The former head of Germany’s Fraunhofer ISE said in an interview with Spiegel that, although the proposed U.S. border wall should reach a length of only 3,000 kilometers, this would be enough to build a huge PV installation. With solar LCOE ranging from $0.03 to $0.05/KWh the PV plant could be amortized in five to six years.

The PV research and upstream organizations ETIP, EUREC and Solarunited have submitted seven requests to all EU policy makers. According to the three entities, the entire PV supply chain must be preserved in Europe in order to give a future to the market and the R&D sector. The reason for the letter was the insolvency of Solarworld, which has spread fears that Europe could completely lose contact with the global market.

A small increase of 2.6 % was recorded in the Central European country last year. The Austrian Photovoltaic Association is still calling for an adjustment of the state´s Green Electricity Act to unleash the limited PV extension.

The German development bank reports robust demand for storages systems combined with PV power generators. Starting from July 1, the repayment subsidy will drop from 19% to 16%.

Three years after acquiring the cell production business of insolvent Sunways, Bluecell has also given up. The 100 MW production equipment at the company’s facility in Arnstadt will be sold by the end of 2017.

Around 300 MW of PV and wind power plants will be selected in the future cross-border auctions, in which German developers will have to deal with competitors from other EU neighbor countries. In the pilot cross-border solar auction held last year, all selected projects were located in Denmark.

The German government selected 32 project proposals with a combined capacity of 201 MW in the auction. For the first time, it was possible to submit proposals for large-scale PV projects on agricultural land in the regions of Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg. This has considerably lowered the biddings.

According to analysis from Fraunhofer ISE, PV was almost on par with nuclear power in Germany in the previous month. PV systems installed in Germany generated the record volume of 5.57 terawatt hours.

Although the central European country has a solar market with a stable growth, the residential solar-plus-storage segment is still far behind its strong potential. In 2016, around 500 storage systems combined with PV installations were installed under the incentive scheme in the country.

An interim report shows that the yields of the photovoltaic system were up to five per cent higher after cleaning. Overall, the field trial runs until the end of September.