You’ll need to pay close attention to find the few mentions of solar in the long-awaited White Paper issued by the government to outline how it plans to hit net zero by mid century.

The European solar market saw around 11 GW of projects, and pipelines change hands in 2019. The positive trend is expected to last, as investors remain optimistic about the future of the industry. Project acquisition activity is seen as a key indicator of financial health in many sectors, including the PV market. It reflects optimism among investors and points to a particularly high degree of liquidity, writes IHS Markit analyst Martina Assereto.

Aggregators continuously monitor the needs of the electricity grid on one side and the energy consumption of a large number of distributed assets on the other. When the grid is stressed or out of balance, aggregators adjust the consumption or production of those distributed energy assets to help the grid restore balance. These services either lead to direct compensation from a transmission system operator (TSO), or a reduction in the total energy bill of the owner of the distributed asset.

The development process for ground-mounted utility scale solar projects in Vietnam is laborious, time-consuming, expensive and still largely difficult to navigate for foreign developers without entering a strategic partnership, in whatever form, with a local Vietnamese counterpart.

Vietnam has now effectively overtaken Thailand as the largest solar market in Southeast Asia in terms of installed solar operational capacity, with more than 6,314 MW installed up to September 2020. Many hundreds of MWs of solar projects are also still under construction or development. However, its solar (and other renewable energy) M&A activity has developed very slowly to date. There are many reasons to expect that this is about to change, but before we examine them, let us review the main factors behind this sluggish tempo.

Polycrystalline PV technology, which is seeing its market share tumble on the global stage, still dominates India’s small solar manufacturing base and is emblematic of the R&D shortfalls in the sector, according to a survey of the state of the industry.

Simarpreet Singh, director at EPC firm Hartek Group, speaks to pv magazine about the impact of the Covid pandemic on India’s rooftop solar sector, technology trends shaping the market, and the outlook for 2021.

The development lender has established a Covid-19 Off-Grid Recovery Platform with impact investors from the Netherlands, U.S. and U.K., to offer affordable loans to off-grid solar companies operating in Africa.

Valoe completed the 15-month purchase process of a 60 MW cell production line from Solitek in the spring and installed interdigitated back-contact production equipment. It hopes to begin deliveries in the next quarter.

The development lender has followed up a $600 million loan for distribution infrastructure in eastern Indonesia with a $430 million credit line for installations in India.

Kyiv’s Commercial Court has begun hearing a case that could be of interest to solar developers with a stake in Ukraine’s solar sector, or those looking to buy into the country’s energy market. For nearly a year the grid connection of a solar plant had been capped by an adjacent metal producer. The legal proceedings could prove a test for Ukraine’s suitality to provide sufficient investor protection, the plaintiff stated ahead of the trial.

The tile has a power output of 45 W, an open circuit voltage of 5.63 V and a short-circuit current of 10.12. The product costs $1.38/W and has a 25-year performance guarantee

Looking back over years of research into the topic of hybrid systems based on different combinations of solar, wind, hydro and other renewables, an international group of scientists found strong potential for strategies to exploit complementarity between the different sources integrate more intermittent renewables onto regional and national grids. The scientists present a series of conclusions and recommendations that aim to push research in hybrid renewables forward.

Global management consulting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers has issued a general economic prediction for 2021. Aside from some general notes on GDP recovery post-Covid, the analysts’ notes were heavily focussed on climate and energy finance and policy.

Some 15% of the finance disbursed must fit the wider definition of being ‘sustainable’ and banks and other lenders have been warned penalties will be applied for non compliance.

The tender was launched by Energy Efficiency Services Limited (EESL), an energy service company owned by the government of India.

The two companies want to test a floating PV array under harsh weather conditions in rough waters for at least a year. The system will be based on a floating solar technology developed by Maritime Moss, a unit of Saipem.

French energy giant Total called the 50:50 joint venture a “first significant step” into the U.S. utility-scale solar market.

