Malaysia

Covid-19 disruption has been cited as the chief culprit as imports from China, Thailand and Vietnam slumped from April to January, but safeguarding duty also appears to have had an impact, with unaffected imports from nations such as Myanmar, Chad and Russia on the rise and Malaysian trade keeping steady.

OCI has revealed plans to invest $55 million to expand production at its Malaysian manufacturing facility from 30,000 to 35,000 metric tons.

Through the fourth tender of the LSS program for large scale PV, the Malaysian authorities have pre-selected 30 solar projects with a combined capacity of 823 MW. The lowest bid came in at MYR0.1768/kWh ($0.0429) and the highest at MYR0.2481/kWh.

The Covid-19 pandemic helped ensure chemicals business OCI could not put its idled polysilicon lines in Gunsan back into use last year, as had been hoped, prompting another hefty assets impairment which weighed on the group even as it expects supply of the raw material to be kept tight by rising demand.

Imports from South Korea and the U.S. dwindled, year-on-year, ensuring Germany’s Wacker and the Malysian unit of Korean company OCI will supply the bulk of the world’s non-Chinese solar polysilicon this year.

The Japanese brand will continue to sell third-party-made modules under its brand in its home market, as it already does overseas, but in-house PV wafer, cell and module production will halt by the end of fiscal year 2022.

The NEM 3.0 program will run until the end of 2023 and will see the participation of residential, commercial and industrial prosumers as well as public entities and government ministries.

Researchers in Malaysia have proposed a new approach for optimal sizing of solar water pumps. Their method consists of using a single PV module, a charge controller, several batteries, and a DC load.

Malaysian researchers have proposed a new passive technology for solar module cooling based on fin heat sinks. The tech ensures lower PV system payback times and reduces operating module temperatures by up to 26 C.

An international research team has analyzed all existing cooling technologies for PV panels and has indicated the current best options and future trends of research. According to its findings, active water cooling, although expensive and not particularly practical, is the most effective cooling technique while passive cooling systems, despite being easy to apply, have still limited possibilities.