photovoltaics

Coronavirus-related disruption severely impacted solar installation during the first three months of the year, as the nation added only 689 MW of utility scale PV, against the 1,864 MW that was scheduled to be commissioned.

Australia’s rooftop PV fleet continues to grow in the face of uncertainty surrounding the outbreak of the pandemic, posting another big month above 200 MW. Mega-household solar systems are growing in popularity, but retailers and installers can see the storm clouds gathering.

Pash Global, a subsidiary of multinational commodities trader Trafigura Group, has signed a renewables power purchase agreement for a project on the British overseas territory of Saint Helena. The microgrid will help the South Atlantic island’s aim of investing in renewables, reducing diesel dependence and increasing fuel security and price stabilization.

The rooftop segment maintained strong growth but utility scale PV saw a slowdown on previous months. In the first four months of 2020, newly deployed PV systems added up to 1,479.5 MW of generation capacity, compared with around 1.6 GW in the same period of last year. The nation’s cumulative PV capacity hit 50.46 GW at the end of April.

JinkoSolar has begun construction of a new 16 GW module production base in Yiwu city, Zhejiang province and Eging PV has resumed a 200 MW solar project in Qitai county in the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, after securing approval from local authorities. The China National Energy Administration has confirmed the nation can add no more than 48.45 GW of solar to the grid this year.

The AYG-1 project, planned in the Aragatsotn province of western Armenia, will be 85% owned by the successful developer and 15% by the Armenia Renewable Resources and Energy Efficiency Fund (Anif).

The PV plant is located at Amin, in the southern desert region of the sultanate. The project, tendered by Petroleum Development Oman in early 2018, was built by a consortium led by the Japanese Marubeni conglomerate.

Scientists in India are seeking to mitigate partial shading with a technique based on the Lo Shu nine-square grid of ancient Chinese mathematical tradition. Their approach features the ‘magic grid’ also used in popular sudoku puzzles, as a guide for reconfiguring arrays.

The utility scale renewable energy tender saw wind prevail again, with 18 projects with a total generation capacity of 406 MW. Solar secured four projects with a combined capacity of 19.3 MW but did offer the lowest bid.

Over the past two years, German renewables business Baywa re has developed in-house floating solar technology and installed nearly 50 MW of projects in the Netherlands. Benoît Roux, director of solar activities at Baywa re in France, said the ramp-up in project size has enabled the company to achieve dramatic cost reductions.