Opinion & Analysis

As solar module prices continue to drop to record lows, amid global oversupply, questions are being asked about how much inventory is sitting in European warehouses and when normal levels will return. With numerous estimates and assumptions swirling, EUPD Research’s Markus A.W. Hoehner and Ali Arfa have looked closely at the numbers in an attempt to provide a transparent view of the issue.

University of New South Wales academic Aihua Wang is the first female recipient of the United Kingdom’s Queen Elizabeth Prize (QEPrize) for Engineering, after sharing the 2023 award with Andrew Blakers, Martin Green, and her husband Jianhua Zhao for their work developing the passivated emitter rear contact (PERC) solar cell. pv magazine caught up with her to ask about the achievement.

According to data collected by Aleasoft Energy Forecasting, roughly 84 GWh of solar energy was recorded on one day in Spain while Germany recorded 910 GWh of wind energy generated on another November date.

From the International Solar Energy Society’s perspective, and the vision of a world with 100% renewable energy for everyone used wisely and efficiently, PV module production should not become an oligopoly and should not be concentrated in one corner of the world.

The threat of catastrophic climate change, as well as increasingly obvious economic benefits, make it advisable, indeed essential, to convert our entire energy system to a sustainable system, based on renewable energy (RE) as soon as possible. The two main pillars of our future RE-based energy system will be power generation from PV and wind. In Germany alone, according to detailed studies by Fraunhofer-Institut für Solare Energiesysteme ISE, we will need at least about 300 GW of PV and an equally large amount of wind power.

In a new weekly update for pv magazine, Solcast, a DNV company, presents its solar irradiance data for Asia in October.

In a new weekly update for pv magazine, OPIS, a Dow Jones company, provides a quick look at the main price trends in the global PV industry.

As the world’s solar manufacturers continue to ramp up production at an eye-watering speed, a cell connection technique up to 10 times faster than the industry standard holds rich promise, according to Keven Tremblay, from Canadian laser process specialist Laserax.

Electricity market prices recovered in the second week of November due to falling wind production. MIBEL recorded the lowest weekly average price for the third consecutive week.

Solar manufacturing capacity has been ramping up so quickly that even impressive installation growth cannot keep pace. Molly Morgan, senior research analyst at UK-based research firm Exawatt, explores the relationship between PV supply and demand and assesses the likelihood of overproduction.