Racing towards high performance – 06-2019
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Excerpt from the magazine
48 hours in … Shanghai
Time: GMT+8 | Currency: Yuan renminbi (US$ 1: CNY 6.78) | Population: 26.32 million | Average temperature in June: 28/21 C° With the 13th SNEC PV Power Expo opening its doors in Shanghai on June 4, visitors can expect a melange of sights and sounds. Local resident, photographer Dave Tacon provides a quick glimpse into life in the bustling city.
Jun 04, 2019
On the Road with pv magazine
Where we are going: Energy and Mines Australia Summit The mining sector is actively seeking alternative, reliable, low-cost and low-carbon energy solutions. Over the last 12 months, more than a dozen projects between renewable IPPs and mines have been announced or commissioned for solar, wind and energy storage. Affordable, reliable and low-carbon power for mines […]
Jun 04, 2019
China’s battery boom
The global energy storage market is poised to grow rapidly in the coming years, with Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF) predicting $620 billion in investment over the next two decades will push cumulative global installations to 942 GW/2,857 GWh by 2040. Declining lithium-ion battery costs are driving much of this growth, with BNEF expecting the cost of utility-scale storage systems to fall roughly 52% through 2030, following an approximate 80% slide in the average price of lithium-ion battery packs in the first seven years of the current decade.
Jun 04, 2019
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Perovskites: Multiple attributes come together
Named after a Russian noble in the 19th century, perovskites have become a darling of the PV research community in recent years. And while there exist many doubters to its industrial outlook in solar applications, Ronn Andriessen, the Director of Solliance Solar Research, which operates facilities in Germany, the Netherlands, and Belgium, believes the perovskite family holds almost unlimited potential for the PV sector.
Jun 04, 2019
pv magazine test Results from the first two years
The pv magazine test program was launched in July 2017. The test was designed to help investors in their module purchasing process, while at the same time allowing manufacturers to spot problems and improve their production processes. Fast forward to today and we have 16 products from 10 manufacturers covering five different module and cell types installed on the rooftop of Gsola’s facility in Xi’an China, having been tested and characterized in its lab. Among the 16 products, 14 were provided by manufacturers and two were selected directly from warehouses for reference. George Touloupas, Director of Technology and Quality at CEA, and Chi Zhang, Junior Engineer, Technology and Quality, at CEA delve into the valuable performance data.
Jun 04, 2019
Polysilicon goes west
Slower demand from China in 2018 meant a bumpy ride for polysilicon producers worldwide. But the biggest players remain committed and are taking advantage of low electricity rates in western China to bring huge new capacities online, giving the market yet another shake-up. pv magazine caught up with polysilicon market analyst Johannes Bernreuter, Head of Bernreuter Research, for a look at the latest upstream developments.
Jun 04, 2019
High efficiency requires high quality cutting
There is a sense in the PV cell and module market at the mid stage of 2019 that the push towards high-efficiency cell architectures is accelerating. This makes the case for half-cut cells in a module more compelling, and the quality of the cut edge vital – argue laser process suppliers.
Jun 04, 2019
One side or two
Bifacial modules are here to stay. But even as manufacturers commit further capacities to two-sided module production spanning a whole range of technologies, there are still challenges to overcome, to fulfill predictions that bifacial will represent almost 40% of all modules produced inside the next decade. Flash testing conducted at the end of cell and module production presents one of these, and there is plenty of debate among equipment suppliers as to how this manufacturing stage should treat bifacial cells and modules.
Jun 04, 2019
CIGS flexes for takeoff
Versatile CIGS modules are opening doors to a range of new applications that have the potential to change how we integrate solar energy into urban communities, according to Michael Powalla from the Centre for Solar Energy and Hydrogen Research Baden-Würtenberg (ZSW) and Rutger Schlatmann from the Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin (HZB).
Jun 04, 2019
Green and greener
Solar and other renewables are gathering pace as an alternative to heavily polluting fossil fuels – but they also require resources themselves, and produce both carbon emissions and waste during their life cycle. Here pv magazine presents an inventory of PV’s environmental footprint, and the efforts to improve it.
Jun 04, 2019
Past and future glories
Since 2009, when production capacity expansions began to outstrip demand for the first time, prices all along the solar supply chain fell, and have continued to do so almost continuously ever since. Simon Price, CEO of Exawatt, argues that solar is no longer in the ‘cost reduction era,’ and is now entering its ‘performance driven era,’ in which the goal for manufacturers is high performance at an acceptable cost, rather than acceptable performance at the lowest cost.
