Highlights

The country’s cumulative PV capacity reached 22.56GW at the end of December.

The London-based analyst has published a series of clean tech predictions for the year which also highlighted the rising proportion of sub-5MW solar projects in the global market, and cheaper clean energy financing costs even as panel prices continue to rise.

The nation imported solar cells worth more than $633 million from April to the end of last year, a figure higher than the value imported during the whole of the 2020-21 fiscal year.

Japan’s PV sector remains the third largest in the world in terms of installed capacity, at some 78.5GW, making it one of the leading global PV marketplaces in the last decade. But as the world races to install more solar, it is one of the few markets in recent years that has charted a decline in new installs. An approach involving numerous government agencies is looking to restart the market, and not purely based on feed-in-tariffs (FITs), says Izumi Kaizuka, the director and principal analyst at RTS Corp.

Developed by Swedish manufacturer Polestar, the hard-top convertible incorporates a drone that can be launched from its dock behind the rear seats whilst driving to capture footage of the journey. In other news, Sony and Honda tie-up to make electric vehicles, Ford splits gas-powered and EV businesses, Stellantis unveils a strategic plan to reach net-zero by 2038, and Tesla offers free supercharging near Ukraine. Panasonic has also unveiled plans for two new production facilities for its large-format cylindrical battery cells.

Glass maker Flat Glass wants to add 7,200 MT of new glass capacity spread across six new production lines and panel manufacturer Eging PV started construction of a new PV panel factory with an annual capacity of 5 GW.

The Hungarian energy regulator expects to contract around 864 GWh of renewable energy in the procurement exercise. Projects ranging in size from 5 to 50 MW will be entitled to participate.

Megasol said the solar module relies on new back-contact technology that is able to reduce internal resistance, ohmic losses and cell spacing.

Thanks to a funding round that will be carried out by the end of the year, French start-up Carbon aims to open its first production site in France in 2025. pv magazine spoke with Pascal Richard, one of its founders, about the timeline for the project.

The factory is expected to begin operating with an annual capacity of 300 MW and to produce bifacial modules with a power output of 600 W.