Germany

The German development bank reports robust demand for storages systems combined with PV power generators. Starting from July 1, the repayment subsidy will drop from 19% to 16%.

Three years after acquiring the cell production business of insolvent Sunways, Bluecell has also given up. The 100 MW production equipment at the company’s facility in Arnstadt will be sold by the end of 2017.

Around 300 MW of PV and wind power plants will be selected in the future cross-border auctions, in which German developers will have to deal with competitors from other EU neighbor countries. In the pilot cross-border solar auction held last year, all selected projects were located in Denmark.

The German government selected 32 project proposals with a combined capacity of 201 MW in the auction. For the first time, it was possible to submit proposals for large-scale PV projects on agricultural land in the regions of Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg. This has considerably lowered the biddings.

With Solarworld’s recent insolvency announcement, questions regarding the potential for trade disputes to affect the global solar industry have once again been brought to the fore. At Intersolar Europe 2017 in Munich, pv magazine spoke with Benjamin Attia of GTM Research about the organization’s latest research into this broad reaching topic.

According to analysis from Fraunhofer ISE, PV was almost on par with nuclear power in Germany in the previous month. PV systems installed in Germany generated the record volume of 5.57 terawatt hours.

Rena and Aiko Solar Energy will expand their collaboration into electroplating cell metalization technology. Germany’s Rena has already delivered some 4 GW of wet chemistry tooling to the Chinese PV producer, and will now deliver one of its InCellPlate to Aiko’s new Yiwu production facility, in the Zhenjiang province.

An interim report shows that the yields of the photovoltaic system were up to five per cent higher after cleaning. Overall, the field trial runs until the end of September.

At pv magazine’s 5th Quality Roundtable at Intersolar Europe 2017, experts from the solar industry looked into holistic approaches to quality management for the lifetime of projects looking at selection of components and legal and technical issues.

The German grid regulator Bundesnetzagentur has also announced new FIT levels for July.