Highlights

Sengi Solar announced a BRL 440 million ($85 million) investment earlier this month to set up two solar panel factories in Brazil. The PV manufacturer recently spoke to pv magazine about the incentives that led to the decision, future technological developments, and its path to 100% Brazilian solar manufacturing.

Indian manufacturer Goldi Solar has unveiled a 710 Wp bifacial solar module based on heterojunction (HJT) technology. The module is built with 132 half-cells and has a conversion efficiency of up to 22.85%.

The 2.7 million people employed in solar in China last year dwarfed the 250,000 working in the US solar industry, according to a new report by the International Renewable Energy Agency.

Leading solar researchers from around the world are meeting for the first time in four years in Milan, Italy, for the 8th World Conference on Photovoltaic Energy Conversion (WCPEC-8). The first morning has seen prestigious awards bestowed on two scientific leaders and inspirational discussions as to how the “second terawatt” of solar can be installed globally in just a handful of years.

Oz Minerals has given the green light to a AUD 1.7 billion ($1.1 billion) copper and nickel project in Western Australia that will be powered by a mix of solar PV and wind generation.

Sterling and Wilson Solar Solutions has signed an agreement to build 961 MWp of solar and 455 MWh of battery storage capacity in Nigeria.

The Solliance consortium achieved a 29.2% record efficiency for the solar cell in November 2021, from just 28.7% in March 2020. In recent months, it increased the perovskite cell for the tandem device from 17.8% to 19.7%.

Saudi Arabia’s latest procurement exercise will facilitate the construction of 1.8 GW of wind power at three sites and two solar parks with a combined capacity of 1.5 GW.

The supply of PV modules to the United States has been challenged by potential tariffs on goods shipped from four Southeast Asian nations that provide 80% of US solar panels. The disruption stems from an ongoing investigation into allegations of antidumping violations. US President Joe Biden has halted tariffs related for two years, but challenges still loom, reports pv magazine USA’s Ryan Kennedy.

Lhyfe has started an 18-month offshore green hydrogen pilot project in France, while SSAB, LKAB, and Vattenfall have commissioned a pilot facility to store fossil-free hydrogen gas in Sweden. The EU and US, meanwhile, have both announced progress on policy measures to support hydrogen.