Jun 04, 2019
UNSW enabling terawatts of solar power
The influence of the University of New South Wales (UNSW) School of Photovoltaics and Renewable Energy Engineering spreads over the horizon like rays of sunlight through a coal haze. Its researchers are confidently working towards the time when terawatts of solar PV power people’s aspirations from Uttar Pradesh to Perth and Pennsylvania.
Jun 04, 2019
Losses as high as 10%
Giso Hahn is a professor at the University of Konstanz and one of the leading experts on light-induced degradation in solar modules. His research group developed countermeasures against the effect on standard monocrystalline technology years ago. Now it is time to address PERC.
Jun 04, 2019
Award window 2: SNEC
It’s time for the second round. Timed for showcase during the SNEC PV Power Expo, at which manufacturing technologies shine, window two of pv magazine’s revamped award schedule has new production equipment platforms and materials aplenty. A selection of the entries.
Jun 04, 2019
Copper corrosion
pv magazine was alerted to the existence of a PV power plant where the galvanized steel posts of the mounting frames were found to be heavily corroded after just a few years. There is a risk of the module racks failing during the 20 year operating period. The problem is not unique to this plant, but the good news is that there’s a simple solution.
Jun 04, 2019
Shedding light on PV in MENA
ACWA Power has an installed capacity of more than 1 GW of PV projects across MENA, Southern Africa, and Southeast Asia, and was awarded the landmark Sakaka Project – Saudi Arabia’s first utility-scale PV project – which it began to construct in November 2018. pv magazine caught up with Paddy Padmanathan, CEO of the Saudi-based energy giant to discuss the Middle East’s growing solar markets.
Jun 04, 2019
Floating PV’s watershed moment
With PV’s cost declines, the growing question is: where to put it all, particularly in densely populated areas. Ingenuity to the rescue – a technology that took its first steps in 2007 is entering full market maturity. And its potential is rather impressive.
Jun 04, 2019
Connecting intelligent power
Information and communications technology giant Huawei is on a mission to build a fully connected world. Operating in more than 170 countries and regions to serve more than three billion people globally, the company is well on its way. In this exclusive interview, pv magazine meets with Tony Xu, President of the Smart PV Business Unit at Huawei, to discuss the technological breakthroughs, trends, and policies that have the company driving solar PV into the era of digitalization.
Jun 04, 2019
Virtual certainty
With the excitement of its subsidy-driven renewables boom now firmly in the past, and the full liberalization of its electric power market looming on the horizon, Japan has become a hotbed for virtual power plant (VPP) development. A number of companies have launched demonstration projects in recent years, backed by the Japanese government’s Sustainable Open Innovation Initiative (SII).
Jun 04, 2019
Commercial appeal
Has Vietnam’s moment in the sun finally arrived? New solar installations soared in 2018, pushing the nation’s cumulative installed PV capacity from just 8 MW to 106 MW, according to statistics from the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA). And while development has continued to surge at the utility scale since the start of this year, it’s the commercial and industrial (C&I) segment that may ultimately offer the greatest long-term promise.
Jun 04, 2019
PV going private in Taiwan
To date, the majority of Taiwan’s solar projects have sold power into the grid, with developers signing 20 year PPAs with the island’s utility Taiwan Power Company (Taipower). But new regulations now aim to make private power purchase agreements (PPAs) a more attractive option for PV developers on the island.
Jun 04, 2019
China’s hard change towards grid parity
Each shift in Chinese PV policy is watched by the solar world. And the reforms unveiled in late April and early May have left many scrambling to catch up. While they may reign in unbridled growth, the changes are leaning towards a future of further cost reductions, particularly soft costs, and the golden goal of grid parity PV.
Jun 04, 2019
The sun rises on the bifacial module market
With market penetration exceeding expectations in 2018, bifacial technology is set to account for one third of global solar module production by 2022, writes Edurne Zoco, Research Director at IHS Markit. Bifacial and half-cell technologies are rapidly gaining momentum due to their improvements in power output, along with their low implementation barriers and minimal capex requirements.
Jun 04, 2019
China’s new solar FIT policy
On April 30, China’s National Development and Reform Commission released the “Improving Issues Related to Feed-in Tariffs for Solar Photovoltaic” notice, the first document that confirms the level of FIT payments for solar projects following several consultation papers issued previously this year. The new FIT rates are set to be effective starting July 1.
Jun 04, 2019
Strength in diversity
Different flavors, colors and creeds; a source of resiliency in the face of rapid change. And as it is true for our societies, so is it for our modern solar industry – with the growing number of PV markets of significance and the increasing diversity of product offerings providing a buffer to potential headwinds. Encouragingly, […]
Jun 04, 2019
