Policy

With electric vehicles starting to gain traction, the International Energy Agency’s updated, ten-year e-mobility forecast has suggested geopolitical and economic concerns will trump environmental niceties when it comes to encouraging recycling. But what price ever-cheaper batteries?

Industry body SolarPower Europe is trying to stay bullish about the lingering effects as the continent starts to come out of lockdown and one analyst has predicted a healthy large scale solar market will carry the US through the crisis.

Researchers have proposed a new battery performance standard for Australia and possibly the world. If adopted, the standard could clarify consumer confusion around which energy storage system is right for them.

SolarPower Europe has predicted the volume of new PV capacity added this year will be 4% less than last year’s figure because of the Covid-19 crisis. At the end of 2019, the world had topped 630 GW of solar. For 2020, around 112 GW of new PV capacity is expected, and in 2021, newly installed capacity could be 149.9 GW if governments support renewables in their coronavirus economic recovery plans.

The Ukrainian government’s conference rooms have been stuffier than usual lately, as policymakers and renewable energy industry representatives attempted to thrash out a compromise to reduce the financial burden left on the administration by a feed-in tariff incentive regime which drove almost 2 GW of generation capacity. The resulting retroactive cuts to payments, outlined below by Ukraine-based lawyer Svitlana Teush, have at least had input from both sides.

Talesun has announced plans to deploy 1 GW of new heterojunction solar cell production capacity, while rack manufacturer Akcome Technologies revealed plans to annually produce 2 GW of the same tech. Panda Green, meanwhile, has secured the exclusive rights to a 1 GW project featuring PV and photothermal generation.

Bidders have until September 16 to pitch for generation capacity which can be installed on vacant land owned by the rail company nationwide.

The companies driving the solar home system boom in the nation, in part with the help of public money, wants Dhaka to authorize the addition of PV in 18,000 public health facilities.

PV manufacturers unable to live with proposed new quality guidelines and project developers alike are set to be squeezed out by the state in the world’s biggest solar market, according to Frank Haugwitz, who has compiled a market update as preparations for the next five-year plan gather pace.

The COVID-19 pandemic featured prominently at this week’s inaugural pv magazine Virtual Roundtables Europe, which took place this past Tuesday and Wednesday. Not only did the pandemic lead to the virtualization of pv magazine’s established June Roundtables, but it was a big topic in the final session on Wednesday dealing with markets and specifically the further development of Power Purchase Agreements (PPAs) in Europe.