And the winner is – 12-2025-01-2026
Table of content
Preview
Table of content
And the winner is – 12-2025-01-2026
2026
Preview
And the winner is – 12-2025-01-2026
2026
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Excerpt from the magazine
The business case for C&I storage
European businesses installed roughly 20 GW of commercial and industrial (C&I) solar in 2024, but only around 1 GW/2 GWh of C&I battery storage. The gap is striking. Both technologies promise lower energy bills, improved resilience, and decarbonization, but batteries are yet to achieve the same commercial traction that solar enjoys. LCP Delta’s Dina Darshini asks why the gap persists.
Feb 09, 2026
Grids key for Gulf solar
The year 2025 was quite an exciting one for renewable energy professionals in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and the rest of the Gulf Region. Marcus Schrauf, CEO at FAS Renewables looks back on a year that saw the first gigawatt-scale battery storage tenders, a few more gigawatt-scale PV auctions, as well as discussions about new regulations in Oman – all strong indicators of a continuously growing market in the Gulf.
Dec 05, 2025
Maximizing MACSE
Italian renewable energy experts welcomed the results of Italy’s first electricity storage capacity procurement mechanism (MACSE) auction, held on Sept. 30, 2025. The exercise offered benefits such as lower system costs, but drawbacks remain, including the erosion of operators’ margins. A total capacity of 9,968 MWh has already been allocated, but the cleared prices at auction are just part of the future revenue stack for Italian battery energy storage systems (BESS), as Sergio Matalucci reports.
Dec 05, 2025
Powering flexibility
Once limited to pilot-scale demonstrations, battery storage is emerging as a core feature of national power strategies across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. Governments that once regarded batteries as experimental add-ons to solar projects are now offering gigawatt-hour capacities and incorporating storage into long-term planning.
Dec 05, 2025
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China’s drive for a polysilicon bailout
Following a lengthy period of oversupply and falling prices for solar components, China’s central and local governments are working with PV industry giants to implement an unprecedented plan to purchase and eliminate excess capacities. Vincent Shaw reports on China’s efforts to bring PV oversupply under control.
Dec 05, 2025
Poly probe outcome hard to predict
US solar stocks had a strong October but all eyes are on the Section 232 investigation into polysilicon. The size and design of quotas is expected to have a significant impact across the solar value chain, reports Jesse Pichel of Roth Capital Partners.
Dec 05, 2025
Solar shines through Mali’s diesel drought
France-based commercial solar specialist Tysilio recently installed three hybrid solar-plus-storage projects in Bamako, Mali. pv magazine spoke with Xavier Juin von Juterzenka, the company’s co-founder, CEO and international business director, about how these installations have helped customers continue to operate while a severe fuel shortage causes heavy disruptions nationwide.
Dec 05, 2025
Concentration and localization
Demand for PV in the Middle East has become concentrated in markets with relatively mature regulatory frameworks, bankable power purchase agreement (PPA) terms, and assessable risk profiles. But PV markets in other countries in the region remain limited in scale or still at a stage of policy uncertainty.
Dec 05, 2025
The business case for C&I storage
In 2024, European businesses installed roughly 20 GW of commercial and industrial (C&I) solar, but only around 1 GW/2 GWh of C&I battery storage. The gap is striking. Both technologies promise lower energy bills, improved resilience, and decarbonization, but batteries are yet to achieve the same commercial traction that solar enjoys. LCP Delta’s Dina Darshini asks why the gap persists.
Dec 05, 2025
MENA’s next move
Solar power across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region is expanding at an unprecedented rate. Insights from the Middle East Solar Industry Association (MESIA) Solar Outlook Report 2025, based on data from Rystad Energy, show that the region’s installed solar capacity reached about 24 GW (AC) in 2024, marking a 25% increase from the previous year. Asma’u Umar, research intern at MESIA, notes that much of this growth has been driven by Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Egypt, where abundant sunlight and open desert land are turning the region into a global hub for solar power and energy diversification.
Dec 05, 2025
From standards to sandstorms
The Middle East now ranks among the world’s most ambitious solar markets. Gigawatt-scale projects across Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Egypt are supported by national programs that pair large tenders with local-content incentives aimed at onshoring production. Yet the same geography that powers the region’s solar boom challenges developers in unique ways, write Intertek CEA experts Jörg Althaus and Huatian Xu.
Dec 05, 2025
Sustainability: Sharing the knowledge
This year, our jury panel chose two education-focused entries as their winner and highly commended picks, acknowledging the impact of getting the right information to the right people at the right time. Sustainability can be taken for granted as an in-built value of the energy transition, but in reality it continues to need champions willing to make practical and quality information accessible where it is most needed.
Dec 05, 2025
Building resilient grids with battery storage
As part of a special edition produced for the Genera exhibition in Madrid, pv magazine publisher Eckhart K. Gouras examines the different trajectories battery storage deployment has taken in the United Kingdom and Spain, and the implications for grid stability.
