JA Solar

Energy policy in China’s Inner Mongolia region took a sharp turn on Aug. 30, when the authorities decided to terminate discounted power prices, effective immediately. The full impact of this shift remains to be seen.

JA Solar and Clenergy sponsored a recent webinar that explored the outlook for solar deployment in a number of southern African countries.

The latest global PV installer survey by Germany’s EUPD Research offers a hint of the solar brands which installers, mostly based in Europe, gravitate toward. This year’s report also ventured to South Africa and considered mounting systems for the first time.

TBEA-owned Xinte Energy says it cannot produce polysilicon quickly enough to meet demand and wants shareholders to back its bid to quadruple its manufacturing capacity by mid 2024.

Climate change ambitions announced by the governments of Egypt and Morocco are symptomatic of a desire for clean power sites with regional policymakers leaning towards auction-set payments for clean power, according to a recent webinar.

Commercial and industrial clients across the continent are turning to solar amid fears ever more cash-strapped conventional electricity companies will be unable to invest in their creaking grids, an online event has heard.

Attendees at an online event dedicated to rooftop solar in Central Africa called for customer incentives, tax exemptions for solar kit, feed-in tariffs, installation standards, affordable finance, grid connections and recycling policies across the region.

JA Solar published data comparing its own modules, based on the 182mm wafer format, with others utilizing the larger 210mm size over a six month period in field testing. The data show that the smaller of the two formats reached an average daily energy yield almost 2% higher. According to JA Solar’s analysis, the higher currents produced by the 210mm modules led to higher resistance, and more energy lost as heat.

A new white paper published by Chinese module giant JA Solar examines the performance of new large format modules, and compares products based on the two different wafer sizes, 182mm and 210mm, that are set to dominate the market for the coming years. Thanks largely to the impact of very high currents present in the larger of the two options, JA Solar finds that the 182mm products offer a slight advantage in performance. Further, JA notes that any further increases in size would come with more risk than reward, and calls on the industry to return its focus to reaching higher cell efficiencies and yields through new materials and innovations.

There is also news of a 1.1 GW central inverter procurement contract, a pending IPO for solar cell player Runergy, and a $700 million-plus solar glass supply contract.