France

Clean energy power plants will figure prominently as Queensland and Victoria bid to reset their economies for a post-coronavirus world. France suffered a hit to its new solar deployment figures in the first half of a Covid-hit year but its neighbor appears to have no such concerns.

Government ministers Barbara Pompili and Bruno Le Maire today unveiled a national strategy for carbon-free hydrogen to the French Association for hydrogen and fuel cells and other major players in the state’s hydrogen economy.

KilowattSol CEO Xavier Daval has criticized the absence of references to solar in the French government’s post-Covid recovery plan, which has allocated €30 billion to the energy transition. The head of the PV technical advisory says solar must become more central to France’s strategic choices and China must not be allowed to retain its near-monopoly on PV panel manufacturing.

The French government will use around €9 billion of its new €30 billion global investment package to support the development of a hydrogen economy, as part of the country’s Covid-19 recovery plan.

French researchers have developed a machine-learning model to clean low-power PV projects and standalone solar arrays in rural areas isolated from the grid.

The solar cell calibration laboratory ISFH CalTeC has certified the efficiency of the cell, which was made with a standard M2 wafer.

France’s cumulative PV capacity reached 10.3 GW at the end of June. Solar generated 6.7 TWh of electricity in the first half of 2020, compared to 5.9 TWh during the same period in 2019, representing 3.0% of French electricity consumption.

In February, non-profit EU solar panel recycling body PV Cycle announced it had collected 5,000 tons of modules in France, of which 94.7% could be recycled. A reader asked us about the remaining 5.3% and here, PV Cycle’s communications manager, Bertrand Lempkowicz, responds.

Verkor intends to set up a battery fab, with production to start in 2023. The scale could reach 50 GWh, depending on the dynamism of the stationary storage and electric vehicle markets.

Negative second-quarter updates from China and uber-low new-solar figures from India, however, show the world is far from out of the woods yet.