2019

The private sector subsidiary of the French Development Agency is backing the construction of four solar power plants and two wind farms with a combined generation capacity of 900 MWp.

The Munich-based group sold five solar parks with a total generation capacity of around 35 MW to the Hamburg-headquartered power producer. One of the five plants was among Germany’s first unsubsidized PV projects.

Scientists from Penn State University have developed a self-heating battery for electric vehicles which is said charge in only 10 minutes at 60 degrees Celsius.

The Norwegian PV developer was allocated three of the five projects available in the procurement exercise, having reportedly offered to accept $0.025/kWh from utility Société Tunisienne de l’Electricité et du Gaz for the clean power produced by the largest, 200 MW slice of generation capacity available.

A U.S. research team has used machine learning to optimize material composition and predict the design strategies and performance of perovskite solar cells. The researchers analyzed 2,000 peer-reviewed perovskite publications and collected more than 300 data points.

pv magazine recently attended the opening ceremony of TBEA’s GW-class new energy equipment manufacturing base in Bangalore, India. Bangalore is the capital of Karnataka state in southern India and the city also hosted the recent Intersolar India exhibition and conference in the same week as TBEA’s inauguration ceremony.

The government claims 292 MW more solar was installed than in the same period of 2018. Taipei reported solar power generation increased 51.7% year-on-year for January-to-October.

As solar and wind power enter the post-subsidy era, the next few years will be critical for China’s energy transition with investors learning to navigate the uncertainties of market reforms. With the 14th five-year plan – touted as a watershed in China’s energy system development – in the works, a report has recommended clear targets for 2021-2025 in terms of solar and wind power deployment and a reduction of coal consumption.

On Oct. 29, China’s National Energy Administration (NEA) released cumulative connection data for the first nine months of 2019, when China installed just under 16 GW. This breaks down as 52% distributed generation projects and 48% ground-mount installations. The figure represents a decrease of 54% for the first three quarters compared to 2018. Numbers for the third quarter of 2019 were lower than anticipated in China, confirming what the IHS Markit PV Market Trend Survey for China announced in September. It indicated that a large part of third-quarter PV demand had been postponed to the fourth quarter. Participants still expect a large increase in demand in the fourth quarter, but are increasingly pessimistic about the size of the Chinese market this year.

Dec. 3rd, 2019, Shanghai, Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF) holds its annual conference, the BNEF Summit Shanghai 2019, in Ritz-Carlton Pudong. More than 300 experts of renewable energy industry from China and other countries of the world joined the meeting.

PV Magazine had an interview with Mr. Rongfang Yin, executive vice president of Trina Solar, about Trina’s business and view.