Dec 05, 2025
The road to higher kesterite efficiencies
Researchers pushed kesterite thin-film solar cells to a record-certified efficiency of 14.2% in 2024, and have now reached a new module record of 13%. But achieving 20% or higher, which could drive broader commercial interest, remains a distant goal, reports pv magazine’s Lior Kahana.
Dec 05, 2025
Manufacturing: Sustainable innovation
Despite difficult market conditions for many in the sector, solar manufacturers and technology suppliers have continued to innovate in 2025. This year’s winner reflects the emergence of PV recycling as a manufacturing and technology sector in its own right, while the highly commended entry provides a great example of equipment suppliers’ ability to quickly adapt to changes in cell technology and the new requirements they bring.
Dec 05, 2025
Syrian solar: From luxury to lifeline
Regime change has reshaped Syria since the collapse of the Assad government in December 2024, but the country’s grid remains fragile. Daily electricity supply, even in the capital Damascus, still averages around one hour on, five hours off. It’s a pattern that has turned solar power into a necessity, writes Tristan Rayner.
Dec 05, 2025
What makes batteries cheaper?
The Cheaper Home Batteries Program came into effect on July 1. The AUD 2.3 billion ($1.5 billion) policy offers a discount of up to 30% on upfront residential battery cost in its first year, delivered through the existing Small-scale Renewable Energy Scheme (SRES) – the same program that has subsidized sub-100 kW solar systems in Australia since 2001.
Dec 05, 2025
Inverters: Fully SiC design takes the win
The jury of the pv magazine Awards 2025 once again faced a challenging comparison. Submissions spanned the full inverter spectrum, from microinverters for balcony systems to multi-megawatt central units for grid-scale storage. The diversity of technologies underlines how dynamic the inverter segment remains and how difficult it is to evaluate across this spectrum. Facing the challenge, the jury awarded first place to a product dedicated to the fast-growing grid-scale battery storage market – an offering that also aims to open opportunities in new market fields. Second place similarly went to a grid-scale design that reduces servicing costs in this segment.
Dec 05, 2025
When solar is a zero-sum game
Negative prices are becoming more frequent in key European markets due to solar and wind intermittency, seasonal variations influencing demand and generation profiles, dated grid infrastructure, and market design. Battery storage absorbs excess generation, and tariffs shift consumption during peak demand, but too much market intervention can do more harm than good.
Dec 05, 2025
pv magazine test: October 2025 results
George Touloupas, vice president of ESG and new services at Intertek CEA, and Huatian Xu, the company’s director of technology and quality, present the October 2025 results from the pv magazine test outdoor installations in Yinchuan, China, and Dammam, Saudi Arabia.
Dec 05, 2025
Beware of solar scammers
Potential PV system operators recently exchanged notes on an online forum after falling victim to solar scams. Sadly, they had been lured by fraudulent installation companies promising cheap offers and fantastic returns for end customers and investors. Martin Schachinger of pvXchange warns of the growing presence of fraudsters in Europe’s PV industry.
Dec 05, 2025
Solar soars in the Middle East
The rapid expansion of solar and battery installations in the Middle East over the past two to three years has taken many by surprise. A region synonymous with rich oil and gas reserves and periodically marked by regional tensions seemed an unlikely source of demand growth, but several factors have helped catalyze a transition that is still unfolding.
Dec 05, 2025
BESS: A hotbed of innovation
Jurors had a tough task selecting a battery energy storage system (BESS) award winner in 2025, with more than 60 entrants vying for the prize. Some entrants debuted entirely new approaches to energy storage, while others demonstrated continuous performance optimization, including round-trip efficiency gains, capacity utilization and degradation. This year’s winner takes an innovative approach to the C&I segment, with a modular system that breathes new life into second-hand batteries.
Dec 05, 2025
BoS: Boosting bottom lines
Balance-of-system (BoS) products can have a major impact on solar plant safety and performance. The right equipment and components can increase reliability and reduce operations and maintenance (O&M) costs, and as this year’s winner shows, BoS innovation can have a major impact on project economics.
Dec 05, 2025
Solar anywhere
From the quiet plains of Alsace to some of the planet’s harshest frontiers, French company Ecosun Innovations is shipping out plug-and-play solar containers to bring instant, reliable power to off-grid sites. What began as a solution for construction crews and humanitarian missions is now attracting the attention of a new, fast-growing customer: the world’s armed forces, hungry for energy independence and low-carbon field operations.
Dec 05, 2025
Forecasting big things
The output of a solar power plant is as unpredictable as the weather. Utilities and other stakeholders require forecasting on timeframes of between three days and 30 minutes ahead to optimize operations and ensure grid reliability. Reuniwatt’s Hannah Bergler reveals the complexity of providing forecasts at a PV mega project in the United Arab Emirates.
