Inverters

Earlier this month, pv magazine held its first webinar under the UP sustainability initiative, looking at greenwashing versus verifiable sustainability. Initiative partner SMA and Professor Dustin Mulvaney shared their insights in a lively discussion. Many questions were submitted by the webinar participants. What follows are those we did not have time to answer.

The court has deferred a hearing of the second case, with Huawei claiming that was due to insufficient evidence of patent infringement. The European Patent Office has revoked SolarEdge’s inverter multi-level topology patent and the Israeli company said it intends to challenge both decisions.

The Chinese company plans to roll out 2 GW of inverters per year from a facility which will have 1 GW production lines for both central and string products.

Complaints about sub-standard, cheap PV imports from China – and notably, India – have been heeded by Dhaka, which has issued a requirement for modules, inverters, charge controllers and batteries to attain IEC electrical standards.

The energy transition is becoming ever more apparent among power companies, as was evident at the European Utility Week event last week in Paris, which showcased the hopes and fears of energy companies. Rebranding next year to ‘Enlit’, the organizers aim to reach the whole energy industry.

A researcher has proposed a new approach to apply maximum power point tracking techniques to optimize electricity production in wind-solar power projects. The permanent magnetic synchronous generator hybrid model used in the study is based on a multi-input rectifier stage which is said to be able to eradicate current harmonics and eliminate the need for extra input filters.

The successes and benefits of distributed micro-grids depend largely on intelligent controllers and the solutions on offer for such systems are diverse. In our market survey, we take a closer look at the products available from 24 manufacturers.

Italy’s main solar event, the Key Energy fair held in Rimini, demonstrated the continuing importance of rooftop PV for Italian renewables but also promised a gradual return for large scale solar. Industry insiders are hoping for at least one gigawatt of solar next year, on top of a projected 600 MW this year.

The European Solar Manufacturing Council says a decision by policymakers to disregard the carbon footprint of imported solar products ‘makes absolutely no sense’. Talk of ‘jobs which require a rather low qualification’, meanwhile, is unlikely to heal the widening rift with solar project developers and panel installers.