Residential PV

The renowned PV-Lab at Switzerland’s École Polytechnique Fédérale De Lausanne today announced that it has taken on the role of coordinator for the EU funded research project ‘Be-Smart’, which aims at developing a European industry for building integrated PV components.

In December, pv magazine met SolaX Power president Li Xinfu and his team at the company’s headquarters in sprawling Hangzhou, in Zhejiang province. The region is a hotspot for the Chinese PV industry and SolaX belongs to the cutting edge of Chinese inverter and residential battery manufacturers.

Despite the small figure, last year saw the nascent Norwegian PV market expand 29% from the previous year. The country’s cumulative installed PV capacity reached approximately 68 MW at the end of December.

Multilateral lender hopes to leverage $212 million more from the private sector as falling solar development costs make renewables more attractive. A solar plant with a 50 MW capacity in Feni will be one of the first to benefit from the new funds.

According to new figures released by SolarPower Europe, last year saw 1.4 GW more new solar generation capacity than trade body had expected. Lower demand in China was compensated for by stronger developments in emerging markets.

Though we’re unlikely to see a return to the days of double-figure GW annual installation levels, Japan will stay at the top table of solar. Last week, pv magazine visited PV Expo Japan, part of Tokyo’s World Smart Energy Week, and found plenty of market developments to discuss, along with healthy interest from major players.

The controversial charge for residential PV systems will apply only to installations connected to the grid after July 1, and will come into force from 2020. Wallonia has around 1.1 GW of installed solar capacity, most of it residential PV systems.

According to solar body the PPLSA, around 300 PV system owners have already gone off-grid as the tariff granted for surplus power under net metering was not attractive enough. Several barriers are preventing net metering taking hold, including an obligation to either use locally made equipment or pay more to re-certify imported modules and inverters.

SECI, the organization responsible for coordinating India’s push for 100 GW of new solar capacity by 2022, has had a busy week. But, as last year illustrated, tenders alone are not always a guarantee of new generation assets.

Maybe. But you’d be better off using a laptop. And no, Huawei inverters aren’t going to cause a blackout.