Dec 05, 2025
Modules: Pushing to the efficiency summit
Selecting a winner from this year’s crop of modules was a difficult task. Perovskite-silicon tandem products were on the shortlist for the first time, provoking serious discussion, but questions remain over the market readiness of this technology. Several entries exemplified the industry’s impressive progress with tunnel oxide passivated contact (TOPCon) technology, including new milestones in efficiency, bifacial performance, and overall power rating. Ultimately, the jurors chose a winner that is treading a different technology pathway, the one most likely to bring single-junction silicon solar to its practical performance limits.
Dec 05, 2025
Consolidation mode
Policy developments, or the lack thereof, continue to shape market sentiment along the solar supply chain. Hanwei Wu of OPIS sees growing likelihood that China will implement a rumored plan to purchase and shut down excess polysilicon capacity, but slow progress keeps prices in a holding pattern.
Dec 05, 2025
From scrapheap to strategy
As many PV plants approach the midpoint in their typical lifespan of 25 to 35 years, the industry faces crucial decisions about what comes next. Much of the focus so far has been on managing modules, particularly on recovering their silicon and other materials. But the conversation must also extend to mounting structures. As the backbone of all solar plants, these structures represent a significant share of material use and a plant’s embodied carbon footprint. Everoze’s Kuba Gajewski explores reuse and end-of-life strategies for these structures and the practical barriers impeding their implementation.
Dec 05, 2025
Projects: The grid of the future
Major obstacles to further solar deployment are tackled by this year’s winner, an energy storage project that provides the kind of grid-shoring support that will be vital in global markets before long. From synthetic inertia to software-informed module cleaning, the pv magazine Awards Projects jury has rewarded those that have used technological innovation to achieve world firsts and significant cost savings.
Dec 05, 2025
Building competitive battery manufacturing in India
India must prioritize a policy framework that integrates the entire value chain, from raw materials and recycling to cell manufacturing and deployment, if it is to ensure long-term resilience for its battery manufacturing sector. That was the view of pv magazine Insight session panelists at The Battery Show, held alongside the Renewable Energy India Expo 2025 in Greater Noida, India, as Uma Gupta reports.
Dec 05, 2025
pv magazine Awards BESS: Taking on challenges
Battery energy storage system (BESS) deployment is continuing at pace, meaning high safety standards and effective operations and maintenance are critical. Maximizing BESS performance is key to the business case for energy storage, while minimizing downtime ensures investors get more bang for their buck. This year’s award sees pv magazine recognize innovators supporting the build-out of storage by addressing key challenges.
Dec 03, 2024
pv magazine Awards manufacturing: More than a flash
As PV manufacturing continues to scale, spotting kinks early on in production has never been more important. While manufacturers have a wealth of options for collecting data on how production lines are performing, keeping that information in order and pulling meaningful insights is a challenge. This year’s award recognizes an important step in integrating big data with PV manufacturing.
Dec 03, 2024
Ampin’ up India’s commercial solar
Ampin Energy Transition has worked on hundreds of renewable energy projects in India, from initial development to operations. The company has chosen to focus on India’s burgeoning commercial and industrial (C&I) sector. pv magazine spoke to Amit Mittal, Ampin’s chief operations officer.
Dec 03, 2024
A numbers game: AI for PV faults
As part of his work as guest researcher at the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy (ISE), Mücahid Candan specializes in the use of artificial intelligence in photovoltaic systems. Here, he tells pv magazine about his ongoing project: deep learning-based fault detection using neural network ensemble (DEFNE).
Dec 03, 2024
Quality from the get-go
In a pv magazine Insight session at the Renewable Energy Expo India 2024 (REI Expo) trade show in October 2024, panelists discussed encapsulants as a driving force of innovation in the solar market and considered how to manage uncertainty in technology and supply chains.
Dec 03, 2024
pv magazine Awards publisher’s pick: Leading the PV manufacturing drive in India
The expansion of solar manufacturing capacity outside China has been one of the key trends in 2024. One company in particular has impressed with its production capability and ambitious plans for the future.
Dec 03, 2024
Not OK, computer
The PV industry is embracing artificial intelligence and machine learning techniques to automate operations and maintenance (O&M) diagnostics and predictive analytics in PV systems. More transparency and standard definitions are needed, however, as US-based Sandia Labs scientists Joshua Stein and Marios Theristis explain.
Dec 03, 2024
Cleaning up solar O&M
Regular solar panel cleaning can help prevent problems such as electrical faults, energy losses, and even fires. All too often, cleaning becomes a commonly overlooked part of operations and maintenance (O&M), argues Steve Williams, CEO of Clean Solar Solutions America.
