Residential PV

Although the International Energy Agency’s latest renewables report forecasts impressive solar growth there is still a nagging feeling it has produced conservative estimates and the emphasis on sharing costs with grid operators is predictable.

Two high-profile bankruptcies this year could serve as a warning for the potential pitfalls of pay-as-you-go and small scale, off-grid solar. However, Marcus Wiemann and David Lecoque of the Alliance for Rural Electrification say such business models can lead to long-term success and have a key role to play in providing power to the 1 billion people throughout the world who still live without electricity.

Getting on for 300 international exhibitors are attending the Solar Bangladesh Expo in Dhaka which opened today and runs until Saturday. pv magazine’s Syful Islam is walking the floors and hearing optimistic messages.

Roth Capital Partners expects the U.S. residential storage market to grow more quickly than expected. The prediction is founded just as much in disaster mitigation as it is in economic viability.

The new. more ambitious target is part of a climate protection program Berlin is now defining. The solar sector believes, however, 98 GW will not be enough to ensure the country’s energy transition.

This year will see strong growth for the global PV market, to 114 GW, and that pattern will continue in the years ahead, according to analyst Wood Mackenzie. a report has highlighted soaring inverter replacement costs for PV project owners as a side-effect of the solar success story.

A recent project milestone saw the disconnection of properties from overhead lines and will enable 64km of poles and wires to be replaced by off-grid solar-plus-battery solutions.

Turkey introduced net metering in May, stoking hopes the scheme could add meaningful volumes of new solar generation capacity. Municipal governments elected in the spring can also boost the program’s success, provided the many layers of authority can work together, that is.

According to figures from Italian renewables body ANIE Rinnovabili, 18,036 storage systems coupled to clean energy power generation have been installed in the country. Most of the batteries are in Lombardy, whose administration offers rebates.

Scientists led by the Technical University of Denmark have begun a project to design solar cells that can be produced in different colors with minimal effect on performance, making them suitable for building-integrated and other applications with aesthetic considerations.