Highlights

French energy company Compagnie Nationale du Rhône is considering deploying vertical PV installations along 400 km of its dikes. A first 104 kW project was deployed at the Sablons dike, in the Isere department.

The Japanese authorities have released new guidelines for the development of agrivoltaics projects and have excluded installations that do not host crops or livestock in the planning phase. Analyst Takeshi Magami says that agrivoltaics can be developed under the feed-in tariff scheme, in the free market via PPAs, or through a rebate scheme covering 50% of initial investments.

India recorded 46.2 GW of installed solar capacity at the end of October, led by installations in the states of Rajasthan, Karnataka, and Gujarat.

It may be the best of times, or it’s the worst – it rather depends on who you talk to. Either way, 2021 has not been a dull year in the global solar industry. Polysilicon and commodities prices, shipping costs, tariffs, and energy shortages have all taken turns to give the supply chain a beating, but has it sent PV development off course?

Developed by Canada-based Hydrogen Optimized, the electrolyzer can be used to stabilize electrical grids and optimize energy recovery from intermittent renewable power sources such as solar and wind. Furthermore, this week four more big international partnerships for developing green hydrogen were announced across Germany, the Middle East, and Australia.

SEIA responds that a new round of tariffs will hamper U.S. solar development and forestall this administration’s vision of becoming a world leader in clean energy.

Photon Energy has deployed its first merchant PV project in Hungary. The company said the €1 million plant may be the first in a series selling power to the spot market. In an interview with pv magazine, Hungarian renewable energy specialist, Ferenc Kis, stated that these projects may become more frequent in the future, due to new coordinated grid connection capacity allocation.

India installed 7.4 GW of new solar capacity in the first nine months of 2021, putting this year on track to become one of the best 12-month periods on record for new PV installations.

A lack of end-of-life batteries this decade is likely to play into the hands of Chinese recyclers located near most of the world’s production facilities, according to analyst WoodMac, but might at least help rebalance the current situation in which new products are cheaper than recycled ones.

Scientists in the United States developed a computer simulator that can calculate the conversion efficiency of different solar cell materials and configurations – helping to guide research and optimization of new cell designs. The simulator is available to researchers as an open-source tool to save time and spot the best opportunities for optimization of any given approach.