The inauguration of Joe Biden as the 46th President of the United States has brought hope the country will play a central role in the world’s energy transition and combating climate change. However, rather than teaching other countries lessons, the U.S. will need to catch up with the rest of the world, and it needs to do so quickly – the world won’t wait for the U.S.

Alongside all of the problems, 2020 has brought us a few promising solar module manufacturer initiatives and developments. Martin Schachinger of pvXchange.com looks back over the second half of the year and offers a quick look at what could be in store for 2021.

In September 2020, Stantec Turkey launched a market assessment report for the Turkish solar PV panel manufacturing sector. The English version of the “Market Report for Turkey’s Photovoltaic Panel Manufacturing” followed in November. The report, based on collected data from local manufacturers, depicts the history of the market since its inception in 2011 and provides unique insights into its development and future potential.

With the wholesale transformation of the power industry from the inside out and other energy transition mega-trends, capital will continue to flow into renewables from ESG, energy funds, and retail, writes ROTH Capital Analyst Jesse Pichel. Look for a greater mix of unsubsidized economic solar projects to support improving revenue visibility, increasing earnings quality, and multiple expansions.

The world is still combating Covid-19, with Europe now impacted by a second wave of the virus. While the market reported delays for a few projects, the impacts on the PV sector remain unclear. But if the world fails to curb the Covid-19’s spread, governments may be forced to reintroduce strict measures, thereby sapping PV demand. PV InfoLink’s Mars Chang expects module demand to hit 126 GW by the end of this year.

Falling module prices will help PV post another record year after an estimated 132 GW was installed worldwide in 2020, according to an energy transition investment trends report published by Bloomberg New Energy Finance.

The private-sector arm of the World Bank, which claims to leverage $3 of its own capital and $8 from third parties for every dollar invested in its blended finance funds, has attempted to quantify what devoting Covid recovery funds to green investment would mean for emerging economies.

European renewables, including Spanish solar, made big gains as energy demand recovered before the second wave of Covid infections. Nuclear was a notable loser, in part because clean energy volumes in the north of the continent drove down power prices sufficiently to make reactors uncompetitive.

A report by McKinsey & Company reinforces the widely-held view renewables will supplant fossil fuels in the energy system but also joins the chorus of voices warning the world is on track to fall well short of limiting global temperature rises this century to 1.5C.

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.

In a recent GOGLA discussion paper, 25 GOGLA members discussed the way forward on how end-user subsidies can be modeled to accelerate universal energy access in underserved markets.

The Tunisian government hopes to build six solar plants in its latest procurement round, with capacities of 10 MW each, in addition to 10 smaller solar arrays, each up to 1 MW in size.

The tender was launched by the Dubai Electricity and Water Authority (DEWA). Interested developers will have time until February 15 to submit their offers.

Université de Sherbrooke researchers have tested a new concentrator PV module for potential applications in heating, ventilation, and air conditioning systems in commercial buildings.

Forecasts for the levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) of solar PV were hotly contested over the past decade, with one trend predominating: All but the most optimistic outlooks were wrong. pv magazine has gathered data to showcase the recent evolution of solar PV energy costs, and the results are stark. Within just a few years, initial projections become outdated, which means that forecasts of solar PV prices are more art than science.

Ecopetrol has announced plans to develop six new solar projects, which will bring its total installed PV capacity to 155 MW by the end of this year.

Fresh from the success of its 7.7 MW microgrid at Gold Fields’ Granny Smith mine in Western Australia, Aggreko has signed a 10-year contract with the global gold miner to install at 25.9 MW hybrid solar and thermal power solution at its Salares Norte mine site, located at a height of 4,500 meters in the Andes Mountains.

A new report establishes the feasibility of wind-solar-storage hybrid projects over new coal plants in the Indian states with high renewable energy potential. Tamil Nadu was chosen for the technical and commercial assessment.

The solar park is expected to be connected to the grid infrastructure of a coal power plant located nearby. Polish oil group Orlen is targeting 2 GW of renewable energy assets by 2030.

Swiss energy company Axpo will supply electricity to a supermarket chain from a 2.2 MW solar plant under a 20-year power purchase agreement. The facility is being deployed at the Muttsee dam, at an altitude of almost 2,500 meters above sea level.

Scientists in Poland have measured the effect of solar radiation spectra in variable weather conditions on the performance of different kinds of PV module technologies. They found that amorphous silicon panels offer the best response to this effect in stationary or BIPV projects on facades, while crystalline silicon and CIS solar panels represent the best options in projects with trackers.

Gowing Bros has become the first major customer of the LAVO 40 kWh battery in Australia. The system, which features an electrolyzer and domestic fuel-cell tech, will be market-ready in June.

Researchers in the Middle East have proposed a new passive technology to cool off solar modules, based on highly conductive porous materials.

Australian researchers have analyzed different ways to improve the efficiency of PV-powered water electrolysis for hydrogen generation. They include the use of magnetic fields, light energy, ultrasonic fields, and pulsating electric fields. Energy costs remain prohibitive, but molecular movement and the redistribution of molecules in water during electrolysis could open a path to viability.

Batteries based on vanadium or zinc bromide represent the cutting edge of redox flow storage tech, an international research team has claimed. They have identified challenges and opportunities for about a dozen redox flow storage technologies, while providing estimates of their current and projected levelized costs of storage.

In many respects, the past year has been unlike any other. But the innovation and ambition driving the expansion of the solar and energy storage industries is one constant that has remained, Across seven categories, pv magazine’s award winners for 2020 demonstrate high levels of technical expertise, creativity, mass production capabilities, and real market impact from PV and power electronics companies big and small. Following on from the virtual award ceremony held this morning, the winners are….

Tennessee-based Shoals Technologies has balance-of-systems solutions deployed on more than 20 GW of solar energy systems throughout the world.

Longi and Risen both announced plans to build up new module and cell manufacturing capacity. Furthermore, the State Power Investment Corporation (SPIC) has revealed it deployed more than 10 GW of solar power last year.

Scientists in Spain and Colombia took a closer look at the degradation mechanisms affecting perovskite solar cells, and developed a new, high throughput method to characterize their performance in an outdoor setting. The group evaluated the method through outdoor testing on perovskite modules manufactured in a lab. it expects its findings to offer easier device characterization and better understanding of the degradation mechanisms affecting perovskite solar cells, both important factors in the technology’s development.

The EV manufacturer with big solar ambitions has finally leveraged its expertise in power electronics technology and launched a solar inverter.

European scientists are designing a new type of redox flow storage system aimed at flexibly balancing power grids in the event of critical conditions. Funded by the EU, the research project is being coordinated by the Landshut University of Applied Sciences and runs until 2023.

The Western Australian government has called for expressions of interest for its proposed 1.5 GW solar-wind-hydrogen hub at the Okajee Strategic Industrial Area. This week, it said that 65 companies from around the world are interested.

The news comes on the day a private equity investor in the English North East announced plans to jointly develop a 1.4 GWp solar portfolio with Canadian Solar.

Standalone solar-powered refrigerators present a $20 billion opportunity in India for vaccine storage, milk chillers, households, micro enterprises, and cold storage for farm produce, according to a new report by Gogla.

A new Wood Mackenzie report suggests that costs for front-of-the-meter battery storage systems in the Asia-Pacific region could fall by 30% by 2025. The declining costs are already having a palpable impact, as 2021 has opened with a slew of large-scale battery project announcements.