Markets

Although China is developing its photovoltaics (PV) market rapidly, the country still has some major hurdles to overcome. As the 2010 Golden Sun PV Industry Summit, held this week in Beijing, China, clearly showed, not only do the prospects of a national feed-in tariff remain uncertain, but other key issues are proving to hinder a major ramp-up of the domestic market.

Offering up an alternative for building integrated photovoltaics (BIPV) modules, Fahrzeugwerk Bernard Krone GmbH presented a refrigerated semi trailer equipped with flexible PV modules, provided by Germany-based Solarion AG, at the 63rd IAA Commercial Vehicles show, held last week in Hanover, Germany.

According to a new report issued by Solarbuzz, the UK’s emergence into the photovoltaics (PV) market “couldn’t be better timed”. However, with a “fast-growing” downstream market, it said “extreme challenges” lie ahead for solar companies to operate profitably.

Annualized photovoltaics (PV) cell production capacity has again increased in the second quarter of this year, said IMS Research, reaching over 25 gigawatts (GW).

A two-megawatt (MW) photovoltaics (PV) plant has been installed in the western Bulgarian town of Ihtiman by Sunservice Ltd.

In its latest renewable energy attractiveness indices, Ernst & Young has announced the solar market is preparing for a shift from a “dominant” German market to other smaller hotspots. It added that Spain “remains largely in the doldrums”, with the wind industry largely thought to have won out over solar.

Climate change firm Emergent Ventures International (EVI) has launched an initiative to aggregate solar power projects to help developers in India earn carbon credits from the UN Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), which aims to reduce emissions through the deployment of clean technologies.

In what has been termed the first “systematic and comparative analysis” of the effects of regenerative energy technologies on the output of value, the German Institute for Ecological Economic Research (IÖW) has concluded that photovoltaics (PV) contributed 36 percent to Germany’s sum total last year.

According to a media report, BWE (German WindEnergy Association) President Hermann Albers has demanded that the solar sector demonstrates photovoltaic’s (PV) potential for reduced costs. In his view, saving the EEG (Renewable Energy Sources Act) is at stake.

The global photovoltaics (PV) market is making positive progress, with new research released by solar energy market research company Solarbuzz showing that PV demand “soared” by 54 percent in the second quarter of this year (Q2’10), to 3.82 gigawatts (GW).