Dec 03, 2024
UP: Frames of reference
US-based Origami Solar has overcome two key challenges to replace aluminum solar module frames with steel products. The company says it can offer improved performance and a compelling value proposition, particularly for module makers setting up outside China. pv magazine caught up with Origami Solar CEO Gregg Patterson to discuss steel frames and the company’s expansion plans.
Dec 03, 2024
The year in solar and storage
In five key trends, pv magazine looks back over a year that saw PV module prices fall lower than many thought possible, while demand was restrained by grid congestion, among other challenges. Energy storage has had a strong year and geopolitics is seeing solar and battery manufacturing enter new regions as competition drives technical innovation.
Dec 03, 2024
Increased cell efficiency, on a plate
The solar industry has dragged its heels on the issue of silver-dependence for cell metallization, but China’s Jiangsu Xianghuan Technology (JXTC) is moving into commercial production with a copper plating process that overcomes many of the challenges that have limited interest from cell manufacturers.
Dec 03, 2024
The pv magazine Awards 2024
It’s been another record-breaking year for solar and storage with new standards for module efficiency, a battery boom, and innovation across the supply chain. Investment in capacity, quality, and R&D is evident, but there’s more to the energy transition than capital. Ingenuity is the lifeblood of technical progress and it has been demonstrated by our pv magazine Awards 2024 winners, whose creativity should serve as an inspiration to all.
Dec 03, 2024
Election spooks investors
The Invesco Solar exchange-traded fund (ETF) was down month on month in October 2024 as investors grappled with the uncertainty of the US presidential election. A potential rollback of tax credits for clean technology businesses and the threat of new tariffs both played a role, says Jesse Pichel, of Roth Capital Partners.
Dec 03, 2024
On the road with pv magazine
Where we’ve been: European Heat Pump Association Heat Pump Forum, Brussels, Belgium Paul Kenny, the director general of the European Heat Pump Association, opened the two-day Heat Pump Forum in September 2024 by acknowledging that Europe’s heat pump sector is “not in a good place,” with sales down 47% year on year across 13 European countries. […]
Dec 03, 2024
Keeping desert projects in peak condition
Saudi Arabia will have a challenging job on its hands to ensure long-term profitability and reliable performance from its energy system if its achieves its 130 GW target for solar generation capacity by 2030. A data-driven approach to desert dust could make a difference.
Dec 03, 2024
pv magazine Awards BOS: Leading the transition
Balance-of-system (BoS) products influence solar plant performance and profitability. Changes at the BoS level can have a real impact on plant design, as this year’s winner has shown through the launch of a product portfolio designed with new system architecture in mind.
Dec 03, 2024
pv magazine Awards inverters: Fit for the future
Flexibility, adaptability, and interoperability are the pillars of good inverter design. This year’s best-scoring products displayed those qualities and more. In a competitive field ranging from microinverters to utility-scale devices, the pv magazine Award 2024 winner was found in the residential segment, where upgradeable hybrid solutions can support households as they embrace the energy transition.
Dec 03, 2024
In the long run…
This time in 2023, all in the solar industry were worried about significant oversupply of PV modules and the threat this posed all along the supply chain. Looking back over the year that’s now drawing to a close, it’s safe to say those worries were justified. In 2024, worldwide manufacturing capacity for PV modules […]
Dec 03, 2024
Using data to enhance safety and performance
George Touloupas, senior director for technology and quality at Clean Energy Associates (CEA), reviews the quality assurance (QA) activity and methodologies used to ensure PV performance and emphasizes the importance of data-driven approaches and continuous monitoring.
Dec 03, 2024
pv magazine Awards sustainability: Innovation extends product lifecycle
Increasing concern over the lifecycle of products powering the energy transition has driven real innovation. Entrants for the sustainability category of the pv magazine Awards 2024 applied the recycling hierarchy principles of reduce, reuse, and recycle with clever solutions to extend the life of products and reduce environmental impact.
Dec 03, 2024
pv magazine Awards projects: Fixing generation
The intermittent nature of solar generation can pose problems for grid operators. This year’s pv magazine Award for projects attracted entrants with innovative solutions. Fixed generation is the goal and appears to be achievable using effective forecasting. From powering up idle plants to bolstering the grid when demand is highest, solar, energy storage, and data can make all the difference.
Dec 03, 2024
A locus for battery development
The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, identified with fossil fuels for decades, wants to be part of the energy transition. Battery raw materials commentator Phoebe O’Hara says the energy storage supply chain can become the region’s fastest-growing industry.
Dec 03, 2024
Power with a capital P
From modest beginnings in 2011, Power Capital Renewable Energy (PCRE) has become one of Ireland’s foremost independent power producers (IPPs). Joint CEO and co-founder Justin Brown told pv magazine that despite Ireland’s challenging environment for solar, the company sees a lot of opportunity and is taking full advantage.
Dec 03, 2024
