On Friday, three Chinese government ministries issued a joint “2018 Solar PV Power Generation Notice.” Its impact has been hotly debated since, with two key conclusions: the largest market segment – utility-scale PV – will take a pounding and not come close to last year’s record installation figure of just under 34 GW; and the expanding distributed generation market segment, which rose 360% from 2016 to 2017, will also be severely impacted by a 10 GW cap on new projects.

At their 2018 PV Market Workshop, across the street from the massive SNEC solar exhibition in Shanghai, IHS Markit offered interesting insights into the further development of China’s PV and energy storage markets, as well as the global PV market as a whole.

The annual SNEC photovoltaic power expo 2018, in Shanghai, closed yesterday after the 12th edition of the world’s biggest PV exhibition. Reflecting the rapid development of China’s PV industry, the scale of SNEC increased from 15,000 sqm at the first exhibition to 180,000 sqm last year and 200,000 this year – a 10% year-on-year increase. Preliminary figures show more than 220,000 visits to this year’s edition, with more than 5,000 industry professionals attending the expo and series of high-level conferences.

The installation of an 18 MW battery storage system shows the region’s pioneering work in integrating innovative storage systems to its electricity grid.

One of the highlights of this year’s Abu Dhabi Sustainability Week (ADSW) and the World Future Energy Summit (WFES), which forms part of ADSW, was Wednesday evening’s Middle East Solar Awards Ceremony, organized by MESIA, the Middle East Solar Industry Association.

This week’s Intersolar India 2017 in Mumbai, which ran from Tuesday to Thursday at the Bombay Exhibition Centre (BEC), highlighted both the potential and the challenges of India’s vast residential PV market. Everything from policy to unique environmental challenges and installation processes was discussed.

The Mexican PV market is full of promise at this year’s Green Expo in Mexico City. Today is the last day of the three-day exhibition organized by EJ. Krause Mexico and CONIECO (Consejo Nacional de Industriales Ecologistas).

As market participants in South Africa wait for the final results of the country’s fourth round of the successful REIPPP tender program for large-scale solar PV to be announced in early April, this week’s Solar Show Africa, part of the 20th Power & Electricity World Africa 2017 in Johannesburg, showed a growing diversification of solar PV in this leading African market.

At this week’s World Future Energy Summit (WFES) in Abu Dhabi Huawei launched its 1500V Smart PV Solution for the Middle East Africa (MEA) market. At yesterday’s launch event pv magazine interviewed Paul Pan, Huawei’s General Manager for the Smart PV Plant Business, Middle East & Africa, at the Huawei booth at WFES. Pan is responsible for over 70 countries in MEA, where Huawei is already present with offices serving its ICT customer base.