Residential PV

The fourth auction held for systems with a generation capacity no larger than 1 MW saw solar secure 750 MW of projects to leave wind developers in the cold. Innogy took its first steps into Polish PV with 42 projects across three provinces.

The government has abrogated a controversial measure introduced last year which favored big developers in the allocation of fiscal incentives for rooftop projects linked to building renovation.

IHS Markit has predicted another year of global solar growth but a peek behind the headline figures shows uncertainty dogging the markets of China and India, two of the most important markets and biggest polluters.

The cataclysmic bushfire season ravaging the nation is a reminder of the risk climate change poses to Australia’s economic and social prosperity. An international roadmap to freedom from fossil fuels by 2050 produced by the U.S.’ Stanford University says Australia needs another 280 GW of solar and tens of billions of dollars of investment to turn down the heat.

The Brazilian president said the potential introduction of a grid fee for net metered solar systems will be eliminated thanks to an urgent ad-hoc decree expected to be approved soon by parliament. The proposed ‘solar tax’ would have affected all new PV installations with a generation capacity of no larger than 5 MW under Brazil’s net metering regime.

Sustainable Energy Development Authority figures show the country saw around 94 MW of new rooftop generation capacity added in the first 11 months of last year. That compares to less than 14 MW in the previous three years.

Industry figures indicate the expansion of the Bangladeshi grid is hitting demand for the solar home systems which have traditionally generated power for homes formerly out of reach of the electricity network.

The analyst expects the final figure for new PV generation capacity in 2019 to top out at 20-24 GW thanks to the delayed introduction of a new solar policy, land scarcity, financing problems and grid connection issues. There are clouds on the horizon too, with China set to remain wedded to coal for the foreseeable future.

By this time next year we may be able to wave goodbye to that old chestnut about renewables endangering security of supply. Elsewhere, the price of lithium – and the products it goes into – could go either way after tanking this year.

Building integrated PV has been described as a place where uncompetitive PV products attempt to go to market. But this may be unfair, says Björn Rau, the technology manager and deputy director of PVcomB at the Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin. Rau argues that the missing link to BIPV deployment lies at the intersection of the architectural community, construction industry, and PV manufacturers.