photovoltaics

Solar modules are evaluated in the Renewable Energy Test Center annual PV Module Index.

In the second interview in a series held at Intersolar 2024, pv magazine spoke with Karen Tang, editorial director for Europe at US-based global energy price reporting agency OPIS, about the strong pressure on prices across all segments, including the downstream business. She defined the current market situation as “unhealthy” and “bleak” for the PV industry, although she acknowledged that overcapacity is also making solar extremely competitive compared to all other energy sources. Tang also expects pressure on electricity and gas prices to continue this year.

At Intersolar in Munich, pv magazine spoke with Jenny Chase, solar analyst at BloombergNEF, about the incredibly low polysilicon prices, massive overcapacity, and increasing consolidation. According to Chase, this year there will be enough polysilicon capacity to produce 1.1 TW of solar modules, but global module demand is expected to reach around 585 GW. “That is a pretty huge delta,” she said, noting that the solar industry should also prepare for a series of “negative feedback mechanisms,” such as negative prices and excess of solar power.

In May 2024, high-efficiency panels, predominantly glass-glass modules equipped with tunnel oxide passivated contact (TOPCon) cells began to converge on price with mainstream offerings, writes Martin Schachinger, of pvXchange. Production volumes for these negatively-doped, “n-type” cells and modules have been ramped up in China while the increasingly restrictive customs situation in the United States may already be having an impact. For the European market, ever-lower prices for the latest module technology would suggest that demand would continue to rise were it not for a number of disruptive factors.

Israel’s Ministry of Energy says it will exempt hybrid solar inverters from purchase tax and customs duties. It claims that these policy mechanisms will help during energy emergencies.

The Italian authorities have allocated 243.3 MW of renewables capacity in the nation’s 14th procurement exercise for clean energy. Developers have offered a maximum discount ranging between 2% and 5.5% from the auction ceiling price of €0.07746 ($0.083)/kWh.

Ireland’s solar capacity has almost doubled in the space of one year, largely driven by utility-scale projects of 5 MW or more. In 2023, the country had 349 MW of utility-scale solar across seven projects, but this has since increased to 594 MW across 13 installations.

Researchers from Iraq have used computational fluid dynamics to simulate the operation of a 100 W panel with ground cooling. The proposed technique was reportedly able to reduce panel temperature by up to 28%, with power generation increasing by up to 6.5%.

An international research group has sought to build for the first time a perovskite solar cell with the help of ChatGPT. The experiment helped the scientists identify a series of materials for the cell composition and the results were cells with a higher power conversion efficiency compared to that of reference cells built without the material proposed by the large language model.

The solar cell was treated with multi-elemental alloying, which reportedly helped eliminate defects in the kesterite absorber, thus increasing cell efficiency. China’s National PV Industry Measurement and Testing Center confimed the results.