW storage-plus-storage facility was deployed by the Danish energy company Ørsted on a 3,600-acre site alongside existing oil and gas installations in Texas.

Moreover, the Germany-based Fraunhofer Institute for Chemical Technology has announced it is progressing with its research to reduce the cost of PEM water electrolysis and the Spanish government has established the criteria for its first pre-selection of renewable hydrogen projects.

The proposed solution is claimed to be able to mitigate potential fire risk, improve logistics and reduce costs. It consists of a series of interchangeable wide blocks that are said to be easily movable for simplified transportation.

German developer Juwi plans to have a 36 MW off-grid solar plant and 7.5 MW of battery storage operational at the Sukari mine during the second quarter of next year.