South Korea

The Korean manufacturer was chosen as a preferred bidder for a portion of the Saemangeum solar complex. The company will likely supply its special panels for floating PV for the project.

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.

The country’s Ministry of Environment has revealed that five dams have already been identified for a total of 147 MW of projects. The new target is part of South Korea’s plan to become carbon-neutral by 2050.

The South Korean manufacturer has brought, to Europe and Australia, its recently launched shingled PERC panel, with an output ranging from 470 to 480 W and an efficiency of up to 20.5%. The products come with a 25-year linear power output guarantee and a 25-year product guarantee.

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.

South Korean scientists have produced a solar cell based on antimony selenoiodide, with a 4.1% efficiency, a short-circuit current density of 14.8 mA cm2, an open-circuit voltage of 473.0 mV, and a fill factor of 58.7%. They claim the cell exhibits excellent stability in humid conditions.

Scientists in South Korea developed a foldable thin-film device with some promising characteristics. Integrating a perovskite cell material and a carbon nanotube electrode, the group fabricated a device that achieved 15.2% efficiency and could withstand being folded more than 10,000 times at a bending radius of 0.5mm.

South Korean researchers claim to have developed a PV cell with a higher efficiency rate than any other tandem cell based on perovskite and organic materials.

Falling module prices will help PV post another record year after an estimated 132 GW was installed worldwide in 2020, according to an energy transition investment trends report published by Bloomberg New Energy Finance.

A new Wood Mackenzie report suggests that costs for front-of-the-meter battery storage systems in the Asia-Pacific region could fall by 30% by 2025. The declining costs are already having a palpable impact, as 2021 has opened with a slew of large-scale battery project announcements.