At the end of the year, of the total installed capacity of 24 GW peak in Germany, 7.5 gigawatts were added in just the last year. This doesnt only bring new challenges for the grid infrastructure, as extensively discussed in the media, but also for the entire photovoltaic system. Technical solutions for dealing with the rapid growth of solar energy were discussed by around 200 experts in Berlin.
"In the future we need to be smarter about designing both the transmission lines as well as the photovoltaic systems," was the view of Karl-Heinz Remmers, CEO of organizer Solarpraxis in his opening speech. He considers that from an economic standpoint, owing to the steep falls in price of the modules, it will be important in the future to take one's chance in being more efficient both in matching system configurations and in the systems themselves.
For a long time grid parity has been the long-term goal of the industry, but now it makes more sense to use the generated power directly rather than feeding it into the grid. "Bye-bye to grid parity", is the new motto.
Hans-Josef Fell, MP for the Green Party, noted that the industry is running far ahead of the much less ambitious goals of the German government to supply 35 percent of power from renewable energy sources by 2020. He believes that a 100 percent renewables-based supply can be achieved as soon as 2030. Thereby, according to a study by the International Energy Agency, energy will become even cheaper than from fossil-based sources.
"There is a potential of 200 GWp for PV in Germany," said Prof. Dr. Volker Quaschning of the University of Applied Sciences in Berlin. He is assuming that the feed-in tariff for solar power will only be required over the next three to four years; after that the cost of solar-produced power will be lower than that for conventional electricity. He also pointed to the potential of about 100 GW for home installations in 2020.
Smart PV systems and power grids can help prevent the scenario so often presented in the media – of a collapse or the need for a billion-dollar reconstruction of power grid network owing to the huge expansion of solar power.
This was the topic taken on by Prof. Dr. Bernd Engel (Federal Solar Industry Association) and Professor Gerd Becker (University of Applied Sciences, Munich) in their lectures. Cost effective solutions include the feeding of reactive power, through which the network performance can be increased by between 20 percent and a maximum of 100 percent, and also an increase in direct, private consumption. More expensive solutions involve the use of controllable transformers, which can increase the network capacity by between 10 – 30 percent, and energy storage.
That the latter will be increasingly used in most PV systems in the next few years, was the key message of several presentations. For example, Jochen Link from the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems is forecasting that local battery systems will be economical for energy storage in the near future.
Declining battery and PV system costs coupled with rising energy costs will quickly make the private use of solar energy combined with the purchase of a battery for storage into a financially attractive proposition, according to Link.
On the second day, Ash Sharma of IMS Research noted that 2011 – although it was largely seen by the industry as a bad year actually, with an increase in installations of 34 percent worldwide, was a pretty remarkable year for the solar industry.
Following on from 2010, which was marked by shortages in the inverter market, there was over-capacity in 2011 leading to large price reductions. For 2012 he predicted stagnation in the number of installations globally: the declining numbers in Europe would be offset by an increase in construction in the U.S. and Asia. Moreover, large quarterly variations can be expected. The big challenge for manufacturers and suppliers will be to adapt to the further differentiation of markets; it is expected that 21 countries will each install more than 100 MW in 2012.
Whether in grid network infrastructure, energy storage, inverters, or by considering the PV system as a whole – the coming year will be marked by great challenges for the solar industry. The conference clearly showed that the industry is heavily engaged in finding practical solutions to these.
The follow-up conference "Inverter and PV System Technology Forum – USA 2012", which will take place on 27 and 28 February in San Francisco, will highlight from a U.S. perspective the growing importance of the electrical components and their contribution to a trouble-free and profitable operation of PV systems over the long term.
