Asia

The Chinese investment firm said the factory will have an initial solar cell capacity of 5 GW and will also produce storage systems. The project requires an investment of CNY 11.6 billion ($1.67 billion).

Researchers have defined a new machine learning-based methodology that reportedly reduces customer acquisition costs by about 15% or $0.07/Watt. It is based on an adapted version of the XGBoost algorithm and considers factors such as summer bills, household income, and homeowner’s age, among others.

The additive consists of a molecule known as 4-guanidinobenzoic acid hydrochloride (GBAC), which is a raw material and intermediate commonly utilized in organic synthesis, pharmaceuticals, agrochemicals and dyestuff fields. The solar cell has a p–i–n structure and, thanks to the new additive, showed considerably reduced defect density on the perovskite film, which in turn results in reduced non-radiative recombinations.

The company’s director Abhinav Mahajan told pv magazine the new 400 MW solar panel production line will become operational by July this year. The facility can produce M10, half-cut, 144-cell modules.

JinkoSolar, Long, JA Solar, and Trina Solar have all reported impressive growth figures for the first quarter of this year.

China’s DAH Solar has added a specially designed microinverter to its Full-screen module, making the ‘SolarUnit’ a formidable offering for the rooftop PV segment. DAH Solar President Shenheng Xie took pv magazine through some of the system’s key features and the advantages they promise once installed.

Kaneka said the cells will be utilized in the roof glass of Toyota’s Prius PHEV electric car. It plans to begin full-scale delivery of in-vehicle PV products this year.

Solar Energy Corp. of India, NTPC and NHPC will examine developers’ requests for an extension to their solar and wind-solar projects on a case-by-case basis. The extension will only be granted if the developer has taken all possible measures to implement the project, such as land acquisition and orders for modules and balance-of-system supply, but couldn’t complete it for reasons beyond his control.

In its latest monthly column for pv magazine, the International Renewable Energy Agency shares a series of recommendations gathered from sector experts to help India reach its ambitious solar targets. According to its experts, Quality Infrastructure (QI) will be crucial for the country’s PV market in the years to come. QI is an interdependent ecosystem of the different elements (accreditation, certification, standards, testing, metrology, inspection & monitoring) working together in harmony, and all associated services should be developed in unity and not in a piecemeal fashion. A sound and internationally harmonized QI not only ensures that PV products and services deliver as expected by customers and national energy authorities, but also enables more efficient and competitive markets based on a global economy on scale.

Researchers in China have built a hole transport layer with a mixed binary configuration integrating the polymer Regioregular poly(3-hexylthiophene) (P3HT) and Spiro-OMeTAD. They used it to build a perovskite solar cell that was able to retain 90% of its initial efficiency after 1,200 hours of storage in dark ambient environment.