Grids & Integration

According to solar body the PPLSA, around 300 PV system owners have already gone off-grid as the tariff granted for surplus power under net metering was not attractive enough. Several barriers are preventing net metering taking hold, including an obligation to either use locally made equipment or pay more to re-certify imported modules and inverters.

Having launched a residential storage system, the German giant announced plans last week to acquire inverter maker Kaco and start a new smart infrastructure business from April 1. In light of those moves, pv magazine spoke to IHS Markit’s Cormac Gilligan about the new kid, albeit huge, on the block.

The capacity comes from two solar parks and five wind power plants awarded firm energy obligations for 2022-2023. The Reliability Charge auctions were created by the Colombian government to ensure power supply during water shortages.

Owners of residential PV systems increasingly want more features. Virtual power plants, smart EV charging and self-consumption measured by ever higher percentages of self-sufficiency have been buzzwords in the industry. The result has been a new breed of smart bidirectional inverters, sometimes dubbed hybrid inverters. And with utilities having found business models that also work out in their favor, could a new dawn of residential installations rise over the world of suburbia?

Maybe. But you’d be better off using a laptop. And no, Huawei inverters aren’t going to cause a blackout.

Two sites with capacities of 34.7 MW and 25.7 MW will supply unsubsidized power to Warrington Borough Council. The smaller project will provide the local authority’s energy needs and reduce its electricity bill while the larger one will sell renewable energy on the open market, further bolstering council income.

In the run-up to the Energy Storage Europe conference pv magazine is featuring the top ten developments in the field as our Energy Storage Highlights, selected by an independent jury of experts. Yesterday we entered our top five, with MAN’s thermoelectric energy storage.

The level of new solar capacity – 8,263 MW – however, was 15.5% down from the 9,782 MW added in 2017 owing to safeguarding duty and tax taking a toll on large-scale PV. While utility-scale solar declined 23% year-on-year, rooftop PV remained a bright spot, and registered impressive growth of 66%.

An international team of economists says power-to-gas may already generate hydrogen at costs competitive with fossil fuel power plants in Germany and Texas, provided certain production output levels are not exceeded. If medium and small power-to-gas is competitive, large-scale should be viable by 2030.

In the run-up to the Energy Storage Europe conference pv magazine is featuring the top ten developments in the field as our Energy Storage Highlights, selected by an independent jury of experts. Last week we revealed #6, a ’70s revival of a ceramic high temperature battery.