O&M plays its hand – 02-2015
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Lessons learned from PV+Test
Module test:?For the second time Hanwha Solar submitted to the challenging PV+Test 2.0 test program created by the German safety standards authority TÜV Rheinland and Solarpraxis this time with a module from the same series that was already tested last year. After adjustments to its production process the module fared even better this time than it did before.
Feb 17, 2015
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Healthy growth
Industry investment: Total corporate funding in the solar sector increased 175% to $26.5 billion in 2014, reports Raj Prabhu, CEO and cofounder of Mercom Capital Group. Last year saw strong public market financing, debt financing, and initial public offering activity. Venture capital funding doubled after a two year slump. Large-scale PV project acquisition activity continued to soar.
Feb 10, 2015
Costs and benefits of monitoring
System management: The smaller a PV plant, the harder it is to implement economically feasible power plant management. Manfred Bächler, the General Director of Pervorm, explains the key considerations in technical management of small and medium-sized PV plants under 100 kWp.
Feb 10, 2015
Dynamic market or missed opportunity?
WFES 2015: the MENA region has long attracted the attention of the global solar industry as a collection of national markets with enormous potential. The question of whether the market will live up to its hype or remain an enormous missed opportunity is still unclear, but it does appear that now is the time for this debate to be met head on.
Feb 10, 2015
Daring to dream
Solar flight: Solar panels have been a ubiquitous sight on satellites since the dawn of space travel, but their use thus far has only ever been secondary to more traditional power sources. Solar Impulse, however, hopes to break these boundaries when it embarks on the worlds first round-the-world, solar-powered-only flight in March. pv magazine gets up close and personal with the craft and crew attempting this historic feat.
Feb 10, 2015
Performance under difficult conditions
Mounting systems Japan: Germany-based provider Schletter established operations in Japan in April 2012 to supply the booming ground-mount market. In supplying around 500 MW of mounting structures to Japan, it has learned valuable lessons about varying topographies and wide-ranging climactic conditions. Dominik Grützner, the representative director of Schletter Japan K.K, shares five key lessons from his time in Japan.
Feb 10, 2015
Frontier mentality
Japan: coming through the module glut unscathed is no mean feat for a thin film manufacturer, but Solar Frontier has long turned expectation on its head. 2014 saw the firm travel along its own path in how it develops projects, moves its CIGS technology forward, releases differentiated products, and looks to the international market.
Feb 10, 2015
Happy prosumers
Grid parity monitor: Solar PV self-consumption is an attractive alternative for residential consumers in major markets. Most European countries have reached grid parity in the solar energy self-consumption market, explains María Jesús Báez, Associate at eclareon, which merged its business with Creara last year to form Creara Energy Experts.
Feb 10, 2015
A maturing market and the rise of O&M
PV is all grown up. In its 2014 clean energy investment analysis released last month, Bloomberg New Energy Finance found that global investment in solar reached almost $150 billion for the year, its largest-ever slice of the clean energy pie. BNEF noted that some large solar investments, such as Japan’s $1.1 billion 250 MW Setouchi […]
Feb 10, 2015
Fiddling while Rome burns
European R&D: Criticized for toiling away in labs while the PV industry lies gravely injured, Europes R&D sector hopes a series of pan-continental projects can help wrest control of solars global future. pv magazine visited the INES research center in France to see how the community is regrouping and collaborating as it prepares to survive Europes solar winter.
Feb 10, 2015
Struggling utilities
Electric utilities: European utilities are struggling to adapt to a shifting market and investment landscape. As a result, policy-makers struggle to find new solutions in securing sufficient capacity reserves to integrate intermittent renewable power and avoid power outages. A pan-European electricity market could be an answer to this problem, but national governments seem more interested in protecting their home markets from competition.
Feb 10, 2015
