Residential PV

A British research group has investigated the economic feasibility of solar-powered heat pumps in China and has found that the country’s northern regions offer the lowest payback time of less than three years. As for the country’s southern regions, however, the adoption of PV-linked heat pumps was found to be “uneconomical.”

In another interview from the series held at Intersolar 2023, pv magazine spoke with Paolo Rocco Viscontini, president of the PV association Italia Solare. He said the Italian solar market is now inevitably poised to see more growth across all segments this year and during the current decade. He also spoke about market drivers, current demand, and the PPA business, as well as large-scale and small-sized storage.

In a new weekly update for pv magazine, Solcast, a DNV company, presents the solar irradiance data it collected for northern India last week. Cyclone Biparjoy had a significant impact on solar power generation in the region.

Scientists in Europe have put together a comprehensive guide to PV module degradation, examining literature and case studies on the topic as far back as the 1990s. Their paper details the primary stress factors faced by modules in the field, the most common modes of degradation and failure, and provides clear definitions relevant to reliability, quality and testing standards. Among their key findings is that a full understanding of how combinations of different stresses over varying timeframes is still missing from methods to estimate and improve system reliability.

José Donoso, the president of Spanish solar association UNEF, spoke with pv magazine at Intersolar 2023 about the future of solar manufacturing in Europe, incentives, and the need for Europe and Spain to master the entire PV industrial cycle.

Xavier Daval, the president of Syndicat des énergies renouvelables (SER), the French renewables association – spoke with pv magazine at Intersolar 2023 about solar and nuclear power in France, as well as the prospects for PV prices and installations. He touched on the market for power purchase agreements (PPA) and the outlook for solar manufacturing in France, where PV installations could hit 3 GW this year.

In May alone, the nation’s new PV additions hit 1,040 MW. Its cumulative PV capacity reached 72.5 GW.

Clean Energy Associates (CEA) has performed a safety audit on more than 600 rooftop PV systems and has found that 97% of installations have major safety concerns. It says that 49% of sites have grounding issues, 47% have damaged modules, and 41% have cross-mated connectors.

Solar’s levelized cost of electricity will reach $30/MWh in 2050, as global capacity surges, said DNV.

According to EUPD Research figures, PV system prices for single-family homes in Germany rose slightly in the second quarter of 2023. Despite falling module prices, analysts do not expect costs to fall significantly in the coming months. Prices also depend heavily on installation context, component selection, and region, which is why price comparisons with average figures, such as those used by Enpal in emails to private households, are not particularly meaningful.