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Magazine Archive 03-2018

Europe takes a second look

M&A and secondary markets: With the pace of solar growth in Europe slowing, activity in the secondary solar market appears to have picked up, funneling solar assets into the hands of a shrinking few. Such consolidation of the market has manifest in increased mergers and acquisitions activity, particularly in the O&M space. Is this new PV landscape an inevitability, a one-off, or simply cyclical?

Two sides to tracking

Bifacial trackers: Solar tracker makers are bringing specially designed models to the market in order to embrace the coming wave of bifacial panels. While bifacial panels may capture up to 10% more light than monofacial panels, single-axis trackers typically add 25% to that bifacial gain, resulting in a roughly estimated 12.5% gain from the two technologies combined, compared with fixed installs using monofacial panels.

Behind the meter

Residential & commercial storage: Since 2015 the annually installed capacity of behind-the-meter energy storage has grown almost three times (from 110 MWh to about 300 MWh in 2017) as the residential market continues to pick up momentum and C&I installations are starting to come to fruition after initial hype. Based on the analysis conducted in our European Market Monitor Report, we foresee a similar growth trend continuing in the future.

Troubleshooting efforts in PV plants

Plant maintenance: Troubleshooting in solar plants requires not only trying to find a diagnosis of why the performance ratio is reduced, but also to localize faulty modules. John Davies, Operations Director – Solar and Energy Storage at operations and maintenance firm Cobalt Energy, shares with pv magazine his thoughts on fault detection, troubleshooting, and thermography in the field.

Refining the process

CdTe modules: At its production facility in Germany’s ‘Solar Valley,’ Calyxo is producing CdTe modules at production costs moving towards $0.20/W, many of which are destined for repowering PV plants across Europe. pv magazine caught up with Calyxo CTO and COO Michael Bauer, to discuss the company’s latest developments.

A multi-layered battle

Lamination innovation: The ongoing ambition of laminator manufacturers is to develop machines that can deliver high output through a faster lamination process, while simultaneously reducing their footprint by combining several machines into one. However, an in-depth process know-how is essential in order to produce defect-free modules. Which players possess such knowledge?

Half cell, full value

Half-cut cell modules: Thanks to their potential for increased power output at module level, half-cut cells are set to be a key technology trend in 2018, with several tier-1 manufacturers having introduced products utilizing the technology in recent months.

From the top

Polysilicon and wafer manufacturers ranking: PV demand reached record levels in 2017, with global installations surpassing 100 GW for the first time ever. Few in the industry expected deployments to hit this level, piling the pressure on to the supply chain. Armed with polysilicon and wafer manufacturer ranking data supplied by IHS Markit, pv magazine delves into the past year’s upstream landscape.

Let’s mitigate LID & LeTID!

Cell degradation: LID in p-type monocrystalline PERC cells has caused serious issues in PV plant performance. Now, it can be prevented with regeneration processes or by replacing boron with gallium. The cause of LeTID in multicrystalline PERC cells, meanwhile, is still a mystery, but researchers have proposed an industrial solution to address it.

Raising issues, raising the bar

Quality and Future PV Roundtables 2018: A look ahead to this year’s packed pv magazine Quality and Future PV Roundtables schedule reveals an exciting program, a couple of new concepts, and a continuation of the format that has served the industry since its launch in 2015.

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