Residential PV

This week saw prices in the polysilicon segment, and further downstream, rise again, with no end in sign. National Energy Agency statistics show a slowdown in installations for the second consecutive month in September. Manufacturers, however, continue to purchase components and materials in the expectation that prices will rise even further.

It turns out that you can have too much of a good thing, says Mark Byrne of Australia’s Total Environment Centre. Or rather, it’s possible that there is too much rooftop PV at some times in some places. As a result, a range of critical reforms – including the introduction of export tariffs to pay for upgrades of the electricity distribution network – are necessary to allow for the uninhibited growth of solar in the future, he argues.

With a rising chorus of voices calling for more solar industry recruits to perform the energy transition, Nigeria already has a skilled base of PV engineers and, with a little help filling the few gaps they have in their knowledge, the nation can step into the breach immediately, as Testimony Gabe-Oji, chief technology officer for Abuja-based installer Green Energy Spectrum, explains.

One PV installer in Wales said he has experienced a 1,000% surge in demand for solar panels as rocketing gas prices have forced small energy suppliers in the U.K. to the wall and created uncertainty in households.

China is the largest residential PV market in the world, and this trend is only expected to strengthen in the next few years. By July 2021, China’s cumulative installed residential PV capacity had reached more than 30 GW, with a total of 1.864 million residential units hosting solar PV systems. IHS Markit’s Holly Hu looks behind these impressive numbers.

Researchers conducted a global assessment of rooftop solar PV potential using high-resolution imagery, big data, and machine learning.

The U.K.’s sudden energy resource squeeze is seeing price increases on gas and electricity and is creating a solar panel boom, too.

The Green Climate Fund has announced it will provide US$150 million in funding to the Desert to Power initiative – a project led by the African Development Bank and spanning several countries that aims to build 10 GW of PV generation capacity in various projects across the Sahel region to the south of the Sahara Desert.

The provisions for a fixed feed-in tariff (FIT) for all PV systems up to 500 kW in size have finally been published in France’s Official Journal – after an agonizing two year wait. pv magazine France provides the low down on tariffs, caps, carbon criteria, and integration.

The Singapore-based manufacturer operates two factories in the Baja California state bordering the United States and the entire output of the facility in Mexicali will be shipped exclusively to the US market. Furthermore, the company’s chief revenue officer, Mark Babcock, told pv magazine that a manufacturing facility is also being considered in the US.