Residential PV

The government has ramped up its budget for the rebate scheme to €10 million.

An international research group has developed a self-cooling PV system featuring a 250 W 60-cell polycrystalline module and a thermal collector attached to the back side of the panel. The cleaning tech is based on a microcontroller programmable integrated circuit, which controls a rotating DC motor.

Tesla has decimated its solar business from installation peaks of years past and its market share lead has long been surrendered to Sunrun and others. In December, it claimed it would install 1,000 building-integrated solar roofs per week – a figure it has not come close to achieving in six months. Is this any way to run a solar business?

Its new line of residential hybrid storage systems integrates Kstar inverter technology with the lithium-ion storage technology of Chinese battery specialist CATL.

Industry body SolarPower Europe is trying to stay bullish about the lingering effects as the continent starts to come out of lockdown and one analyst has predicted a healthy large scale solar market will carry the US through the crisis.

SolarPower Europe has predicted the volume of new PV capacity added this year will be 4% less than last year’s figure because of the Covid-19 crisis. At the end of 2019, the world had topped 630 GW of solar. For 2020, around 112 GW of new PV capacity is expected, and in 2021, newly installed capacity could be 149.9 GW if governments support renewables in their coronavirus economic recovery plans.

The government will grant rebates to residential PV projects and may cover up to 90% of the costs of purchasing and deploying a rooftop array.

The Solar Energy Industries Association has urged the U.S. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to dismiss a petition to scrap net metering, solely on legal grounds. A filing by Solar United Neighbors, Vote Solar, and other groups makes a legal case and also rebuts the petition’s claims about net metering.

The government said developers have one more month to apply for the subsidy. It also delayed the project-completion deadline from Dec. 31, 2020, to June 30, 2021. From next year, rooftop PV will likely be supported by unspecified tax breaks.

European scientists have developed mini modules with an active area of 14 cm² and a 3.68% efficiency rating. The panels also have a self-adjusting feature that can help to mitigate the amount of light when they are exposed to full sunlight, or to the temperatures of buildings with large windows and/or glass facades.