Malaysia

An Indo-Malay research group has sought to define the best conditions for developing large scale solar projects at airports. The researchers provided insight on glare analysis as well as design and performance.

The US solar company says its production lines in Ohio, Malaysia and Vietnam have thus far been able to carry on operations. The company says measures have been taken to protect its workers at all of its premises.

While it has seen little fallout for its operating PV assets, the Norwegian solar developer says the coronavirus pandemic has started to affect construction, commissioning and testing of some of its new solar plants.

Chinese manufacturer Risen Energy will supply Malaysia’s Tokai Engineering with 20 MW of its new panels, unveiled in December. Risen claims its products can help reduce balance-of-system project costs by 9.6% and the levelized cost of energy by 6%.

The nation’s only two poly manufacturers could both shutter factories in their homeland due to downward price pressure. OCI says it will maintain only 6,500 MT of its 52,000 MT annual production capacity in an operational state and Hanwha Chemical says it is ‘examining the situation’. Poly analyst Johannes Bernreuter has discussed the reasons for the crisis with pv magazine.

With solar grade polysilicon prices having plummeted in recent years, cutting down on consumption of the material has not been a priority. But strategies exist and significant savings can be made through deploying thinner wafers that use less silicon, insists a new paper published by MIT and NREL. And as manufacturers are increasingly hitting dead ends on other routes to cost reduction, this option could be back on the table for many.

Four bids have been lodged for 100 MW projects and fifth for a 90 MW facility, all in peninsular Malaysia, to indicate the 500 MW tender will fall short of its intended capacity. The lowest solar power price lodged is for $0.042/kWh.

Sustainable Energy Development Authority figures show the country saw around 94 MW of new rooftop generation capacity added in the first 11 months of last year. That compares to less than 14 MW in the previous three years.

The $483 million fab will be built by an unnamed ‘multinational glass manufacturer’ at the Kota Kinabalu Industrial Park, in the Sabah region.

A Malaysian study has compared the techniques used to reduce total harmonic distortion caused by PV systems. The paper, which considers the benefits and drawbacks of the approaches studied, suggests the use of adaptive filters.