Modules & Upstream Manufacturing

Researchers at the American Institute of Physics have used the clear-sky irradiance model developed by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory to measure the degradation rates of solar panels at a testing field in Germany over five years. The scientists say the model, when combined with real-world data, offers an efficient tool to evaluate the aging of PV technology.

The Chinese manufacturer debuted on the Shenzhen exchange in mid December, after de-listing from New York’s NASDAQ in 2018. The company plans to roll out 10 GW of new module capacity and 5 GW of cell lines over four years.

Sun Da has moved to become the lithium energy storage and electric vehicle battery company’s second largest investor, raising HK$10.3 million for the business in the process.

By this time next year we may be able to wave goodbye to that old chestnut about renewables endangering security of supply. Elsewhere, the price of lithium – and the products it goes into – could go either way after tanking this year.

Battery innovations started to come thick and fast this quarter as the hunt for alternatives to lithium-ion intensified and the latest slew of solar tenders indicated the relentless pressure on solar power generation costs was showing no sign of abating.

Intersolar Europe is always a key date in the solar calendar but this year’s show had it all, including three panel-smuggling arrests. Elsewhere, wafers were getting bigger, efficiency records were tumbling and new technologies were emerging. There was also more news on the solar car ports fad and Hanwha’s ongoing legal tussle.

Finnish lender Nordea has called in a NOK150 million indemnity loan thought to have been taken out by REC Silicon ASA as a result of the bankruptcy of its Norwegian wafer manufacturing arm seven years ago.

The first part of pv magazine’s review of 2019 considers Q1, when solar early adopter Italy offered an optimistic start to the year by fleshing out its plans for PV but uncertainty still clouded the world’s biggest solar market. The potential for household solar installations to rocket the world over – helped by ever cheaper panels – prompted strategic decisions in the inverter market and analyst expectations were confounded as the cobalt and lithium price plummeted, bringing the EV revolution a big step nearer.

U.S. scientists are trying to understand how non-fullerene small-molecule acceptors (NAFs) increase the efficiency of organic PV devices. They claim that methoxy groups embedded in the acceptors could facilitate an efficiency increase of approximately 6%.