The German research institute has proposed a technique based on the surface structure of the wings of the morpho butterfly to produce colored BIPV panels for facades and rooftops. The process is claimed to make it possible to color the modules with an optical effect and not with color pigments, which reduce their efficiency.

Luxcara and Be Green want to build 415 MW of unsubsidized solar in Denmark. The authorities are planning four solar parks, with the electricity to be sold to power consumers under power purchase agreements.

German scientists have fabricated an enhanced amorphous germanium PV cell that confines light in an ultra-thin absorber. It has the potential to combine PV with photosynthesis in new solar applications on bio-reactors, greenhouses, and agricultural land.

International researchers have developed a silicon heterojunction PV cell with textured surfaces to accommodate the perovskite top cell. They optimized the rear transparent electrode to collect as much albedo as possible and achieved five different perovskite bandgaps by altering the iodide-to-bromide ratio in the perovskites, resulting in a higher open-circuit voltage.

Dutch company Rads Global Business has developed an anti-soiling coating for solar PV modules that is claimed to reduce cleaning cost by around 60%. The anti-reflective and anti-corrosive coating is also said to mitigate potential-induced degradation (PID).

Scientists in the United States developed a new anode for aqueous batteries. A working battery utilizing this anode, with seawater as an electrolyte, demonstrated impressive energy density, and remained stable after 1,000 hours of high current cycling. The group is already discussing the potential of their approach in large-scale manufacturing.

While Spain is struggling with the largest snowfall since 1971, pv magazine editor Alejandro Diego Rosell has asked two Spanish experts what the consequences of the massive snow loads produced by Storm Filomena will be on solar installations. According to them, some PV systems may stop working completely and component failures may not be excluded.

In the first instance, the Düsseldorf Regional Court in Germany ruled in favor of Hanwha Q-Cells, but Longi Solar has appealed the judgment. There is also still a struggle for the validity of the patent between the photovoltaic companies at the European Patent Office. In addition to Longi Solar, REC is also reporting another partial success in the legal dispute with the South Korean photovoltaic manufacturer.

Japanese scientists have fabricated a prototype CPV panel that could be applied on spherical surfaces with a curvature radius of 100 mm, and under outdoor one-sun irradiation. The module is based on a silicone concentrator lens, a thermoplastic polyurethane sheet, and a rigid III–V triple-junction solar cell.

The solar cell manufacturing facility, located in China’s Yunnan Province, is expected to raise Jinko’s cell capacity to 30 GW by the end of 2021.

Australian scientists have built a perovskite solar cell based on 2D and 3D salts. By adding a fluorinated lead salt in the processing solution – normally used to form 3D methylammonium lead iodide – they were able to achieve a 21.1% efficiency, an open-circuit voltage of 1.12 V, a short-circuit current of 22.4 mA/cm2, and a fill factor of 84%.

The PV module relies on Jinko’s TOPCon mono cell technology, for which a record efficiency of 24.9% was announced last week. TÜV Rheinland has confirmed the result.

The two French energy giants have announced a partnership agreement to develop, build and operate the Masshylia project – a 40 MW electrolyzer coupled with solar parks at the Total biorefinery in Châteauneuf-les-Martigues, in the southern region of Provence-Alpes-Côte d´Azur.

The Canada Infrastructure Bank (CIB) and Oneida Energy Storage LP, a joint venture between NRStor and Six Nations of the Grand River Development Corp., have signed a memorandum of understanding for the Oneida Energy Storage project in Ontario.

The Australian Smart Energy Council and Deutsche Energie-Agentur will work together to develop a scheme to certify renewable hydrogen and carbon-neutral power fuels.

The two French companies have announced Horizeo, a massive project that includes a solar plant, battery storage, a green hydrogen production unit, a data center, and an agrivoltaic facility. The huge project is scheduled for completion in 2026.

Neoen Australia has filed planning documents for a 500 MW / 1000 MWh big battery to be built west of Sydney.