The country also intends to continue the procurement exercise for the Dimona solar power plant in the Negev desert. The Israeli government also will try to remove barriers to facilitate rapid and efficient development, while improving the grid-connection process for projects.

The tariff is around $0.0021 lower than the $0.0156/kWh French oil giant Total and Japanese conglomerate Marubeni Corp offered in Qatar’s 800 MW tender in late January. French energy company EDF and Chinese solar company JinkoPower reportedly submitted the record bid in the UAE exercise.

As a focus of research at leading institutes the world over, new developments in the perovskite field come thick and fast almost every week. From x-ray observations on a nanoscale to financing and plans for mass production, pv magazine is bringing together some of the most exciting developments of recent weeks.

Russian researchers have improved the efficiency of a thin-fim GaAs‐based solar cell by 0.9% by applying single‐walled carbon nanotubes as the topmost layer. The cell also showed a slight increase in the short circuit current density, from 16.9 to 17.9 mA/cm2.

The Chinese manufacturer has integrated the Solis 110 kW string inverter into its 5G tech platform. The company claims the upgraded device can offer stronger system returns and a lower levelized cost of energy. The price of the Solis-110K-5G inverter is €0.035/W.

Clean energy developers have three days left to pre-qualify for the first procurement exercise staged by the Irish Renewable Electricity Support Scheme. Solar will compete with wind – on and offshore – and biomass projects.

According to the latest figures from the Turkish grid operator, 109 MW of new solar was added in the first quarter, most of it net-metered rooftop systems. The troubled 1 GW national tender originally planned in January 2019, however, has been postponed for a second time, with the government stating the Covid-19 crisis will cause the exercise to be staged next year.

The transformer-free products have a power range of 3-6 kW and efficiency of 97.8%. The Chinese manufacturer says the devices are designed to accurately match the voltage and phase of the grid sine wave AC waveform.

According to the 2020 World Silver Survey 2020 by the U.S.-based Silver Institute, the metal’s price will decline by only 3% this year, despite the impact that the Covid-19 crisis will also have on demand. In the global PV industry, silver demand is forecast to drop 3% from 98.7 million ounces in 2019 to 96.1 million ounces this year.

Atamostec, a private-public initiative supported by Chile’s government-run Production Development Corp. and several industrial partners, has developed a new module. The team claims that the bifacial panel offers an additional annual average gain of 11% compared to monofacial PERC modules with the same cell technology.