Residential PV

The private-sector arm of the World Bank, which claims to leverage $3 of its own capital and $8 from third parties for every dollar invested in its blended finance funds, has attempted to quantify what devoting Covid recovery funds to green investment would mean for emerging economies.

Blockchain systems are being tested as a means of offering solar households revenue for excess power they generate, now the FIT program has ceased.

A recent ruling of the Belgian constitutional court has canceled the 15-year grace period granted to residential PV system owners to keep operating under net metering despite the arrival of smart meters. The Flemish government said it will provide some compensation for the financial losses that this decision will cause.

The EV manufacturer with big solar ambitions has finally leveraged its expertise in power electronics technology and launched a solar inverter.

Scientists applied a model where rooftop PV and electric vehicle batteries are integrated into the energy system of nine Japanese cities. Their findings suggests that such a system could meet more than half of every city’s total energy demand by 2030, and as much as 95% in some cases. The model also reveals opportunities to cut both pollution and energy costs for urban populations in Japan.

The German research institute has proposed a technique based on the surface structure of the wings of the morpho butterfly to produce colored BIPV panels for facades and rooftops. The process is claimed to make it possible to color the modules with an optical effect and not with color pigments, which reduce their efficiency.

Some 15% of the finance disbursed must fit the wider definition of being ‘sustainable’ and banks and other lenders have been warned penalties will be applied for non compliance.

While Spain is struggling with the largest snowfall since 1971, pv magazine editor Alejandro Diego Rosell has asked two Spanish experts what the consequences of the massive snow loads produced by Storm Filomena will be on solar installations. According to them, some PV systems may stop working completely and component failures may not be excluded.

The German energy company has acquired a 49% stake in U.K. installer Eco2solar. The British company offers solutions for commercial and residential projects.

Brazil may see the deployment of 4 GW of new distributed generation solar capacity this year and another 5 GW next year, according to Aldo Pereira Teixeira, the CEO of Brazil’s largest PV product distributor and system integrator. In an interview with pv magazine, he explains why and how this huge growth could materialize.